blocked IPs

[eFestivals]

I'd say it's possible that various ISPs were doing their own throttling due so many people trying to get out to the same server. If so, then multiple ISPs could increase your chances. It could also explain why people were more successful using 3G than broadband. But that could simply be anecdotal of course.

nah - that wouldn't explain how come I got thru (as far as a failed payment) on just one of two consecutive IP addresses I was using (I've got 6 fixed IP addresses).

[autoinflate]

so what you're saying is that you don't know how any of it's set up, but you can definitively say that everyone's issue was due to load

[jameshunt]

nah - that wouldn't explain how come I got thru (as far as a failed payment) on just one of two consecutive IP addresses I was using (I've got 6 fixed IP addresses).

[jameshunt]

so what you're saying is that you don't know how any of it's set up, but you can definitively say that everyone's issue was due to load

[eFestivals]

It's true that back-end load turns this sale into a lottery, but if you can't load the page at all it's definitely worth investigating for issues.

I'll investigate the issues once you show me the web-server which can handle an infinite number of page requests at any moment.

Because there is no webserver which can handle an infinite number of page requests, not loading the page is simply that you're hitting a webserver that has reached its limit.

You definitively write off all other explanations, which is not a sound troubleshooting strategy for those who failed.

I see these things every year. People simply do not want to recognise the part that luck plays.

It's a recognised psychological phenomenon, but I forget its name.

The reason that I argue so strongly against them is because I don't wish the conspiracy theorists to dominate the discussion unchallenged whern there is absolutely no evidence to support their conspiracies whilst there are some very simple and clear reasons (without getting into those conspiracy theories) for why what happens happens.

I haven't decided that I'm someone special, but I do have a lot of technical knowledge/experience which has certainly come in handy with these sales. The fact that I've never failed stands testament to that.

PMSL - and so you prove yet again that you don't understand how luck works.

Really, go do some reading about luck, and come back when you're wiser than you currently are. All the while you're saying "The fact that I've never failed stands testament to that" proves you as dismissing solid and irrefutable* evidence about how luck works and how humans react to luck.

(* just so it's clear, that does not mean "conclusive evidence that it is only luck in these sales". But your statement shows you as dismissing solid evidence from your reasoning, making your reasoning bad, unscientific, whatever you wish to call it).

[eFestivals]

so what you're saying is that you don't know how any of it's set up, but you can definitively say that everyone's issue was due to load

There'll always be exceptions for whatever reason (a failed net router, perhaps), but pretty much just that, yes.

[autoinflate]

yes neil, luck is a major contributing factor to whether you get a glastonbury ticket or not in these sales

however, I do believe that you can also significantly improve your odds if you have some technical savvy, access to multiple computers/ISPs etc....i sincerely believe that the way I've gone about these sales over the years has improved my odds, resulting in me getting a ticket every year...'lucky' me.

my advice to anyone who failed to load the page *AT ALL* is to at least do some basic troubleshooting.

you just seem to want to have a pop at people and win pointless arguments...strange career choice, but there you go....

[eFestivals]

I think he's saying that all of the issues could be explained by 1,000,000 people trying to perform transactions in one place in a limited timeframe. i.e. server load. That doesn't rule out other possibilities, but is the most likely. But I'm sure Neil can explain his thinking better than I can.

Yep, just that.

We *KNOW* for certain that no web system is infinite in its capabilities. We know that See's systems are well short of infinite in their capabilities. We know that there will have been a stupid amount of people trying today, very likely to max-out the sort of System See has.

We do not know anything to support any of the conspiracy theories beyond the purely anecdotal.

Further, all of the conspiracy theories can be logically covered within the limits of the system rather than be conspiracies.

So while I don't rule out the possibility that there might be something to some extent to one or more of them, until there's the smallest bit of supporting evidence (rather than meaningless anecdotal evidence) I'm not giving any of them any credibility.

Don't forget that some of the conspiracy ideas that people have said to day have already been debunked (PlusNet being blocked, for example), but that the 'anecdotal' was enough for some people to put faith (faith, just faith, little reasoning) in them .

Why should I let the readers here go away thinking that there's something to them because they're not being challenged with logic and reason?

Edited October 6, 2013 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

yes neil, luck is a major contributing factor to whether you get a glastonbury ticket or not in these sales

however, I do believe that you can also significantly improve your odds if you have some technical savvy, access to multiple computers/ISPs etc....i sincerely believe that the way I've gone about these sales over the years has improved my odds, resulting in me getting a ticket every year...'lucky' me.

my advice to anyone who failed to load the page *AT ALL* is to at least do some basic troubleshooting.

you just seem to want to have a pop at people and win pointless arguments...strange career choice, but there you go....

The religious "believe" too, and they're deluded. Just a thought.

[jonodillieono]

Just curious, but could they block the IP address of someone who bought a ticket in Thursday's sale?

[eFestivals]

PS: there's still people believing that if they go into work and use their fast system they're guaranteed a ticket.

And every year after the sale there's people who did that who admit that it didn't work for them this year.

Luck does not mean that over a number of years you'll end up averaging out with your success. Until you understand that about luck you are speculating on the basis of ignorance.

[autoinflate]

The religious "believe" too, and they're deluded. Just a thought.

[eFestivals]

I got tickets on Thursday and tickets today so I definitely weren't blocked. I have no idea whether they have the ability to do so though

so that's another of today's conspiracy theories debunked.

Which only gets to show how luck and the anecdotal has people believing all sorts of wrong bollocks

Edited October 6, 2013 by eFestivals

[zero000]

Agreed that there is a lot of luck involved in the process, being better prepared can help you for sure but a lot of the time it's just down to sheer dumb luck.

Also a lot of the posts at the moment remind me of this:

[Ricci's Special Kebabs]

I wonder how many of these people who think they had IP blocked had multiple tabs open?

[eFestivals]

ok we can leave it there I think

Am more than happy to pick it up again with you when you've grasped a better understanding about luck and how humans react to it.

Until then there's no point in you trying to prove a faith-based belief to me, as there is no proof for faith beliefs.

good luck getting a ticket.

Thanks.

[Ohinever]

Neil what you are talking about is "confirmation bias". It exists, that is definately true.

It is also true from a statistical point that any one event (i.e. being successful one year or not) has no effect on the chance of being successful the next year or not. However the "law of large numbers" would suggest that over many attempts a person's success rate would revert to their mean i.e. balance out their particular luck, so allowing a "more successful than usual method" to be identified.

Sadly this would probably take several hundred years to be relevant, from a numbers theory.

Edited October 6, 2013 by mooro

[efcfanwirral]

I think the only advantage people have over others is the very very basics, for example everyone I know would press the 'back' button when a form in the stage of the booking process fails to load. I hit F5 until it comes up. Imagine how many hit back? And imagine how many believe they are in an actual queue?

Total luck once a large number have been weeded out by that

[efcfanwirral]

But even then there are people who let it refresh every 20 seconds who get in, and people whose back button antics work, we just have a better proportional chance using these very basic techniques

[jonodillieono]

PS: what I can say is that the (almost) successful PC was the one I tried with the least (by a long way), and also that it was started trying later than the others.

... so perhaps lots of the people who hit the system at exactly 9am and saw 'server unavailable' pages somehow screwed up something within their browsers for their interaction with See.

That's some wild speculation, based on some people saying that they tried their phone later on and got straight thru.

No less wild than your own, certainly. And probably just as stupid.

[jameshunt]

I tried buying tickets using my Sinclair Scientific calculator. Didn't load a page once and didn't even look like it was trying, so See were definitely blocking some things.

[Squonk]

I tried buying tickets using my Sinclair Scientific calculator. Didn't load a page once and didn't even look like it was trying, so See were definitely blocking some things.

[pedmills]

I doubt they actually blocked IPs, but one thing I have learnt from doing this every year is that if you haven't reached the holding page on a particular attempt (browser/device) by halfway through the ticket sale, then you never will.

You just need to try every browser on every internet device you own until some are consistently giving you the holding page, ditch the rest, and hammer F5 on these.

[eFestivals]

Neil what you are talking about is "confirmation bias". It exists, that is definately true.

It is also true from a statistical point that any one event (i.e. being successful one year or not) has no effect on the chance of being successful the next year or not. However the "law of large numbers" would suggest that over many attempts a person's success rate would revert to their mean i.e. balance out their particular luck, so allowing a "more successful than usual method" to be identified.

Sadly this would probably take several hundred years to be relevant, from a numbers theory.

the average is the average for everyone. It suggests that individuals will get that average for everyone, when they won't necessarily.

Because, as you say, being successful one year has no effect on being successful or not the next year.

And so that average leads people to conclude that if they're getting lucky every time it *must* be because of something they're doing, rather than concluding that it's perfectly possible to get lucky every time.

So, we have evidence for why there's conspiracy theories about the sale, but we have no evidence for anything of those conspiracy theories themselves (tho do note some of them have already been indisputably debunked).

And people wonder why i'm not giving these conspiracy theories any credence.

[LondonTom]

Thanks.