Ticket

Encyclopedia : T : TI : TIC : Ticket

For issues regarding tickets in relation to contract law, see Ticket cases.

A Parisian's transport ticket

Ticket can mean one of several things:

Contents

1 Permission
2 Receipt
3 Notification
4 Elections
5 Computing & IT

5.1 IT Security
5.2 IT Service Support

6 Maintenance
7 See also
8 Slang

Permission

A ticket is a voucher to indicate that one has paid for admission to a theatre, movie theater, amusement park, zoo, museum, concert, or other attraction, or permission to travel on an airplane, public transit, boat trip, etc., typically because one has paid the fare.

A ticket may be bought at a ticket window or counter, also called box office (this term is also used for the total receipts). The ticket check may be there, or it may be separate.

Where applicable, a ticket may be for an arbitrary seat ("free seating") or for a specific one. Sometimes, e.g. for some train journeys, one can either just buy a ticket, or also a seat reservation.

A ticket to the 2003 Rugby World Cup sporting event. The black ball in the top centre is a hologram, used to prevent counterfeiting

Paper is generally used, although plastic may be used instead. Some have a barcode or magnetic stripe for keeping simple data stored on them.

Counterfeit tickets are a problem at high-priced concerts and other events, so holograms are used on tickets for the Olympic Games, Super Bowl, World Cups and other high-profile events.

No tickets are needed in the case of voluntary contributions, e.g. after a street performance; in fact, a ticket system is often neither practical nor legal in such a case.

Free tickets are applied in virtual queueing. In a place where one has to wait one's turn, there may be the system that one takes a ticket with a number from a machine. It applies at the doctor/hospital, and at offices where many people visit, like the town hall, social security office, labor exchange, or post office.

A pass is a special ticket, representing some subscription, in particular for unlimited use of a service or collection of services, e.g.:

Sometimes the pass replaces the tickets, sometimes it entitles the holder to free tickets. In the latter case typically at the ticket check both the pass and the ticket has to be shown.

Alternatively, there is the discount pass, for services such as those above: for a fee per unit time (or as a benefit on other grounds) one gets a discount on each purchase. Alternatively, a multi-use ticket (either valid a limited time, or indefinitely) may provide a discount. For example, a pass for entering a cinema 6 times within a year may cost the price of 4 or 5 tickets. A multi-use ticket may or may not be personal. If not, there may be a limitation to the number of people who can use the same multi-use ticket at the same time.

Receipt

A ticket may be a pick-up ticket, for example when retrieving clothing from a dry cleaning shop or an automobile from a repair shop, or putting things in storage at a train station, cloakroom, etc. It is also used in places where people are required to "take a number" to queue up, such as in a waiting room or at a customer service desk. Often, this simply has a number printed on it.

Notification

In (primarily US) law, a ticket is a notification that one has committed a minor legal infraction, for which a fine must be paid, and/or an appearance in court must be made (See: summons). Typically this means a parking ticket for parking in an unlawful manner or allowing a parking meter to expire, or a traffic ticket for a moving violation such as speeding.

Elections

A ticket often refers to a single election choice which fills more than one political office or seat. For example, in the U.S., the candidates for president and vice president run on the same "ticket", because they are elected together on a single ballot question rather than separately.

A ticket can also refer to a political party. In this case, the candidates for a given party are said to be running on the party's ticket. Straight party voting (most common in some U.S. states) is a means for a voter to cast a single vote for the entire party ticket, including every office the party has a candidate running for.

Computing & IT

IT Security

In IT Security, a ticket is a number generated by a network server for a client, which can be delivered to itself, or a different server as a means of authentication or proof of authorization, and cannot easily be forged. This usage of the word originated with MIT's Kerberos (protocol) in the 1980s. Tickets may either be transparent, meaning they can be recognized without contacting the server that generated them; or opaque, meaning the original server must be contacted to verify that it issued the ticket.

Some magic cookies provide the same functionality as a ticket.

IT Service Support

In and IT Service Support organisation, in IT Service Management, a ticket or trouble ticket is a file containing information about support interventions made by technical support staff and third parties on behalf of a user who has reported an incident that is preventing them from working with their computer as they would expect to be able to. Typically the ticket will have a unique reference number, also known as a case, issue or call log number which is used to allow the user or support staff to quickly locate, add to or communicate the status of the users issue or request. These tickets are so called because of their origin as small cards within a typical wall mounted work planning system when this kind of support started, operators or staff receiving a call or query from a user would fill out a small card with the users details and a brief summary of their request and place it into a position (usually the last) in a column of pending slots for an appropriate engineer, so determining the staff member who would deal with the query and the priority of the request.

Maintenance

A ticket can also refer to a request for help with, or repair or maintenance of, an item or complicated system. In this context, a ticket is the record of the request and the follow-up actions taken to correct the problem.

Slang

Something being the ticket may also refer to something being perfect or just right or something that happens which then leaves you better off than previously, for example, finding alcohol at a music festival is the ticket or the fact that your tent didn't flood is also referred as being the ticket.

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