Posts by Stu

Beijing scales back RFID ticket plans

Rubbish

This is old news - the RFID chips was removed from all but the opening and closing ceremony tickets over a year ago; well before the first round of tickets even went on sale here in china. There haven't been any real checks in place to ensure there is any quality to the data that they are given so you could give them anyones photo.

And to the previous comment: one billion rfid tags is nothing; places like hong kong airport would go through that in less than a year. The tagging of animals only applies to those destined for the olympic village, and nobody believes that it is actually being done as the farms don't have the technology.

Places like Shenzhen (Special Economic Zone just over the border from Hong Kong that was a small fishing village) are the exception not the rule - until a couple of months ago the Beijing subway relied on paper tickets being ripped to get in.

China doesnt have the infrastructure or the experience to handle it on such a large scale. The cost is nothing here, and while they may be producing more than anyone else, they produce them for outside china.

Reg readers split on Vista readiness

the IT industry needs to get a grip

I have 3 points to rebut most arguments

1) "Vista needs new hardware": Of course when XP was released it ran on all hardware no matter how old it was - no wait, it couldn't come close to running on my PC from '98 (that was only 3 years before XP was released in 2001). Of course when Windows95 was released it ran on all hardware no matter how old it was - no wait, it didn't either! Does anyone notice what happens when a new OS is released???

2) " Vista broke my software": actually, the APIs etc didn't change all that much from XP to Vista, there is just better enforcement of the rules that always existed to stop people doing bad/wrong/stupid things. In most cases if your software doesn't work its because it is trying to do something it shouldn't.

This is a similar argument to the one everybody used when speed cameras were introduced - it was always illegal to speed, just 'cos they didn't give you a ticket didn't make it alright.

3) The IT industry needs to get in touch with reality. Look at the Yahoo vs Icahn debacle. I'm going to guess that most people who don't like Vista side with Yahoo.

There are only three ways this can end 1) Yang etc sell out there principles to stay in power and do a deal with MS 2) Icahn (or others) take over and do a deal with MS 3) Neither of the above happens, so all the business investors (who are in it for the money and don't care for your semi-religious fervour) leave and the stock plummets so someone (maybe MS) walks in a takes over anyway.