Nectec, the GT200 and the fall of reason

picture from link

One one level it is nice to see that the government has put perhaps the only branch of government with a modicum of common sense on the job. Nectec was told to hold an inquiry.

But does anyone remember that other inquiry that Nectec did a few years back into the 888 million Baht procurement project of the smart ID cards? The MICT severely restricted Nectec's access to the card, giving them mere minutes to test a few key areas as per an agreed list, not even the entire list they should have been able to test as per their role as an independent third party.

Not only did Nectec find that the cards were not compliant, but in their brief testing, they found an EMV module (europay-Mastercard-Visa) for e-Cash and a couple of unidentified programs in it, none of which were in the terms of reference.

But despite that overwhelming evidence and the independent report saying that the cards were non-compliant, the ICT Ministry chose to vote them as compliant. In a democracy, only votes count, not the laws of mathematics.

I often ask key MICT people what 32-4 equals. The card came with 64 kb of memory, of which only 32 was avaialble and of that 4 was used for bug fixes. The TOR says that the card needs 32 kb of available memory for the javacard apps. The answer is that "the committee voted them as compliant".

Score one for democracy.

A350 XWB delayed, because A400M delayed because A380 delayed.

Probably not news for those in the aviation industry, but I recently had dinner with a friend of a friend at Airbus who told me that the A350 XWB (the ultra-wide body big twin Boeing 777/787 competitor) is severely delayed. Why? Well, all the engineers on the A400M were taken off the project to work on the delayed A380, and then the engineers on the A350 XWB were taken off their project and put to work on the A400M. So right now everyone is scrambling to get the A400M in the air and the A350 XWB is not exactly at the top of their priorities right now.

The thing you learn over a dinner table.

Nexus One - red herring

I'll save my full analysis for the paper, but IMHO, the Nexus One was a red herring. The Nexus One launch was the beginning of the disintermediation of the telco, changing the relationship dynamics of the customer, the telco, the handset manufacturers and the service providers, such as Google, who lie outside the walled garden.

One question I was hoping someone would have asked at Q&A was what Google is planning to do with the new relationship in respect to its acquisition of Gizmo5, a VoIP company, two months ago. Coincidence? Or is Google soon going to relegate the world's telcos to being merely a fat pipe and changing the world yet again?

Clinton, all over again at Thai

So the chairman of the board of our national flag carrier resigns to take responsibility for the 500 kg of luggage he took back from Tokyo recently. Again, everyone is seemingly missing the point.

The point is that luggage documents were falsified, changed from 500 to 100 kg. This breaks all sorts of rules, not just moral rules on making fake documents, but civil aviation rules and weight distribution rules as well.

It's almost like, "oh, let's put in a couple of missle launchers and not declare them" like the Khazak pilots tried to do lately.

Then there is the issue of safety. Well, while one 500 kg passenger might not be a problem, what if the entire board made a trip. The extra weight and unplanned weight distribution (moreso the distribution than the weight itself0 could mean a lot of extra fuel needed to be burned, and that has safety implications.

But is any of this important? No, the headline is just that he resigned for the excess baggage. End of story.

Narita should sue him for endangering the flights. Others paassengers should. The ICAO or CAA should, too.

It is like Bill Clinton all over again. He was impeached for lying under oath. He was found guilty of sexual misconduct. There's a slight difference there.