(1) I am still trying to figure out what part of my work in China can I blog and which I can’t. Even the fact that I met so-and-so may not be something I can put on the blog up here - culture differences.

(2) I have only been in China in-and-out for 10 years and really stayed here for a year plus. The longer I stayed in China, the less I seem to know about it. I don’t like to blog about China as-if I am an expert. There are enough “China expert-bloggers” to fill that need.

Anyway, this shanzhai Macbook Air is what I bring me back for a min. It is too good not to blog about it.

It is one of the best “shanzhai” machine I seen in China. Except for the white plastic casing, the moulding is exactly like an Macbook Air - I can use my Macbook keyboard protector and it fits perfectly. The packaging looks and feels like from Apple. There is even a remote control which actually works pretty well!

The specs is decent - N280 Atom 1.6Ghz, Intel 945M, 2GB RAM, 320GB harddisk, 4 cell batteries, win7 - what you expect from a standard netbook.

Cc: Tina Dam
Director, IDN Program
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601

Dear Mr. Beckstrom,

In July 2000, CNNIC, JPNIC (now JPRS), KRNIC (now part of NIDA) and TWNIC jointly established Joint Engineering Team (JET) to develop and implement IDN technology. JET is responsible for drafting RFC 3743 that is commonly known as JET Guidelines for Chinese, Japanese and Korean IDN.

1) IDN Variant Problem. On 27th March 2003, ICANN Board endorsed the “Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names” 1 with the following:

3. In implementing the IDN standards, top-level domain registries will (a) associate each registered internationalized domain name with one language or set of languages, (b) employ language-specific registration and administration rules that are documented and publicly available, such as the reservation of all domain names with equivalent character variants in the languages associated with the registered domain name, and, (c) where the registry finds that the registration and administration rules for a given language would benefit from a character variants table, allow registrations in that language only when an appropriate table is available.

The implementation of IDN variant is of utmost importance to our community as variants are often used interchangeably, similar although not the same, as uppercase and lowercase characters in English.

JET would like to urge ICANN to implement TLD with IDN variants, at least for the Chinese, Japanese and Korean strings, in according to RFC 3743.

Not implementing RFC 3743 would results registrants having to pay multiple times for the “same” domain name.

2) CJK Three Characters Problem. With reference to “Draft Application Guideline, Version 2” Page 2-11,

Policy Requirements for Generic Top-Level Domains – Applied-for strings must be composed of three or more visually distinct letters or characters in the script, as appropriate.

We would like to highlight that the policy of three or more visually distinct letter or characters is not practical for Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean are phonetic languages and CJK Ideographic characters are used to express the phonetics. A morpheme (“word”) can be expressed in one or more ideographs. This is quite different from English where a single or two characters are unlikely to have any meaning.

It should be noted that final report2 of the GNSO new TLDs Committee dated 23rd May 2007 include an sub-group report specifically on “Single and Two Characters Labels” dated 10th May 2007 recommended that for Single and Two Characters IDN labels,

Single and two-character U-labels on the top level and second level of a domain name should not be restricted in general. At the top level, requested strings should be analyzed on a case by case basis in the new gTLD process depending on the script and language used in order to determine whether the string should be granted for allocation in the DNS. Single and two character labels at the second level and the third level if applicable should be available for registration, provided they are consistent with the IDN Guidelines.

We would like to take the opportunity to address some of the objections raised in the “Discussion about 3-character String Requirements”3.

a) With respect to “Fairness of Treatment”,

There are 74,394 CJK Unified Ideographs in Unicode Version 5.1 where as there are 26 English alphabets. In other words, each ideograph has equivalent “information encapsulated” to more than 3 English alphabets (26*26*26 = 17,576).

It is not unusual to find Chinese or Japanese translation of an English text shorter by a magnitude of 3 times or more by character counts.

Therefore, ICANN cannot rely on “character counting” for fairness.

b) With respect to “Statements concerning the Chinese words and numbers of characters”

It should be noted that the statement “few Chinese characters are words” is wrong.

Every well-form Chinese character, on its own, has a meaning.

c) With respect to “ICANN ccTLD delegation function”

We agree that there is certain elegance in simple rule like two characters TLD are reserved for ccTLD that allows one to immediately identify the type of TLD it is from the string.

However, such rule may not be feasible in IDN ccTLD in the long run. For example, Singapore in Chinese is “新加坡”.

It should be noted that ccTLD Fast Track Draft Implementation Plan has no restriction that IDN ccTLD be two characters only.

We are also unaware of any intention from the Maintenance Agency for ISO 3166 country codes to expand the list beyond ASCII character codes.

Therefore, we do not recommend that this legacy rule should apply when it comes to IDN.

We understand that removing the three character restriction is a major policy decision. We have spoken to several would-be TLD applicants from Chinese and Japanese community, majority have expressed interest in TLD shorter 3-characters strings.

We share the same view that ICANN should be careful and prudent. We believe that IDN TLD should be carefully considered by ICANN with consultation with the relevant community.

For further correspondence, please contact us via James Seng (james@seng.sg).

Additional Note: While Korean language community has the same issues as Chinese and Japanese, it would take sometime to reach a consensus. We hope the three characters limitation for Korean IDN TLD would be removed when the Korean language community reached the consensus.

Best regards,

References:

1 http://www.icann.org/en/general/idn-guidelines-20jun03.htm

2 http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/final-report-rn-wg-23may07.htm

3 http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/three-character-30may09-en.pdf

Jet Open Letter to ICANN - Original PDF

Lee Felsenstein and his wife Lena.

Meet them last year in Bay Area via Nick Palevsky. They are in Sydney to give a talk on OLPC and I am here for ICANN.

Yesterday, I tweet: *doh* When would US clueless hardliner learn how to deal with #China? RT @CNBCtopStories: Knocking Down the China Myth http://bit.ly/bda3m.

I am not surprised that Tony Fratto, ex-Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary for the Bush Administration would take a hardliner view on China. He is absolutely right that China did not buy US debt out of altruism and it is in China self interest to continue to do so.

For those interested, one should read the excellent article by Paul Krugman China Dollar Trap.

But what he is wrong is the attitude with the assumption that US is in the position of strength in the negotiation. Squandered by the 8 years of Bush administration, in global goodwill as well as economy strength, US has to come to terms with the new reality.

Still, people in Washington continue to believe that US has the power to command or the very least, to bend China to her will, as we witness in the latest saga with the North Korea.

Washington’s think tanks are concerned with North Korea’s nuclear missile test, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates “raised the idea of a tougher approach toward North Korea’s recent nuclear test … including the prospect of building up United States military forces in the region should six-nation diplomatic talks with North Korea fail” (JS: ST reported Gates does not plan to build up American troops in the region…Hmm…)

At the same time, they are appealing publicly (and privately) that China should do more in the saga, and it is not in the interest for China and US and China must stand up to North Korea togther.

Promfret got it absolutely right that when he say “First, there’s a silly assumption in Washington that our interests (no nukes in North Korea) are the same as China’s. But they’re not. China’s first interest in North Korea is making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. China’s second interest? Making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. From Beijing’s perspective, nukes in North Korea rank somewhere around 10th.”

Asian mentality on society values stability above anything else. I quote Kishore Mahbubani “An imperfect government that commits some human rights violations is better then no government, in many societies”.

China emphasis of Harmonious society is a broader reflection of that philosophy. Western interpret that as working towards a better society of equality, freedom and prosperity. Chinese understood it as tolerance for imperfection in society and when inequality occurs, look at the cup half-filled not half-empty.

North Korea having nukes? Okay, bad idea but chances that North Korea will unleash it in China is next to zero. A unstable North Korea is far more dangerous to China. A known devil is better than an unknown friend.

So Washington’s think tank who really think China will do anything to step into the affair right now is just dreaming in their ivory tower. And as I noted early, US is no longer in the position of strength to bend China to its will.

China needs US as much as US needs China, economically. One is a producer, one is a buyer. One is a lender, and the other is a debtor. The two economy is tightly coupled and therefore, one yield to the other not because of differences in power but in the mutual interest of both party.

US may have greater military power over China as a whole. But with a war in middle east, and a mess-up economy, China know US cannot sustain a (cold) war in the Far East. US “threats” of greater US military presence is at best laughable.

Japan, who is traditionally US ally in this region, is also mindful of China rising power is also evaluating their position. Japan is honestly concerned over North Korea but unfortunately has little clot in the matter beyond making motherhood statements.

It is left to South Korea who feel the immediate threat to flex its military muscle with US support. North Korea immediately responded that South is nearly an act of war.

Perhaps that’s what Washington has in mind all along. Not exactly what I like to see but perhaps that’s what it takes to bring China to do something.

* Also read the excellent article by Eric Anderson.

First, they complaint that TheOnlineCitizen and similar sites coverage was biased to the extend of being anti-Christian. Then they go after Siew Kum Hong blaming him being impartial, pro-gay and worst, hinting he is corrupted. Siew has to take action to stop the nonsense. The latest is going after Straits Times claiming they are biased in their coverage.

What is truly sad is in all these, they have not sit down and reflect what did they go wrong.

Instead, its ST fault for uncovering the story in the first place (don’t they get a hint when we didn’t respond to any of their interview!?). If not, no one would know we taken over Aware and everything would be fine. Its TOC fault for extensive coverage and gathering voters to the EGM to vote us out, using anti-christian sentiment. Its Siew fault interfere with the EGM, or else we would have legal backing to hold on even we lose the vote of no confidence.

If you are doing something that cannot be said in open, it is good idea to evaluate what you are doing. If what you are doing angers people enough to spend 2 hours to queue up and 8 hours to vote you out, then its good idea to think over what you have done wrong. Christians are embarrassed by the saga not because of the coverage of ST or TOC but by the action of a few extreme fundamentalists.

Conservatives are free to believe in what they believe in and lead the life they choose. But they have no rights to impose that ideology to the rest of us.

I share the same sentiment as A. Prof Koo and I quote “Intolerance, not the economic crisis, poses the biggest threat to Singapore.”

Singapore recovery depends on everyone in Singapore working together, regardless of race, language or religion, regardless where a native Singaporean, PR or foreigner. Everyone is in a little boat called Singapore. Differences in opinions are okay but at some stage, one should say “We agree to disagree” and move on.

Bus 44

Last week, I found out we have a new neighbor in Zhangjiang, two story below us. We are located in the building behind The9.

There is this big sign board outside the building by NetEase recruiting people with experiences with World of Warcraft, strategically place so that staff from The9 can see it across the window :-)

One of the hottest vids going around in China right now.

Whether it is bad PR or lack of experience or bias of the media, the following remains:

1. They were telling half-truth in an NGO, an environment that requires and values transparency. In some cases, they either out-right lie or they changed their position often. The appearance of the puppet master, a feminist mentor, and the church (please don’t give me the BS that COOS is not involved) behind all these is the last straw for us.

2. (1) is not about whether they are christian or their views of homosexuality, which I disagreed but my wife agreed. As I said, she is pro-family - but at least she don’t see people who disagreed with pro-family as anti-family.

3. Their action so far in Aware speaks volume of their modules of operation: shutting down all sub-committee, firing long-time staff members, changing locks, security cameras, and uncontrolled spending of reserves.

This is not how you takeover a society. This is not even the way you handle a hostile takeover of a company. NGO is a totally different beast, and far more political and sensitive for you to run it as if you own it.

4. If there is one thing the ex-new Exco would be disqualified to run Aware, it is their value of Pro-Family they wear with pride. Aware is not just about helping woman to be successful (and by that count, the ex-new Exco is fully qualified) but build upon Suffrage movement.

Pro-Family oppose abortion. Pro-Feminism, on their first agenda list is reproductive rights, including abortions. Pro-Family and Pro-Feminism have a lot of things that don’t see eye to eye.

Don’t get me wrong: There is nothing wrong with Pro-Family values, although it is not one I subscribe to, but there are decent people (like my wife) who believes in it. But that value has no place in Pro-Feminism group.

via mrbrown

Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha, world’s greatest stock market investor.
Bill Gates, Billionaire Computer Genius, world’s richest man.

We tend to overemphasis on the man and overlooked the fact that successful men are successful because they are surrounded by a team of talented people.

Warren have Charlie Munger. Bill have Steve Ballmer.
Liu Bei have Zhang Fei, Guan Yu and Zhao Yun.
Sun Quan have Zhou Yu, Zhang Zhao, Zhang Hong, Cheng Pu.

Empires are not build by one man. 江山不是一个人打出来的。

As a leader, people skill, of recruiting and retaining talents, is far more important capability than his own capability.

But speaking to one of the staff recently, I just realized how bad it could be for the moral of the company, esp the company is small in a close-nit group. He reminded me that it is sending a very wrong signal when his friends are being let off and a new one is joining at the same time. Worst, a good talented new staff may end up being ostrichized by the rest of the company, even though no fault of his.

One of the few things that makes managing a Chinese company quite different; “Relationship” is stronger than anywhere other company I used to work in.

No, I am so silly to fly back to PVG (Shanghai) only to take a PVG-PEK-SFO cheaper ticket.

Anyway, back in SFO yet again. 3rd time this month. The guy at the immigration was puzzled. Me too.

Dragon

Phoenix

Wofo Temple on the west side of Beijing

See the little building up in the mountain? Ya, we went up there…

View from the top…not as breath-taking as I thought it would be. Perhaps it is the polution :(

The handicraft man who made these dragon and phoenix that I got. Ya Ya, RMB 10 may be a rip-off but I think it is worth it, even just for the photo.

It is a wonderful article of how the whole financial sector breakdown, to the world we have today, in simple terms of how CDO and CDS adds to the mess we are in. (I understand CDO, but I never fully grasp the implication of CDS until I read this article)

Actually, I was made aware of something called “sub-prime problem” in US in late 2006 by a very smart investor I worked with. He told it is going to be the biggest problem the world going to face and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how a lending problem in US could lead to a worldwide breakdown. I also remember sitting down with some analysts over lunch in mid 2007 trying to make sense of this subprime thing, and we never got it except to get out of the market.

I remember asking “If something going to crash, then someone somewhere going to made money”. I don’t know how back then and wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. I didn’t bother to dig further either (not my field anyway).

But it all make sense now and I wish I did ask a lot more questions then.

—
[I wrote the following and then deleted it, and then wth, I am not giving out anything that is important anyway]

While I lost money in the crisis, I am a little proud I wrote the following in 15th Aug 2007 for an investment report I made for my investor.

“The other risk is timing of the IPO. Many market analysts believe that the US market has being growing for too long and the housing loans problem will bring a major correction to the US market within this year. We must be prepared that the (COMPANY) may not be able to go IPO in 2008 as planned.”

Like sitting at University Cafe talking to some friends (Nick, David and Andy) yesterday and turning my back to see Loic, who is meeting Benjamin, another new friend I just got to know just 2 hours ago. Small world!

And waking up in the middle of the night, jetlag, login to World of Warcraft, only to realized Joi Ito (who is also jetlag) is in SF holding a party tomorrow. (guild-only, no links). Very tempting, almost made me wanted to stay for another day.

Or just an hour ago, as I am about to go through security clearance, to see Ole Jacobson standing inline in front of me on his way to Osaka, and then Nakayama joined us in the lounge who is on his way back to Tokyo.

I guess March is an active month, with ICANN (Mexico), Demo (Palm Bench), ETech (San Jose), IETF (San Francisco), APAN (Taiwan) and WIDE (Japan). The geeks are certainly busy traveling.

First, I would like to thank the staff who have work very hard for the revised gTLD RFP. The quality of the RFP clearly show the effort the staff have put into the document, despite facing very challenging and sometimes conflicting comments from the community.

It is important for me to pay tribute to the staff because what I am going to say may sound ungrateful, and I am certainly not.

When I started using the Internet in the early 90s, it was an Angelo-centric Internet.  We dream about an Internet that is truly international where English is not a prerequisite.  There is a slogan then from ISOC - “Internet for everyone, everywhere”, remember?

In 1999, I demonstrated IDN at APRICOT/ICANN. I went on to chair the IETF IDN WG in 2000 defining the standard for IDN as we know now. I have conducted numerous workshops here at ICANN, also at ITU and other international forum on IDN.

I have dedicated nearly a decade of my life on IDN. I have no regrets and gladly doing it all over again.

So I am really proud that I finally get to see my dream, a 10 dream, of a fully-internationalized domain name coming true.

Yet, as we embark on the next great step forward, of IDN TLD, I am also disappointed that despite all these years, ICANN remains as Angelo-centric as ever.

Why do I say that? Two examples.

In the latest revision of the RFP, there is a legacy 3 character limitation on GTLD. The arcane rule has extended from 3 ASCII character to 3 Unicode character, assuming an Angelo-centric view of “character” apply to the rest of the world. A “Unicode character” in CJK is not a “character” but a “word”.

Imaging having a rule that say “Your English TLD has to be at least 3 words long”. That what ICANN is telling the CJK community.

Second example, despite our work on JET Guidelines, the RFP is silent on IDN variants. I shall not go into the technicality of variants but imaging ICANN saying “.shop” in small letter goes to A but “.shop” in upper case to goes to B. The confusion it will cause to the CJK community is unimaginable.

I spent a lot of time with the ICANN staff this week on these issues. I am happy to say that the staff, Tina, Kurt and Patrick, are extremely understanding to our problem.

I thank them very much for their time and effort.

I am not here to whine but to bring proposals. I won’t go into detail right now but I hope it will be accepted.

Let me end with a story: At the Joint SO/AC meeting this week, the moderator posted a question to the audience, “In the RFP, do you agree that IDN TLD has the most well-defined need?”. It is the only question that has 100% green flags. So if there is such thing as a “priority” in this RFP, then the priority MUST be IDN TLDs.

In 2008, the largest growth of domain names, excluding .com comes from Asia.

If ICANN is sincere about making GTLD successful, I beg you, please do not fumble in Asia.

Thank you.

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes , found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

- Annotation on Obama Staff Arrives to White House Stuck in Dark Ages of Technology - washingtonpost.com

This is so sad at so many level…

But I hesitated to comment on it because,

1) I could be one of the “foreign blogger” who is “controlling the Singapore blogosphere” she is referring to altho I am quite certain she is referring to U-Zyn and not me or Cowboy. While I acknowledge the “foreign” part is true, I am not so sure of the latter.

Tomorrow.sg is foremost, an experiment, pushing the boundary of what is allowed in Singapore (and towards that goal, with the results of what AIMS have proposed, I think we done our part) and a social management experiment (for me personally) to see whether a bunch of people with wildly different ideals can come together to work on a project. I couldn’t even get the editors to come to an agreement for lunch, much less “control” the whole blogosphere.

2) Given the vindictiveness of how ECL goes after U-Zyn after the ping.sg award incident (I know U-Zyn and Veron so I kind of know the back story), she is one woman I don’t want to cross.

While I have an occasional (weakness) habit that I provoke people like ECL for fun, I don’t have the time nor the energy to engage in another blog flamewar right now.

3) Most importantly of all, while I may disagree with who is leading the association, I am not so sure I am against anyone trying to form an association. It is another step forward, yet another experiment, which may or may not work out, but something to watch.

There is an old saying in American politics “Decisions are made by those who show up (Aaron Sorkin)”.

There lies the answer to those who is against the association. Participate and make your vote counts (perhaps that’s the reason why they require council approval before allowing membership). Or form your own association. :-)

Out of the blue, my wife said to me that I am beginning to behave “more like a father”.

Reflecting on her comments, I feel quite guilty. I spend most part of Yauyau babyhood away from her (Malaysia and Indonesia) and then I spend most part of Shern Ley babyhood away from him (US and China). Even on the times I was in Singapore, I spend most of my days running from meetings to meetings and will be home quite late. The only times I really spend with them is the few weekends I am in Singapore, which is not much.

My wife never grumble of my traveling, and always supportive. I feel very blessed and thankful to know she is behind me on this. Many friends in similar situation as me are amazed by my wife tolerance (she is rather independent and all she really asked for is a broadband and a warcraft subscription. Very easy to satisfy :-).

But still it does not eliminate my guiltiness and looking back, insisting them to come over to China with me was a good decision. For my kids; Yauyau love her school so much that she said she don’t want to go back Singapore after first day; but also our family; that I spending more time with them that I am starting to plan family trip within China (something my wife never thought I would ever do cos my idea of a vacation is “sleeping in bed”).

I feel extremely guilty this morning. Three of them, lying in bed, weak from diarrohea and vomiting, and I am packing my bags for Wuhan and Beijing. More importantly, unlike in Singapore where I know the in-laws would be able to take care of them, there would be no one over here.

Our “aiyi” left this morning to spend Chinese New Year with her family but luckily our driver is still around so I asked him to keep an eye on them this morning. (He told me of his old village remedy for diarrohea, extracting from fat in the chicken stomach, grill them and down it with water…*gump*)

Still, I don’t feel quite good about it.

But my wife say “Don’t worry, I am strong enough today.”.

Obviously she wasn’t and made me feel even more guilty :-(