Ching's Weblog 敬.網.誌 (2004~2005)

Elton and the Jetsssssss....

Despite of the conflict at the CKS airport with the custom and the press in the early morning(no diplomatic privilege for Sir Elton?). Sir Elton John, along with his bandmates showed up on the stage right after 8PM, in the face-lift-required soccer stadium in Taipei in the raining night. It's a GREAT CONCERT!! You can't believe that Elton is 57 years old now, strong voice, humorous and hearty talks, stunning energy!! In Taiwanese saying, he is the "living dragon".(photo source: TVBS)

(zh-tw)強叔不愧五十歲還是一尾活龍!!

The Jets
I did not manage to count how many jet planes fly over the stadium during the concerts , but do recall: two jets during Bennie And The Jets, one in the beginning of Daniel, one during Elton singing "I am a Rocket Man". I must say that those jets are really helpful to the presentation of the classic "aviatic" songs. Rocket Man was performed in extended version, it seems that not many people enjoyed it, but I think it's the musical highlight of the night.

Hardest Word, Heaviest Rain
The rain was OK in the beginning, but when Elton began the melody of "the hardest word", it rained a lot. Even though the organizor was carefully preparing the disposable raincoat for us, we all soaked up in the rain, and in the magnificently beautiful performances by Sir Elton....As for the "Hardest Word", it is easy for Elton to say that he is "sorry" in front of all of us sitting in th rain, I do really feel that. But I agree for those reporters in the airport, "f@#$~!@k" seems to be the right word to them.

Last time I was in this soccer stadium for Phil Collins concert in '95 with my girlfriend. Seeing Sir Elton 10 years later with "Your Song", "Sacrifice", in the same venue, with the same girl, now my wife :-)

The Setlist
(two or three songs less than HK and Shanghai)
The Bitch Is Back / Bennie And The Jets / Levon / Daniel / Someone Saved My Life Tonight / Philadelphia Freedom / Rocket Man / I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues / I Want Love / Answer In The Sky / Tiny Dancer / Take Me To The Pilot / Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word / Sacrifice (solo) / Candle In The Wind (solo) / Funeral For A Friend / Love Lies Bleeding / All The Young Girls Love Alice / I'm Still Standing / Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting) / Crocodile Rock / Encore: Pinball Wizard / Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me / Your Song / Can You Feel The Love Tonight

I also did some news cut (text in traditional Chinese, sources: UDN / TVBS / Chinatimes). Some more newspaper scan files will be uploaded later.

Revisit "The Visitor" by Arena

I lost this CD in a car that I rented in L.A. a while ago. Anyway recently I ordered it from Amazon.com, and believe that this one will stay in my cd player at least for three months :-)

"The Visitor" is a concept album recorded by Arena, a neo-progressive rock band in UK. It is one of the best prog rock albums in the 90's and to me, "The Visitor" is as important as Dream Theater's "Scenes From A Memory" album. I assume most of the prog-rock fans agree this saying as well.

The Visitor can be interpreted as an album about someone who has strayed from his faith and after a long inward conflict returns to God. The lyrics are full of religeous influences. The music is the mixture of Marillion and Pink Floyd, especially the guitarist John Mitchell is really good at Gilmour-ish soloes. The other highlight is the keyboard by Clive Nolan, who wrote the lyrics for this album, and also work with Rick Wakeman and Rick's son in his solo projects.

Click here for complete album review.

Lost in Translation...

Hmmm.....I'm not going to write the movie review for "Lost in Translation" by Bill Murray (it's a good one though), yet an exciting / boring one, DNS, or Domain Name System.

First of all, Internet needs translation, lots of translation, from numbers to names, or vice versa. That's what DNS designed for.

DNS (RFC 1034, 1035) was originally composed by Prof. Jon Postel in the early 80's to handle "names" to "numbers" tranlation over the Internet. That said, all you need to remember is something like "www.chiao.info" or "www.yahoo.com", instead of a number string like "211.34.11.65". Statistics shown that up to last month there are about 63 million domain names registered under +250 different categories (like .com/.org/.info, or .tw/.jp/.cn), and the number grows steadily even after the dot-com crash.

Back in the 80's, the DNS was simply a text file. The translation works were easy since if the rules changed or the number-to-name pointers needed to be updated, all Jon did was to overwrite that text file. Today, hundreds of millions requests per hour are made and resolved through 13 root servers (mostly in the US, and Japan has the M-root server) and nearly 100 mirror servers (Taiwan has one F mirror in TWIX) around the world. The fact is more than 600 million people, like you and I, who also use Internet on daily basis to compose email, shop online, and do many other things by typing the web address in the browser.

So sometimes you get lost in translation....Experts will tell you many good reasons why you get lost, wrong DNS setting, mis-direction by stupid registry rules, domain name hijacking by some back-door programs, request time-out/no response, etc. My concern is much more about the impact brought in by emerging technologies / standards such as Internationalized Domain Name (or IDN), ENUM, and the ONS, or Object Naming Services for RFID. Those applications, in a foreseeable future, give 10 times more headache to existing DNS infrastructure.

No blame on the technologies because you don't stop invention because of out-dated scopes or rules. But it's time to worry about finding the pain-killer (for the headache)! Just think about how many calls or product codes flowing around the Internet per second which they all demand the services of DNS. What we will be dealing with is not just lost in translation, but loss in revenues and valuable information...once it's gone, it's gone.

4-leaf Clover

Instead of asking "where can I find my 4-leaf clover?", I recently realize the positive thinking of "sowing the seed for my 4-leaf clover".

I read an article from the local BusinessWeekly magazine. The fabled story described a King was looking for the 4-leaf clover. He then asked three of his best knights to get it for him.

The first two set sail fast, and worked hard on "finding" it, on the mountain, in the forest. On their way they kept asking people "where can I find it?", and of course, most people told them to give up because it's just too difficult. They felt upset about the reality and believed that the King was picking on them.

The third one did the same thing in the beginning. However one difference he made is to listen carefully from the people about the "conditions/criteria" which help grow the 4-leaf clover. Although the chance of actually growing one is low, he decided instead of giving up, he should at least try to sow the seed.

All of them failed. But the King rewarded third knight eventually.

On the next edition of the magazine, the titled article was about one poor hard-working student who aggressively asked for part-time job in Mckinsey Taiwan, which they do not even hire part-timers. 5 years later, 2004, this part-timer's own company, which design Java application for handsets, became a multi-million dollar enterprise. On the day of his company merging with his Japanese counterpart, he was in the hospital, with his handset, laptop, and other seeds he is about to sow.....

(zh-tw)其實工作的因緣很奇特, “因”就好像種下的種子, “緣”就是成長發展的路徑. 而未來的結果因人而異. 如果自己能積極去播種, 去拓緣, 就能在不經意之間, 看到幸運草!

For the winners, too

Check out this blog--http://www.mcwetboy.net/dfl/

The website is designed for "Celebrating last-place finishes at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Because they're there, and you're not".

Surprisingly Taiwan wasn't on the list, and Greece turned out to be the one who keeps the laurel :-P

Hope that Jo can do it again for the Beijing Games (I can provide the Mandarin version).

雅典奧運輸家名人堂　最後一名也能永垂不朽 

（法新社多倫多二十五日電） 奧運贏家可以獲得肥缺、金牌及豐厚的球鞋合約，但是沒有人記得最後一名，直到今天。

一名加拿大作家，身兼網頁設計者、蛇類飼主並自承「專業渾蛋」，將自己投入虛擬世界為勇敢的雅典奧運輸家立下不朽紀錄。

三十二歲的克洛說：「我擔心，我們正對奧運最後一名採取憐憫的態度，特別是他們從聖多美或蒙古這種小國而來。」

他說，這個世界有罪，「因為選手參加就摸摸他們的頭以示鼓勵，又不把他們當一回事，即使我們大部分人都無法接近他們的成就」。

凡相信奧運箴言「所有奧運選手都是贏家」的人，都可能被克洛打敗。他過去十天在網路部落格（http://www.mcwetboy.net/dfl）上記載雅典奧運每項比賽最後一名，細數誰是今年最可愛輸家。

克洛每天統計哪個國家擁有最多最後一名，中國、希臘及吉爾吉斯昨天為這個頭銜搶得頭破血流。

 

 

Out of Battery

My first IBM R32 Battery is now out-of-battery :-)

This little guy (not the coconut head, but the one under its feet) has been travelling with me in these two years. At the same time I found it's not easy, even in Taiwan, the Republic of Computers, to get a R32 compatible battery.....

ICRT Relaunch!

ICRT 25週年暨改版派對

ICRT, the leading English radio station in Taiwan, invited us to join its relaunch party. All paritipants received a cool invitation card (like a big coaster) and a bottle of red wine (as shown. Ian, thanks for the camera).

I grew up with ICRT's music and the English news. Back then it was the important source for my interest of western music--American top 40, live concert shows on the weekends....lots of good memories. In TWNIC I had the privilege to work with the lovely Emily David (she got great hair set-do for the party), the tall-cool-news-man Jeffrey Mindich, and David Wang, who is now in heaven with all our best wishes...

The new ICRT jingle (8 different version) were recorded by Sandy Lin, one of the most successful mandarin female singers/ artists. She also showed up for the party. WOW!

Congrats and thanks to ICRT for keeping Taiwan English radio a remarkable history and bright future!

ASUS P505 PPC Phone

ASUS said P505 is coming at the this month, and many of us already decided to adopt it ;-). 以下節錄自比價王網站 (圖片節錄自Mobile01網站):

於 2004 年 CeBIT 展首度曝光的 ASUS P505 (原 ASUS A8100)，擁有傲人的硬體規格，只可惜在會場所展示出來的不是實機，因此並無法親自體驗一下 ASUS P505 的驚人表現。由於離上市之日還遙遙無期，因此華碩在會場僅先公佈部份功能，詳細的規格可能要再等上市前才會再度更新。定位在 PDA 手機的 ASUS P505，結合 PDA、MP3、攝影、拍照、手機功能於一身，ASUS P505 的誕生，不但充分顯露出華碩在電子業的傑出能力，也不辜負國人對於華碩手機的殷殷期盼。

ASUS P505 功能列表 (Features)：
-GSM Triband三頻 / WAP / GPRS / MMS / JAVA
-內建 130 萬數位相機及閃光燈 1.3M Pixel Camera w/ Flash
-掀蓋式設計，觸控式螢幕 Touch Screen
-240 x 320 pixels 超大螢幕 BIG screen，採用 TFT-LCD 面板
-內建藍芽、紅外線無線傳輸 Bluetooth, Infra
-內建 MP3 音樂播放器
-支援 MMC / SD 記憶卡外接

Stan Shares--the new book and the website

"施振榮 薪傳: 一手都不留的經營智慧"座談會與新書發表

我有幸參加了9/9下午施先生的"薪傳"新書發表會暨座談會. 主辦單位邀請了50位30~40歲年輕企業人士參加, 與施先生面對面暢談年輕人創業要掌握的理念與策略, 施先生也毫不保留地分享了他28年來企業管理的經驗. 當然了, 兩個小時座談是絕對不夠的. 但施先生總能很簡潔精確, 但又不失幽默以及"me too is not my style"的風格, 回答與會者的問題. 整場座談會將由年代電視轉播, 主辦單位也將在下一刷中附贈座談會的光碟.

心得分享

野人獻曝一下, 提出三點來分享:

1. Acer掌門人換成了義大利籍的藍奇 (Gianfranco Lanci) . 施先生引述了他一句話: 沒有"Magic", 只有 "Basic". 個人以及企業的基本功, 真的很重要. 腳踏實地, 實事求是, 好好努力的去種自己的幸運草, 才有有長遠的成功(long-term success). 我最近常與人聊起台灣一般人對於基礎科學邏輯及公眾事務的漠視, 看看街上, 大家一窩蜂去開咖啡廳, 餐廳, 好像回收效益很高, 對於要長期同入研發心力, 教育, 或是"利他", "利眾人"的事務, 不屑一顧. 台灣太缺乏鼓勵年輕人從事"basic"扎根工作的環境, 好多人都為了生活, 想得到"magic/quick return", 一夕致富. 這點需要政府真正去正視的.

2. 施先生指出, 台灣有B2B國際貿易的人才, 因為賣東西給台灣的工廠, 跟賣東西給美國的工廠, 差異化並不大. 進行國際貿易, 不然就是007皮箱走天下, 不然就派一個人駐地, 解決廠商的問題. 品牌這種B2C的國際行銷能力, 台灣人才太少, 大多也都是C級人才. 所以最好的辦法就是要以夷制夷, 要用當地人, 了解當地的文化, 消費習性, 才有可能用品牌打入當地市場. 其實當初我在Register.com服務時, 公司請我負責亞太區的業務, 也是希望以亞洲人去面對亞洲的客戶. 但是我發覺很多美國公司(我也是)都會犯一個錯, 就是把中國人, 日本人, 韓國人...等等統一稱亞洲人, 就好像業者進軍美國市場, 把紐約人, 加州人都當作美國人. 雖然經銷商體系可以用一個system來管, 但是到retail這一端, 一定要針對不同的消費習性作區隔. They may look similar, but act differently.

3. 膽識(Guts)--這是我提問的問題. 我發現施先生回答的很簡短. 他似乎已經知道我要的答案....膽識是理性, 感性, 還是衝動? 施先生說, 一定先有"識", 才會有"膽". 所有的"膽", 都應該有充分的準備, 然後才放手放心去做決策. 回家的路上我一直在想, 新創企業以及成長中的企業, 如何先有"識", 才有"膽"? 我給自己的答案是有好的董事會, 有忠誠度高的團隊, 同舟共濟, 以識壯膽!! 我也在想, 台灣目前的狀況是政府很有膽, 一般民眾好像膽子借給政府了, 變得比較沒有聲音, 或是不隨便發言. 只是我覺得, 政府要成為高效率, 革新型的團隊, 還是要有理性的討論空間與過程. 只有guts, 即使作(矇)對了, 也是非常不好的示範!

施先生令人感動的是對於教育下一代的熱情, 這一份從"King"到"King Maker"的寬闊胸襟. 其實我們家人, 包含我在內, 這麼多年來也間接地受到施先生的照顧, 他始終那麼地真實誠懇, 平易近人, 絲毫沒有大企業家的架子. 我衷心祝福施先生健康平安, 歐洲之行愉快!

有關「施振榮 薪傳」

「施振榮 薪傳」一書是由施振榮口述，經濟日報記者林信昌、鄭秋霜兩位記者採訪整理，歷時一年完成，全書約10萬字，內容涵蓋施振榮創業心得、經營理念、用人哲學、發展品牌過程，以及宏碁轉型再造、接班佈局，與產業動態等多方面課題，可說是施振榮經營智慧大公開。

一向樂於與各界分享經驗的施振榮，將於今年底自宏碁退休，因此去年下半年即開始推動薪傳計畫，讓各屆分享他經營企業各分面的經驗。施振榮也表示，退休以後，除了會繼續開創新事務，享受「無中生有」的樂趣外，將會分出時間去繼續進行薪傳的工作。

以下取自聯合新聞網

施振榮「薪傳」 傳承經營智慧 記者鄒秀明／台北報導

宏碁董事長施振榮今年底即將退休，昨天發表「施振榮薪傳--一手都不留的經營智慧」，紀錄他的創業心得、經營理念、品牌建立、以及危機處理的心路歷程，希望將寶貴經驗對外分享；不過，施振榮說，即使透過書本的傳承，也只能說是「第二手」，他退休後最大的願望就是與年青人面對面傳授創業經驗。

「其實我在宏碁裡面是被孤立的！」宏碁集團董事長施振榮昨天表示，他很想與年輕人分享經營經驗、了解年輕人的想法，但在公司經過很多中、高層主管的「隔離」，他覺得在公司與年輕人的距離很遠，退休後最大的願望就是跟年輕人在一起，他願意分享自己的創業經驗，協助30到40歲的年輕人創業。

施振榮發表的「施振榮薪傳--一手都不留的經營智慧」，由聯經合作出版，他還表示，自己還有很多經驗，「一本書根本說不完，」後續他還會繼續推出；施振榮認為，即使是失敗的經驗，講出來也可幫助年輕人少走幾步冤枉路。

施振榮昨天還與50位企業精英對談，他除了提出自己的「借錢必倒」、「自不量力必倒」、「成功太早必倒」等三原則作為警惕外，也表示，遇到創業困境，最好的方法就是「面對它」，該割捨的、該壯士斷腕的、該認錯的都要去做；他坦承真正遇到問題時很難做決定，但平常最好就要與周邊的人溝通培養共識。

此外，施振榮也透露，他對於自己的親信有很嚴厲的對待方式，越是親近的人，他越不能對他越好，因為只要對親信好一點點，管理馬上會出問題，他的夫人葉紫華雖是創業夥伴，但也常常因此被他犧牲，只有在家裡，葉紫華才是最大，在公司他最大。

針對近期宏碁宣布由義大利籍的蘭奇出任宏碁總經理，施振榮說，宏碁的業績有95％來自海外，依照比例分配，宏碁到「今天還在虧待老外」，未來宏碁會更加善用國際行銷人才。

【2004/09/10 聯合報】

施先生的Stan Shares網站

ps. 看的出主辦單位盡心地徵求這一群讀者, 但似乎也沒有落實過濾審核的工作, 參與者也不乏提出一些非關這次主題的問題....有一個女士就問施先生看起來氣色不錯, 想問施先生的養生之道, 有一些是抱著宣傳自己公司或產品的心態, 介紹自己就長達一分鐘, 問題(那種牛頭不對馬嘴的)可能只有20秒....?

ITU Telecom Asia 2004 in Busan

ITU Telecom Asia 2004 in Busan. There was one session for Internet governance yesterday.

Here is the link for the opening statment from ITU-TSB Director Zhao, who plays a important and strategic role for making the global governance body of the Internet.

Quoted from Zhao:

“Internet service today is no longer a scientific experiment but has become a public service and a highly politically sensitive one during recent years.”

“…. I do not see the reasons for the global family to create a new organization to fight against the existing one or to duplicate the work of the existing one.”