Ching's Weblog 敬.網.誌 (2004~2005)

Internet Content Rating

A foundation set to manage the Internet content rating in Taiwan is placed to work on Monday this week. The principle of content rating will take effective on next Oct. Click here to see the press release from the Government Information Office

(zh-tw)台灣知名的Blogger如Schee和Jedi, 對於網路分級之舉也多抱有疑慮. 其實該基金會成立的故事, 我也略知一二, 只能說現況是 the more you know, the less you feel confident about it...台灣的網路發展這樣搞下去, 令人感到憂心!!

FYI 另一個反出版品分級的網站.

Family Quick Note

My younger brother Chuck who has been in the States and Canada for more than a decade will move back next week. I am just SO HAPPY for him and I think two of us will have some awesome time together before he is called to serve the country (military service).

Mom's face getting better, faster than I expect. Ange was diagnosed with fibroid :-( . Hu's got average score on his first Chu-Yin (Chinese alphabets for character pronunciation, only teach in Taiwan) exam at school. (zh-tw)這小子還是英語思考, 在學校還糾正老師英語發音... 但他搞不懂單位詞, 如一"架"飛機, 一"朵"花, 一"頭"牛, 一"杯"水...等等. 他問我, 爸, 上課ㄈㄚ 一ㄢˊ要舉手--"發言"是不是因為眼睛痛"發炎", 所以要舉手...@#$% 中文真難為他了!  Ray Chiao, the junior, will still play reindeer for this year's Christmas show. Recently he thinks he can become a magician after watching the Las Vegas Great Magicians DVD series.

I found myself not blogging as often as last 2 months ago. Only 5 posts this month. I think I am just tired dealing with work (3rd TWING Camp is coming, ENUM, TWNIC broaband suvey, TWIX project wrap-up, although escaping from ICANN Cape Town meetings is a big relief...), career planning (or "change management" if I may say so), family business, etc., etc. Sometimes it's not easy for me to get hold of the right feeling or moment of writing, organizing, presenting in the way that a blogger should (one good excuse...) . I now encourage myself to do that.

Meanwhile, with helping hands generously given by J--F and M--K (the gents reserve their right of name disclosure), I setup a site called www.callmeno1.com. It's for the losers who dedicate themselves in Taiwan's upcoming Congressional election on mid-December. Just for fun, pure entertainment, good democracy over Internet!!

I like Skype, but....

Well, these are the "BUTs" of my feelings for Skype so far...
1. It's not an IM client, it's a voip clicent. If comparing with MSN's grouping function, which is fundamental, Skype sucks.
2. It's not a "phone". It's a voip software, an amazing one.
3. It's still in Beta version..@#$??
4. I'd be so embarrassed when I could not find my headset when the ring tone starts....
5. I don't have many contact online. I don't know how to invite them to switch over. I mean hey text chat is easier for men. Voice chat is for l---a---dies :-P
6. I don't like the skin. Don't you think the appearance of Skype is like Windows 3.1?
7. I am much happier to hear the term "Skypeout". I mean PSTN is now considered "OUT"...sounds like "Strike-out", PSTN!!
8. I find a group of people called it Sky-pee, the other ended without the "ee" sound. What's the correct saying?
9. How to teach my mom to use it? I am willing to make concession here...ok it's a phone,but my mom doesn't know how to "click-to-call"?

Regardless those "BUTs", I honestly like Skype!!

Mom falled

Last night around 9pm,  Ange picked up the boys from my mother's house. Hu and Ray were excited to see Ange's car so they ran to it (not the first time they did it). Mom ran after them, she was always worried about them for being out of her control. But she stepped on the uneven iron board on the sidewalk--then she falled directly toward to the brick road without too much protection or support from her hands, her upper-right face, both palms and some fingers were injured. Brain and bones seem ok. Dad carried her to the nearest clinic for disinfection. This morning for some in-depth check. Mom has been the beauty-queen-like lady and it's really shocked and sad for me to see her look that way. I hope that Mom will recover soon. She's 60 now and falling isn't good for her at all. I spent another 30 mins talking with the boys with straight face....

Winning in a Realistic Way

A friend of mine who was a high school swimming champion in Taipei once told me his theory of winning the game. In the beginning he tried his best to swim, out-beat his competitors in a significant spread, and get the reward / scholarship / a.k.a. money for breaking the community or even city record.

He knew he would get the reward anyway no matter its 0.01 second or 1 second faster than the old record. So in his 4 year (not 3 for him) high school life, he earned his 4-year colleage tuition and a BMW. He stayed in colleage for 5 years (not 4 for him) and earned a nice apartment in Taipei.

As for the city record, only 1 or 2 seconds increasing during those years. My friend never made it in the larger national games and he didn't even want to.

Winning at the right moment, in a realistic way, that's about business, not sportsmanship. What's your goal?

The next will be "IN"

印度網域".IN"明年起開放第二層註冊, 預計將造成搶註熱潮!!

Yes, that's true. .IN, the country code Internet identity for India, will be the major hit in the domain name market in 2005.

The Government of India decided to make the 2nd-level .IN unrestricted, whereas keeping .co.in, .net.in 3rd -level only for commecial companies and ISPs. For complete story please click here.

Update: Sorry I was wrong. .co.in and .net.in will also be open for registration. Price drop from Rs 1,500 to Rs. 250. Here is one more story about the new .IN policy. What's more interesting is that the registry will be handled by NIXI, or National Internet Exchange of India.

Remember when last year (2003) .CN opened up its second level, it grew in an exponential trend from 0 to nearly 400,000 domain names now. Besides .CN and .IN, Asian ccTLD are making an much more aggressive approach by opening up the second level to general public, such as .JP, .SG, and .HK. Some are available in local language (or IDN, Internationalized Domain Name) but since the dominant web browser, MS-IE (click here to switch to an IDN-ready browser), does not support this type of domain name encoding in its original setting, the idea needs more time to become widely accepted.