Ching's Weblog 敬.網.誌 (2004~2005)

Good Kyoto APRICOT Experience

Some good experiences I have so far in this APRICOT Kyoto meeting:

• Saw beautiful snow flake when setting up the APEET trial on Sunday evening. This time we are at a wonderful meeting venue within the Takaragaike area (the big pond of treasure ^_^). Got to do some sightseeing then....
• Met Joi Ito in APNG Camp. I did not know that he's very much an America-influenced Japanese but I do like his speech and the logic behind. Look forward to having him in Taipei during TW Blogger Fair.
• Went KARAOKE with Peter, Chris, Keith after the APTLD dinner. The way they sang was like NZ won the world rugby game :-) I was also amazed by the Karaoke machine, it's like a song server, an earth collection of music!!
• Since APEET provided WiFi phone services, it's good to see many people don't have to talk to their laptop. In the past several APRICOT you can see a a bunch of computer maniac sharing their secret live with a computer~~
• My first APTLD meeting without being in the Secretariat team. Ai-Chin's first term as the board member. I think this time collectively we've done an amazing job in APTLD, APRICOT, APNIC, APEET, APNG, etc., in the post-Vincent-Chen era of TWNIC.
• Dr. Tseng made joke on my email to him regarding travelling from Kansei Airport to the APRICOT meeting venue in Kyoto. He found the best way is to ignore my email so the route would be shorter and ticket would be cheaper. I was just trying to be naughty la....

TWOCW?

Read Jedi's recent post about TWOCW...(also see my comment)

(zh-tw)我記得五月間2nd TWING Camp時,  Jedi和Lucifer分別受邀蒞臨演講... 希望大家都在各自的領域, 帶領台灣網路發展, 走向新紀元...您們才是台灣網路發展的下一代領導者!!

FYI MIT OpenCourseWare.  

TWING in Action

3rd TWING Camp will be held on Dec. 18th, 2004.

(zh-tw)第三屆新世代網路研習營將於今年12月18日假政大公企中心(金華街那個)舉行.

本次議程草案...請做好心理準備, 就可按這裡先睹為快, 保證比第二屆更豐富, 更精彩! 我將會於下週將最新訊息po到TWING官方網站上. 感謝Rachel, LihYing, Benson, 還有許多熱心公益, 全心全力愛台灣的五六七年級網路族群共同策劃籌備(好像很多人的樣子...其實就...)

上圖為海報設計稿, 正式版將於11月中限量推出. 如果要搶先報名, 請Email給我並註明"該吃藥了"還有"患者姓名".

Got RFID?

Today I attended EPCglobal's RFID Int'l Forum in Taipei. It's also the official announcment for EPCglobal to establish its presence in Taiwan. Visit www.epcglobal.org.tw for more detail.

This seminar focused more on RFID tag and reader, and that's the part which most of the Taiwanese companies / suppliers are good at. I am more curious about how EPCglobal perform Object Name Service, or ONS, in Taiwan...unfortunately not much about it this time.

Here's what I am thinking so far--
1. ONS will be run on Verisign's existing network, meaning they own the root depository(.onsroot.org domain name is used for all ID flowing on the Internet). NOT AGAIN!!
2. Most of valuable trading/commerce info-flow will be controlled by a US company, Verisign. I think that's why China, Japan and Korea are considering of a possible new standard for RFID.
3. What's TWNIC's role in it? Should we make more effort on the policy and management of  the ONS on a country level? What other NICs are thinking and doing (I know KRNIC has done a lot...)?

BTW No RFID badge given in the seminar or anything special w/ the technology, nah....:-P

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.

12 millon people in TW use Internet

台灣1274萬上網 936萬寬頻
TWNIC annouce it's mid-year household/personal usage broadband survey. About 12.74 million people are using Internet, more than 4.4 million household have Internet access. Among that, more than 9 million people / 3 million families are using broadband.

Broadband? Not yet. Most people / families are still using 512/64 K ADSL (about + 70%). It's not broadband comparing to Japan and Korea. ISP in Taiwan seems to provide just the "always-on" function for ADSL subscribers, not many applications (or they still not find the revenue model) run over broadband--such VoIP, streaming video/audio, etc (less than 2%).

(zh-tw)我與e天下以及商周的記者在會後討論了不少有意義的問題, 例如上網世代目前集中在16~35歲, 而現在上網已經是全民必備技能之下, 我們希望未來能長期觀察此一趨勢, 是否能慢慢隨這一群人年齡增長而向外擴散. 另外我們並希望能找出一些新世代(30歲以下)利用網路成功的案例....

今天也真巧, 碰到高中學妹, 目前在華視服務. 以下是取自中時的報導.

台灣1274萬上網 936萬寬頻
李怡志／台北報導

調查顯示，台灣到今年7月為止，上網人口已經高達1274萬人，占人口比率61.71％，寬頻上網人數也高達936萬人，而12至25歲這個族群，上網的比率更超過9成，幾乎快要人人上網。

台灣網路資訊中心（TWNIC）今天發表「台灣寬頻網路使用」調查報告，目前台灣有69％的家庭可以上網，而49％的家庭甚至可以寬頻上網，幾乎到達一半，而ADSL還是寬頻上網的大宗（74％），其中又以長期被民間團體批評為壟斷的中華電信居冠，在家庭ADSL市場中占有率高達78％的使用率，撥接的用戶則只剩下12％。而使用Cable Modem上網的家庭只有4.4％，其中半數為東森寬頻的客戶。

根據TWNIC的調查，男性的寬頻上網比率（63％）還是比女性（59％）要高一點，從年齡來看，年輕族群上網比率最高，而56歲以上的，就只有7.45％。而從地區來看，北部（53％）最高，中部、南部、東部的寬頻上網比率則都在45％左右，比北部略低。

3G--Girls, Game, Gamble

Couple days ago TWNIC hosted a panel group discussion on broadband policy in Taiwan. One panelist (sorry I could not disclose his name) from one of the largest local telcos, said that the future of 3G in Taiwan relies on "Girls, Game, and Gamble".

Yes this is 3G stands for in Taiwan--Girls, Game and Gamble (over mobile phone).

I have to say that the interpretation is so real. 3G. 3G exists in our daily communication/entertainment life already, over the phone, radio, tv, Internet....we need it, businesses need it, and the government(s) need the 3G providers to pay taxes...