This was posted to GA (General Assembly) mailing list by Danny Young:

I would like to begin by thanking Thomas Roessler and Esther Dyson for their service on the At-Large Advisory Committee and applaud their decision to resign in order to better pursue other endeavors.  I now call upon the remaining members of the At-Large Advisory Committee to tender their resignations. 

This is a vote of no confidence.  I believe that I speak for the At-Large community when I say that your service is no longer desired.  

The At-Large respects the concept of transparency; you do not.  No minutes of any of your meetings have ever been posted. No MP3 recordings of any of your teleconferences have ever been provided.  No record of any committee vote has ever been published.  At a time when the world expects the entities responsible for the management of the domain name system to be transparent, you have chosen to operate in secret.  It would be honorable for you to resign.

I have several discussion with At-Large committee members, at ICANN meetings, over emails, and also at the recent APRICOT.

I asked them what values they bring to ICANN beside signing up regional organizations which have little to do with ICANN charter, they provide no answer.

I told them that they are heading the wrong direction but none think so.

I offer to help them to use tools to facilitate online discussion, no response.

I have given up trying to change the current committee members. Hence, I fully endorse this letter (Thanks Danny) and call for all the existing At-Large committee members to resign.

Saw this disturbing news on Asahi Shimbun: For many kids, death not final – just hit the reset button

A mother who attended Nakamura’s lecture told her children afterward that death was a scary thing and they shouldn’t even consider taking their own lives. Her conversation with her then first-grade son continued as follows:

Son: “Revival, revival, game over when you die.”

Mother: “What does that mean?”

Son: “It means you come back to life when you die.”

Mother: “You mean, you reset the game when you die? What happens when you reset the game?”

Son: “I don’t know. I guess you go somewhere. I know you just start over. You hit the start button.”

Mother: “Where is that button?”

Son: “In the heart. See. Start!”

There are also some statistics on the paper (not online tho):

Can we revive the death:
Grade 1-3: 5.6% yes, 81.9% no, 12.6% not sure
Grade 4-6: 4.9% yes, 77.9% no, 17.2% not sure
Junior: 12.8% yes, 67% no, 20.2% not sure

Ever since switching from Windows to using Mac full time, there is one application which I missed the most: MS Paint. Yes, laugh all you can but it is a small and allow some very simple image editing (resize, crop, cut&paste) and format conversion.

Both Photoshop and GIMP aren’t really the most ideal replacement – it is big and takes a lot of time to load. What ever happened to MacPaint? :-(

Woke up late – This means less time for me at Akihabara which is a mistake because PSP is back in stock! I thought, hey, I could pick it up on my way back – duh! By the time I make one round, 4 hours gone and I have to rush off for my next appointment and didn’t have time to pick it up.

Incidently, 4 hours isn’t enough for Akihabara – you need at least 24 hours (or a local guide) to really discover the interesting stuff. But I don’t have that kind of time to spare unfortunately.

Anyway, I was invited by JDNA (Japan Domain Name Association) to come over to Tokyo. JDNA has completes all its goals, and instead of letting it hang around, they decided to do a proper conclusion of the organization and close it officially. So I was asked to help to produce some video clips, sharing about the history of IDN etc. This was done at the new JPRS office, so I am glad to have an excuse to visit :-)

I learnt two things: (1) I sux infront of camera. Give me an audience, I can talk. In front of a camera and no-eye contact to make, I fumbled. I think my last BBC interview also requires several retakes (2) Goto-sensei can really speak very well! In Japanese style (ie, sitting still and no body movement), he did an impromptu talk for nearly 10mins non-stop, one take. I was very impressed!

While many heard of Maria Schneider who produced the web-only album that won the Grammy, very few people (or at least outside the Chinese community) heard of 杨臣刚 (Yang Chen Gang).

Yang Chen Gang produced a web-only Chinese album called 老鼠爱大米¹ (click here to listen) which is incredibly popular in China , thanks to 网络DJ (Web-DJ). In fact, he was just recently invited to (China) National TV, which is an incredible feat.

Don’t believe? Grab a friend from China and ask if he/she have heard of Yang Chen Gang. They would be very surprised that you know the name. [Or do a search on Baidu, the Google for China.]

I also learn yesterday that China Internet Users has grown to 94m (~10% of the world internet population) according to Mao Wei. I think I can trust Mao since he is the Executive Director of CNNIC who is responsible for collecting these statistics annually. That’s means there is a world of 94m chinese Internet users which the rest of the English-speaking Internet world have little knowledge and interaction with.

It’s like you have a 10% blackhole in your system.

¹ The literal translation is “Mouse love Big Rice” which is very cute.

Here’s a story from APRICOT: The Hitachi-cable folks who made the wonderful WiFi SIP Phones originally didn’t believe this will work. They have been trying to sell the phones in Japan but their customers wasn’t really interested.

“Who wants WiFi only phones?” “my i-mode/FOMA can do more things!” “I still need to install a SIP server?”

This was confirmed when we found very few Japanese interested in our trial.

But all the gaijin goes ya-ya over the phones. Just before Ogawa-san (from Hitachi-cable) presentation, I did a quick strawpoll and asked how many people have the phones. A few hands raise up. Then I asked how many wants the phone. Almost everyone in the room raised their hands. Ogawa-san was speechless.

Moral of the story: When you have an innovative product, don’t talk to your old customer; They are all blind. Instead, find new ones!

I survived the hectic week! Phew. And the trial went beautifully … Everyone loves it so much so that only 1 person return the phone on the last day, altho we have a long waiting lists of people wanting a set. Anyway, we will publish the results of the trial soon.

APEET have a quick meeting this morning. We got lots of requests to repeat our trial at some other events. I wish we could handle all of them but some are probably going to be disappointed. But anyway, we agree to do it again at some future APAN or IETF so watch out for it :-).

We also learn a lot from the trial and we already have ideas how to improved the system. Really, obtaining the handsets isn’t the most difficult part. Making it “just work out of the box” is the most challenging part :- e.g. the infrastructure, the base station network design, seamless base station handover, etc etc.

After stealing some lunch from APNIC, I finally have some private time. More exactly, Mao Wei, Xiaodong and myself went up Kurama Onsen, a really beautiful outdoor hotspring in the middle of the mountain. After the nice hot dip, we have dinner at this Yakikinu (japanese grill meat) in Kyoto downtown which I always wanted to go but my wife refused to go. Too bad for her..their special marinated beef was, lets just say we couldnt stop ordering!

Took the last train to Tokyo arriving here at midnight…only to discover the only thing I know about my hotel in Tokyo is an URL: rph.co.jp. No name, no phone nothing. Tried to make some calls to friends but no answer (it’s past midnight). Tried to call back home but couldn’t. Went to the police post but the guy on duty couldn’t speak any English. *faint*

Wandering around in Tokyo Station in the middle of the night, a young policeman who spoke a little English come to my rescue. He was really patient and helpful and eventually helped me figure out which phone can be used to make IDD calls (the KDDI ones). A quick call back home give me a name: Royal Park Hotel. Phew.

If not for him, I would still be wandering in the cold dark night in Tokyo Station. Thank you!

Andy, I like your blog but sorry, I have no idea whats up with Popular Telephony and its Peerio or GNUP.

Help me out here – what exactly is the “patent-pending invention, Peerioâ„¢, defines the framework and principles for a state-of-the-art, next generation server-free IP telephony system.” (see Peerio) or where is the software agent described as “A lightweight software agent used with any VoIP application (Peerio, Skype, Liphone, SIP or H.323 client software, etc), GNUP allows you, your computer, PDA or other device to be called from any another VoIP, PSTN, mobile or satellite device.” (see GNUP).

Or maybe I am just clueless and perhaps so is David and Richard. But please show us a working product – and not those PRs and diagrams which don’t make sense. Maybe then, maybe we can talk a bit more about it.

Or are these all just a joke?

Took most of my morning trying to do my presentation for the evening while sitting thru Asia Pacific IPv6 Summit. Sad to say, looks like IPv6 isn’t moving here as much as we want…I guess we have to keep trying. I escaped presenting at this summit this time because I really dont have much update on IPv6. I wish I could do more for IPv6..do something like APEET trial for IPv6 but what?

Then went to lunch with APRICOT MC meeting discussing various issues including APRICOT 2006 and 2007. Heated meeting but I am glad we reach some conclusion.

Ran over to meet Meng Wong who is giving a talk here on Unified-SPF. Spoke a little bit and will try to catch up with him more tomorrow..or some place. I missed his talk as I was scheduled to give a speech on VoIP at a Internet Telephony keytrack.

I was asked to do some funny Japanese ceremory to break some sake and kick off the social night. Later the evening, Philip gladly announced to everyone that we have select Bali as the venue for APRICOT 2007. Perhaps my trip report on my Bali visit help a little bit but I think they really deserved it. I look forward to APRICOT 2007 in Bali. :-)

My talk on VoIP at APRICOT.