Before arriving here, I was pretty worried about Internet connection. The last time I was here 3 years ago, I remember I have to do IDD dial up back to Singapore to get my mail. So I was really happy to know there is a broadband and the hotel is wifi-enabled. I also have a chance to speak to their deputy manager yesterday evening and he told me they are paying about US$800 to US$1,000 a month for 640kbps. That’s not too bad at all!

The presentation was well-received altho I have a feeling the audience (mostly government kind of people from ASEAN countries) going to hear similar story again and again over the next couple of days. But it never harms to have people repeating the same story, esp. if they come from different people. :)

I learnt from Mr Kim, Head of KISC that there is no phishing attacks against Korean banks. His explaination is that Korean banks had implemented two factor authentication (single-sign-on and/or PKI solution). And before you are able to logon, the banks will scan your PC if you have anti-keyloggers and spywares and if not, will install one for you. How cool is that?

There could be another possible explaination: the banks dont report the phishing. Afterall, you really do not want to tell the world you just lost X dollars of your clientee money especially if you are a bank. Most banks will sallowed the loses quietly (which makes even more sense to target the bank if I am a phisher btw). But I rather believe Kim’s story. :-)

I should also spend some more time talking to Meng Chow. I enjoy the discussions we had, many we agreed but more importantly on issues we don’t agreed. When you speak to a smart guy that don’t share some of your ideological belief, you get your brain screwed around and really start thinking and questioning. :-)

Great documentary into the inside of Chinese Farmers in online games :-)

The sky looks a bit polluted which really spolit this great view. But the weather is great here!

I just packed my stuff and head for Hanoi to attend the Workshop for Network Security for ASEAN CIOs. I will be giving a talk on NGN and Security…I haven’t finish the slides yet but here is one for you :-)

This will be my second trip to Hanoi. The first one was done 3+ years ago to attend the Ideographic Rapporteur Group (of SC2) meeting when we were doing CJK Extension C of Unicode. I remember fondly of the place…

Being on the buyer side of the table for the last three years, I have vendors knocking my door, pitching me with their latest technology or product. Its great being a buyer since the vendors are always polite and nice to you.

So finding myself on the seller side of table today (for a project I am currently working on) was an interesting experience. Or rather, an experience I havent had for a long time. I did a lot of “selling” in IDA but thats selling technology and my audience dont fork out large sum of money to buy anything from me. So the the feeling was very different.

I always believe the Art of Selling (esp. selling yourself) is an important survival skill in today world. So although it has been quite humbling, I am glad I am doing this now again. And there will be more of these in future :-)

Not sure how I performed today however..regardless how successful I think I was, its whether they buy my pitch or not that matters. Keeping my finger cross…

My previous entry on Petronas CNY advertisment has gathered a lot of interest. Many asked me if I know where they can see it online. I have been keeping an eye on Petronas website, esp. the section that post these video clips but so far no luck. So I am surprised when I found it on Google Video today :-) Without further ados, here it is!

Incidently, all the Petronas festival advertisements were made by Yasmin Ahmad (yes, she has a blog so go drop her a note!). Yasmin is a talented director who also directed SePeT, the winner of the Best Film in the Malaysian Film Festival 2005 and the winner of the Best Film in Tokyo International Film Festival 2005 (see trailer) Her latest work is Gubra which I am sure will win some awards too. (see trailer)

The highlight of the day should goes to Geoff Hutson’s keynote on Convergence. Geoff as I noted previously has a talent for writing and giving really good speeches. A short summary:

1. Convergence is something the industry has always being doing constantly.
2. Triple Play is game over. Bittorrent has won!
3. What your users wants may not be what you want. But focus on doing what your users want you to do – shuffle the bits!
4. All the exciting stuff is happening above the network so stop trying to build smarter network.

(3) is similar to what I had said before: “Stick to what you do best (within your layer) and you will still make your money, in ways you never expect to be in future.”

Oh, one slide is particularly interesting

As you can see, the market already redistribute to value applications service providers and the supplier higher than infrastructure providers. :-)

I agreed with almost everything he said and I doubt I could do a better job in delivering that message. If you are interested, here are his slides which is an adaption of his paper published at ISP Column.

Last night, after dinner hosted by Mao Wei, I got this email from Dave’s Interesting-People: “China To Launch Alternate Country Code Domains”. It was funny because no one said anything about the BIG news during dinner but nevermind, I could clarify with them in the morning.

By morning, this little email turn into small discussion on IPer and a dozen of bloggers jump at it. Three of those even made it on CircleID (gosh, do u need to have 3 articles on the same topic?) I spoke to Prof. Qian and he said has no idea (apparently he was also asked during his board conf call) until Mao Wei step in to clarify.

So anyway, here is the story which I send to IPer, hopefully Dave will post it when he wakes up (I mean literally!).

Hi Dave,

Just saw this news and find it funny because I just had dinner with Mao Wei and Prof. Qian last night (Mao is the Executive Director of CNNIC). To be exact, they have no idea of the news as they are in Perth right now. But after showing them the news and speaking to them, this is what I gathered.

The focus of the news is actually the launch of .MIL.CN, a new 2LD CNNIC is launching which requires a change in their Article. As a matter of procedure, they announced the revise Article that includes the the policy for the three Chinese TLD for .NET, .COM and .CN (网络，公司，中国). The Chinese TLDs was actually added 3 years ago in 2003. It is hardly news now.

It has been in operation for 3 years now as you can see from http://www.cnnic.net.cn/index/0B/index.htm

In practice, they did not actually use any alternative/parellel root. Instead, when someone registered a domain name like 联想.公司, what they get is 联想.公司.cn and the append of .cn is done automatically by the client resolution.

Dave, hope you can help to clarify this issue. The news is just .MIL.CN.

-James Seng

Like Ian Peter said: “There will be a few embarrassed editorials out there, but otherwise it’s business as usual.”

Sometimes it is better to ask first before pressing the panic button. I would seriously lmao if I see this on Washington Post or NYT tomorrow :-)