What? Me - worry? Er - Engaged in Adversarial Relationships?

I quote from Chin Wong’s Manila Times article:

The [PICS] draft paper also noted Disini’s “antagonistic and adversarial relationship with the Philippine Internet community.”

When people criticize me, I try to make it a point to listen to them and figure out where they are coming from. It was somewhat surprising for me to hear the PICS paper refer to me as having “antagonistic and adversarial relationship with the Philippine Internet community.”

Sure, I have had some antagonistic relationships with members of the Internet community, but as far as I can tell, this is probably the case with people who have attempted to take over control of the PH Domain. It shouldn’t be surprising that there would be some discord, given that

1) these people have failed to articulate any valid reason for taking over control of the PH Domain.
2) there has been little regard for the time and money we’ve invested in building up the DotPH brand and infrastructure. The people we’ve dealt with seemed to have no problems appropriating our investment without any sort of compensation. I felt that was unfair, so it’s only natural that things have gotten testy at times.

But have there been other people who feel I’ve been adversarial with? Perhaps! And I thought I’d like to clear the air on that.

I note that the head of PICS is Maan Tolentino, an AVP for BPI, whose company sued us over a year ago because a cybersquatter had been using the domain bpiexpressonline.com.ph. The suit was settled amicably, but I sometimes wonder if the PICS paper has something to do with the lawsuit.

Here is what happened. One day, Emil Avancena of DotPH received a call from Maan Tolentino requesting us to disconnect the bpiexpressonline.com.ph nameholder. Maan’s reasoning - which is how most “cybersquatees” feel - is that

1) we (Maan) are obviously the rightful owners of bpiexpressonline, and you (dotph) know it!
2) it would be a simple matter for Dotph to disconnect the current user and pass control of the domain to BPI.

What Maan failed to understand is

1) It is not our job a DotPh to determine who is the rightful owner of the bpiexpressonline.com.ph trademark. (It would turn out, during our court case, the BPI in fact DID NOT have the rights to the trademark. BPI had filed for the mark, but the trademark had yet to be approved!)

2) It was possible that the nameholder did in fact have the rights to the bpiexpressonline trademark in another country.

3) ICANN expressly discourages ccTLDs like DotPH from getting involved in these kinds of disputes and has set up a dispute resolution process to handle these kinds of issues. We actively encouraged BPI to contact WIPO, and told them that in our experience, WIPO normally settled these kinds of issues in less than sixty days. If BPI was indeed the rightful owner of the mark “bpiexpressonline”, it should have no problem getting WIPO to rule in its favor.

BPI was not pleased and preferred to sue us. Why? I’m not sure - but I think it’s something unique to Filipino culture. She (Maan) probably expected us to bend the rules for her, and was probably felt insulted when we would not do so. I recall JR Contreras - who was largely responsible for trying to take over control of Dotph four years ago, and with whom I used to enjoy excellent relations - being miffed that I refused to register the domain “powerup.com.ph” w/o prior payment. When people know you, they expect special treatment; and they are put off when you don’t accord them that. The flip side is that when I help people, they are overly grateful - and are a bit surprised when I tell them that it was nothing - I was simply doing my job.

Not too long ago, we had a Telco who was having a major problem with some of their domains. It turns out that the Registrar (for the domains) and the Telco had a financial dispute, and the Registrar was refusing to change the nameservers (of the domains) to point to the Telco’s. As a result, the nameholders were caught in the middle, and their email was bouncing. The nameholders were getting upset with the Telco (whom they had paid to register their domains).

In this case, it was not DotPH’s job to determine who owed whom. But the fix was elegantly simple - DotPH employs two domain locks - one so that the user can’t transfer from one Registrar to another. We implemented this lock so that Registrars had some protection against nameholders who still owed them money. So the fix was to teach the Registrar to enable the transfer lock (so they still had control over the domains) while allowing the domains’ nameservers to point to the Telco’s (so that mail would be properly processed). The Telco and Registrar could continue to work out their differences in court, while the Registrar could continue to exercise control over the domains, yet the Nameholder’s domain details could now be managed by the Telco (w/ the proper authorization from the nameholder)- to avoid any disruption in service.

The Telco was profuse in their thanks - thinking I had done them a special favor - but they didn’t realize I would have applied the rules equally for any Registrar.

We in the Philippines had a President who once said “walang kamag-anak dito”. Yet we don’t know what to make of people who actually practice this policy. I live in a neighborhood where security is strict and the guards call up the resident before allowing any guest in. People understand that this is done for security reasons, yet there always are people who are insulted when a guard subjects them to this kind of security check. “Hindi mo ba ako nakikilala? Sino ka ba?” etc. etc.

If the PICS people are listening, I think it would be good for them to document these “adversarial and antagonistic relationships”. It would be good for me and it would be good for the community.

Fermat’s Last Theorem solved?

While on the subject of inaccurate stories in the press, I came across this story on ABS-CBN and the Manila Times:

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=4433

It talks about a Filipino mathematician, one Edgar Escultura, who claims to have proven Fermat’s last Theorem (FLT) to be false.

Now this is spectacular stuff. To a mathematician, proving or disproving FLT is an even more amazing feat than completing Einstein’s Unified Field Theory, or mapping the human genome.

So it was somewhat a disappointment to me when Rony Diaz, the Times CEO, “wrote” the above story, without as much as doing a little basic homework.

Just listen to the story:

Escultura’s refutation sparked much discussion on the Internet that has spilled over to other fields such as physics, astronomy, cosmology, intelligence, learning, chaos, turbulence, gravity and nonlinear analysis

.

Uh - Fermat’s last Theorem has implications in cosmology? Intelligence and Learning? Chaos Theory?

[Escultura] took the position that the failure to resolve [Fermat’s Last Theorem] for over 360 years reveals the inadequacy and defects of foundations, number theory and the real number system. [Escultura] undertook a thorough critique-rectification of these fields and found, among others, that the real number system in basic algebra, the foundation of mathematics, is defective.

Uh - the real number system is defective? That’s like saying that 1+1 <> 2. (More accurately, he claims that 1+ (0.9999…) <> 2, but then i digress). This guy doesn’t just claim to “solve” Fermat’s Last Theorem, he’s actually starting a whole new branch of Mathematics!

More on the Manila Times hoax is available on Alecks Pabico’s blog:

http://www.pcij.org/blog/?p=73

It turns out that Mr. Escultura even used fake letters from renowned mathematicians - congratulating him on his work - to buttress his theories.

Here is one such letter from a world-famous mathematician to Escultura:

Your work is incredible, I read all of it just yesterday and let me tell you I respect you. I am going to review all my ‘proof’ which I am sure is wrong (thanks to you!).

How could the Manila Times not see through this self-serving crap?

A plea for accuracy in the local IT media

Some time ago, I ran across an article by Chin Wong (dated May 16) in the Manila-Standard-Today. It leads by saying:

The country’s biggest association of online businesses (eg - PICS) will support the appointment of a new administrator of the PH Domain.

I’ve met Chin Wong before, and I’ve tried to talk to him about his attempts to sensationalize news about DotPH, and it’s unfortunate that he keeps doing this. A more accurate story might have been:

“PICS - an organization w/ 40 individual members and 30 corporate members will meet later this week on May 18, to discuss a draft paper written by one of its members regarding the appointment of a new administrator of the PH Domain”.

I understand the IT beat is tough - and journalists, like all of us, have their bills to pay. But to sensationalize news in this way is completely irresponsible. It gives the public the impression that there’s a huge clamor to replace the administrator of the PH Domain. It could make our suppliers wonder about extending credit to us. It could make our clients think twice before dealing with us. It could make our employees targets of recruitment agencies.

An overreaction on my part, you might say - but this is exactly what we happened four years ago, when all sorts of inaccurate stories were popping up in the local press.

I have no quarrel with PICS; in fact some of its members are good friends of mine. But for Chin Wong to characterize PICS as “the biggest association of online businesses” is - misleading. If we go by their Yahoogroups membership, a quick check will reveal that PICS has 229 members. To give you an idea of how this compares, here is the online membership of some other business groups:

Centralized Decentralized Business Network - 1,684
Digital Filipino- 2,358
Makati Business Club - 10,998

Four year ago, I called Chin to complain about a story he had written for ComputerWorld, which went something like “ISPs support petition to replace PH Domain Administrator” or something like that. Chin had attended a PISO meeting, where ISPs had been asked to sign a petition, and at the end of that meeting, only two ISPs had signed up. I reminded Chin that we (at DotPH) had a separate petition - already signed by 20+ ISPs supporting DotPH. And I can’t forget Chin’s reply. (paraphrasing)

“But I was accurate, right? Two ISPs is plural - hence the headline ‘ISPs support petition to replace PH Domain Administrator’”!

I was shocked. Welcome to the world of the sensationalist press, where the Truth only gets in the way of a good story.

Honesty, the Ivatan way

Our thanks goes out to Batanes Governor Vicente Gato for doing the right thing and showing us what an honest people the Ivatans are. At the domestic airport x-ray machine, Gov Gato’s aide had mistenly picked up a black bag containing $18T that belonged to a Japanese reporter. The money was returned the next day to the overjoyed reporter.

My wife had told me several years ago, when our foundation was setting up a wifi hotspot in Batanes, how surprised she was when the rooms to their hotel had no locks in them! Ang sagot ng housecleaning staff - “don’t worry, no one will steal your things here”! Another friend who used to work in Batanes would tell me how complete strangers would go up to her at the Batanes airport and entrust her with cash - to be later picked up by relatives when my friend arrived in Manila.

It’s still that kind of place - where people trust one another, and people live honest lives.

For more on $18T incident, click here.

Ugh!

I picked this story up on the news recently:

A CANNIBAL confessed yesterday to a court in Berlin that he had killed a teacher and fed the man’s lungs to his cat before he had sliced off and salted other parts of his body with a view to eating them later.

Ralf Meyer, 41, a decorator, was clearly emulating Armin Meiwes, the “Cannibal of Rotenburg”, who was jailed last year for murdering and eating a software specialist.

[..]

The victim, Joe Ritzkowsky, 33, taught music at Berlin’s renowned Waldorf School. The clergyman’s son was drawn to Herr Meyer’s flat through an internet chat room. He let himself be tied to the bed and the two men had sex, during which Herr Meyer dug a screwdriver into the teacher’s neck.

[..]

The dossier shows that Herr Meyer started to have cannibal fantasies at the age of 25. Two years ago he started to advertise on the internet for potential victims. One read: “Looking for slim man, round about 30, to be roasted.”

Ok. There a lot of weird people out there, but this is what really caught my attention:

Police estimate from internet exchanges that there are 204 Germans ready to be slaughtered to feed a cannibal, 13 are ready to watch such an act and 29 would like to eat a human being. The trial will continue next week.

204 Germans willing to be slaughtered? That’s sick!

Defaults at the World’s Table Tennis Championships

Esposo being defaulted because of the coachs' negligence is unacceptable. Anong ginawa nila sa China kundi mamasyal at sinayang lang ang taxpayers money sa pagpunta nila doon..tsk, tsk tsk..this is sad and a mismanaged oraganizationa dn poor leadership of TATAP.

After reading this post on tatap.ph, and reading what was written on the tatapusa.com website, it's pretty clear to me that the person that made this post has an axe to grind against the current TATAP President. Personally, I don't give a hoot about all this, and I'd like to stay away from all the politicking. (I never dreamt that sports could be so political).

But i will make a few observations, if I may. Some of it may be hurtful, and cause people to react defensively, but I hope that the people concerned accept it in the spirit that it is given - as constructive criticism, to help improve the state of Table Tennis in our country.

If anything is clear from the recent , a good shot at the top 32 (in the world) is certainly possible. The near-success of Indonesia's Men's Doubles Team of David Jacobs and Yon Mardiono against China's Wang Liqin and Guo Yue (who eventually won the Gold) gives us a glimpse of what is acheivable. The Indonesian duo have been training in China for the last seven months, and according to RP's Julius Esposo, their play used to be at about the same level as the Philippine team's.

Here's what we need to do:

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Nasty Tagboard comments on TATAP.PH

Am back from china, and was surprised to find some pretty nasty posts on the TATAP tagboard. Since I don’t speak for TATAP (I merely maintain the website) and since the TATAP officials prefer not to comment on the posts, I thought I’d chime in with my 2 cents on my blog.

for the webmaster..sino sino ba kasama sa delegation ng RP? Is it true na kasama ang syota ni victor? Pls confirm kasi we as taxpayers are entitled to know

Wow, that’s pretty rude! If Victor (TATAP President) wants to bring his syota along (that is, if he has one ), that’s a matter for him to discuss with his wife. However, the correct question to ask is - what funds were received by TATAP, and how were these funds disbursed? That’s the more important question, as I think it’s very important for TATAP to attract sponsors willing to donate their time and money to improve the state of Table Tennis in our country. But that just isn’t going to happen if donors feel that their money isn’t being spent wisely. (as the person above suggests).

Clearly the biggest problem TATAP faces is lack of funding, and the proper way to handle this is (1) publish what funds are received and how they are disbursed and (2) announce what projects and tournaments TATAP intends to involve itself in for the next 12 months, and how much money is still needed for these projects to push through.

The reality is that the little that I donate to TATAP players does go a long way. For example, I’ve given about P6T/month to feed 10 players every lunch time. Now that’s less than P30 per person per meal! But they’re happy with that, and I’m happy to help, and the players like that as they don’t have to go home after their morning training session. They can have lunch, talk about their game, sleep,then resume their afternoon session. The point I’m making is that if TATAP publishes its financial needs, and if people see that the money they put in is being put to good use, people will come out of the woodwork and help.

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