Christmas Gifts

It’s an early Christmas for some people in government.

 Chief Justice Panganiban’s appointment has drawn its share of controversy. It’s interesting how the opinions vary along the same lines as the political battle currently raging in our country.  Opposition politicos are guarded while administration stalwarts hail the new appointee. 

There were concerns on both sides though:  (a)  that the 12 month term of CJ Panganiban will ensure his leadership will not have any impact on the Judiciary and will pose little threat to the Lady who holds fort along the Pasig (the “revolving door” policy); and, (b) that the President ignored a time-honored practice (some people called it a “tradition”) of appointing the most senior justice to the position of Chief. 

As to the first, time will tell whether CJ Panganiban’s claim of independence will come true.  How he votes and leads the Court through various cases important to the Administration will be the litmus test and sad to say, might be the hallmark of his tenurs as CJ.

As to the second, I can’t say I’m fond of the seniority rule because it fails to give consistent results.  I say, let the best man win and for that matter, even if he’s the latest appointee.  Just look at CJ Roberts at the US Supreme Court.  In the case of the latest appointment, of course, I dare say the vast majority of lawyers would hold that as a jurist, Justice Puno is the hands-down winner.  If only it were that simple. 

I respect the fact that Justice Puno will not opt for early retirement.  Why should he?  He deserves to retire as a Chief Justice and there’s still time and seniority to keep that dream alive.   

The other Christmas appointee is Napoleon Morales who will head up the Customs Bureau as OIC.  Still, I imagine his photo-finish appointment means that those folks who gave Christmas gifts to his predecessor, Alexander Arevalo, will now have to shell out another one for the new OIC.   Double whammy. But hey, that’s life.

A Near-Perfect Golf Day

 Here’s how Wednesday went for a friend of mine:

1. Wake up early to play at the annual Smart Christmas Golf Tournament in Sta. Elena.
2. Freebies in the locker: a Jennifer Rosales (J Ro.) DVD, a pair of socks, a Smart golf towel, and a pair of Mizuno golf shoes (which didn’t fit)
3. Tried and failed to get a replacement for the shoes before the 11am shotgun
4. Get into the first bunker on the first hole and tries to get out until finally shooting the ball right into the lip causing it to ricochet back landing before the bunker. Third time’s the charm.
5. Rain, rain, rain.
6. No lunch but the folks at Smart set up food stops everywhere (I particularly liked the pandesal with spanish sardines & kesong puti).
7. Traffic, rain, sunlight, rain
8. Finished the round in 6 hours!

THEN . . .

  (more…)

Dean on Blogs and Writing

Check out this excellent article by Dean Alfar on the ABC’s of writing and blogging.

Tokyo Tsubibo

It is supposedly the largest and tallest ferris wheel in the world.  As high as a 30-story building, this monstrosity sits in Odaiba, a new part of Tokyo with lots of shopping and home to some of the high-tech companies in Japan.  This is the best picture I could wangle out of my borrowed digital camera.  Tokyo’s a great city and the more we look around, the more convinced we are that the Philippines will never catch up — at least not within our lifetime.  I guess we don’t have to develop to this point.  There’s a price for all of this and I’m not sure we’re ready to pay.   It would be nice though to see Manila grow into a city like this.   Well, we can dream, can’t we?

Out of Touch

I’m currently in Tokyo to give a talk about Intellectual Property Law and Foreign Investment incentives at Kogakuin University (here’s a poster in Japanese).  It’s my first time to address a Japanese crowd and to use an interpreter to boot.  I hope nothing gets lost in translation.  (I don’t want to be like Bill Murray being told: “More intensity, please!”)

Still, I can’t help but think of this as a sales pitch.  After all, I was told the attendees are looking to the Philippines as an alternative software outsourcing destination.  I’ve coordinated with the DTI and the Philippine Software Industry Association (where I’m an Honorary Member) so the attendees can get more information from the real industry experts.  I hope some good comes from this. 

In the meantime, I’ve come a few days early to take Owens around Tokyo.  It’s cold but that never stopped us before.  Special thanks to JP for the AOTS guidebook and the maps. Also to Denise for the helpful Japanese phrases (”Starbucks-wa doko desu-ka?”).

Sayonara!

A VoIP Contract Review

While aimlessly surfing, I ran into Sky VoIP’s terms of service. So, I decided to check it out.  Here are some of my observations:

Place of Use:

Use of Service and CPE Outside of the Prescribed Area
Bayantel does not support the Service to Subscribers located outside the locality where the Service is acquired. Bayantel does not offer any warranty on the functionality should the subscriber opt to use the Service outside the locality. Subscriber does at Subscriber’s own risk, removal and usage of the device outside of the covered area.
x x x

Bayantel reserves the right to terminate Subscriber’s Service immediately and without advance notice if it determines that Subscriber is using it outside its prescribed area.  (underscoring supplied).

Let’s see.  The contract doesn’t say where the “prescribed area” is although I presume it’s the subscriber’s address (who knows?).  The mention of the ‘locality where the service is acquired’ might be a little confusing becuase the service is delivered over the Net.  Is the service acquired where Sky’s facilities are located or at the subscriber’s location? Your guess is as good as mine. 

What’s clear is that you can’t take the Sky VoIP router outside the Philippines to say, an OFW relative in Hong Kong so you can reach each other via a local phone call.  Or for that matter, you can’t take the router with you when you travel.  Fair enough. (more…)

Two TOYM Awardees from UPIS

It is perhaps fitting as the UP High/Elem/IS/Prep Reunion is coming up, two alumni have been named as TOYM awardees.  One is Rep. Francis Escudero who won for youth leadership while the other is Maria Corazon de Ungria for forensic science. 

 Congratulations!  You do us proud!

Justice Artemio Panganiban’s Formal Judicial Philosophy

The Justices of the Supreme Court have asked the JBC to forgo a public interview of their colleagues vying for the post of Chief Justice.  Instead, they have directed the JBC to investigate their brethren’s “judicial philosophy.”

As I said before, I have never heard a Constitutional law expert or professor even hint about a Filipino justice’s “judicial philosophy.”  Must be vaporware.

However, for the record, I would like the JBC to take a look at Justice Artemio Panganiban’s formal judicial philosophy, which is as follows: (more…)

Kudos to Tedjie Herbosa!

Tedjie Herbosa, social entrepreneur and founder of B2BPriceNow.Com, was recently awarded the TOYM award for community development (see the Inq7.net story).  Apart from being one of the oldest B2B portals, B2BPriceNow gained national prominence when it won an Infodev award from the World Bank.  He’s now in the US attending an Ashoka recognition event and later this month, he will receive a WSIS Philippines award.  Congratulations, Tedjie!   Mabuhay ka!

Scrapping the Chief Justice Interviews

Rizalist pointed out Ricky Carandang’s take on the Judicial and Bar Council’s decision not to push through with the public interviews of the candidates for the post of Chief Justice. They did this because 12 of the Justices of the Supreme Court sent a letter to the JBC expressing their objections to the interview upon the following grounds:

The justices pointed out that from the time the 1987 Constitution was adopted, the JBC never interviewed nominees who are already incumbent SC justices.

They also stressed that the Chief Justice was not the chief executive of the judiciary nor of the high court. Hence, if the JBC was interested in finding out how the nominees intended to manage or administer the judiciary, the exercise was pointless, the 12 justices said.

Instead of interviewing the nominees, they said the JBC should examine their judicial philosophy expressed in their written decisions.

As before, I can’t help but disagree with the High Court.

Ricky Carandang is right.  It’s all about transparency.  To that, I add that all of the Justices seem to be oblivious to the conflict-of-interest here.  After all, this precedent exempts all of them from being interviewed should any of them be  nominated to the position of Chief Justice.  On that ground alone, the JBC should have dismissed the letter out of hand.  After all, like the Supreme Court, the JBC is a Constitutional body.

More importantly, the JBC was created as a replacement to the open-house grilling of candidates before the Commission on Appointments.  The High Court’s move to put a veil on the proceedings leads me to believe that perhaps a return to the CA would be a better move.  In this sense, perhaps it’s good Constitutional changes are being discussed.  This should be thrown into the mix.  (more…)

Blocking VoIP Calls?

Apparently, the Israeli government has ordered ISPs to block VoIP traffic on their networks.  The government is concerned (like the Telcos here) that VoIP traffic is being used to by-pass the international gateway facility. The ISPs have responded by saying that they’re not aware their networks are being used for this purpose.

I’m not a technical guy but I think what the ISPs are saying is that they can’t stop VoIP traffic.  I once talked to a network admin in an Asean University and he said he has found no way to block the use of Skype on their network.  The reason is that Skype uses all sorts of ports in the course of one call.  So, the most they can do is monitor the fact that a Skype conversation is in progress but they can’t stop it.

I think the same is true for VoIP calls.  How can the ISP determine which packets are being used for VoIP calls?  Aren’t VoIP IP packets identical to email or WWW IP packets?  (more…)

Alternate Domain Providers Show the Way: But ICANN’s Not Listening

Companies such as New.Net and Unified Root are allowing registration of Top-Level Domains (TLDs) — those 3 or 2 letter codes at the right-most end of domain names.  Currently, the folks behind the Domain Name System (DNS) — that is, ICANN — have resisted the introduction of new TLDs for intellectual property and ostensibly technical reasons.  Either way, ICANN has opted to maintain an artificial scarcity in domain names that artificially inflates the value of those names beyond their optimal economic value (which is near zero) and has caused various groups of people to make property claims to the DNS to prevent its growth or slow down potential uses — an anticommons at the heart of the Net. 

As ICANN begins its meeting in Vancouver, maybe it should stop a minute and consider what the alternate domain providers are doing.  First,  they’re allowing the sale of TLDs which frees up the domain name space for a host of registrable names.  If the COM space can handle millions of domain names, then even a modest introduction of 200 TLDs will allow for a potential for billions of registrable domain names. (more…)