jybkk

From what I read, he's not talking about stomping out prostitution but he wants to tackle human trafficking and minor's prostitution which are quite different things, and a probably more realistic target.

Side note: Contrary to a common belief, studies from a few years ago have shown that 80% of the prostitution business were purely local (thai customers, thai owners, thai sex workers). I'll try to find the link and update this post with it.

Hi.

It's very difficult to have a good estimation of the Network quality of 3G services in Thailand at the moment. Most of them (AIS, DTAC, True) actually operate using "temporary" test licenses. They are on the way of developing their networks but it is still pretty hectic and unreliable (they might also be a bit reluctant going full speed on the deployment considering the real licenses still haven't been granted.

So far, in my experience, none of them is really reliable.

3G network coverage is not directly related on to 2G. Meaning that if you get CAT 2G connection in one place, you won't necessarily get 3G coverage there.

My advice is: give it a try. You can buy prepaid access to internet. Start with CAT for a few days and see how that goes. Then if it's really not satisfactory, go for prepaid internet sims for the competitors just to test it.

No problem has been reported with logging into Google services.

The addresses you're giving are the search engines. Wherever you are attempting to log in, there shouldn't be any differences. Does it gives you an error message? If yes, which is it?

Check that things like "CAPS LOCK" or "NUM LOCK" are not activated when you type your password.

There is really no safe area from the water and many of the tourist areas are hit the most with the exception of Cowboy (not sure about Nana). Soi Cowboy is a little road with few people there other than those looking for pleasure and those providing it.

Why not buy a squirt gun and enjoy the fun?

Because a squirt gun battle can be fun. But buckets of ice cold water and talcum powder splattered on your face and in your eyes are, in my opinion, pretty annoying. Moreover when it lasts for a week and you have to carefully plan your moves so the "fun" doesn't catch up with you when you're trying to go on with your life.

edit: I'm not saying that Thais should change the way they enjoy Songkran. I have nothing to say about that. But for me it's difficult to enjoy this kind of fun and therefore, like OP, I'm doing my best to avoid most of it (which is difficult if you can't fly out of the country)

The deductions and allowances are detailed in the link you provided. Main ones are th 40% deduction (limited to 60,000THB), and the allowances for single taxpayer/children.

After that, the calculation is progressive.

I'm not an accountant, but I've filled a few tax revenue form and usually my end result is pretty close from the one done at the tax office (they actually sometimes help you figure out some deductions you didn't think of).

If the annual salary is 1.2 million and the taxpayer worked only for 3 months (100K/month), calculation would be like this: total revenue is: 300,000.

Deduction on income: 40% of 300K = 120,000 => maximum is 60K

Then let's say that in our example the taxpayer is single, then there's another allowance of 30K

Taxable income is then 300K - 60K - 30K = 210K

First 150K are not taxed, so he'll pay 10% on 210-150 = 60K => Tax will be 6,000THB

Ah, ok, thanks.

I live in the end of ladprao, close to tawanna, the mall bangkapi and tesco lotus, perhaps I can find it in any of those shops?

but I've been a bit lazy with the search, prefer to know exactly where to go

Anyway, thanks for the responses, I'll check it up if I can't find something closer to home

I puchase gas cartidges for mine in any of Sukhumvit's Department Store (so far found them in Emporium, Paragon, Central Chidlom).

I'm a bit late to the arty but here are a few things about the "Twitter censorship" subject that were overlooked by media... and that might end up being an actual improvement for freedom of speech.

First, this move of Twitter is done mostly because they are opening offices in various countries (mostly in Europe so far) and therefore must abide by the laws over there. Some of these countries have restriction about what can be expressed publicly (neo-nazi speech in Germany for example), and if they want to keep their office opened over there, they will need to remove such content when notified.

To minimize the impact, they started this new system of "country-based" removal. Meaning that rather than deleting definitely a post, its access will be restricted in certain zones... but still visible in the rest of the world. The user will be informed that this particular post was flagged by this particular government.

This is where I feel many governments trip over themselves and will probably be bitten back... Because accessing twitter through proxies or VPNs are not rocket science, and such flagged tweets will garner more attention than if they weren't flagged.

In the case of Thailand (remember, this will happen only if Twitter opens an office in the country), we would finally have a chance to have clear examples of what is regarded as "lese-majeste".... Because that's the probleme here:"X is accused of saying "something". Well, we can't tell you what that something is, but you should trust us, it's bad". So much for making your own opinion.

All in all, it looks like this move will actually improve things.

A quick Google search will tell you how to block Timeline.

I see you posted that on the other thread.

First it's pretty misleading (Timeline will soon be pushed to everyone, no exception, no coming back). Meaning that we will see a lot of scammy apps appear that pretend they can bring you the old Facebook back.

Then because the introduction of Timeline doesn't change anything about your privacy on Facebook, and whether you have the TImeline or not, the advices given in the OP's post still stand.

If you posted stuff as "public" in the past, it was visible for everyone before timeline, and will be visible after. If you kept your profile neatly private, nothing you did in the past will suddenly appear.

A quick Google search will tell you how to block Timeline.

This won't work anymore once they push it to everyone as announced.

What people fail to understand is that Timeline is only a layout change.

As usually, there's going to be the wave of "OMG BRING TEH OLD FACEBOOK BACK!!!" but that won't matter much.

Instead of stacked on one pile, posts are stacked on 2 piles, and instead of having to scroll for hours to view older posts, you just click on the date and months and you can have a look. That's it.

The rest (notably privacy) is the same.

Things are coming back to normal. Slowly, but they come. 7/11 is approaching to the quality it had before the floods. Beer has seen slight fluctuations as it got a bit more expensive, not much, about 1-2 Baht in the market. About Coke Zero I have no idea as I don't drink that stuff and I don't miss it, plain water does for me. What I noticed is the crime rate that has spiked recently with plenty of shootings around. But so far I've heard it on news or where it happened I wasn't a witness. Again to mention worryingly, it happens a lot around. Anyway you are welcome to spend your money wisely

plenty of shootings around!? What type of shootinga are they? Muggings? Criminal gangs? Are the victims usually foreigners? I've been coming to thailand for years and always felt it was so much safer than where I live (Dublin)..

Dunno what he's talking about.

Maybe mistaken with the Chinese new year celebrations.

Our company is considering offering a 6 month internship to a European student.

While the intern won't have a salary, we will cover most of the expenses, including the visa.

What kind of visa should try to get? Business? Student?

Old school phishing.

People get a bit more cautious mow, but over the millions recipients, there will be a hundred careless enough to get caught and leave their details on the shady site. Enough for the criminals (you can't really call them hackers, as it requires little technical knowledge to pull up such a trick) to make good money.

I'm not really a dog person, but I find that for the most part, Bangkok Soi dogs are pretty nice, if not friendly. I guess we can thank their effort for undoing the inbreeding humans have subjected them to for centuries.

They don't look like anything, but seem quite "balanced" and really used to human proximity.

Feeding soi dogs is seen as many thais as an act of kindness. Most of them are really well fed. I once dropped a moo ping on the floor. The street vendor tried to convince a dog to eat it, but it wasn't hungry apparently.

This tradition, unfortunately, makes the problem worse, as well-fed dogs reproduce even faster...

Just come back from the local MaxValu (Phra Khanong). They have Coke zero and Pepsi Max.

I guess following the floods, supply chain and a few factories got disrupted and companies are focusing on their best sellers until everything gets back to normal.

FYI I saw the camera mounted google street view car yesterday (Thonburi)

Hi, some of my friends reported seeing it too a few times in central Bangkok.

I guess Google is now seriously decided on pushing their map in Thailand. That's good news, because so far, nobody (including Google Maps) is offering a reliable way of linking an address to a point on the map in Thailand.

sounds like a plausable explaination to me. Israel have more than enough means to move large volumes of anything, anywhere anytime so it is not beyond the realms of possibilty that he was set up by spooks. Yes. Just for being an Arab with' suspicious movements and lifestyle'. Give him and me a break.

This isn''t about Israel. It is about an individual engaged in illegal activities.

Did he have a visa to engage in this activity? No.

Does he have a history of having engaged in illegal activity? Yes.

Is he credible based upon his previous dishonest acts and lying? No.

Do you think the purchase of undeclared counterfeit products, the attempt to export the fertilizer in fan boxes, the intentional mislabeling of the products, the violation of his visa are all indicative of an honest man given to telling the truth? I don't. Perhaps for those that have a hatred for all things Israeli, it doesn't matter. However, for those of us that can look at the big picture it does. Many arabs are in Thailand and they follow the rules and are law abiding. How is it that they can do that, while this chap cannot?

This guy sure is shady.

But there are a lot of other stuff going on about Thailand, the US, Israel that make almost any theory possible.

For example, this could be related: http://news.yahoo.com/palestinians-thailand-recognises-state-163950684.html

I emphasize on the "could".

Thanks for the Skifta recommendation, just checked it out and looks really usefull. Going slightly of subject

as well as using Dropbox, I find Hotmail Sky Drive is a lot more acommodating for sharing files than attachments

Dropbox and Sky fire are a bit different while they share quite a few features.

Dropbox offers an instant and automatic sync/backup of your files in the Cloud. Any file, as soon as it is modified, will be updated in the cloud. It seems Sky Fire requires you to specifically "Add".

I actually like Sugarsync even better, as you can set which folders on your drive will be sync'ed. Typically I set it up to sync the "Desktop" and the "My Documents" folders and then I never bother anymore. I'll always have my files available from anywhere with an internet connection.

Sharing seems easier with Sky Drive (although Dropbox and Sugarsync let you activate sharing on a file or folder and give you an link to send to the people you want to share to)

I have windows 7 (previously win xp) in my notebook

and can easily access the files on my Dreambox

via the windows file explorer

Why should it be any more difficult for an iPad?

Because despite Apple's claims, an iPad is an appliance, not a computer. And unless they implemented the support for microsoft networks (which they didn't) in their operating system, you're pretty much forced to find complicated workarounds.

It's not impossible. Just not simple.

Try Filebrowser app. You might manage to get what you need.

Accessing files through Microsoft Network is pretty difficult unless you use another Microsoft device. Meaning it will be a bit complicated, whether you choose iPad or Android based tablets.

There are, however, other solutions that could answer your questions.

For small documents (word, etc..) , as the previous poster suggested, going through a cloud sync with dropbox (or sugarsync) could be the solution.

But if you want to access files like music, video and pictures, I'd recommend to use Skifta http://www.skifta.com/ , which is based on DLNA protocol (supported by many devices and operating system, including Windows 7 and the latest TV sets).

Would thought they would be more sophisticated than to use a js redirect rather than a server side redirect.

Me too!!!

Maybe the point is to show that censorship is most likely to affect the average user who haqs no ill intent while the criminals (like you guys ;-) ) can easily circumvent this.

The estimation covers something like 50% of Earth land mass. Chances are very slim it will re-enter over Thailand.

The video is not in the email. it's jsut a link.

What seems to have happened is that the mail client the sender used to forward this has embedded the original messagewithout saying what type of attachement it was and that was not understood by gmail. Some older or corporate clients do like that.

Your iPhone managed to display it because it chose to assume it was an email. It then just cleaned up all the "email" data in the attachement and showed you the body of the message (which you managed to find manually).

Using a desktop client on your computer might help... But I must say I'm surprised to hear this happens often to you. I think I got that once when someone sent me an email FW:FW:FW:FW: from their company's horrible Lotus Notes.

Methinks that whatever happens it's a ,''Pinch of snuff to a pound of excrement,'' that poor old Mr and Mrs Somchai in the street won't see any benefits from the upcoming power struggles, sadly they like the nation in general will yet again be the overall losers.

Exactly, this is what baffles regularly on these forums. That some people genuinely believe that these guys actually offer a democratic alternative to all that Thailand has known so far. They are just selfish sharks painted with different colors. In my opinion, the whole Thailand isn't ready yet to do the changes needed for a more fair society.

How can they achieve this? I honestly don't know. I hope they figure it out soon enough. But it's definitely not now, and not through all the circus we've seen over the past decade.

Perhaps others here can correct me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression, that in order to get a "foreign exchange certificate", it is necessary to send the money to yourself. i.e. To a Thai bank account in your name.

This is what I had to do. As far as I know, this certificate is needed for the purchase, and, even more, in case you'd decide one day to repatriate your money.

I too have and HSBC account oversea an was thinking about simply opening one here and transferring within the same bank, but HSBC Thailand seems to operate pretty differently as the branches I've used in Europe.

Opening the account would have required me to leave a pretty huge unused balance (I don't remember how much, but it was, in my opinion, very big) or I'd have to pay something like 500THB monthly fee, just for keeping a savings account.

And the money transfer process didn't look simpler, as HSBC Thailand is apparently a very separated entity (probably because of Thai banking laws).

In the end, I did the transfer from HSBC to Bangkok Bank. Bangkok Bank acted very professionally, they were clearly used to that and knew yhat I'll ask them for the foreign exchange certificate. They even called me the day the money arrived on the account. The currency exchange fees were not that bad either.

In short: Transfer to your THB Bangkok Bank account, ask for a Foreign Exchange Certificate, no need to involve a lawyer or a foreign bank on Thai soil.

Can't agree more with this.

Both French and Thai operators lack reasonable roaming plans. Actually, I don't think there's such thing as a good roaming plan.

Get 2 sims and switch between one and the other.

In Thailand, it's pretty easy to have cheap pre-paid plan and keep them forever. In Franc, with the arrival of Fre Mobile,you will soon have more cheap option for keeping a number without using it too often.