Gumballl

The Thai official will probably be awarded a "self sufficiency" award.

I just received a notice the other day from the US District Court Settlement Administrator (PO Box 290, Philadelphia, PA 19105 USA); here's the text contained within the letter:

Dear FirstName LastName,

We are writing on behalf of the US District Court because you are eligible to receive a Court-approved refund of fees charged to your eligible cards, which are Visa, MasterCard, and/or Diners Club credit, charge, and/or debit/ATM cards. The fees were based on foreign transactions, including both purchases and ATM withdrawals, from February 1, 1996 to November 8, 2006.

Please read the enclosed Notice explaining the proposed $336 million settlement and all of your options under the settlement.

If you choose to request a refund, you may use one of three Refund Options. Each of these Options will pay a single refund of fees charged for foreign transactions on ALL of your eligible cards. You may choose only ONE Option from the following:

Refund Option 1: Request an Easy Refund of $25. [snip]; OR

Refund Option 2: Request a Total Estimation Refund based on typical spending during travel and your answers to a few questions about your own travel outside of the US. This Option is recommended if you traveled outside of the US for more than one week or had foreign transactions of more than $2500 using your eligible cards during the 1996 to 2006 period. Refunds will be a maximum of 1% of estimated foreign transactions; OR

Refund Option 3: Request a refund based on information that you provide concerning your Annual Estimated foreign transactions during the 1996 to 2006 period. This Option is recommended if you had extensive foreign travel or foreign transactions and are willing to provide year-by-year information. Refunds will be a maximum of 1% to 3% of foreign transactions. This is the only Option you can use to get a refund for corporate card use.

Enclosed are three forms, one for each Refund Option. You may also file online at the Settlement Administrator's website, using your Refund ID on the top of this letter. [snip]

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Well, it looks like I will be eligible for Refund Option 2. I spent quite a long time in LOS, paying out the nose for the ATM withdrawals. The fact that the settlement covers over 10 years, it should be easy to collect more than offered by Option 1.

I hope all of those here on TV that have been unjustly charged foreign transactions fees will be eligible too.

Forget about the story that your passport has been damaged; start telling a new story... it has been lost! That way you can get a new one and still hold onto the old one with your stamps till you return to LOS.

Have you tried /dev/sdb2? Really, though, you might not need anything in your /etc/fstab. I am able to mount my iPod using Amarok, and there isn't an entry in my file system table for such. It just works. Unfortunately, though, on my system (Ubuntu), Music Player "grabs" onto the iPod as well. I have to shut down Music Player before relying on Amarok.

I have a BofA account, and when I travel to Thailand, I perform a wire-transfer of funds to my account at Bangkok Bank, which has a branch in NYC. Thus the wire fees are only $3 plus whatever is charged by BB (500 baht?).

If I were to use my BofA ATM card in Thailand, there is a $5 fee plus a 1% foreign currency transaction fee of the amount withdrawn. For 20K baht w/d, that could amount to about $11. This is a little less than doing the wire-transfer. But then, I am only talking about a "small" amount here.

What are the fees for using an HSBC ATM card? I have an account with them as well, but have never used the card!

--- Wow, I just read above that BofA is now charging 3% for the FCT... that's steep. That means if I were to use the example above, the fee would be approximately $23 for a 20K Baht (~$600) withdrawal. Ouch!

For those who are interested, here's a website where you can track terrorist and other man-made events around the world. And yes, Thailand recently had their share of the spotlight.

http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

What are the consequences of shutting down a modern Linux system simply using the power-switch?

My employer ships a couple of products that rely on the Linux OS, and not once has any customer ever complained about a corrupt file system upon rebooting. My employer does not want the customer to think that they are dealing with a computer, but instead a simple device that is turned-on when needed and shut-off when it is not. Sometimes at the office, we cycle power in a moments notice (to reboot) and there are no file system glitches whatsoever.

Therefore, I suppose a "graceful" shutdown (whether using halt, shutdown, reboot, or ctrl-alt-delete) is needed only when data preservation of running applications is needed; for cases where it is not, simply shutting off the power should suffice. Am I correct?

Btw, the systems my employer ships is HDD based, not RAM and Flash Memory like in embedded systems.

Try "jobtopgun dot com". They advertise a lot in Thailand (BKK), however I have never read a post of any foreigner getting a job through them.

Btw, I didn't mean to discourage your search for employment in Thailand, but merely to point out that the odds are against you. There are laws that prevent companies from hiring a foreigner if the very same job can be done by a Thai national. It's also more costly to employ a foreigner than a Thai national.

I for one have never worked in Thailand (although I spent 7 months living there). My opinions are derived from what I have read here on the TV forum. I'm a competent software engineer, however without the ability to speak Thai, I found it difficult to approach companies that require IT professionals. Ironically, many of the jobs posted in the job website I provided above are posted in English, yet require the candidate to be a Thai national. Go figure!

As for the companies I was "eyeballing", these included Shin Corporation and Bombardier (which is a multi-national corporation). Bombardier was/is contracted to provide the Skytrain with radio-based control equipment, which is probably some sort of SCADA (supervisory control & data acquisition) system. Shin Corporation, or whatever it is called today (Temasek?), is in the satellite communications business. They don't build the satellites, they just manage them. The satellites are more than likely built in the US, by either Boeing or Lockheed-Martin... or maybe a company in the EU.

Anyhow, you should look at the other forum here on TV (I forgot the exact name) that contains information about Jobs and Business.

Do you speak Thai? If so, that would help immensely. Do you know any IT persons in Thailand that could offer you a job as a consultant? You could always set up your own company, however then you have to worry about getting customers. That's why being able to communicate in Thai is important.

Anyhow, windows is still the prevalent OS in Thailand because it is practically "free"... that is, the knockoffs. With Windows being at such a low price, Linux has not made tremendous in-roads into the Thai market yet. However, that's not to say it won't change. What is lacking in Thailand is e-Commerce. Sure there is a small market, but it lacks the professional touches as seen in the West. With e-Commerce, there is a need for servers; perhaps Linux servers.

Anyhow, it would be a long stretch to get a job in Thailand. Keep your hopes high though. For me, it is more advantageous to work in the West, make loads more money than I could ever possibly make in Thailand, and save for retirement. In Thailand, even if you were to get a job, more than likely it would not pay enough to provide you with the opportunity to save for the future (and for your family).

P.S. None of the above is "factual". Just my opinion.

Nope, the balloons and confetti did not fall out of the sky with this release, however it is supposed to be "better" than F7. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

I blew away an installation of FC5 on my laptop and supplanted it with F8 with a full install. While attempting to get system updates (post-install), the process froze on me. I think I tracked the problem down to having both my wired and wireless network chip-sets enabled at the same time. I disabled the latter during a reboot (using the h/w switch), and then all worked fine. Later, I had trouble launching Administration GUIs, but a reboot solved that. Btw, I seen this same problem on other Fedora releases too.

Anyhow, everything seems working at this point. I've gotten HTTPd, SSHd, and ddclient (DynDns client) running well. I will give Amarok and the other multimedia players a spin today.

P.S. Fedora 8 can be obtained here: http://fedoraproject.org

I suggest you file, regardless of your hopes to remain off the radar. If the IRS ever decides to pursue a case against you, the first thing that will probably happen is that your US passport will be confiscated by the Dept of State.

Greenwanderer108 - The same advice applies to you. File your taxes using the 1040EZ. If you owe nothing, then great; if you do, then consider using the regular 1040 and the 2555 to reduce your tax liability. If you want to claim your child, then he/she must have an SSN. Btw, your personal expenses (for family, education, etc) are of no concern to the IRS; they only care about how must money you earned, and then any adjustments that you claim to derive an "adjusted gross income".

Do you want this for your home, or do you want to be able to use your wireless PC when you are out and about?

If only at home, then assuming you already have an ISP that provides high-speed internet service (either DSL or cable-modem), you can use a Wi-Fi router (e.g. Linksys WRT54G) to setup a Local Area Network (LAN) within your home. The setup is quite simple, and it supports both direct-wired systems and Wi-Fi systems.

If you are looking to have Wi-Fi service "everywhere" you roam about in the UK, then you will need to inquire with one of the mobile telephone companies if they offer such a service. Here in the US, Sprint and AT&T offer a service where one can get a PCMCIA card that is used to receive and send radio signals very similar to a mobile phone. The service runs about US$50/month. Like I said, this is in the US; as for the UK, I haven't a clue.

I have the following, all of which work fine:

Fedora 7, Open Office version 2.2.0

Fedora Core 5, Open Office version 2.0.2

Ubuntu 7.04, Open Office version 2.2.0

Too bad you didn't name your thread "Hasta la Vista, Baby."

Or impose "visa restrictions" on those pints of beer such that as soon as the beer is bottled or poured out of a keg, it has to be dumped or shipped out of the country. ;-)

Thailand has always found a way to stifle businesses when the competition gets "hot". Probably why the Beer Lao thing is on hold for another few years.

After 7 months on the job, my company finally got me a PC. Previously I had been using my personal systems. Anyhow, I got a Toshiba Satellite P200 with 2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, the nvidia GeForce video chip-set, etc, and pre-installed with Windows Vista.

My first cheerful task was to wipe out Windows and replace it with Fedora 7. F7 installed like a charm off of the install DVD disk, with the exception of little issues with the sound card and Wi-Fi chip-set. But I have sorted those out. I even got my printer working with no sweat at all. The hardest part of the installation was removing the nvidia sticker from the top panel of the notebook (the d*mn glue would not come off!). The Vista and the Intel stickers came off easily.

Anyhow, I'm one happy s/w weenie. With my luck though, F8 will be coming out in a "short time" and I will once again be running an old-school OS.

Cancel any cable/satellite tv agreement you have, and sink the money you save into the fastest internet service available (even if that means "business class" service). There are numerous sources for music, video, movies, etc on the internet that are popping up each week.

Netflix offers movie downloads (all that is needed is a credit card to subscribe). NBC (in the US) will soon be offering free downloadable tv shows (with ads). Undoubtedly other broadcasters will follow suit; perhaps the BBC already offers such service?

Beer Lao is popular among visiting tourists...

True, Beer Lao is the best beer in Laos. Wait... it is the only beer in Laos. Maybe that's why it's so popular.

What Thailand needs is a "heavier" beer for those like myself who can't stomach piss-water. Chang is ok, but still not my favorite. It would be nice if Thailand and the US would sign an FTA so that beers from the micro-breweries could find their way into Thailand.

For me the choices were Fedora and then Suse. I currently use FC5, Ubuntu, and F7 (on a work computer).

Note F7 = Fedora 7. The 'core' has been dropped from the name because there is no longer a separation/distinction between the core and the extras... it's all one thing now, starting with F7.

A couple of questions in the survey seemed to weed out some distros. For instance, if one wants a development system and is comfortable downloading the tools (e.g. Ubuntu) or have them readily available on the CD/DVD (e.g. Fedora, Suse, etc).

The other question about whether I am willing to pay for my distro is probably used to "weed out" Red Hat.

I think a more relevant survey would ask about hardware support, perhaps going as far as asking for the exact hardware being used. Some things seem to be easier to setup in Ubuntu than in Fedora. But perhaps that is because Ubuntu seems to have better documentation. Other distros (e.g. Slackware or Debian) are not so friendly.

Anyhow, it is a simple Q&A tool to help guide the newbie to Linux. Experienced Linux users already know which distro they are comfortable with.

No it's FREE. FREE as in free beer.

If you are paying someone somewhere for an iPhone unlock, you are getting scammed.

...

The open source unlock is currently a bit difficult, but hackers are working around the clock to package all the many steps involved into one sleek package that allows for a one-click unlock.

...

If one is being charged for a service, it is not necessarily a scam. You own statements above prove that for the non-technical person, paying a service fee is warranted in the case of unlocking an iPhone.

Goto this web page at Linksys and hopefully your answer is there (as far as configuring PPPoE).

If you still have problems, contact your ISP or post your questions here on Thai Visa. I'm certain other members are also using PPPoE.

I mix coca cola with bacardi and a slice of lime to make a cuba libre.

Since this thread has absolutely nothing to do with thailand, perhaps substituting bacardi with sang som will cheer some one up.

... And they lived happily ever after.

Congrats. Now that you know more than you ever cared to know about setting up printers and networking systems together, you can start your own business to provide service to others.

When you're in Thailand you're subject to Thai law in the same way that a Thai living in the UK would be subject to UK law. Your nationality is irrelevant.

Yes, but the OP is "virtually" in the UK ... ... so, does the Thai Law still apply?

The law applies to the person, not the computer. Jeez.

If the printer is not supported by Linux then that leaves you two options: 1) Host it on the Windows system, or 2) chuck it. Option 1 is easy, and if your systems are on the network then it is simple to get your Linux system to "find" a shared printer on a Windows system.