trimesh

if its a new phone, simply reset it to factory settings if you are afraid

It depends on how paranoid you are - if the phone can be rooted, it's quite possible to install apps on it in a way that will survive factory reset - basically, all you need to do is root the phone, install the app, move it from /data/app to /system, unroot it and do a factory reset.

The next time someone turns in on, they get the standard out-of-box experience - but the app that was copied to /system is already installed, and will remain installed even if you factory reset it again.

You need to reflash the phone to actually get rid of it.

The short answer is "not really". The first thing is that all the avionics on the plane have to meet a lot of technical rules - one of them is called DO-160, and one of the things it covers is EMC - both in terms of interference generated and susceptibility to external signals. The RF levels the equipment is exposed to in these tests is far in excess of anything that a mobile phone could generate (especially in the latest DO-160G revision, which calls for HIRF tests).

Against this, there is no real reason to allow the use of mobile phones on the plane unless there is specific on-board equipment to allow them to operate, since all the current mobile phone signalling protocols require that the MS obtains timing synchronization with the BTS and as a result there are hard limits to both the maximum range and the relative velocity between the MS and the BTS. The old analog systems (like AMPS) didn't have this restriction and could connect as long as the signal could be detected in both directions. Some TDMA phones (IS-54/IS-136 and GSM) could operate outside their supposed maximum range as long as the next time slot wasn't being used by anything else (this was heavily software dependent, though - and at least in GSM was in theory a spec violation). The pure CDMA systems (IS-95/CDMA2k, UMTS and LTE) just don't work at all unless the required timing advance is in range.

The proposals allowing mobile phone use on planes are based on placing a microcell on board the aircraft, and don't run into these limits - this also has the desirable side effect of making all the phones operate at the lowest possible transmitted power because they are so close to the base station.

"The Chinese firm explained that a fire had hit the plant of a parts manufacturer, a DRAM manufacturer," the source said.

Ah, the old, the dog ate my homework ploy.

That bit is actually true - it was a Hynix plant in Wuxi, and it was responsible for about 15% of global DRAM production.

But it was back in September, and within about 2 months production had been ramped up in other locations to pretty much make up the shortfall.

The last thing I heard, one half of that plant was back in production, but the date for the restoration of full capacity kept on getting pushed back.

As far as I know, there are only a few countries that can't get that visa - USA, India, France and the Philippines. The normal cost is 168RMB (payable in RMB cash only), but some countries get charged more - I suspect that Thailand may be one of them, since the fees for regular visas for Thai citizens are higher than the "other nationalities" price.

At Lo Wu, look for some stairs going down and a sign that says "Port Visa" just after you cross the bridge over the river. Note that the signs just in front of the Port Visa sign say "Chinese Nationals" - but that's just been done to confuse you.

If you arrive at Huanggang (say if you take the sky limo from HKG) the visa office is at the left end of the arrival hall - there are also some people there that can get you a full visa, but they seem to be expensive - they quoted me RMB 3000 for a 6-month multiple entry that I ended up getting from Forever Bright Travel in TST for 2000 HKD (about RMB 1600)

this kind of stuff will only cause manufactures to move production out of China. It is already happening in America. More and more American companies are moving production back to America

What is the source for this claim? I have heard quite a few people make it, but as someone involved in manufacturing I have seen zero actual evidence for it. There have been a number of US companies that have shut down operations in China - but every case of this I know of falls into two categories - either they were moving things to some place that had lower costs than China or they were moving for tariff reasons to some place like Mexico that can sell directly into the US market.

There have been a few small SKD assembly operations set up in the US - and, again, this has been for tariff reasons.

Believe me, I would love to see a large scale return of manufacturing to the US - but I honestly can't see any sign of it

Yeah, it will work with no problems - the only difference between Thai TVs and UK ones is in the actual signal sent over the air, and the 360 doesn't use a modulator.

There are a couple of things you should be aware of, though - one is that if you have an Xbox Live account that is registered in the UK it will normally match you with other UK users even if the console is not in the UK anymore - this can result in very poor multiplayer gaming. The other is that getting original PAL software is basically impossible in Thailand - most of the games are copies, and the ones that aren't are generally NTSC:J and hence may or may not work on your console depending on if the developer region locked it.

There is a train station in the basement of the airport that runs to Phaya Thai station - there are two services, one is the city line that stops at every station and the other is an express serivice that stops only at the terminal stations. The Sukhumvit BTS line serves Phaya Thai, so for Sukhumvit road change to that (in the Bearing direction) and get off at which ever stop is the best for you.

Was waiting for all the pattaya bashing to start. Typical.

Shocking. A site full of people who have experience of Thialand think that Pattaya sucks. How could this be?

I agree with the Thai government, as much as possible of these chemical shit products from Pfizer and similar companies must be banned. Chemicals in your body can never give you any benifit.

This sort of comment always baffles me - your body is made 100% out of "chemicals" - and even if you were to narrow it to "exogenous chemicals" then I would just have to wonder if you plan to never eat or drink anything.

Your body is not made of of synthetic chemicals. Therein lies the difference. Drugs of any description are usually a bandaid for the symptom rather than treat the causes. Drugs are usually modified natural substances and every man-made drug bar none, has toxic side effects. Can't see how anyone defends this shit (any drugs).

Actually, I wasn't "defending drugs" - just responding to the absurd claim that you would be better off with "no chemicals" in your body. No synthetic chemicals is more defensible, but it rather depends on what you mean by synthetic - does burning hydrogen in air produce synthetic water, does reacting hydrochloric acid with sodium hydroxide produce synthetic salt and is the ascorbic acid produced via bacterial fermentation synthetic Vitamin C. On a purely mechanistic basis the answer to all three is obviously yes; but in all three cases you could take the product and it would be impossible to distinguish between it and a pure sample of the "natural" product.

Thanks for that info User3.

Can you say what was broken on the PS3 before the "repair"?

I disassembled our PS3 expecting it to be clogged with fuzz but it was actually fairly clean.

The heat sink paste was all dried out but found nothing else that would point to the problem.

It may be that the HD was full?

I see there are a lot of YouTube Vids showing all manner of fixes including shooting with a shot gun.

Nice to know I can get a new one in Pantip!

The most common fault is cracked solder joints on the chips - basically the same problem that the early 360s had, but it took longer to develop on the PS3s. The cause seems to be the same, too - a combination of Pb-free solder, marginal heatsinking and chip carriers with a coefficient of expansion that was poorly matched to the main PCB. The best way to repair them is to remove the chips completely from the board, reball them (preferably with Pb based solder balls since they are more ductile) then reinstall them using an infrared reflow machine - this gives you a result that's arguably better than the original.

A lot of the people offering repairs don't have the right equipment, though - they just remove the mainboard and use a hot air gun. This will often get it working, but the lack of preheating and controlled cooling sets up stresses in the solder that means they will likely fail again soon.

I've also read news reports of US expats in europe that have been denied banking services or asked to close their account. I don't feel that it is anti US sentiment, simply that the new reporting requirements being imposed by our all knowing (US) government make tha accounts unprofitable.

One of my friends is a project manager working for Deutsche Bank - they were looking into developing a system to comply with the new US reporting rules about a year and a half ago. The project ended up getting cancelled - his understanding was that there were two reasons for this - one was that the costs involved were sufficiently high that it didn't make any financial sense in view of the rather small number of US customers they had - and the other, more basic, one was that their legal department felt it would be at least very difficult, or perhaps even impossible, to comply both with the US disclosure requirements and the requirements of German data protection and privacy regulations. There are exclusions in the data protection laws for legally mandated disclosures - but since the US has no jurisdiction in Germany this doesn't apply.

I don't know about that specific model, but most of the ADSL modems I've seen won't negotiate PPPoE in bridged mode and you have to either set up the PC or and the downstream router to handle that.

If you want anything more than a single-entry visa then dealing with the Chinese embassy in BKK is more trouble than it's worth. I just went to HK and got a 6 month multiple entry via an agent - all they wanted was my passport and a photo and they dealt with everything else. It cost HK $2100, so not exactly cheap, but worth it for the lack of hassle.

I don't know if this is still the case, but back when I was still using Air Asia there were a couple of times that I got CC transactions "rejected" although when I contacted the bank I was told that there was no record of them ever even being presented for payment. I don't know if that was the result of intentional prescreening or just that something timed out at the payment processor and it returned a failure code by default.

One interesting thing was that after a number of payment failures using a US issued card I tried again while connected to the US via a VPN - and this time exactly the same transaction using the same card went through without any problems.

I guess the issue comes down to who pattented the design and name first. If LG didn't, big mistake.

The LG tablet apparently didn't go to market, even in South Korea, so it appears it was a design study.

When the iPad came out, it was panned by a lot of people, but Apple stuck with it. Now it is the standard which other tablets are measured.

There are two things - the first is that the US patent system is (at least at present) based on "first to invent" rather than first to file. The other is that one of the fundamental requirements for getting a patent is novelty - so demonstrating that the idea you have patented existed before you claim to have invented it is grounds for getting the patent invalidated.

The larger issue is that the US patent system is horribly broken - a great example of this that that Research in Motion were forced to pay $600m for "infringing" a patent at a point in time where the USPTO had already stated they were going to invalidate it on the basis of prior art. The idea that a patent should be "non-obvious" also appears to have been lost somewhere along the way.

It could have locked up or the firmware validation failed and it went into DFU mode.

First of all, just wait and see if it happens again - something like a smartphone is very complex, and they do sometimes crash for no obvious reason. So if it's an isolated event, I wouldn't worry about it. If it happens again, then start by restoring the firmware using iTunes and see if that fixes it. If it still locks up then it's likely a hardware problem and you should take the phone back to the supplier and get them to fix it.

I find it hard to believe that anyone can say that Claudio's drivers are safe.....................I have never been so scared, 140km/h in the pouring rain, tailgating the vehicle in front !

we got back to Bkk, and despite telling the driver the easiest way to drop us off at our respective points he drove around like a headless chicken and added 2 hours to our trip, not really what you want at the end of a long journey.

I will never use them again because of their drivers, and to those who think they are safe, I would hate so see what you consider unsafe.

All people can do is report their experiences. I've been on one trip (to Lao) done by SWD Transport/Claudio, and the driver in our bus was excellent - and on that basis I would be happy to use them again. I've also done one trip with Jack Golf, and on the basis of that would not be prepared to use them again - precisely because I thought the driver was crazy.

Just out of interest, did you just install the IDE and tools or were you using external hardware (ICD, Pickit, etc.)? The last time I tried this the software worked OK under WINE, but I couldn't get it to detect any of the hardware (ICD2, Pickit2, Pickit3, Real ICE), which made it somewhat less than useful.

I'm using external hardware, a Pickit2 hardware clone and the canned software/drivers for it. Specifically this one. All my PIC development is under Windows though and not sure how Wine will work with the PIC programmer hardware drivers. May give that a test also when I get to the office Monday to see.

Thinking about it, I've just realized that the testing I was doing was using MPLAB 8 rather than MPLAB X - the problem being that I was using some old legacy devices that MPLAB X doesn't support. I'm also pretty sure that MPLAB X doesn't support the ICD2 at all, even in the Windows version. It would still be interesting to see if you can get it to work correctly - and it's nice that Microchip are at least trying to support OSes other than Windows.

Found the problem, I had to install libstdc++.i686 also, was not listed in the orginal dependencies list.

Now you tell me. I just finished doing a test install and run under OpenSUSE 12.1 with no problems. I use MPLAB but under windows but the install under Linux was straight forward.

Just out of interest, did you just install the IDE and tools or were you using external hardware (ICD, Pickit, etc.)? The last time I tried this the software worked OK under WINE, but I couldn't get it to detect any of the hardware (ICD2, Pickit2, Pickit3, Real ICE), which made it somewhat less than useful.

I've got a TP-Link WL-MR3020 for exactly this situation - it's small (about 7x7x3 cm), light, and will either operate from USB power or from a wall socket using the supplied power adapter. It's also got 3 operating modes: 3G (uses a USB aircard), WISP (WiFi to WiFi bridge) and AP (Access point only) - so if you are traveling you can set it up to work in places with a hard-wired connection (AP mode), Wireless connection (WISP mode) and no internet access at all (3G mode).

One annoying "feature" is that when you are in WISP mode the AP only comes up after it connects to the host network - so if you set it up and take it to another hotel where the network has a different SSID you have to connect to it using a (supplied) RJ45 cable to reconfigure it - which can be a serious problem if, like one of my friends, you have a Macbook Air with no network port...

Seems there is a method to creating valid IMEI numbers...I expect it wouldn't be too hard for the bad guys to figure out the method or even steal a whole database of valid IMEIs. Yea, some IMEIs would start showing up as duplicates, but that's after the sale and the bad guys now have your money. In countries where strong customer protection laws exist (this would not include Thailand and many other countries) a person who bought a fake would probably just be screwed....totally reliant on trying to get a refund from the shop they bought the fake from---good luck.

IMEI numbers have a simple structure - the first 2 digits tell you who issued the number block ("RBI"), and the next six are either a 6 digit model code ("TAC") or a 4 digit model code and a 2 digit factory identifier ("TAC/FAC") - the next 6 digits are a serial number and the last is a check digit generated using the Luhn algorithm.

So, if you know (for example) that the RBI/TAC "35815004" means "Samsung GT-I9100 Galaxy S2" then you can just put 6 random digits after that and work out what the check digit should be - and you will end up with an apparently valid IMEI that maps to the correct model.

And yes, the people making clones are perfectly well aware of this.

OK that is the one that I have also with the virtual sr0 that pop's up - had a problem with no way to select the chap auth. With all the effort in the past the ref post I don't recall - seems there is a way to get MSchapv2 so I might put a new effort on the work list. That is if you got it to work how about Jsixpack which aircard did you have working.

If you are getting a virtual CD coming up on /dev/sr0 then it sounds like the device is still in "installer" mode - and in most cases they won't work as modems in that mode even if you send them the right commands. It's a little confusing since you can send them commands via the command port and they seem to respond, but won't actually connect.

The problem is that the command used to turn off the virtual CD mode is different depending on the manufacturer - for example, ZTE modems use "AT+ZCDRUN=8" and Huawei ones use "AT^U2DIAG=0" - you might also check to see if you have usb_modeswitch installed and if it knows the USB VID:PID of your device.