Plus

Lets see you spur economic activitiy, tax the proceeds, and then spend the money where it'll help your country the most.

That is true, that is what Thaksin has done and it worked brilliantly for a first couple of years before the effect of that massive bailout had worn off.

The thing is that the gap between rich and poot, haves and have nots increased dramatically, too, and the assumption is that this is not what Thailand needs.

Also the problem with Thaksin social programmes was that they were never meant to be anything more than vote grabbing schemes. Cheap healthcare put hospitals in deep red, no new equipment, no doctors, forever stuck in the late 90s Thai standard, while private hospitals for the rich claimed international level of care for prices prohibitive to the rest of the population.

Education was the most neglected area, no progress in six years whatsoever, not enough votes from that, I guess.

Otop scheme proved to be unsustainable, too, and perpetual debt forgiveness made it a legitimate electoral demand - write off the loans or we'll vote for someone else.

Agricultural subsidies got nowhere with artificially high prices harming everyone in the long run.

By 2006 it was clear that "dual track" development was a flop and Thaksin had run out of ideas.

Couldn't find any usenet programs on that osalt.com, they don't list nor windows nor open source clients.

why would you want it to when things like Evolution / thunderbird and many more are already included in many Linux distros (read most of them).

Because they are not meant for downloading binaries via mutliple SSL connections and .nzb files, or repairing broken downloads with .pars.

A few apps were mentioned here already, but not on that site.

I installed latest Ubuntu, btw. So far for Compiz working but not much else.

Noticed that there's no GUI for editing Grub, or I couldn't find it.

Buddhists and atheists in general are non confrontational when it comes to bodily harm and avoid fighting whenever possible.

Duh, that's why Khmers love them so much... That's why Thaland has the second highest rate of murders or something.

Don't confuse the reality with aspirations.

Halfwit Prawit came up with a few platitudes he calls "ideas". They sound good only on the surface.

The Nation

Stuff like that has been circulated for years without any impact whatsoever.

Besides, if the South was really given a large degree of self-governance, what are the chances it would not turn into something like Chechnya or Afganistan?

And why should Thailand give any ground to insurgents who regulary cut people's heads off?

Or why should it accomodate moderate muslims and their leaders who want more independence - they are not the troublemakers, they are often targets themselves, at the moment they are just opportunists, piggybacking their demands on the back of insurgency.

I don't think Southern insurgents would accept any Malaysian authority either, never mind similar ethnicity.

In five years there has never been an attack on a whole community, inside a mosque - that's very odd here. Insurgents are the least likely suspects, unless there's compelling evidence that they whole community became "impure", and there's none so far.

Also the survivors should be able to tell if the attackers were locals speaking local dialect. I suppose local buddhist vigilantes can't fully imitate local yawi.

You mean to say that Toyota Hilux sold all over the world for decades didn't pass EU brake test? Or only Hiluxes imported from Thailand?

I'm still pretty sure they didn't export Sportriders. I can't find any second hand Sportriders on UK used car sites, for examples.

And yes, it was most likely due to safety issues.

"They" is Toyota.

What is a simple historical fact is that the region was NOT part of old Siam. It was independent...

The "old Siam" was not a country in the modern sense and various provinces didn't belong to it in the modern sense.

Regional lords simply paid tributes to Siamese King, that was all.

When upper Malaysian provinces were part of that "old Siam", there were very few actual Siamese on the ground there.

>>>

Perhaps the backlash is against more recent attempts to install "Thai" identity there, a concept that is only a few decades old.

I seriously doubt they sold Sportriders in Europe, ever.

Couldn't find any usenet programs on that osalt.com, they don't list nor windows nor open source clients.

There were two other incidents of shooting inside a mosque. Krue Sue massacre when the army went in and killed everyone inside, and recent Red attack on mosque in Bangkok during the riots.

I doubt locals would blame this current shooting on insurgents, unless there's a clear evidence of collaboration with the govt, and in situation like this it's the perception that counts, not facts.

Any news on the emergency degree?

>>>

How many policemen do you think were at the station when a couple of thousand angry muslims were "demonstrating" outside. I think it's a valid reason for police to shit their pants and call on the army, and that's when everything went downhill.

If there was an emergency degree in place, whatever the soldiers did next is excempt from prosecution.

Overall it was a far bigger political failure, the army MO was probably straight from the rule book - tie the hands, face on the ground. They do the same routine with refugees and farmers, too.

Actually, you are incorrect Plus. There have been numerous reports of Muslims being killed for various reasons, one time it was because they were working (selling vegetables at a roadside stand I believe) when they had been told by the insurgents that Muslims were not allowed to work on a holy day.

I personally know several Muslims who have had to leave their homes because of being threatened when they refused to join the movement.

But this one is different - they've targeted a mosque, not individual "traitors". Either the whole community pissed them off or it wasn't them.

First case is preferrable, as no one wants roaming gangs go around in black uniforms and shoot praying muslims, even rumors like that are very damaging to reconciliation process, or whatever it is called there these days.

Why couldn't it be tit for tat retaliation by some secret Thai death squads? Granted they've never done anything so bold, but neither did the insurgents.

What could the victims possibly done to force fellow muslims to open fire in a mosque?

I'd love to think that it was the insurgents and they are getting desperate and completely separated from the rest of the muslim society, but there are no other signs of that, just this senseless mosque attack.

Provinces in NE and North didn't belong to Thaksin.He and TRT earned their loyalty.

Thaksin, yes, his party MPs - no. Areas owned by the likes of NAP and Rassadorn simply merged with Thaksin's party, and are still controlled by the same people.

You can argue that Thaksin made their development a national agenda, but the reality is that local development is the work of local politicians, and Democrats are better at it than TRT.

Yeah, Sportriders were completely replaced by Fortuners in late 2004, but I think the price difference would be significant.

Fortuners have shorte wheel base, btw, they could have less interior space.

Ford Everest guarantees a low price, that's for sure, it's the image thing.

I think there is some of the answer in two factors -

one the cars are automatic.

In heavy traffic the manuals are the worst. It takes them forever to shift into a gear and there's always at least one car that would cut in front of them while they are moving their arms and legs.

Off the green light autos shift earlier, that's true, but that's not a big deal as everyone's auto shifts at the same time. They just don't step on gas, that's all.

To be honest I don't imagine that the avaege Thaui driver puts his car into neatral at the lights - at present there are NO sedans available with manual in Thailand so any manual gear changers would be a minority.

However I'm sure that many drivers will move off in a manual in 2nd or third gear!

There are plenty of manual pickups, perhaps the majority, and they don't take off in 2nd gear.

Sedans have manual option but only for the lowest trim models. I don't see them very often.

Manuals for sedans were still popular ten years ago, so older cars are often manual, and they don't take off in 2nd, too.

You can easily spot manuals in bumper to bumper traffic. From traffic lights there are other factors at play that level out manual vs auto reaction.

I think network connections load at boot, but if your particular connection depends on programs run later, they do not get activated - like my pppoe. At the boot time it doesn't exist, apparently, and network thingme accepts eth0 as default instead.

I think the same would be true for wifi. Is there some wifi manager that could run its own connection automatically? Compare this to Windows - wired ethernet is one of the first things that is up, but wireless is one of the last to load. With proper router, on Linux, I'm online even before I get to see the desktop.

There's undoubtedly a lot or progress. Any Linux guide from three years ago would go on and on about using terminal.

These days users have GUI for everything, terminal is not needed at all (assuming GUIs are working properly).

My own problems are all related to deep system bowels, something that will hopefully be fixed in upcoming releases.

However, new releases means that programs not in the repos will not work at all, and I think that should be worrying, as it puts extra burden on developers.

In one case I saw someone berating the developer for not providing .rpm/.deb packages, saying that users are not supposed to compile anything themselves anymore. Valid point - Linux distros out of the box do not even have tools requires to install anything from the source - compile, make, install - those common terminal commands do not work anymore, you have to manually install things like gcc+ first, and no one tells your what exactly do you need to make this or that program or driver installed and working.

On the other hand, the developer must release dozens of different versions of the same program or driver and keep adding new versions few months to keep up with Linux updates, and they often are working on something else already, I suppose.

This has to be sorted out. Are we going to have more Open Source programs, or just a few but well maintained?

Well, if democracy doesn't work on local levels, maybe they should try national instead - those feudals can't control national politics.

Maybe there should be greater separation and locally elected MPs should have less influence on national affairs/government.

Currently the push is to have more MPs in the government, though.

Thaksin's legacy also includes keeping his provinces two-three times poorer than provinces run by opposition party.

I haven't seen any diesel+LPG conversions in Thailand. Yet. There are a couple of people on mentioning it on this forum, though.

Usually people swap the engines to run on LPG.

With Fortuner you can buy 2.7l petrol mode and convert it for less than 40,000 baht, but don't expect same performance as from 3l diesel. It won't affect your insurance, afaik, but Toyota would most likely withdraw warranty on all engine related troubles.

Siam Park is a terminal station for buses 501, 60, 71, 109 and 115, only routes 60 and 501 have airconditioned coaches.

The best way to catch them is from Prakhanong BTS, then walk around the corner into Suk. soi 71, route 60 goes alone Phetburi road from Sanam Luang, past Khao Sarn.

I don't think the entrance ticket is more than 200 baht, at most 400, but I haven't been there for ages.

In Thai it's called "Suan Siam".

The crux of the matter of the matter was ' did Thaksin know it?' the court said yes in a 5 to 4 decision

Voting on key points of the historic verdict

9-0 - The 1999 anti-corruption act is effective.

9-0 - Appointment of Assets Examination Committee is constitutional with authority to investigate cases.

9-0 - Financial Institutions Development Fund, the land seller, is a government agency.

6-3 - The prime minister has oversight of FIDF.

5-4 - Thaksin Shinawatra violated the 1999 anti-corruption act.

7-2 - Khunying Pojaman Shinawatra is not guilty and her arrest warrant will be cancelled.

7-2 - The Ratchadaphisek land plot and transaction money will not be confiscated.

9-0 - Thaksin is sentenced to a two-year jail term.

The Nation

Don't they have another entry for software packages, next to Synaptic? I thought that was the one where you can edit the repos.

Also, Synaptic on KDE has repo servers under Edit menu, in Gnome it might be different.

Pclos repos are unpredictable, I had to try them all before finding two reliable servers. "File not found" or or connection timeouts on others were regular.

At the moment I'm considering installing 9.10 over OpenSuse as I'm stuck with printing problems that might get fixed in Ubuntu. At least I have a driver that was reported working in 8.10 and 9.04.

Unfortunately I need to restart the system to check if the driver works, so trying it from LiveCD is useless.