Veazer

I just changed houses in Chiang Mai and went from my maxnet indy 1024/512 connection to a True 1024/512 connection. True is tremendously slower, is this typical? I could manage about 850-870 kbps on the maxnet speedtest but i can't break 200 kbps on my true connection. I tried to see what the absolute maximum speed i could reach was so i downloaded a Linux distro on a thai mirror using an 8-part connection with a download manager. The highest speed i could reach was 28-30 KBps. I could get over 100KBps with maxnet on an international link if i broke the download into that many threads. This sounds suspiciously like i am on a 256Kbps connection to me.

Is this typical for True? Sorry to create yet another "Thai internet sucks" thread but I'm beyond frustrated now....

I think you could modify this script a little further to suit your needs:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcen...06/hey0404.mspx

...

smutt sellers pissed me off also, even with wife on arm. i was very

reminds me of trying to film a 30 second clip to say "happy mother's day" when i was in tachilek. I had to do it 4 times because the first 3 take had a cigarette / sex vcd walk into the middle of the frame and say "You want sex movie?"

To me the published article in Bangkok Post implies that currently there is no valid law that forbids the use of Proxies. Can someone shed a light at the current legal situation on this (without breaking the Forum rules of voluntary self-censorship, of course)?

Sunny

I'm interested in this as well - can anyone clarify this? It doesn't make sense to me. We've got 2 possible interpretations of the law regarding prοxies:

1) use of prοxies for circumventing blocked sites is illegal, but legitimate uses remain legal. This seems to be how the law should be interpretated based on the article, but I don't see how that would be enforced with a truly secure prοxy. They would only see that the person is accessing a prοxy, then what?

2) any use of international prοxies is illegal. I can only assume they would make the 'international' clarification in the law, obviously they don't want to ban the office web sharing device, etc. This seems absurd, but it seems like the only one that could be easily enforced given the nature of a secure prοxy. As mentioned multiple times already, it's easy for an ISP to see if someone is using a prοxy.

I occasionally need to use prοxies for website testing, usually payment portals that show entirely different pages to someone using the site from thailand (ie, paypal). I need to be able to see how the page will be seen by a US user and prοxies allow me to do just that. I need to know if this would remain legal under the new law.

try http://speakeasy.net/speedtest/, they have multiple servers in the US you can run speedtests on.

I use an old 21" crt for movies. It works great if someone wants to watch a dvd while i'm wokring but they can't do any browsing or anything else requiring input. I'd just like to have a solution that allows me to connect a second keyboard and mouse and use my second monitor as a second pc like singa-traz mentioned. I'm not sure how windows would manage that - 'dual focus' or something to that effect?

I do know where you can get the Linksys PAP2T in Bangkok (which serves me extremely well). I have yet to find a Sipura device there though.

Wasn't sipura taken over by Linksys to produce the SPA lines of product? I hand carried a Linksys SPA3102 from the UK a while back as I couldn't find it in Bangkok. Now www.shop4thai.com seems to have it.

The PAP2 will do just fine. The Linksys PAP2 can use the firmware from the SPA-1001 if he needs that functionality (2 voip providers on a single FXS port), otherwise just use the stock firmware which gives each provider a separate FXS port.

...The openDNS setting have little effect on this, since the proxy should catch the request anyway.

I was reasonably sure it wouldn't be the cause of my unblocking, but I do remember a time when a 'blocked' website meant simply having to type the numerical IP address instead.

OTOH, perhaps your mention of decentralized blocking is related to this. Someone who didn't know how to properly block it might have just blackholed it in DNS.

Still available for me... maxnet service in chiang mai, no proxy.... All doubters may head out into the rain and check at my house provided they bring me a sandwich from Lanna cafe. Chicken on foccacia please.

I'm using opendns servers, might be related. ( 208.67.222.222 / 208.67.220.220 )

I just noticed it's back, let's hope it stays.

Try AVG, altho some members here seem to hate it , they seem to hate it bc it is free. I've used it for years and never a virus, or one it couldn't clean up.

actually i hate AVG because it let several viruses through despite being up to date. I wouldn't hate something because it's free... I use NOD32 now a greatly prefer it.

I haven't dealt with this particular virus, but ususual strategy with a vbs virus is:

• open task manager (CTRL-Shift-ESC) and kill the wscript.exe process
  
• set explorer to show all files and extensions (Tools -> folder options, then enable 'show hidden files and folders' and uncheck 'hide protected operating system files' and 'hide extensions for know filetypes')
  
• search your system for *.vbs files, including removable drives.
  
• Sort results by size. You'll see the files you already know are the virus (ie. ms32dll.dll.vbs) Anything .dll.vbs is nearly always a virus, they are taking advantage of the fact that windows is set by default to hide extensions and thus the user only sees ms32dll.dll.
  
• Anything the same size and nearly the same date as the known virus is likely also a virus. delete them, or rename them and move them if you're uncertain and think they might be legit. note that the bad .vbs files are usually hidden and will show up as 50% transparent in the search results.
  
• check your removable drives and C drive for autorun.inf, this is how the virus spreads itself. it's unlikely that your removable drive has a legitimate autorun.inf unless it's designed to pop -up a portable application list or something when installed. Bin them.
  
• run MSconfig from 'Start' --> 'Run' and examine the Startup tab for items referencing the virus and uncheck them.
  
• Get a decent virus program.
  

Short version:

"The 950 was created with Microsoft Windows Vista kept in mind and will easily run the Aero interface ."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA)

Long Version:

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&h...+950+vista+aero

...1 CD can hold about 10 hours of mp3 compressed audio.

There are different quality settings for mp3, from highest (320bit) to lowest (64 or even less bit), stereo/mono - in general, the lower the quality, the smaller the files. For voice you can go to 64bit no problem.

There's no real benefit to using a low bitrate like 64kbps for this project when he has so much extra room to work with on the CD, and the quality will suffer - albeit slightly. Might as well use a high quality VBR compression.

Low bitrate: OGG

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=35438

Ogg vorbis is great, but there's no way I would use a format like ogg for something to be sold commercially. Can you imagine the support headache trying to help computer newbies to get his files to play properly? And far fewer standalone players can handle ogg compared to mp3.

If you want a .wav to .mp3 conversion program, you can get a trial for a paid program like dBpoweramp music converter or a free program like MediaCoder.

After your compression is done you'll also want to make sure your files are tagged with all the needed information, I highly recommend MP3TAG.

...I also have a D-Link DSL-G604t and have started playing with OpenWRT firmware on it, because even the above-mentioned firmware from the newer model in Italy still has some instabilities for me on my TOT ADSL line...

What kind of instabilities are you getting? Recently I started getting lots of disconnects and horrific downstream SNR but it seems to be heat related - opening the case has [mostly] brought things back to normal. I'd like to stick a little heatsink on the hot chips inside and see if the helps things out, a fan would be nice too. The processor and wifi card both get very hot.

Have you tried the RouterTech firmware? I tried it a few months back and was really impressed with the feature set, but I found it much more difficult to get the WAN connection configured correctly and in the end my speeds seem to have gone down a bit. Bummer, because it is pretty impressive other than that. IIRC you cannot establish connections between wireless and non-wireless connection on the router with this firmware.

You can get more info here:

http://www.routertech.org/viewtopic.php?p=16210#16210

and here (translated):

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/t...d.php?t=1342075

I think the first link is more up to date, the second seems to be release candidate.

Removal of this firmware is different from the other d-link firmware. Here's the instructions from the author:

For remove this firmware you will use an other tool with new firmware because the var mtd are different

1: install in corrupted image mode this firmware

http://www.esnips.com/doc/b7fa31a2-2f06-46...L-G604T_v.5.rar

(Only for restore the variable mtd for your firmware)

2: install with web interface your prefered v3 firmware ;-)

3: clean your cache browser

4: login in the web interface and restore (if you have) your backup config.

I have developed an audio book from original material. The voice was originally recorded with Audacity software - then the large files were crunched to mp3 files by way of an add-on (a patch?) software. However, even the mp3 files are quite large - so the nearly 4 hours of audio winds up as a 4 CD set. My question is: How can I get the data to crunch down to one or two CD's ? is there software to enable that? I sell the audio book on Amazon.com, but even with a net of $11, I'm hardly making any money because posting the CDs to the States via airmail is expensive.

Another option is placing all the files on on DVD - which is plausible - though I still think most people who listen to audio books, do so via CD format. suggestions are welcome, thanks.

Also, if anyone is thinking of making an audio book and needs it published, let me know - though I'll be better able to assist when I get a satisfactory resolution to the issue mentioned above.

If 4 hours of mp3 audio is taking up 4 CDs, something is wrong. I suspect your files are still .wav files.

Let's consider the storage requirements for mp3. A high quality MP3 could be around 200kbps for music (greatly depending on what the music is), but the maximum for mp3 is 320 kbps. Spoken word audio is typically much less than music as it lacks the high frequency sounds like snare drums,etc. Uncompressed CD audio is 1410 kbps. Therefore, at the very minimum you should be getting more than 4 times as much audio per CD than standard audio cd format, and audio cds can hold a little over 80 minutes.

The best MP3 compressor imho is LAME, and lame even has some presets for voice. Even the standard preset would give you fantastic audio quality and easily fit on 1 CD. You could probably get your work down in the 160 kbps region. You'll want to use VBR (variable bit rate) which dynamically changes the bitrate depending on the source material complexity to maintain quality. I would export your project from Audacity as a .wav file and then compress with LAME, unless Audacity has a lame export plugin....

I think the quality of dlink products varies significantly from product to product and what region the product was purchased.

I have a d-link DGL-4300 "gaming" router and think it's fantastic. It does a great job at traffic prioritization and more, I have no complaints other than some weird naming schemes used for the admin stuff.

I also bought a Dlink G604T modem/router and had loads of issues with it - slow, lockups, etc. The D-link singapore website which handles the Thai models only had the original firmware, no upgrades, but other dlink sites around the world offered newer firmware. I found this post here talking about what firmwares work on this model. I tried many and found the V3.00B01T02.EU-A.20060720 firmware intended for the G624T to be far more stable and faster than the original firmware. I would have returned the router if i only had the original firmware to use, but I'm quite happy with it after finding the better firmware. Since then, I opened it up and saw that the motherboard was actually an EU model anyway. For the money, it's a great deal imho. It seems like many places are dumping them at lower prices due to problems without knowing there's an easy fix available.

I think a Linksys linux model like the WRT54GL with alternative firmware (+ an ADSL modem) is better overall if you need to do advanced router setup like QOS and port triggering, but you're going to pay much more for it as well. If you can find a g604t for 900 baht like nick2k did I'd go for it, i paid 2200 new. PM me if you need help with a firmware upgrade. My only complaint is that is makes a faint high pitch whine when a ADSL link is established but I have mine hidden under the shelf and I don't notice it.

EDIT: typos

I've trying to do a brochure for a thai firm and the font they gave me is an older non-unicode font with TIS-620 mapping. Most of the content that will be in the brochure is given to me in MS Word format and I can't cut-n-paste to InDesign like I can with unicode fonts, I need to use a text conversion app (XTIS620.exe from HERE) to get Adobe apps to properly display the text. This is awkward and hard to edit later.

I'd like to know if anyone has come across any app that can easily perform this TIS-620 to Unicode conversion, ideally capable batch processing a folder of fonts.

Hi folks.

I'm popping back to the UK for a short spell, primarily to close down my UK office.

I have a few workstation PC's and a bank of servers I would like to ship to Thailand.

I have found a company that will ship them but I am concerned about import laws in Thailand.

Can I expect problems from customs when they arrive at the dock?

Thanks in advance.

I had problems trying to import my used laptop from US. Prior to shipment, FedEx refused to tell me how much import duties would be and I found widely varying information on the internet as to what % of the value I would need to pay. It was really outside of their hands though, any figure they gave me would be meaningless as the fee seems to be determined using some combination of dice and roulette wheels.

It finally arrived and the FedEx rep told me the import fee would be 5,000 baht but i couldn't pick it up till the following day. Next day, the fee was 6,000 and still i couldn't pick it up. This continued on and on until 11,000 baht at which point I was told I would also need to pay a daily storage fee of 200 baht (huh? did my laptop have a guesthouse room in Banglampoo?) I was told I could also pay 6,500 baht instead if i "didn't need a receipt". I told him i would do that if i had the laptop in hand and that's what option I chose.

I talked to someone else in Chaing Mai who had the same problem and ultimately decided their laptop wasn't worth the fee so they smashed it to pieces in the shipping office and walked out. That's his story, not mine.....

Best of luck to you! It may be an entirely different experience for you since you are shipping much more and not going through fedex.

...Also the speakers do suffer. The foam around the bass speakers just disappered on my ATLs, a friend of mine had the same problem on his Infinities. We both fixed it the same way...brought the speakers to the local shop and they fitted in whatever fitted and..well...the speakers sound fine!

My friend had a slightly more bizarre destruction. You know the little micro-sized ants that go insane when they find 3 drops of coke on the counter and send the whole colony? They ate his tweeter cones...

Is MaxNET or TT&T generally blocking mails sent via SMTP to servers outside Thailand?

I have a office here in Pattaya. Sending mails via SMTP/25 was never a problem but since two days or so the mails won't go via our foreign mail server(s). Also, a telnet connection to any mailserver off country is not possible anymore. The only server i can use at the moment (at port 25) is smtp.tttmaxnet.com, which i really don't want to use.

Anyone experience the same problems?

If you can get your host to open port 26 like TRD mentioned you'll potentially save yourself a lot of hassles. I've had many ISPs and wifi hotspots block port 25 and using 26 will avoid constantly changing your SMTP server to the ISPs - like you are stuck with at the moment.

All journaling elements within NTFS cannot be switched of even at the registry level, so though it may not be the only reason there will be a performance impact.

Don't see what your asking here now, the original question was how to secure a USB stick if used, presumably as a sneaker net between computers, and I would have thought that portable apps would be a probable solution, alternatively buy a read only device.

Regards

Can u point me to some info about not being able to turn journaling off? I'm trying to find more info about this and the little bits I can find seem to suggest that it can be. I know it's possible on OSX, but of course that's a whole different file system.

I guess at this point I'm stuck trying to see what can be done to speed up NTFS on Flash RAM devices at this point, none of the other options really suit the bill. Clamwin and other portables apps might help prevent the viruses from being transmitted to the stick but existing scripts could still erase her data off the drive.

As I mentioned before, I know reducing the ownership & permissions of a folder to only the user&pc it was created on isn't a perfect solution since a smartly written script could just change ownership before doing its damage. At the moment, it's far better than having no security with FAT32. The best FAT32 can offer is "read only" status which achieves almost nothing.

I agree that I could buy a device with a write-lock, i'm just trying to do the most with what i have.

...it got to be better than ADSL from both TTT & TOT ...

Why?

Just because they are incompetent in many aspects of running an ISP (bandwidth management, customer service, billing, tech support, etc.) doesn't mean that others cannot match or exceed their ineptitude.

Maybe I'm just a realist pessimist.

Just a reminder to use common sense with the larger antennas, I'm told by thai friends that people are occasionally killed by using them during storms. Lightning rod with a direct connection to your head.

...Max, the dude who used to own Chaos City is still knocking around I believe and could probably point you in the right direction for the current scene. I don't have a number for him but possibly know someone who does. PM if you'd like me to follow up some leads...

I think you're referring to Bastard, I haven't seen him for a long time. The owner of Naga Tatoo on Loi Kroh, Ugly, worked with him before and likely knows how to get in touch. I just love the idea that Ugly and Bastard worked side by side. The main 'dude' behind Chaos City, imho, was Sophie Ironthorn. She's not around anymore but she was in town last few weeks visiting...

There's a former sandwich & coffee shop turned bar about 1 block south of the Huay Kaew / Canal road junction on the southbound side that has become a punk hangout now. Look for a black sign with a skull and crutches logo.

My solution was to format the drive as NTFS and create a blank autorun.inf that only allow administrators from my PC can modify (using NTFS security and ownership).

Hold down shift when you insert a cd-rom or flash drive. Turns off autorun.

You can turn off autorun on your PC through the local security policy as well. Especially if you don't know where the USB drive has been. That is what I do. I don't want any USBs or CDS starting by themselves when I stick them into my PC. I use USB for data only so there is no chance of getting a virus that way.

Liam

It's disabled on my machine using TweakUI because I don't like autorun (or autoplay) either. The reason I was aiming to create a 'locked' autorun.inf is to protect the other PCs she uses the drive with. I wanted to prevent infected machines from changing the flashdrive to be an "autorun virus spreader".

I've been investigating NTFS a bit more and it appears like journaling is disabled by default for external drives. Here's an example from my machine. Drive C is internal of course, drive G is a thumbdrive and drive Z is an external 200gb drive on a USB interface:

C:\>fsutil usn queryjournal c:
Usn Journal ID   : 0x01c6a6585ac0e844
First Usn		: 0x000000007f600000
Next Usn		 : 0x0000000085a00f38
Lowest Valid Usn : 0x0000000000000000
Max Usn		  : 0x00000fffffff0000
Maximum Size	 : 0x0000000006400000
Allocation Delta : 0x0000000000040000

C:\>fsutil usn queryjournal g:
Error:  The volume change journal is not active.

C:\>fsutil usn queryjournal z:
Error:  The volume change journal is not active.

I can enable journaling on the externals if I really wanted:

C:\>fsutil usn createjournal m=1000 a=100 g:

C:\>fsutil usn queryjournal g:
Usn Journal ID   : 0x01c7799ba295d56e
First Usn		: 0x0000000000000000
Next Usn		 : 0x0000000000000000
Lowest Valid Usn : 0x0000000000000000
Max Usn		  : 0x00000fffffff0000
Maximum Size	 : 0x0000000000100000
Allocation Delta : 0x0000000000040000

So if journaling is not the cause of the performance hit, i wonder what is... and btw i do have NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate enabled to speed up NTFS a little.