Lannig

Sure you can, just use a command-line Bittorrent client like e.g. 'ctorrent' (http://ctorrent.sourceforge.net/)

There are many more, just Google for "Linux command-line Bittorrent client program".

I hope that you really mean SSH (Secure Shell) when you write 'telnet'. Accessing your server over telnet is very unsecure.

Unless it's an unusual installation, your Linux server should accept SSH connections as well. It's basically the same thing, but secure (communication is encrypted). On the client side, you will need a SSH client program.

One of the most widely used ones is PuTTY (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)

It's free.

You can also copy files back and forth over a SSH connections using another (free) program called WinSCP (http://winscp.net/eng/index.php). It's almost completely identical in its usage to the FTP client programs you're probably used to, except it's secure.

Oh... and I sympathize if you're using iPSTAR.

Hope this helps,

--Lannig

Even 4-5 years ago, it was possible to get 12 MB/s (96 Mb/s) throughput over SSH between two workstation-class Pentium III or Xeon PCs, e.g. enough to saturate a 100baseT network interface in full-duplex mode. My current Pentium-M laptop has a much faster processor than those did.

Ever since I left behind my multi-gigabit employers, I have never seen SSH be the bottleneck in a WAN transfer.

Well, don't know, but I certainly have seen a huge difference between native and ssh transport modes when doing daily backups of a Linux-based mail server (~150Gb of data) using rsnapshot which in turn uses rsync. My daily backup times were almost cut by half.

One box is a dual 2.0G Xeon, the other one a 2.6G P4. Ah well, they are on a gigabit Ethernet segment I must tell.

It probably won't make any difference on a WAN though, I do agree.

Other reasons why I like the native transport much better:

- you don't have to allow root logins through ssh

- you can sort out the rsync traffic from the ssh remote admin traffic, and filter them independantly on your f/w

edit: I have to add that my Linux manpage for rsync has --acls and --xattrs options to preserve ACLs and extended attributes. I don't know if these are available in a modern Windows port...

Interesting... I'll look into this.

--Lannig

Rsync normally works great even on slow WAN links, but in my experience the Windows port isn't as reliable as the

native Unix version. I (also) used it to sync two Windows servers as well, one is on a colocation facility. It works, but some syncs mysteriously fail, actually as soon as my Internet connection gets heavily loaded.

Also, being a Unix app, it has no knowledge of the Windows file system protections, and I have all kind of trouble with newly created files or folders. It doesn't carry the ACLs of course.

I eventually gave up and now use shared folders inside a VPN connection + a freeware folder sync program instead of rsync.

Last note: rsync over ssh is slow. Better use the native (unencrypted) client-server mode. The security exposure is very minimal if you configure it properly (filtering on IP of client etc.). Unless you object having the data going across in cleatext of course. I'm not sure rsync over ssh is possible at all on Windows anyway (maybe with Cygwin).

--Lannig

This short video (.swf) clearly demonstrates the superiority of Macs over PCs.

Seems to be gone comes up as a blank page, and forced download gives me a zero-length file.

Anyone kept a copy? I'd love to see it

--Lannig

Also, OS X is a version of Linux, so you can do a lot of Linux-type stuff on a Mac as well. There you go - three computers in one!

Not quite true. It's a modified FreeBSD, which is another variant of Unix, on a Mach microkernel.

Agreed, this doesn't make a whole lot of difference except to die-hard Unix fans like me.

Still, Linux programs won't run on MacOSX on Intel. They need to be recompiled from source.

--Lannig

Wild speculation IMO. The main reason is $$$, CAT selling international bandwidth at 10x the market prices (with 1/10 of the reliability) to Thai ISPs by the grace of the monopoly.

I agree that money is clearly one motivation (one of the key reasons the ISPs hate CAT), but I don't think it is the only one.

Another is the opportunity to impose sudden and draconian censorship (and I'm not talking about the current restrictions on porn). In the event of some ermm...'political instability'...how long do you reckon it would take the government to lock down the internet?

It may be futile, but they will try.

The current filtering is done by the ISPs themselves, based on the directions received from the MofICT.

Hence the uneven filtering one can observe. They all do redirect requests hitting the blacklist to a common page

at the MofICT, but the actual filtering is done by themselves.

Technically that's the only way, since most ISPs (the big ones anyway) have links to private uplink providers (Singtel, Cable & Wireless etc.).

--Lannig

NO!

Ever wondered why all internet traffic in Thailand has to go through CAT?

Wild speculation IMO. The main reason is $$$, CAT selling international bandwidth at 10x the market prices (with 1/10 of the reliability) to Thai ISPs by the grace of the monopoly.

Under the old legislation, only ISPs giving 30% free shares to CAT could connect to foreign uplink providers. Now things are becoming more flexible I think, and most of them have non-CAT international bandwidth pipes that they sell to leased line customers at premium price.

I don't think that the folks at CAT are doing any data analysis on network traffic. They probably wouldn't even be technically capable of doing this. They break their network routers every time they touch them...

--Lannig

Ipstar STINKS! Nearly every download is corrupted and a waste of time to even try to download anything. I routinely complain and here is the last reply I received;

Regarding to the problem of iPSTAR service delay and the frequent disconnection during the past few weeks, we have investigated and found that some groups of customers have excessively used the services offered corresponding to the application's conditions, and the bandwidth is consequently congested.

Translation: we don't have enough b/w to serve our customers so everything breaks down when customers get serious downloading or P2Ping. We don't even have a clue on how to configure our own routers to properly implement per-customer b/w limits because our network "engineers" are a bunch of low-paid loosers who can't even read an english-language Cisco documentation.

However, the company have not ignored the problem. We are trying to allocate the bandwidth and to find the best way to entirely support the customers. At the moment, the customers may still face such problem as we are now in the process to find the best solution.

Translation: since we can't figure this out, we've asked the Big Guys to buy more b/w from CAT, but the Big Guys said "no way, this home Internet user business operates at loss anyway, we're going to kill it and sell the satellite b/w to the burmese for their communications. They can't buy any high tech service from any western company so they're willing to buy any kind of service at any price from us".

So live with it.

--Lannig

Gary, these are interesting figures, thanks.

It's good to know about the new Nissans. The older Nissans were really thirsty.

I happen to like the style of the Triton very much (does that make me gay?). It's an approach different from the tank-size style of the Vigo and the D-Max. At least the Vigo is kind of stylish though.

I've been told that A/T means (in my terms) 1 extra L/100km, so that means that I could expect 7L/100km with the 2.5L Triton M/T when using smooth driving. Looks OK to me.

I wouldn't touch an A/T car even if it were given to me anyway

Thanks for your input guys. Let's have more please.

--Lannig

At this point I wouldn't bother. Even if you somehow convince AIS/One-2-Call to block the IMEI of your lost phone it really won't have much of an impact. The phone could be used on other networks (DTAC/TrueMove/Hutch), and/or the IMEI could be hacked. Or they'll get the IMEI number wrong and block somebody else's phone.

I think some countries have made it a requirement that all operators block reported lost/stolen phone IMEI's? Maybe Autralia?

France does.

If it is done properly, the blacklisted IMEI numbers are shared between the local providers or even globally if they use a central registry. eg. the one England uses is talked about at here. IMEI numbers can be changed on some models of phones, but not all. The more recent your phone model is, the less likely it can be changed.

I'm suspecting in Thailand you are correct and there is no shareing between providers even if you can get one of them to blacklist a handset. If it was available it would be better known

I'm almost sure there isn't. Hey, that would force too many phone shops in MBK and elsewhere out of business

In countries where the providers sell handsets they profit from phone theft so I can understand them dragging their feet. I guess here the providers just don't care, which is a real shame given how expensive phones are to the average Thai and the market in second hand phones being large enough that they are an ideal target for thieves.

Amen to this...

I'll try going to the AIS main office when I get a chance and see what happens.

Good luck. Your patience is going to be exercised a lot...

--Lannig

I'm trying to find this Media Player Classic on a PC running XP.

I know it is on there as some VCD's open the program and play.. but I can't seem to find the .exe file anywhere..

Tried searching.. looked through program files.. nothing..

totster

Media Player Classic (a great program!) is not a Microsoft product. It's a freeware replacement for the bloated Windows Media Player 7+, keeping the slim look interface of Media Player 6.4 with much more features.

Find it at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...ackage_id=84358

Note that there are separate downloads for Windows 98/ME and 2000/XP.

--Lannig

My mom is wanting to create a website for her little store, and is asking me which software she should use. I've offered to do it for her, but she is really wanting to learn and do it herself, so that she can update it frequently and easily without bothering me. (Good idea!)

I've been using Dreamweaver for years, but she is a little intimidated by the possible complexity, and especially the cost!

I'm curious to know what other people are using / recommend in terms of a free or cheap WYSIWYG Web page design software and FTP client for uploading pages to the server that are easy to work with / user friendly.

Any recommendations?

I'm an old school IT guy, so developing web sites really isn't my my thing. In the few cases I had to develop something that looks better than my hand-edited HTML, I had found IBM Homepage Builder a really neat program, simple to use yet powerful, coming with a lot of (decent) templates to start with.

I know, an easy to use program coming from IBM sounds like an oxymoron, but it really is (or was).

Unfortunately they've pulled the plug out on this product

Maybe you can still find copies around...

--Lannig

Para is right, there is a 9 second window to skip checkdisk. Bypassing this results in the PC hanging. Then I have to press the reset button.

I really think that your disk has developed bad blocks, so check disk hangs when it tries to access the damaged area and if you skip the disk check, Windows does the same because it can't access files that are vital to booting.

In such a case I would:

- first, use BartPE to save my documents and whatever files I value on this disk to another computer on the LAN

(provided I can access them)

- run a physical disk read test from a bootable CD that includes such utilities (Google for "Ultimate boot CD" or "Hiren's boot CD") to assert the readability of the disk surface

If the disk does have bad spots, Hiren's boot CD includes an utility called HDD regenerator that sometimes works in making the HD readable again (usually not for very long... if the disk is developing bad blocks, odds are that it will fail completely soon). It tries extremely hard to read "something" from the bad blocks and then re-writes what it has managed to read into these blocks. In most cases, that effectively makes the bad blocks readable again, with a significant risk of them containing more or less corrupt data. It can takes ages to complete for a big disk (over 1 day is not unusual) but it did succeed in most cases for me, with no (apparent) corrupt data. Actually that's just what the so-called "low-level format" utilities do as well.

Still, it's just until you can put a new disk in.

Just my 2 satangs.

--Lannig

I would never try to recover data from a failing drive by installing another copy of an OS on it, but by doing so on a new drive, with the old one the secondary or slave, and then find and copy the data from within the Windows GUI.

I just gave this utility a try. I could not access the hard drive from the GUI as it did not show up there, and I assume because the nework drivers weren't loaded, there was no network support. At a glance, I did not see the ability to do anything I could not from the XP/2000 CDs, although it does load faster. Did I miss something?

Peter

If you just do a default build of the bootable CD, you'll get no more drivers in it than what comes on the XP installation CD you use for this. If your box requires drivers that are not in there, then you won't see the corresponding hardware. If that's a SATA disk requiring a specific driver, you won't see the hard drive at all. Same goes for networking. Building a custom image with 3rd party drivers in it is fairly easy and well documented on the web site. I had to do that for networking to work on some systems e.g. my Thinkpad notebook. Never had to do this to access disks, but maybe I don't have access to bleeding edge hardware.

I think it makes it easy to do things that are either very difficult to do from the Windows recovery console (change files, move them around, edit them) or plain impossible (tweak the registry, copy files over the LAN etc.).

But it's not a download-and-play utility.

I've used it countless times on a wide range of computers and it has proven of very high value to me and to the IT support folks I've made it known to.

--Lannig

I agree with Para. chkdsk is there for a reason. If it fails, your hard drive is almost certainly hosed. There is nothing on the XP CD to deal with that kind of problem other than chkdsk.

If you don't have backups of your data, you still may be able to pull it off after installing a new system on a new hard drive.

Peter

To make data recovery easier or to manage any situation of Windows XP not booting, this has saved my life many times:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

PEBuilder is a small program that will let you create a bootable ISO CD image of an fairly complete Windows installation that boots stand-alone from CD, with a (limited) GUI, full network support and all! From this environment you can easily access your data (even on NTFS partitions), tweak the registry etc. It's a breeze compared to the very limited environment of the recovery console. It makes it really easy to copy data out from a failing disk to a shared folder on another computer on the same LAN, much easier than having to install another copy of Windows on that disk (and a more reliable method too, especially if the disk is developing bad blocks).

Obviously for legal reasons no ready-to-use ISO image can be downloaded from PEBuilder's web site. Again, what you'll download is a program that will use your Windows XP installation CD to create that ISO image that you can later burn to a CD.

Oh, and it's free.

Hope that can help someone - it surely did help me.

--Lannig

quite easy, but you need a static (non-changing) IP address, which you probably won't receive with a regular DSL connection, surely not with dialup.

Almost 100% true. Fixed IP is way better but dynamic DNS service (free) like no-ip.org can be an acceptable work-around to no fixed IP. You get a domain name that 'follows' your IP when it changes.I use it for a dynamic TOT ADSL and it works quite nicely.

--Lannig

I am the (now) unfortunate owner of a Mistubishi Strada (old 2.5l atmospheric model) which I bought second-hand almost 2 years ago because it was cheap, in good condition and well equipped. Of course as some of you may know the thing gobbles fuel like hel_l and that's becoming a real concern these days with the litre of diesel soon to hit 30b... Even using a light right foot, I get a fuel consumption within 8.0-8.8 litre/100km (mostly road, no city). Quite a lot. I used to have an old Isuzu TFR before that, the locally-produced station-wagon variant, quite sober (6.7-7.4 l/100km) but noisy as hel_l (both engine and body) and the body falling apart due to rust, as could be expected from a locally-produced variant with no proper anti-rust treatment, cheap paint etc.

The Mitsubishi has a quiet and smooth engine, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to stand the pain when hitting the pump

Stil,l I've learned to like Mitsubishi, because apart from its unreasonable fuel consumption it's comfortable, reliable and has good control. I'm considering a replacement. I really dislike the D-Max: it's ugly, relatively noisy as well for a newer generation pick-up and overpriced. Same goes for the Colorado sister model (just a little bit less ugly). I know it's the most fuel-effective brand now (or so they say), but I'm wondering about the Toyota Vigo and the new Mitsubishi Triton, as well as other less popular brands (Ford, Mazda, Nissan).

- how do they compare in terms of fuel consumption? what is your real-life experience?(we europeans usually express this in litres/100km, but I can use a calculator to make a conversion -- just avoid using gallons please ;-)

- comments about reliability, comfort, noise? (especially noise, I'm very sensitive)

- how do they compare on the 2nd hand market? (I can't afford a new one, although for the Triton I don't expect to find many on the 2nd hand market yet)

- any specific good/bad experience to share?

Oh yes, about the noise: I can't really consider a gasoline engine. I drive a lot and I need a pick-up.

Thanks for any input,

--Lannig

does anyone know what Dengue fever is know as in Thai?

This page http://www.thai-language.com/id/135116 shows it as 'khai saa' but I've always heard it called 'khai leuat awk' (hemorragic fever by this same page).

--Lannig

Turns out it's this goofy companny I signed up with for hosting. dotster.com blocking my outgoing mail. They say I have a virus. I just scanned with Nod32 and have no virus. Looking for a new hosting company.

Big help would be knowing the outgoing server address for TOT. Still trying to find a phone number for them.

Does that help?

http://203.154.210.35/index.htm

(from the ADSL top-right icon on TOT's main page)

best "real speed test: http://netspeed/standford.edu

just tested (10:22) and getting an alarm from "a patch" in BKK gateway

TCP/Web100 Network Diagnostic Tool v5.3.3e

click START to begin

Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done

running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 166.80Kb/s

running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 55.54kb/s

Your PC is connected to a Cable/DSL modem

Alarm: Duplex mismatch condition exists: Host set to Full and Switch set to Half duplex

Huh? unless I'm seriously missing something this program you're running is alerting you that your Ethernet interface is improperly configured, that's there's a duplex mismatch between your PC and the iPSTAR box. If true (not a bug of the program), that would be a very good reason for absymal transfer rates.

AFAIK the LAN interface on your PC should be set to automatic. In any case, it should never be forced to full-duplex. Forced full duplex configuration is always wrong, because the other end will be unable to auto-negociate and will fallback to half-duplex (by standards). So you'll end up with a duplex mismatch.

Go to the properties of your LAN interface, click 'configure' next to its hardware name, go to 'advanced' and make sure that 'Link Speed/Duplex Mode' is set to 'Auto Mode'.

--Lannig

That alarm was coming from the Gateway! Really! Your point is well taken and it would appear otherwise - i.e. on the LAN side(me) as opposed the the WAN side, but it's the gateway in BKK.

Regards

Very confused ... how can this alarm come from the gateway? which gateway are you talking about anyway? iPSTAR's? how could a duplex mismatch condition, a typically local condition, be remotely detected? or were you connected directly to iPSTAR's own core LAN at that time? I'm really 'ngong' here as Thais say.

best "real speed test: http://netspeed/standford.edu

just tested (10:22) and getting an alarm from "a patch" in BKK gateway

TCP/Web100 Network Diagnostic Tool v5.3.3e

click START to begin

Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done

running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 166.80Kb/s

running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 55.54kb/s

Your PC is connected to a Cable/DSL modem

Alarm: Duplex mismatch condition exists: Host set to Full and Switch set to Half duplex

Huh? unless I'm seriously missing something this program you're running is alerting you that your Ethernet interface is improperly configured, that's there's a duplex mismatch between your PC and the iPSTAR box. If true (not a bug of the program), that would be a very good reason for absymal transfer rates.

AFAIK the LAN interface on your PC should be set to automatic. In any case, it should never be forced to full-duplex. Forced full duplex configuration is always wrong, because the other end will be unable to auto-negociate and will fallback to half-duplex (by standards). So you'll end up with a duplex mismatch.

Go to the properties of your LAN interface, click 'configure' next to its hardware name, go to 'advanced' and make sure that 'Link Speed/Duplex Mode' is set to 'Auto Mode'.

--Lannig

You can run your own smtp gateway.

This is one of the free products available.

Not necessarily good advice:

- some ISPs block direct SMTP connections from their customers to the Internet to avoid people running spam engines

at home. These spam engines deliberately bypass the ISP's SMTP server in order to avoid being caught (don't know of any Thai ISP currently doing it though, but that may come soon - I know for sure someone who's got in trouble with True because of that)

- some major networks blacklist mails coming from known 'residential' (ADSL) or 'dynamic' (modem dial-up) IPs because, well, the same as above, it has a greater chance to be spam. See e.g. http://dynablock.njabl.org/

So if you SMTP out directly from your ADSL connection, you may sometimes get bitten by this and see your mail bounced back.

TOT should provide you a mail server. This is normally specified in the documents you get after subscribing, or their Hotline staff should be able to tell you.

This web page on their site http://203.154.210.35/index.htm gives different SMTP servers, I don't have time to decipher the accompanying Thai text right now to find out which is to be used in what situation, but I'm sure you should find the right one there.

Hope this helps,

--Lannig

Well I don't know if you've got "beginner's luck" because I don't of anyone who is satisfied with their Ipstar, especially since June 1st when the services has deteriorated sharply.

My signal strength is never below 88and often 90, and EsNo is around 11.6. I had a brand new box when I signed up last December, with a couple of metres cable connection staright from the dish to the box - no joins - no long wires, no leakeage

Just a quick technical tip: iPSTAR uses KU-Band frequencies for satellite link, which are very sentitive to rain. This means that whenever there's rain over your place or over their uplink station in the Pathum Thani province, you're out of luck.

Maybe this early rainy season has something to do with the noticed degradation since June 1st...

My bandwidth this morning was 126kpbs - about the same as isdn. Better than some mornings when it has often been well below 100 and even single digit figures. Yesterday it crashed for a long time in the afternoon. MY dial up modem is frequently faster than Ipstar.

On a 512 connection, my bandwidth should be in the 300-400 kpbs range, and it used to be for people who had the 512 connection, but not now. Even with 256, on good days I would get 200- 300 kpbs.

Loxinfo IPstar have acknowledged they have a problem, and have told me that "the Bandwidth is Full" and that they are "working on it" and it might be better next month. They have emailed a friend to say something similar - and even told him they have have signed up too many subscribers. They are also talking about giving credits for those who apply.

I'm repeating myself here but I have very good reasons to think that there's no effort being put into iPSTAR for home Internet users these days, I very much doubt that they're going to allocate more int'l bandwidth (if that's actually the problem, I'm skeptical) to this service while at the same time they're now focusing on corporate and government customers for mostly private networking (in Thailand and abroad). As for the technical issues, with the Thaicom 3 bird almost completely failed (this was in the news long ago), the new Thaicom 4 aka. iPSTAR bird facing a mountain of technical glitches and the older ones really not fit at all to do IP network traffic routing, I can't quite see how they'd be able to provide a decent service.

If you have a chance, shy away from iPSTAR. I really don't think you can expect things to get any better.

--Lannig

It really seems to me that you've been ripped off by a very indelicate technician.

Celerons are very significantly slower, although this may not be that much noticeable when doing ordinary office work.

It does show up in e.g. games though.

One of my former notebooks had a 2.6Ghz Celeron desktop CPU. I've replaced it by a 2.4 Ghz P4 and all benchmarks as well as my observation revealed a significant performance gain.

Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to find out when the CPU switch has taken place from the Windows event log.

Switching CPUs between P4 and Celeron requires no Windows tweaking or even less reinstallation.

The HAL layer is the same for all single-core CPUs AFAIK.

--Lannig

So there is no driver installation record or log that will just show the date of the swtich????????

Not as far as I know. The Windows event log does not record the CPU type when logging the start-up event.

The registry does have this information for the current configuration in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment\PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER

and the former ones in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet00x\...

but I couldn't find any timestamp in there.

I saw someone use a program called avalance or something similar.........

Don't know this program, but I doubt it can keep track of this unless you had it running before the swap tool place.

I really want to know which shop it happened at as I was patronizing one in particular a lot.

Iguess its a lesson and am just that much more saavy for it.

I sympathize... been totally ripped off for a 2nd hand mobile phone a few days ago. Shop moved away within days I bought it (and it failed, of course).

--Lannig

As written earlier, AVG and Avast work equally well, but I really think Avast errs a bit too much on the fancy user interface side whereas AVG really focuses on its main job: catching viruses.

Downloading updates from AVG can be painfully slow sometimes.

Norton is evil. There's an excellent paper about this in this week's Bangkok Post Database in the Helpdesk section. I shall be forever asking myself why it's so popular.

The actual usefulness of firewalls is debatable indeed but it depends so much on the actual environment of the concerned user that I find statements like "you don't need no stinking firewall" arrogant and laughable. As I have noticed quite often, the main issue is not having a firewall or not, it's being ready to spend enough time to configure it properly. Not many people want to do this, many even say that they can't (that's not always true - it's often just being too lazy to actually read the directions). In the end firewalls are configured so wide open that they've become useless.

Antivirus, firewalls are nice things to have, but they come after the essential step: keeping your installation up-to-date. How many people have I seen buying expensive a-v software, spending quite some time installing it and running daily disk scans, while at the same time completely neglecting to properly set up Windows automatic updates and making sure that it works. MBSA (Microsoft Baseline Security Analyser - a free program) should be run at least as often as one does a-v disk scans, to make sure that your PC actually receives Windows updates in a timely fashion.

My favourite analogy is: antivirus (and firewalls to some amount) are medicine, proper updates are vaccine. Better not get sick at all.

Just my two satangs.