Lannig

12 minutes ago, TheFishman1 said:

Corruption at its best TIT

Agreed, most likely all parties involved were quite aware of every bit in the deal, including the most fishy parts like the busses being actually made in the PRC and just transiting through MY. But someone didn't get his share and decided to let the crap hit the fan as a revenge.

20 minutes ago, Calach said:

Internet : an army of dumb carping teenagers made judges, jury and life teachers.

Agreed, but strike out the "teenager" part. I kind of doubt that this kind of self-righteous posts come from teenagers. I'd bet on adults.

Geez... I've witnessed this kind of play chicken races taking place right in front of me so many times over my years of weekly commuting between Bangkok and my upcountry place. Not up to the gun pulling thing, admittedly.

I was just slowing down trying not to become a collateral damage...

Just now, DavidVincent said:

I would tend to agree but in case of accident, who will rescue/take the body?

No lack of "rescue" and body collector "foundations" in Thailand. Quite a big business in this country. They even fight to be first on the spot.

And if we start listing all the irresponsible behaviours Thais tend to engage into (especially on the road) that end up quite often in stupid and avoidable loss of life, that list would be quite long.

So what? let Darwin's Law sort them out. Their lives.

I would kind of understand shaming people who litter, who destroy nature, who steal or abuse public belongings, but isn't this going a tad too far in the way of the great tradition of finger pointing in Thailand?

Fillon isn't "centre-right" by any means. He's the toughest, most ultra-liberal and conservative rightmost wing of his party. People voted for him only because they wanted Sarkozy out and Juppé has too many ennemies in his party.

If he wants to actually do what he promises, France will enter a state of simili-civil war for months with general strikes and violent demonstrations, the whole economy will come to a halt.

I'm not even sure I can vote for him if he comes up facing Le Pen in the second round, as in the most likely scenario. And heck, I did happily vote for Chirac in 2002.

4 minutes ago, JustNo said:

If things do not change within the next year, things will go downhill pretty damn fast for the Thais and their kingdom. A lot of them forget that without our tourism money their country will essentially die. They do not export enough products and or services to cover the loss of tourism that I can see on the horizon if things continue this way 

While I'm not especially optimistic (to say the least) about this country's future, I call BS.

Reasonable estimates for the share of tourism in GDP are around 10-12%.

Of course no country can easily manage a loss of 10+% of the GDP, but 1- I don't think it'll go that far 2- that wouldn't make the country "die".

Thailand is a huge exporter of food products, raw and finished, as well as a whole lot of manufactured goods.

Well, I wouldn't mind lasting a bit longer than this.

My condolences to his relatives and friends.

OK, so Google Translate was correct for the "private" part but not the other one.

Thanks so much, Sir 

Hello all,

Would anyone please kindly spare a minute to give me the proper translations for "public" and "private" hospital?

Not in my current vocabulary and Google Translate is giving me something I find suspicious. Of course I know how to say hospital, the issue here is "private" and "public" (i.e. government)

Thai script + transliteration would be great. Thanks in advance.

@biggles45: I know about PIN2, thanks, but my KBANK branch just strongly discouraged me from using it a year or so ago, telling me that it was going to be phased out anyway. Maybe a lie. Doesn't seem that secure to me, by the way. I've tried learning about their new QR code authentication but it seems like a mess. I can't even find the K-Secure app on Google's Play Store to start with. Maybe because I'm abroad. Switching auth. schemes would require a visit to my branch which won't happen until a few months when I'm back to LOS, in any case. If it's workable from abroad, I shall probably go for the QR code auth., which seems more secure.

@thurien : correct.

@tutsiwarrior:yep, I did. Sorry for the time and electrons wasted. However as written above I suspect that this post might come useful if someone hits the same problem, because the least that can be said is that the root cause (OTP-SMS facility suspended from account) isn't obvious based on what happens 

Congrats to your wife, a nice shopping week ahead 

OK guys, thanks for the replies, appreciated.

I ended up calling 02-88888888 (fortunately I can call fixed lines abroad for free from my ADSL box IP phone) and they told me that this service had been "locked" on my account, for unclear reasons. Maybe because I've tried too many times yesterday (but I wasn't receiving the SMSes so...).

So basically some hiccup at KBANK or DTAC over the week-end and me trying too many times.

One would wish for a more explicit message coming up like "This service has been suspended on your account, please contact blah blah blah" instead of this empty box, but well,  asking for too much I guess.

Maybe this post will come useful for someone else having the same problem. Basically:

- call them (online chat is 100% useless)

- have your ATM/debit/credit card at hand (yes, they're asking for its number the phone... I was concerned too)

- have your account number at hand

- have the mobile phone # registered to your account at hand

Thanks, but topping up for an already registered number doesn't require an OTP SMS, does it?

At least it doesn't for me.

Hello folks,

I've been using K-Cyber Banking for years to manage my account, including when I am abroad just like now.

It has had some outings, but never for that long. I've been unable to use the SMS one-time-password (OTP) system to authenticate my transactions for over two straight days now. KBANK online client service chat claims that the service works as usual and plays their usual troubleshooting script to me (have you checked SMS mailbox full? etc.). I can receive SMS from other sources on my DTAC number in roaming mode here so everything works OK.

Would anyone else using this service confirm or deny that it works for you?

Another hint that there's something wrong is the missing five-letter reference code usually displayed in the box where I am supposed to type the received password:

And yes of course I've tried another browser/another computer.

Feedback much appreciated.

Have a nice day

Checked in on Oct 29th? Huh? 

Quote

There was also a fruit flavored liquid available and and eCigarette. Nobody admitted to owning these dangerous and despicable items.

Love the tongue firmly in cheek 

11 hours ago, Maestro said:

 

That's very useful information. I was thinking when reading an earlier post that simply turning down the monitor's general brightness is not very helpful if it then has to be turned up again when switching to another site. Your idea is the solution, at least for Chrome users.

 

What shade of white are other popular sites and application programs using to make this screen apparently so unacceptably glaring to some members? Incidentally, Windows Explorer (file manager), which I have often on my screen, uses the colour code #fcfcfc, which is only mnimally darker than Thaivisa's pure white of #ffffff.

 

#ffffff   telegraph.co.uk

#ffffff   guardian.co.uk

#ffffff   bbc.com/news

#ffffff   groups.google.com

#ffffff   facebook.com

#ffffff   twitter.com

#ffffff   Microsoft Word

#ffffff   Microsoft Excel

 

Thaivisa seems to be in good company.

 

Oops. I thought of looking through my list of attachments on Thaivisa, found a screenshot of a reply box I made on 2016-02-22 and see that the background colour was #ffffff.

Based on a previous advice, I do use the "Care your Eyes" extension on this forum now, but the overall result, although less an injury to my eyes, is really ugly with large frames of white around topics and other screen elements. Yes, it makes the site (almost) bearable but it's still an eyesore which has driven me to visit much less often.

It's not only a matter of screen backgound color being #ffffff or anything less bright, it's also the overall amount of white color on the page, and the current forum theme makes this amount well beyond what's bearable. I do participate other fora using white backgrounds, but it's not as omnipresent as is it here now.

Not my only gripe about this new theme, the text density on screen has dropped dramatically, way too much empty space (hence white background...). It's not usable anymore in anything less than full-screen on my 19" 1024x768 monitor. In windowed mode, there are items missing (such as the "new contents" link).

How about the inverted/dark theme that was considered earlier? should we keep hope?

2 minutes ago, SgtRock said:

 

Gonna go out on a limb here and make the assumption that the cell phones used for detonation were not registered to anyone.

 

Why would you guess that the perps would be carrying their cell phones ? The make up of the devices show a certain degree of professionalism, not something associated with idiots.

They must be registered, or they wouldn't be allowed on operators' networks unless they're foreign SIMs in roaming mode (quite possible). However they might be registered to dead people or stolen IDs as the ones sold in the black market as I've been told.

1 hour ago, tomyumchai said:

Bol locks. I have an ancient toyota bus which i thrash the living shit out of through every twisty road in the land. Its great fun getting a 4 wheel slide on when rallying up the 107 and round the mae hong son loop. Its very seldom that anyone else can keep up with me and ive never crashed..... or even come close ...... but ive almost been hit by countless morons who cant control a vehicle above 30kph. Why cant thais manage to not crash in there things?

At 55, I've driven millions of km on roads on most continents, on many kinds of cars ranging from luxury sedans to bare-bones pick-ups and I think I can tell the difference and claim that these minivans have really poor control and stability characteristics (among other safety flaws)

Now if you can't tell the difference, then I would be concerned riding with you behind the wheel. 

17 hours ago, JHolmesJr said:

I cant believe no one has filmed this at dxb...i would have liked to see the video

The very last seconds of the 777 sliding on its belly have been filmed.
Video here: 

21 minutes ago, OMGImInPattaya said:

American build quality ☺

Yeah... too bad the same can't be said of the 787, but that's another story.

7 minutes ago, Bangkokhatter said:

Nonsense, the vans are harmless, it's the drivers who need banning.

I beg to differ. I've driven such a Toyota minivan once and they're a handful. High centre of gravity and therefore high sensitivity to wind and turbulence caused by passing trucks. They react very strongly to potholes, one has to be very careful and hold on really tight to the wheel.

Furthermore they offer very little protection to shocks and exiting the vehicle in an emergency is quite difficult due to cramped seats and the sliding door.

We don't get to see these models on the roads in Europe AFAIK, probably for a good reason. They wouldn't pass safety certifications, at least not with the number of passengers seen riding them in Thailand.

Quite an impressive picture of the plane still sliding down the runway below.
As an European (and thus biased towards Airbus) I have to say that these 777 are built really tough.
This one has obviously slammed down to the runway rather violently (one can see a completely detached engine)  and managed to remain in one piece. The one running out of fuel that fell like a stone ahead of the runway in Heathrow and the one which literally cartwheeled in Los Angeles did too.

Congrats to the cabin crew for getting all the passengers out in less a minute obviously.

DXB closed for a while... I pity the people who were flying Emirates from Suwa tonight.

5 hours ago, BuckBee said:

What a load of uneducated nonsense .

No special sim card is needed, tourists or anyone who buys a sim through normal channels are required show ID (passport) same as thai residents so they can track us anyway if required, the network does tracking not a magic sim .

Very poorly presented & totally not needed, most of the proper bad guys won't be using a sim in any way linked to themselves, you can actually buy pre registered sims in MBK which ideal for the criminal tourist use .

Real issue as always is police & immigration corruption that allows scum of the earth operate here, no magic sim card going help with that, even 44 not working well on that ! lol .

Ah... learned something today, that business I was foreseeing actually already exists then!