Weezaalinux

it wasnt only me who got the bad news slip, there were a numer of other farang all getting the bad treatment as well . one farang guy was father of three (3)thai kids and was also still getting the harrassment.

time to move on.

here is a scan of the offending document receeived from thai embassy in phnom penh today.

http://www.badongo.com/pic/971183

notice also in addition to the harrassment detailed above, the details of itinerary and purpose of visit requirement at number 6..

went to the one and only thai embassy in cambodia in phnom penh along with the three thousand of cambodians (who all require a visa) and after a one and a half hour wait to get my passport and the completed form to the front desk, I was handed a list of requirements and told to comply FULLY with ALL the requirements for the Tourist visa which included "hotel reservations with dates " and a "fully paid AIR tickets" in and OUT of thailand.

so it doesnt seem possible to cross the land border out of cambodia into thailand.

and so I advised the lady behind the glass at the embassy that thailand is now off of the list of countries that I will visit. out of principle will buy my tickets to nepal in singapore instead of in bangkok . checked out both cambodia and vietnam as alternates to thailand but the bad news mototrash have lost it for both those countries. south asia here i come.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/...ent_6199121.htm

9 arrested in California for plot against Laos government

LOS ANGELES, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Nine people, including a retired U.S. National Guard officer, were arrested on Monday in California on charges of illegally trying to buy missiles, mines, assault rifles and other arms to help topple the government of Laos, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Harrison Ulrich Jack and eight alleged accomplices in California's ethnic Hmong community were held in custody by federal agents in raids spanning the state, the newspaper said on its Website.

Jack allegedly met with an undercover agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to discuss air-dropping arms into in Laos.

Among those arrested was Vang Pao of Westminster, near Los Angeles. Pao was a CIA-backed ally of the United States during the Vietnam War and became a prominent leader among Hmong refugees who resettled in California 30 years ago, the report said.

The group allegedly discussed an initial 100,000-dollar purchase of weapons and is accused of creating an operational plan for an armed insurgency to overthrow the Laos government.

Editor: Xiao Jie

aria2c -d /home/Desktop --metalink-file=/home/Desktop/ubuntu-7_04-i386_iso.metalink

will download the ubunti.iso to your desktop (edit the url and _iso.metalink sections to be appropriate.)

you might want to add the embeded checksum to that code

aria2c -d /home/knoppix/Desktop -c --realtime-chunk-checksum=true --metalink-file=/home/knoppix/Desktop/ubuntu-7_04-i386_iso.metalink

just to be sure .

A shop called "Hardware House International" and you can find them in most big IT malls have a brochure of their products.

Nice thing about it is they list all the laptops they sell in a easy to compair list

Get that as it makes compairing laptops real easy , the brochure is FREE.

hardwarehouse is online at

http://www.hwhinter.com/price.php

if you can get past the thai to the price page, it is in english.

also online for prices is

http://jib.co.th/

but if you are buying acer you may also want to check

acer in malaysia (also online) and you may find you can save the whole cost and more of your visa run by buying acer in malaysia. (on current research it seems the dogs are seriously biting the acers as they come across the border.)

I had a GlobeTrotter 3G EDGE PCMCIA card before, with this card it was easy to connect to any GRPS or EDGE network. I not use this card anymore as, EDGE or GPRS is almost useless in Thailand. (But that has nothing to do with Linux)

I guess it depend on what you are using the EDGE connection for. I am able to see value in approx 3 baht an hour on package connect anywhere on AIS, both for use on my phone and on my laptop using my phone as modem. admittedly one has to learn the tricks to get value. on the phone if the page doesnt download within 20 sec, do a reconnect which takes about five seconds. am using operamini.com on my phone and it is great for lying in bed and reading the news, checking email, browsing forums, ect. but yes if you were doing derivative trading or lightning chess you would be pulling your hair out. when i need to do other things like big file downloads or need a speed connection, there are many internet cafes available.

seems there is interest in a "linux distro swap club" for those with the venue and social motivation.

can suggest one venue with ample mulit power points and free wifi (20 baht initial plugin fee) in banglampoo in a small soi parralel to Tano road, first left off soi post office then about 100 meters down.

but there is another way:

aria2 is a multi connection and multi-mode download method for linux:

http://aria2.sourceforge.net/

if your package list is uptodate:

apt-get install aria2

then you get the meta file of your choice from:

http://download.packages.ro/metalink/

for ubuntu.iso it is at

http://download.packages.ro/metalink/ubuntu/

save the metafile to your desktop

and then

aria2c -d /home/Desktop --metalink-file=/home/Desktop/ubuntu-7_04-i386_iso.metalink

will download the ubunti.iso to your desktop (edit the url and _iso.metalink sections to be appropriate.)

man aria2c

for more options

currently as i write this, am getting up to 210KB/sec on 15 connections using a knoppix5.1 live disk at an internet cafe to do the download of ubuntu 7.04. should be downloaded in just over an hour.

http://download.packages.ro/metalink/

has metafiles for also: archlinux,centos,edubuntu,fedora,kernel,kubuntu,openoffice,opensuse as well as ubuntu.

I chose knoppix over ubuntu 6.10 mainly on the stength of it gprs connection ability.

You did not get any CD's with your notebook? For Linpus this is seen as a commercial distribution as it is only sold together with hardware (computers). Acer one of the worlds largest notebook manufacturers is sponsoring this Linux distribution financial and with know-how.

There is nothing wrong with this distribution, surely if you not into wanting the latest/newest stuff. On the downside Linpus is a distribution that runs on any processor better then the first Pentium. People who want to use the power of todays processors are better of running distributions as Ubuntu 32 or 64 bits or the latest Fedora 7 distribution.

I have a notebook running Linux (Fedora Core 6) and in fact it is the best thing you can run on a notebook. It connects to any network around the world, no net to worry about security, spyware or virus.

To write letters or do some spreadsheet work it has a good Office suite, which is able to export to Adobe PDF files and email directly.

no disks, I am a prospective customer casing the market. the acer agent I spoke to also didnt have any of these elusive little linpus beasts even though they had numerous acers on display.

Aside:

can you easily connect to edge/gprs with any network in thailand with your fedora? my current laptop wouldn't install fedora due to low ram I presume. but knoppix5.1.1 does let me install AND connect to AIS GPRS with just a few clicks?

are you able to install the knoppix package 'gprsconnect' to fedora or Ubuntu?

i am not a linux guru but this is what I would be doing.

download knoppix 5.1.1 (approx 700MB) and burn the iso to CD.

put the knoppix CD in your CD drive and boot (altering the boot order in the BIOS may be necessary first). boot from live CD knoppix 5.1.1 and satisfy yourself that you can still do so while your disk 1 is disconnected. you should also be able to access and move around files on both disks and to external media such as usb flash and external drives. if you are unable to figure the rest out yourself more help could be forthcoming.

wasnt so keen to dismiss a linux distro that I suppose must be able to support all the hardware currently on a currently available acer laptop so asked the acer service depo for a CD copy of linpus and they said "no have, our dealers usually install windows XP for the customers so we dont need to do repairs on the OS". on insistence they directed me to the pirate shops. not hopeful of finding a linpus copy there though.

so perhaps it is a matter of trying the package manager to do updates as suggested above before partitioning the disk and installing something of choice in a new partition.

as for not giving the money to M$ , it seems to be replaced by acer giving the money to linpus as linpus is said at distrowatch, to be a commecial edition . also think acer being taiwanese-chinese chooses linpus for its chinese character ability.

have seen some other laptop brands advertised with Freedos as the installed software without linux or windows, may look further into that option. good to see other manufacturers are dumping M$ as well.

but no comments or usage reported. recommendations are for other linux distributions.

is Linpus Linux BE being over written by linux users and other distros installed?

is it this

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linpus

distribution or does the BE mean it is a different distro?

I want to test it out but the download.iso at distrowatch is quite oldish at 2005/09/22.

walk in and put the cash down, walk out with the linux distro in a packet.

any clues?