chuckygobyebye

I've got the HP Envy 'ultabook'. It's i7 8GB 1TB hybrid drive, Bt36K on 10 months 0%. The big trouble you're going to get is trying to find laptops with SSDs as retail, they tend to stick with spinning rust to keep price down, or at least they did a year ago when I got mine.

For the record, it's still too big and heavy to carry around all the time and the hybrid drive slows everything down.

Is your Wi-Fi connection is constant but you are sometimes able, sometimes unable make requests to the internet? If so, it's possible the building's uplink is saturated, or perhaps downlink.

Is it that you have to keep connecting and disconnecting from the Wi-Fi to get access? If so, there may be a problem with the DHCP service on your local router. Out of the box they're usually configured to lease 200 addresses (or so) for 24 hours. If you have a floor full of people with computers, tablets and phones connecting and disconnecting all day the lease table can fill up pretty quickly and the DHCP server will stop giving out addresses. This would account for one device being able to access but not another. You might try setting up a fixed IP to fix this but you'll have to guess where the DHCP address range begins and ends.

It seems that my users can't connect to GoToMeeting from the office connection or from home. Both are True connections. I tried off my phone's hotspot, which is DTAC and the PC was able to connect, suggesting that the problem is with the ISP.

Can anyone who's got GoToMeeting and is using True ADSL or cable validate this?

Cheers.

This is for equipping a corporate office, not PCs that you'd buy in a shop.

We're refreshing our desktop fleet. Some stuff is being supplied by Dell. I've worked with them before and am happy with their on-site service and so on. We're looking at getting a bunch of Lenovo portables (Helix Thinkpads) and I was wondering if anybody has any experience with their after-sales support?

Again, this is for corporate service, not your broken laptop.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Guys,

This isn't a virus and it's not a problem that's originating at your machine, it's your internet connection. You can take your device to another connection and the problem will stop.

What's happening is that a file in animated Google ads is being substituted mid-http stream somewhere on the True infrastructure.

The effect is that any page with animated Google ads will be redirected to parking.ps. Pages served via HTTPS won't because the stream is encrypted from end-to-end, that's why HTTPS Everywhere appears to work. However that's not going to work if the page can't be reached via HTTPS (unless they proxy it or something, it's been ages since I looked at HTTPS Everywhere).

We were getting it on our office machines and got rid of it by updating our internet connection config. Specifically, we updated the DNS servers from static to the ones assigned by True (via DHCP) when the cable connection is made. So I recommend checking if you have static DNS servers set up on your router and seeing if you can change them to be assigned via DHCP, or change them to OpenDNS or something. We discovered this when we hooked a machine directly to the cable modem, which was getting its DNS assigned via True's DHCP server.

Note that you'll have to clear your cache after making any changes or the effect is going to continue. The substituted file has the same name as a legitimate one (beacon.jss according to the account on Pantip.com) and I guess they'd also spoofed the etag so that the dodgy one stays in your cache.

The other method to avoid this effect is a little weaker. Because the payload file is being served as part of Google ads, avoiding the ads will avoid the effect. You can install Adblocker, which is what is recommended at the bottom of the parking.ps page itself (ha ha) or you can use Spyware Bot or something similar to block the tracking domain, which is where the file's apparently being served from. I don't recommend either of these methods as it doesn't fix the source of the problem and the problem may reoccur.

Don't go fooling around in your registry or installing dodgy malware scanners. There's nothing wrong with your machine, if you're internet session that's getting hijacked.

rubbish.

my galaxy note was redirecting in pattaya, tokyo and miami. My ipad was doing it in all the same locations. My desktop only in pattaya.

You're getting cache hits.

Hi Guys,

This isn't a virus and it's not a problem that's originating at your machine, it's your internet connection. You can take your device to another connection and the problem will stop.

What's happening is that a file in animated Google ads is being substituted mid-http stream somewhere on the True infrastructure.

The effect is that any page with animated Google ads will be redirected to parking.ps. Pages served via HTTPS won't because the stream is encrypted from end-to-end, that's why HTTPS Everywhere appears to work. However that's not going to work if the page can't be reached via HTTPS (unless they proxy it or something, it's been ages since I looked at HTTPS Everywhere).

We were getting it on our office machines and got rid of it by updating our internet connection config. Specifically, we updated the DNS servers from static to the ones assigned by True (via DHCP) when the cable connection is made. So I recommend checking if you have static DNS servers set up on your router and seeing if you can change them to be assigned via DHCP, or change them to OpenDNS or something. We discovered this when we hooked a machine directly to the cable modem, which was getting its DNS assigned via True's DHCP server.

Note that you'll have to clear your cache after making any changes or the effect is going to continue. The substituted file has the same name as a legitimate one (beacon.jss according to the account on Pantip.com) and I guess they'd also spoofed the etag so that the dodgy one stays in your cache.

The other method to avoid this effect is a little weaker. Because the payload file is being served as part of Google ads, avoiding the ads will avoid the effect. You can install Adblocker, which is what is recommended at the bottom of the parking.ps page itself (ha ha) or you can use Spyware Bot or something similar to block the tracking domain, which is where the file's apparently being served from. I don't recommend either of these methods as it doesn't fix the source of the problem and the problem may reoccur.

Don't go fooling around in your registry or installing dodgy malware scanners. There's nothing wrong with your machine, if you're internet session that's getting hijacked.

Problem fixed at our end.

It turns out our loadbalancer was assigning fixed DNSs to the workstations. True updated their DNSs last year or something and changed the addresses. When we switched to the new servers the problem vanished.

I expect what's happened is that True have left these creaky old DNSs on as a courtesy but haven't been patching them and they've been hacked/poisoned.

We have two True cable connections for the office and a backup 3bb ADSL line. We're not getting the effect when we're on the backup line.

I can reliably reproduce the effect with news.bbc.co.uk and linkedin.com, doesn't happen on any https sessions, so it's code injection somewhere along the line.

Did this get sorted out? I can send over a chap.

"Bricked" means its remaining purpose is a doorstop. The firmware's thrown an error, which has caused it to go into failsafe mode to eliminate the risk of data loss (BSY error). If you Google "Seageate 7200.11 firmware" you'll find details of the bug, along with a great deal of cursing.

I do a fair bit of data recovery myself but don't have the kit for this one. As I mentioned above, the data recovery companies I spoke to don't seem to either.

I've never actually built an electronics project that worked so...

I have a bricked Seagate 7200.11 with HP24 firmware. After a depresssing couple of weeks talking to Seagate and HP support I've had another depressing week talking to Bangkok's data recovery companies. Most are all very keen to take my money but tend to go quiet when I aske them if they have the kit to open a terminal session to a drive.

So anybody know anyone in Bangkok who has the kit to open a teminal session to a bricked drive?

Alternatively, I can give it a go myself if I can find a RS232 to TTLv3 converter (or a USB to TTLv3 converter for that matter). Tried Panthip with no luck and will try the phones section of MBK this week, but if anyone has any better ideas it would save me a bit of time.

The comapny I work for does very good SEO/SEM.

You don't actually want SEO, what you need is someone who can look at your site and advise on how it can best complement your business. That is, make sales or sales leads. A company that only does SEO probably can't advise you on which keywords to optimise for or how to structure your site into a sales funnel. We had one client who came to us from another SEO company because, although her traffic had gone up, her sales had actually gone down.

Also, if your market is anglophone, make sure you use a native speaker.

Better still, there's a spur that comes south from Japan and makes landfall (among other places) in southern Thailand.

Good luck.

Getting a book printed here is easy and fairly cheap, it's getting distributed that is the real trick. Asia Books is the only distibutor left as they've bought up DistriThai, altough they themselves got cleaned out and bought up a couple of years ago.

The problem is that Asia Books aren't very nice people to do business with. I've heard of cases where they've taken books on consignment and then left them in a warehouse. The problem for most authors is that they're not selling books that are going to move fast. If you got into an Asia Books shop you'll see most of the shelf space is occupied by business books, kids' books, design, cooking, coffee table, etc, etc. If your book is funny or crude it may move but you've got plenty of competition in that department.

However I know lots of authors who've walked around and placed their books in the shops themselves, and gone on to sell up to 30 copies.

Don't do it yourself, it's really not a good idea.

Talk to a couple of companies, check their past work. Spend a bit more to get it done right first time, rather than being disappointed and having to have it done again.

You need to check if your DSL connection is being interrupted, which would indicate problems on the line. However, what it sounds like is that your connection is 'timing-out,' and that you need to go into the connection settings (in Windows) and change it to a higher time period or set it to always-on. What could be happening is that your Windows Network Connection is set to time out after 5min or something.

Yes, call these guys:

www.com2u.co.th

0800 300400

Cheers

Simplicity International in Bangkok have a Pattaya office:

www.simplicity.co.th

Not all of Big Chili's articles are cut and pasted off the 'net, lots of them are written by their advertisers.

There is the occasional nugget of interest, but to qualify as a 'good read' there has to be more than ten minutes worth.

Christ! Another one, in the bath this time. Same kind of snake, I caught it and put it in a pot this time. I'll try to get a photo I'm over the shakes.

I'm not silly, I'd be off to get a pennicillin shot at the very least. So why do these goddam snakes keep coming into my apartment? I'm two floors up for God's sake.

Didn't bite me, he was probably too little anyway. I got him in a dustpan and flung him into the garden below for someone's kid to find.

You didn't include a photo.

From your description it could be a one of these snakes.

Banded Krait (very poisonous) or a Laotian Wolf Snake (poisonous)

You know, when I posted this, I knew the first question would be 'where's the photo?' I do actually work as a photographer, but neglected to get a photo while I was chasing the scaly little worm around the apartment to the shrieks of my wife and daughter. Consider it a dereliction of duty.

I did a bit of internet research beforehand and discounted the Banded Krait as that species is too big. I think it probably is a Laotian Wolf Snake as the size and stripes seem right, but in the very few photos on the web the head doesn't look right, on my snake it seemed wider and more diamond-shaped.