Actually, I was talking about the period 2000-2004, not the 2006 coup, but hey, don't let my personal experience get in the way of your opinion.
I was involved with gov't relations in the 90's, too. Thaksin siphoned more money off of the Thai government than any politician in recent history. Ther's a reason his wealth nearly tripled while he was in power. Since he was the richest man before he became PM, I think we can see how much money that truly was.
He was a crook. He stole unbelievable sums of money. He legalized the execution of thousands without trial. There is no disputing those facts.
Actually, the Thai says "If you would like to be contacted by me again, please send your five-digit zip code to [number]." I'd still rather receive that than a thirty minute address (see the pun?).
The Economist doesn't know what it's talking about:
None of this is to absolve Mr Thaksin and his cronies of their sins. But even his gravest abuse -- a "war on drugs" in 2003, in which police were suspected of hundreds of extra-judicial killings -- was not entirely his fault. The dirty war against supposed drug-dealers was misguidedly supported by Thais of all social classes. Even the king, in an equivocal speech that year, sounded at times as if he approved of it.
Wrong. Thaksin explicitly gave the police in the north the right to execute suspected drug dealers on sight. No right to a trial by peers. No trial for the public record. Just a bullet to the back of the head. It wasn't "suspected." It was well-documented and widely reported.
Never mind that the police up there are just organized crime and used the "War on Drugs" to consolidate power. You didn't even need to be a low-level drug dealer because the police could just plant some heroine and be cleared. A friend of a friend was executed that way. (The army is no better. They fight the police over what part of the country to control. I know guys who have been at the meetings dividing the drug routes between the two.)
The only good thing that came out of TRT's reign was OTOP (One Tambon One Product). All the pork projects, cheap loans, and other Eua Athorn projects were just ways for TRT to buy and keep popular support from upcountry while mortgaging the country's future and lining the pockets of Thaksin and his friends.
For about forty years, Thailand was the only country in the area that had any prosperity. The only constant during that time was the king. The Economist seems to believe that people are brainwashed to follow him. They aren't. If you get close to them, they'll talk about their misgivings. They'll even talk about inbreeding. Still, Thaksin lost his popular support when he claimed to be sovereign and at the level of the king. That's because almost all of them truly love and revere him.
Everyone fears the day he dies and the crown prince becomes the new king. He doesn't have the moral backbone to lead a largely conservative and Buddhist country. He's the Prince Charles of Thailand.
It is even possible to dream of the red- and yellow-shirt movements transforming themselves into a well-behaved, mainstream two-party system with broad public participation.
The fact that the Economist wants a two-party system for Thailand just proves that they have their heads up their asses. They don't even discuss Islamic separatists. Wow.
p.s. I used to "joke" about Thailand's war on drugs being a real war and that U.S. officials should learn to use English correctly.
Thaksin was the most corrupt man I've seen in Thailand. He "donated" land to a Buddhist temple to avoid taxes then built a luxury golf course on it, for god's sake, and that was before he ever got elected. There's a reason he was several times the richest man in Thailand. You don't get that way by being clean, and his level of wealth speaks directly against your "serving the rich" rant.
Since the average vote costs a couple of beers, it doesn't take much to get "the will of the majority," especially if you have the money to buy the votes and the position gives you the opportunity to triple your cash.
As I mentioned above, the PPP was suspended for buying votes.
I lived in Thailand (and watched nightly TV news) during Thaksin's establishment of TRT, the election, his first term, and part of his second. If he represented the majority, it's only because he promised enough pork to get the votes. There was no real political platform. Don't pretend that there was. Eventually, even the common man turned against Thaksin when he started claiming to be on the level of the King and sitting in his assigned spots.
I was all for the Eua-Athorn schemes (computer, loans, etc.), though. I liked pork as much as the next guy.
I can't believe you don't remember the "great exodus" maybe five/six years ago. A bunch of people (mostly the journal writers) left Slashdot for Technocrat. I don't remember the reason for the boycott. Sorry about that. I think it had something to do with deleted posts and editor mod points.
The stories on TC were really good to start with and the conversation was clean. The platform was slashcode. The site worked pretty well for a month or two, but then died out. I've checked in on it a couple times a year since then.
Not Thai, no. I was a Thai linguist then lived there for four years. I've been in Korea for almost five years now.
I was there when FOSS was in full swing. How's it holding up now? I don't hear much from the LinuxTLE or OfficeTLE teams at NECTEC these days.
My gal's brother is pissed about the new PM, too. He lives in Bangkok but doesn't like the politics there (being a northerner at heart). Every time she talks to him, they spend more time on politics these days than anything else.
Thais didn't seem so obsessed with politics a few years ago. I hope that signals some real change coming.
From the picture in the article (I don't live there anymore so I didn't get the message), it's more like:
I, the new Prime Minister, invite you (hon.) to join together to bring Thailand out of (something illegible). If you are interested in being contacted by me again, please send your 5-digit postal code ("rahat praisanee") to the number... (cut off in the picture).
Personal interest -- where did you learn Thai? How long have you lived there? Are you in IT?
That's a nice theory about the new PM, but as far as I can tell, he's part of a coalition of minor parties and he spoke out over the army coup in 2006. He was actually supported by the King, not the military.
Admittedly, the Suvanabhumi airport fiasco and the removal of Somchai, the democratically-elected PM was sad, but there's no way to know how corrupt those elections were. A vote sold for two beers when I lived there. The PPP (Somchai's party) was apparently dissolved for buying votes, though there's some evidence that it was business as usual.
Thai Rak Thai (Thaksin's party) was also elected several times by gaming the Bangkok vs. upcountry political system and throwing so much pork at the outer provinces that everyone voted for him. Hey, who wouldn't vote for an extra month's salary in cash and interest-free loans?
Since The recently-deposed PM was Thaksin's brother-in-law and one of the richest families in the country, and Thaksin was extraordinarily corrupt even by Thailand's standards, your propoganda makes me doubt you're a disinterested party in the manner.
The King has been the only thing keeping Thai politics remotely sane since it went constitutional, and his death will let the dogs loose.
I can't get every word, but here's a rough translation:
I, the new Prime Minister, invite you to help Thailand come out of its current {illegible, probably crisis). If you're interested in receiving (illegible, probably information) from me,please send your 5-digit postal code to this number.... (the rest is cut off)
It doesn't seem very spammy. The tone was appropriate, neither common nor overly polite. The Thai language paper I looked through didn't even mention the message. I look at it as just a better version of the required political speech on your first day.
p.s. I know that you were joking about reading (it does have "Thai," though), but I though you might be interested in the content.
I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure that Thaksin (the deposed PM from two years ago) sold all his stock in the telecom and moved the money to Singapore in the weeks before the coup.
Also, the new PM is from a coalition of minor Thai parties and has nothing to do with Thaksin.
This story also appears to be a non-starter in Thailand. I went back to the 18th at thairath.co.th (a Thai language newspaper) and found no mention of this story in the political section.
Anyway, I'm not sure I would consider it spam if Obama had a message stating something like "I, the new President, invite you, the people of the U.S., to join together and help us rise out of our current situation. I welcome your comments." (The picture in the Bangkok Post is too blurry for me to make out every word the Thai PM wrote, but that's the gist of it.) In fact, I fully expect Obama to do something very similar in his first week, though it will be an announcement on TV pre-empting your favorite show. I doubt it will be quite as short or too the point, either.
I tried using it for my book, but it didn't support admonitions, and although I wrote my own in Latex, manually inserting Latex code in Lyx for each admonition just seemed like too much work.
Did I miss something and give up a good tool for no reason?
First of all, XP doesn't work well on 128MB unless you ignore the required safety mechanisms, use an unpatched version (like SP1) and don't run any applications.
Try putting LXDE, however, on that same machine, and you will have a modern, FD.o compliant desktop based on the light OpenBox. It uses 42MB at boot on my two (previously Win2000) laptops with 128MB.
Want better? Slitaz is a similar setup in a 26MB.iso. It can run completely in memory in a machine with just 256MB. Talk about blazing fast....
This is really the standard business model in Asia. Maple Story works this way. Ragnarok works this way. I'm pretty sure Liege II does, too. I don't play any of these games, but they're really popular here.
Play for free. Pay extra money to make the game more interesting.
With no security? WebDAV + Apache + Avahi to announce. I guess you could use Apache's security as global protection, but it still wouldn't really get you anything file-level.
I use it anywhere I just need to share stuff. It's a lot simpler than FTP or Samba. See Debian2Debian
Slashdot Mirror
So what's the problem with disabling the on-board video and installing your own card? I don't get it.
Actually, I was talking about the period 2000-2004, not the 2006 coup, but hey, don't let my personal experience get in the way of your opinion.
I was involved with gov't relations in the 90's, too. Thaksin siphoned more money off of the Thai government than any politician in recent history. Ther's a reason his wealth nearly tripled while he was in power. Since he was the richest man before he became PM, I think we can see how much money that truly was.
He was a crook. He stole unbelievable sums of money. He legalized the execution of thousands without trial. There is no disputing those facts.
The original application was in 1998. Only the final application was in 2001.
It was originally applied for in 1998, which might make it less obvious. It seems like NeXT was going in this direction in the late 80s, though.
Haha. I see what you're dong there ....
Actually, the Thai says "If you would like to be contacted by me again, please send your five-digit zip code to [number]." I'd still rather receive that than a thirty minute address (see the pun?).
None of this is to absolve Mr Thaksin and his cronies of their sins. But even his gravest abuse -- a "war on drugs" in 2003, in which police were suspected of hundreds of extra-judicial killings -- was not entirely his fault. The dirty war against supposed drug-dealers was misguidedly supported by Thais of all social classes. Even the king, in an equivocal speech that year, sounded at times as if he approved of it.
Wrong. Thaksin explicitly gave the police in the north the right to execute suspected drug dealers on sight. No right to a trial by peers. No trial for the public record. Just a bullet to the back of the head. It wasn't "suspected." It was well-documented and widely reported.
Never mind that the police up there are just organized crime and used the "War on Drugs" to consolidate power. You didn't even need to be a low-level drug dealer because the police could just plant some heroine and be cleared. A friend of a friend was executed that way. (The army is no better. They fight the police over what part of the country to control. I know guys who have been at the meetings dividing the drug routes between the two.)
The only good thing that came out of TRT's reign was OTOP (One Tambon One Product). All the pork projects, cheap loans, and other Eua Athorn projects were just ways for TRT to buy and keep popular support from upcountry while mortgaging the country's future and lining the pockets of Thaksin and his friends.
For about forty years, Thailand was the only country in the area that had any prosperity. The only constant during that time was the king. The Economist seems to believe that people are brainwashed to follow him. They aren't. If you get close to them, they'll talk about their misgivings. They'll even talk about inbreeding. Still, Thaksin lost his popular support when he claimed to be sovereign and at the level of the king. That's because almost all of them truly love and revere him.
Everyone fears the day he dies and the crown prince becomes the new king. He doesn't have the moral backbone to lead a largely conservative and Buddhist country. He's the Prince Charles of Thailand.
It is even possible to dream of the red- and yellow-shirt movements transforming themselves into a well-behaved, mainstream two-party system with broad public participation.
The fact that the Economist wants a two-party system for Thailand just proves that they have their heads up their asses. They don't even discuss Islamic separatists. Wow.
p.s. I used to "joke" about Thailand's war on drugs being a real war and that U.S. officials should learn to use English correctly.
Thaksin was the most corrupt man I've seen in Thailand. He "donated" land to a Buddhist temple to avoid taxes then built a luxury golf course on it, for god's sake, and that was before he ever got elected. There's a reason he was several times the richest man in Thailand. You don't get that way by being clean, and his level of wealth speaks directly against your "serving the rich" rant.
Since the average vote costs a couple of beers, it doesn't take much to get "the will of the majority," especially if you have the money to buy the votes and the position gives you the opportunity to triple your cash.
As I mentioned above, the PPP was suspended for buying votes.
I lived in Thailand (and watched nightly TV news) during Thaksin's establishment of TRT, the election, his first term, and part of his second. If he represented the majority, it's only because he promised enough pork to get the votes. There was no real political platform. Don't pretend that there was. Eventually, even the common man turned against Thaksin when he started claiming to be on the level of the King and sitting in his assigned spots.
I was all for the Eua-Athorn schemes (computer, loans, etc.), though. I liked pork as much as the next guy.
I'm not a right-winger, I don't live in the U.S., and your tirade was exactly my point: this happens every four years. Americans don't call it "spam."
I can't believe you don't remember the "great exodus" maybe five/six years ago. A bunch of people (mostly the journal writers) left Slashdot for Technocrat. I don't remember the reason for the boycott. Sorry about that. I think it had something to do with deleted posts and editor mod points.
The stories on TC were really good to start with and the conversation was clean. The platform was slashcode. The site worked pretty well for a month or two, but then died out. I've checked in on it a couple times a year since then.
Jeez. How many Slashdotters are there in Thailand? You're number four, I think.
Not Thai, no. I was a Thai linguist then lived there for four years. I've been in Korea for almost five years now.
I was there when FOSS was in full swing. How's it holding up now? I don't hear much from the LinuxTLE or OfficeTLE teams at NECTEC these days.
My gal's brother is pissed about the new PM, too. He lives in Bangkok but doesn't like the politics there (being a northerner at heart). Every time she talks to him, they spend more time on politics these days than anything else.
Thais didn't seem so obsessed with politics a few years ago. I hope that signals some real change coming.
Link to your site, please!
I, the new Prime Minister, invite you (hon.) to join together to bring Thailand out of (something illegible). If you are interested in being contacted by me again, please send your 5-digit postal code ("rahat praisanee") to the number ... (cut off in the picture).
Personal interest -- where did you learn Thai? How long have you lived there? Are you in IT?
That's a nice theory about the new PM, but as far as I can tell, he's part of a coalition of minor parties and he spoke out over the army coup in 2006. He was actually supported by the King, not the military.
Admittedly, the Suvanabhumi airport fiasco and the removal of Somchai, the democratically-elected PM was sad, but there's no way to know how corrupt those elections were. A vote sold for two beers when I lived there. The PPP (Somchai's party) was apparently dissolved for buying votes, though there's some evidence that it was business as usual.
Thai Rak Thai (Thaksin's party) was also elected several times by gaming the Bangkok vs. upcountry political system and throwing so much pork at the outer provinces that everyone voted for him. Hey, who wouldn't vote for an extra month's salary in cash and interest-free loans?
Since The recently-deposed PM was Thaksin's brother-in-law and one of the richest families in the country, and Thaksin was extraordinarily corrupt even by Thailand's standards, your propoganda makes me doubt you're a disinterested party in the manner.
The King has been the only thing keeping Thai politics remotely sane since it went constitutional, and his death will let the dogs loose.
I, the new Prime Minister, invite you to help Thailand come out of its current {illegible, probably crisis). If you're interested in receiving (illegible, probably information) from me,please send your 5-digit postal code to this number .... (the rest is cut off)
It doesn't seem very spammy. The tone was appropriate, neither common nor overly polite. The Thai language paper I looked through didn't even mention the message. I look at it as just a better version of the required political speech on your first day.
p.s. I know that you were joking about reading (it does have "Thai," though), but I though you might be interested in the content.
I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure that Thaksin (the deposed PM from two years ago) sold all his stock in the telecom and moved the money to Singapore in the weeks before the coup.
Also, the new PM is from a coalition of minor Thai parties and has nothing to do with Thaksin.
This story also appears to be a non-starter in Thailand. I went back to the 18th at thairath.co.th (a Thai language newspaper) and found no mention of this story in the political section.
Anyway, I'm not sure I would consider it spam if Obama had a message stating something like "I, the new President, invite you, the people of the U.S., to join together and help us rise out of our current situation. I welcome your comments." (The picture in the Bangkok Post is too blurry for me to make out every word the Thai PM wrote, but that's the gist of it.) In fact, I fully expect Obama to do something very similar in his first week, though it will be an announcement on TV pre-empting your favorite show. I doubt it will be quite as short or too the point, either.
It shocks me that so many techies commenting on this story don't know what "eating your own dogfood" means. I expect more from Slashdot.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000012.html
Just kidding. If you don't care, then I don't. Cheers. ;)
Possessive pronouns don't use apostrophes.
"It's" is a contraction for "It is."
Seriously, check-out this site for example: http://featherandquill.com/ and http://www.sajafutura.us/index.html
Seriously, stop being a tool and surrounding every post in <tt> tags.
I tried using it for my book, but it didn't support admonitions, and although I wrote my own in Latex, manually inserting Latex code in Lyx for each admonition just seemed like too much work.
Did I miss something and give up a good tool for no reason?
First of all, XP doesn't work well on 128MB unless you ignore the required safety mechanisms, use an unpatched version (like SP1) and don't run any applications.
.iso. It can run completely in memory in a machine with just 256MB. Talk about blazing fast ....
Try putting LXDE, however, on that same machine, and you will have a modern, FD.o compliant desktop based on the light OpenBox. It uses 42MB at boot on my two (previously Win2000) laptops with 128MB.
Want better? Slitaz is a similar setup in a 26MB
Yeah. That's what I meant. Lineage Leige. Gaiea is one I saw recently that works that way, too.
This is really the standard business model in Asia. Maple Story works this way. Ragnarok works this way. I'm pretty sure Liege II does, too. I don't play any of these games, but they're really popular here.
Play for free. Pay extra money to make the game more interesting.
With no security? WebDAV + Apache + Avahi to announce. I guess you could use Apache's security as global protection, but it still wouldn't really get you anything file-level.
I use it anywhere I just need to share stuff. It's a lot simpler than FTP or Samba. See Debian2Debian