joekicker

Heh. Excellent. I am actually using IE 9 for the forum as I write, I posted pics and previewed them within the past couple of hours. Seems that it is the settings within the browser and computer than Dungheap has. That's why they call them *personal* computers I guess. It's probably a virus. (imagine an impish smiley here) .

Every mod has a style. I have to say I would have done that a bit different. Except as an obvious joke, I never like writing right inside someone else's post. Still, it was clear what was happening. .

Bookies love people like you. .

You can get grills of what seem to be similar style in the big stores but I've sure never seen a Foreman on sale in Thailand. How good the wannabes are, I also do not know -- but if "desperate times.... etc" call, have a look at Tesco or similar. .

Moderators - REAL moderators not the many shyster-mods trying to tell you what to write - are very powerful. Glyn is a real, actual mod. .

Yeah no args, and I was talking about - what games aren't affected by single players?? Ever? Both sides of the ball. Speaking of Williams - the Giants don't have Jacquian Williams, they don't get the fumbles, they lose the game, handily. Your logic, the only conclusion is that every game -- and every signing of every player really -- is an invitation to game-fixing. After all, using your logic, all Jacquian Williams would have had to to is hold back just a little bit when he had those two strips on Kyle -- even hold back on one of them -- and the 49ers win, Jacquian is a rich guy with the bribe money. But he didn't. But maybe Kyle, now, maybe *he* walked into those strips and is going to take the secret of game-fixing to the grave. This whole season Jacquian Williams had 78 tackles and a sack - and nothing else, nada - up until Monday not a single FF, not one forced fumble or a sack. He stepped up, that's the point of sports. Why else watch? Agony of defeat and all? Getting on your slippery slope, the 49ers waited and waited and laid back to led Jacquian strip Kyle? Why not? If Kyle *COULD* have fixed the game there, why not every 49er fixing it and letting the very ordinary Jacquian Williams fix it -- a guy who had NEVER impacted a game much, ever? Hey BOTH teams I picked lost and the bookies made out like bandits. Why not the whole NFL in on game-fixing, financed by the books? That's the problem with slippery slopes -- or the beauty of them, depending on yoru view of course. I just thought that they were two nail-biting games that went right, literally right to their ends, and that some guys stepped up, some guys didn't. Never crossed my mind they were throwing the games. Vic mentioned the same thing for the previous weekend, that the Patriots might all decide en masse to throw the game to Denver. I'm pretty naive, am I, thinking guys just go out and play the game? .

Hmmm weird, what channel did you guys have on? I saw two excellent games that came right down the wire in both cases, absolutely no way to tell who was going to win either one right to the last minute - literally. Every game, a couple of guys star and a couple of guys make mistakes or worse - that's why they actually play the game instead of having computers duke it out on stats tables. The Ravens would not have been in the playoffs without Cundiff, who also missed some kicks in the regular season but overall is an excellent kicker. Williams was a standout on special teams, without him the 49ers would have been worse than they were. That's what sports is all about ferpetesake is who steps up and who doesn't - in every game of the year, not just the last one. .

Dangerous. That could mean "You Forgot!!" with the attendant grief. .

I remember the nook WELL. Still can't get a photo of a THAI passenger bus in my mind though. I can see the actual trail, walking from that limo desk (seldom used it, but occasionally did), head left (not right) out the door, into the heat, onto the pavement.... And qujte a few buses close by from hotels and travel agencies and so on. Every time I "see" a THAI bus, though, it's got good-looking girls in uniforms on it. But not me! (Crew bus.) .

If there was such a bus line, it was certainly Don Muang, LONG before Suvarnabhumi was a sparkle in the eyes of the telephone magnate. No question it was way before the swampland was paved. And what you write is believable, because THAI was very protective of those limos for sure. But I *still* can't raise a cell that remembers THAI passenger buses. I was looking for old photos of River City and Royal Orchid Sheraton which was THAI owned, because there certainly would have been buses there - found city buses and "tourist buses" at that hotel and shopping centre, but no THAI ones yet. .

According to Bell Travel Service you can remember no more than 17 years, which is a start I guess: Bell Travel Service was established in 1995 in order to offer a convenient shuttle coach service between Bangkok and Pattaya. Still can't find any reference to a Thai Airways bus, but I did find that the dopey airport bus shuttle to and from Bangkok died last June -- in the obscurity it so richly deserved. .

New England by 7, 50.5 points total San Francisco by 2.5, 42 points. Seems everybody likes Giants AND 49ers defence. New York is good but I will definitely take the 49ers on that side of the ball. Reminder that game times are different this week. Both games are Monday Pattaya time at 0300 from Foxboro and 0630 in San Fran "Don't Call Us Frisco" Cisco. .

Wracking my remaining grey cells on this, and I do not remember a Thai Airways bus for the public. You used to see a lot more crew buses, it seems to me, but that may just be poor memory also. There was (is???) that ridiculous bus from downtown to the airport, that sometimes had as many as three passengers, and it had THAI advertising on it, but most definitely not a THAI bus. I'm pretty sure there has never been an actual THAI bus run by the airline, although it has been mobbed up ("mob" as in price-skimming mafia) with transportation, especially limos for many years decades. .

Posted mine more than seven weeks ago, last US Thanksgiving and there hasn't been a reason to change. Come Feb 5, Lucas Oil Stadium of Indianapolis will be World Central for Brotherly Love™ and the Super Bowl will be a rematch of the 49ers and Baltimore. .

In case you were on the verge of arguing that Joe Biden is NOT the biggest doofus in current US politics if not in all US history: Vice President Joe Biden had his "oops" moment Wednesday speaking in a 49er-crazed San Francisco when he told a crowd at a city political fundraiser that "the Giants are on their way to the Super Bowl." Giants, 49ers, those darned San Francisco people and their team names!! The thing is, being from Delaware, I'm sure Biden has actually claimed to be a NY Giants football fan. What a doofus. .

Heh. Don't think it's easy, though. Domino's and Wendy's never made a dent and put their head between their legs and left. Burger King still isn't very big. Big Bob's was another failure, and it took KFC two tries to make it go. Swensen's simply out-marketed Baskin-Robbins and for all its money Pizza Hut still struggles against the local guy. .

I think we're not talking about the same things. You're talking about a "good" encryption system and what you write is totally correct. I'm talking about someone getting the encrypted stream and attempting to break it. The chances of success on encryption used on the Internet and similar are NOT zero, and the strength is NOT 100%. Both -- in real-world use of encryption -- are close, but not exactly 0 and 100. That was what I understood the OP was asking. Here's an example of what I mean. The encryption used by banks, the so-called "double DES" or AES, the standard 128-bit system. The encryption HAS BEEN BROKEN, but it has not been broken while in use. That is: AES is used, for example, for me to send 1,000 baht to your bank account. The transaction takes a little time, typically a few seconds, let's say an hour. If a bad guy gets (intercepts or whatever) the *encrypted* information, and he has he proper equipment, knowledge and so on, he WILL break that encryption. But it takes him too long at the moment, you have the 1,000 baht safe in your account long, long before he can actually break it. DES has actually been broken in controlled tests, but the US State Department (among many others) continues to use it for certain traffic because it's all they need for those certain messages which are unclassified but not entirely public either. So there is a proof of concept that AES can be broken *in the real world* but no one thinks it can actually be done. So AES remains in use. Like DES it will eventually be discarded by banks of course, mainly because bad guys are getting too close to breaking the encryption in the real world. And again, what you write is entirely true -- that what my banker sends to your banker is 100% reliable. But the question was: Could someone get between them and steal the encrypted stream and break it? And the answer is "yes" it COULD but only in theory at the momentm, and not under today's real-world conditions at the moment. And you are entirely correct as I also wrote that people become theft victims for just about every reason *except* encryption - from those key loggers to identify theft to the guy at McDonald's swiping your card twice, and lots more. However. Saying "never" and "100 per cent" and similar about breaking encryption is a mug's game and horribly insecure and wrong. EVEN one-time pads, which can be horribly flawed in the setup. The Nazis weren't the first or the last to find out you never should say "never" but Enigma is still the best-known story. EDIT in: Whoops, forgot. Your advice on self-protection is very good, can't be repeated enough. These days, there are two big threats -- that you give the bad guys your money with really bad decisions, or that bad guys steal your identity from someone else, such as the so-called "hacker break-ins" at banks and big companies which store your info in unencrypted form. .

Pretty much like Windows. It's usually done these days by social engineering."Click here to see pussy" except a little more subtle -- and if it's not a little more subtle, it is WAY more subtle. But in the end, you are the one that installs the keylogger, yep. Even when you don't know you've done it. Really. Seriously. Stay alert. Mac and Linux aren't all that more secure, they're just attacked less frequently. But Apple stuff is getting really popular - with everyone. Including bad guys. The best hardware protection is what your parents gave you between the ears. Use it a lot. First half of sentence, good. Second half of sentence, gooder. Don't be lulled. Ever. .

Some people spend their life's savings buying a business in a country that is undergoing deep change that they can't fathom. Other people invest in an exciting new prospective business because the country is undergoing deep and obviously profitable change. .

I've often thought that the reason Mac owners get ripped off so darned often is that they just trust Apple stuff. And these are the "open" and "honest" keyloggers. Please resume your previous Windows-style alertness that found the keylogger, because your keystrokes can be stolen on any computer, any time. .

But Thailand shares the lowest credit card cryptography breaks in the world with, well, almost all the other countries. Protecting your credit card and the details on/in it has approximately nothing to do with breaking the (heh-heh) "in the ether" security of the card. Two different subjects entirely. The OP wants to know (among other things) if it is safe -- and how safe, and how dangerous -- to use your credit card to buy things on the Internet. And the answer is that it is pretty darned safe to give your name and credit card details on a "https" website because the encryption is quite secure, although not 100% -- because NOTHING about cryptography is 100%. Call it 99.99999999999999999999999% though. You are telling us at the same time that we need to guard our credit card number in situations that do NOT involve encryption and you are so correct, but an entirely different part of the problem. .

Seems a lot of people ignore that expert advice learned in years of hands-on experience. Amazon for example seems to do okay taking credit cards and issuing refunds. I don't even GET this alleged advice. Tens of millions of people put stuff "in the ether" that they really can't afford to become public. They buy insurance, they make mortgage payments, they cash money at the ATM (14K dial-up modem ATMs, too). They buy stuff at Amazon and Pantip.com and sell stuff on eBay. Like almost all people, I absolutely cannot afford that my credit cards, ATM cards, tax ID numbers, social security numbers, medical access information, car payment methods, tax filings and much, much more become public. CANNOT afford that. Yet like tens.... no, like hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses, I put such sensitive data "in the ether" (love that, haven't seen it for decades). What are you recommending exactly. Not to me, but in general? Well, there you go! I'm surprised you thought I was writing an opinion. I wasn't. Any reason you didn't refute a word of what I wrote? Yes. Yes, there's a good reason. Isn't there? .

I've always laughed at this, and I laugh again. Excuse me. hahahahahaha Just like any guessing game, it takes a Cray computer as long as it takes. The very first guess COULD be correct. The chance that the first attempt in a millionth of a billionth of a second would be correct is exactly the same as the chance that the very last guess would be correct, the one in 100 trillion years. Who thinks up this nonsense? That said. The main number to watch is what the banks themselves use. They have been use a 128-bit encryption system for quite a while now and are not even THINKING of changing it. All the money transfers in the world are done with this single system, and no one is much worried about it. Very simply put, and if anyone wants to be less simple, fine: In 2004, the international (and most national) banking systems went from DES, which is effectively a 56-bit system, to AES which is normally 128-bit but can be a maximum of 256-bit. This was done after a hellaciously long period of public and peer exams and comment and hard work to break every useable system around. Please note: up to today, no one has shown a *working* break-in for the previous 56-bit DES system. There have been proof-of-concept demos using very, very controlled systems, but no one has broken the old 56-bit DES banking system in the real world. I don't personally claim to know there is *not* some flaw in the currrent 128-bit system but a 2048-bit system for working with money on the Internet is showing off, without real effect, like the claim it would take eleventeen gazillion years to break. Today's in-use security is VERY secure, but no cryptography is known that is unbreakable except for the so-called one-time pad which is unuseable on a day to day commercial basis. .

Is there some other measuring stick in the NFL than winning division, getting to playoffs, winning playoffs and winning Super Bowl? What else? As I write FOUR QBs have achieved more this season than Tebow and FOUR teams have achieved more this season than the Broncos. In about two months, most people will only remember the ONE team and ONE QB who out-performed Tebow, even though four of them already have. To put it another way, 24 teams and their quarterbacks failed to achieve what Tebow and the Broncos did this season. Four achieved more, and four equalled him. Members of 24 teams including their quarterbacks sat on the couch and WATCHED Tebow and the Broncos last weekend. Or maybe some of them curled up in a fetal position in a dark room, I don't know -- but they didn't play NFL football, did they? How do YOU rank teams if you don't use this season-playoff system that everyone else does? You are really over the top, Vic, stuck somewhere or other where wins and losses just don't count because you personally don't want them to. The rest of us, that's how we count. While you don't bash at all, no way!! Even ignoring your juvenile name-calling. Vic, note this: Everyone is out of step except you. .

You can't get much more authentically cultural than a ham and cheese sandwich from a Japanese business in a Texas convenience store in Thailand. Gawd I love globalisation! I don't know about Sam's Witches. Oishi is doing lots of stuff and putting out products. Tea and all seems normal, but maybe their fast-food kitchen is still down? There's a lot of stuff in Ayutthaya that's yet to go back online. I haven;t seen anything on their commecial kitchens in a month or so -- and they sure weren't working then. .