tomcat76

Hard to find sea views like that at anywhere near the price.

You're probably right in the short term. But if the govt really truly believed that, they'd change the law to allow it. Without that, you just can't ever be sure that someday there won't at least be somebody 'round with their hand out... Thai politicians understand populism, and if foreign ownership schemes ever capture enough of the interest of the public... Long-term rental is the most I'd go. I'm with '007 - 'don't feel I can afford to risk a few million baht.

Another couple of links you might find helpful on the logkeeping topic: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=229950 http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/vpn-providers-and-logs/ It's a controversial topic to be sure. It's a 3-legged stool: the true extent of the anonymity and security you're getting; performance & reliability; and price. (Some might add a 4th "leg" for customer/technical support.)

Excellent (and often-asked) question - you're using a server and all servers (at least any run for any business purpose, including proxy servers) are going to have logs. The questions are, for how long are the logs kept, do they log just header info or sometimes payload data as well, and do they suffer from the same susceptibility to being co-opted by court orders, this "monitoring deal" with RIAA, etc My suggestion is that you visit their website, review their policy (as well as the policies for ANY VPN or Proxy services you're considering), and if they have a support or user forum (most probably will) see what's been posted on the subject there. My belief is that you'd have to go some to excite enough legal interest that corporate entities would try and extend their tentacles beyond the ISP level. They'd have to go to the ISP, get a list of logged destination IPs (remember, your VPN tunnel is encrypted to them), check out all the connections involvng encrypted datapaths, THEN identify and go to the VPN provider and try & get a subpoena or court order against THEM (remember, they're NOT parties to the "deal" between major ISPs and RIAA, etc.), THEN look up THOSE destination IPs (which were encapsulated & encrypted at the ISP level), decide which ones are "interesting" (who cares about your browsing to Target or BBC News), and THEN glean as much info as they can from their logs and/or contact the "interesting" sites you visited. All that's going to require a lot of effort and a lot of cooperation. Much more than a blanket "monitoring" effort. I did a little digging before setting up with StrongVPN, and satisfied myself that they a) do not keep their logs for nearly as long as the ISPs do; have a much better track record of NOT turning over information; and c) definitely are NOT participating in the monitoring efforts that began in July.. But I'll say it again, if your comms are somehow or for whatever reason of sufficient interest to authorities, there's not much you can do to completely secure and conceal your internet activities. Neither VPNs nor Proxies nor strong encryption are going to reliably shelter online lawbreaking. It's just a matter of the resources available. Also, remember your email. Whatever email provider you use, your email is probably being stored as well, and unless you're routinely encrypting it (which means certificates, key exchange, you know - all that stuff), it's probably sitting on a provider's server somewhere, in the clear, for who knows how long. A VPN tunnel will go right through your ISP but will terminate at the VPN server you're using - from there to the actual destination server is just plain old HTTP or HTTPS (or FTP or whatever).

In this day & age, I think that's true. Tipping is a holdover from another time when wages just weren't a regulated thing to anywhere near the extent they are now. Employers should be paying their employees what their efforts & expertise are worth, the customer pays his bill, and that's that.

I sometimes notice that the cursor isn't really where it appears to be, the displayed position lagging the actual position. I just place the cursor where I want it, and start typing or deleting or resume whatever I'm doing, even though it doesn't initially appear that the cursor is where I wanted it. When things finally "catch up" (usually just a matter of starting to type again), all's well.

Best wishes from me, too, sir!

'Found an online forum here in the states that was all about tipping (I was trying to look into the matter of tipping pizza delivery guys when the pizza places already charges a delivery fee). I began reading through what was posted in some of the different threads there until my blood pressure couldn't take it anymore. The arrogance and disrespect for customers generally was astounding. Repeatedly saw references and threats as to what happens to the food of customers who are deemed "under-tippers". I guess what really got me was that it was just another incarnation of the all-to-common entitlement mentality here in the US. But I did see one or two posts, from people claiming to be wait staff themselves, stating that in their opinion and in their experience, it was in fact usually the less competent, less motivated, full-of-attitude individuals that seemed to be the perennial victims of low tips. They of course mentioned the occasional and unavoidable low-tipper, but their bigger complaint was in having to pool their tips...

For anyone interested: http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/tiger.htm (...but if you look up Cebu Pacific, they don't get much better marks...)

Something about one end of one of the runways subsiding again, necessitating an upcoming new round of repairs (& sgl runway ops)??

...or a VPN. Pros & cons to either solution. Description of each here. Pros & cons of each here. Samsonite apparently prefers the proxy approach; I use a VPN. So between us we can probably answer any questions you might have about either.

I think Chrome's "incognito mode" just has to do with cookie handling. Your ISP will still be logging all your connection info (your IP, IPs of websites you're visiting, connection start/stop, bytes uploaded/dowloaded, protocols used, etc.). Having signed in with Google, I guess they're logging everything, too. If you're doing anything online that you shouldn't be, don't expect Chrome to provide you any protection.

Jumping ship for another browser might work, but it's a shot-in-the-dark approach to what you've been experiencing. I'd want to see if I could first actually identify the problem with IE. No, I'm not defending IE; just saying that installing a new browser over some as-yet unidentified problem might or might not permanently fix things. I use both IE9 and Firefox (and occasionally Opera), and no performance problems with any of them. I routinely have up to 10 or 12 or even more tabs open in IE, and sometimes multiple windows with multiple tabs in each window. You might have inadvertently added a toolbar or something to IE (all too easy to do with some software installations, and some of these unintended add-ons are notorious...), or have something streaming in one or more tabs or another app entirely running that's tying up resources, or have loaded a web page with some flawed scripts, or even have some sort of malware based issue. (If that last is the case, you really DO want to identify the problem & address it, and not just install a new browser.) Just my 2c. If you go with another browser (and I really do like Firefox), and start doing all the same things and going to the same sites you were going to with IE, and there aren't any more problems, then great. I've found that almost inevitably though, you eventually come to a site that just doesn't work well with anything except IE.

Yes, it's one of mine as well (and I'll definitely be going back, too; and would recommend the place). I consider the episode completely anomalous, and I know it was dealt with. I was just making the point really that it doesn't really matter much where you are - always best to stay up with what's going on around you. Pattaya is probably not the best place in the world to get into the habit of taking things for granted.

Not that I know of. They're nazi's about luggage weight though... (Tiger probably is, too. I think it's symptomatic of all the "discount airlines".)

They're the alternative to Cebu Pacific. Yes, they fly at better times. But they have an erratic track record for short- or no-notice cancellations. (I'm risk averse, so the last few years I've used Cebu Pacific.)

I'll be back in Dec!!

Business (politics) as usual. Foreign diplomats cleaning out their inboxes; Pattaya officials cleaning out theirs. Case closed.

??? I realize that any fluids containing the bacteria are highly contagious, but there has to be at least a tiny break in the skin, doesn't there?

Sort of off-topic, but have they opened those new bars at the Avenue complex yet? Just bar beers or are there some go-gos?

What an abysmal lack of taste! Some people just can't appreciate fine humor. We'll just have to do something about that.

I thought so! (In a grim humor sort of way...)

I think he's recommending Soi Lengkee (and to check out the room before you rent it)... Never heard of "Soi City".

Nice...

Thanks. I saw that there were increases in the works but was unable to work out exactly what the current rates were. Guess the Thai MW is higher than I thought