Asia Tech Blog

I’ve been helping many people everyday this past month who have for one reason or other been having severe connectivity problems due mostly to Thai ISPs messing with their DNS servers, trying to play filtering tricks and making a poor job of it.

Yesterday, in an effort cut the workload I posted a slightly different version of the post here about OpenDNS, because it was the solution that solved most of the problems people were having, and I was really getting sick of explaining it over and over again in one forum after another. I wrote it in my own words, as I always do, but I used some screenshots from OpenDNS to explain things a bit better. Well, I wondered why the IP address of my host’s abuse department was crawling through every site I host on this server. Shortly after this they forwarded me an email from someone at OpenDNS who I won’t identify here. Turns out he took exception to this and would prefer that I just link everyone straight to their site. Can you imagine if every magazine that reviewed and explained new products just published links to the manufacturers site? Excuse me if I was misled by the following declaration on their site:

Creative Commons. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. We would appreciate a link to our home page http://www.opendns.com/ if you do use the work, though the link is not required. (quoted from opendns.org)

Seems my host’s didn’t need to get involved. I mean, the email address to this site’s admin is published and the comments are left open for two weeks after a post. I really took exception to how he inferred I just took the content. I’m sorry, but I’ve been writing and publishing for almost 15 years now and not once have I ever just taken someone else’s writing.

So to the OpenDNS people, I don’t need these hassles. I don’t need a suspicious abuse department at Godaddy rooting through my server. The (supposedly creative commons) images are gone. They will be replaced later by my own identical screenshots, but for now here is the text version. If anyone needs additional help just email techblog2007@thaivista.net and I’ll help you through it.

If OpenDNS has a problem with this I don’t know what to say. I thought we were on the same side here, trying to help users in trouble and promote OpenDNS. If anyone is reading this let me state very clearly here that I consider any technical help I write here as public domain. Feel free to cut and paste the info to your heart’s content.

Now, on with today’s helpful (I hope) article, with added fluff words to further distinguish it from what OpenDNS’s own instructions. I apologize that my writing is not quite so tight as normal, but I’ve had enough hassles for one day:
Thai internet users these days don’t know what sites are censored, which ones are offline, and which are just unreachable due to poor quality IT skills and even worse quality control at many Thai internet service providers. Often a site is just fine but lousy DNS server configuration at the ISP means that even common sites like Gmail won’t resolve. This leads to frantic “Google is blocked!” posts on every Thai web forum to the point that it gets really annoying.

The way around this is to dump the DNS from the Thai ISP and use OpenDNS. This won’t get around site blocking, but it will help you reach sites outside of Thailand that don’t resolve well due to poor ISP DNS configuration.

Installation is very simple.

Instructions for Windows XP:

First, go to the Start menu, and open your control panel:
Select Network Connections from the list,

Click on your connection, which is most likely named Local Area Connection

Now click on the Properties button

On the next box, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then click on the Properties button again

Now, before you do anything more, write down the numbers and settings you see in this box, in case you ever want to change back. Then set your settings to the following:

Preferred DNS Server: 208.67.222.222

Alternate DNS Server: 208.67.222.220

These next steps are optional, but will probably help:

Before going anywhere do the following;

Go to the start menu, and click on Run

In the box type command and hit enter

type the following command exactly: ipconfig/flushdns
Reboot your computer (regardless of whether or not you did the optional last step or not) and you should see a noticeable improvement.

Links for setup on other operating systems and windows versions are shown below, including GPRS, and XBox/Playstation Setup.

For Vista
http://www.opendns.com/start/windows_vista.php

For Windows 2000:
http://www.opendns.com/start/windows_2000.php

Macs:
http://www.opendns.com/start/mac.php

Unix/Linux:
http://www.opendns.com/start/unix.php

Mobile/GPRS:
http://www.opendns.com/start/mobile.php

Xbox/Playstation:
http://www.opendns.com/start/gaming.php

I have to say I was disappointed, being a longtime supporter of TeXtra, a video poscast by tech Journalist Natali Del Conte. Right at the intro to her show is a statement that Textra is not just a “chick reads the news show”, inferring that Del Conte is a serious journalist and not just a pretty face. Now, leaving aside the “look at my perky bottom” glamour pics displayed on the site, on tuesday she threw out a glib comment regarding Thailand’s impending Lese Mageste lawsuit against YouTube saying that it would make more sense for Thailand to go after the uploader of the video, however she would rather see YouTube Get sued then someone get beheaded over it.

Beheaded? Please! Pick up a book, or do a quick Google before making a comment like that. I guess this girl thinks Thais are a bunch of barbarians living in the middle ages.

I’m disappointed because I’ve enjoyed TeXtra, and aside from the silly glam pics, I always liked Del Conte’s straight forward opinions on tech industry news.

I’m sure she knows that the difference between a “chick reads the news” show, and serious journalism is the serious journalist checks their facts before speaking.

If not, that bottom better stay perky. There’s lots of chicks waiting to read the news.

The Textra link is http://textra.podshow.com/ The comment is in the Tuesday May 8 show.

Software piracy is nothing new in Thailand, but while enough people love getting a copy of XP for less than a meal at KFC, many others are burned by dishonest retailers who install pirated software on machines sold as new. This isn’t limited to the stalls in Panthip Plaza either. A look through local forums such as Thaivisa.com and Thai360.com will reveal plenty of stories of Acer and HP’s distributors in Thailand selling brand new PCs loaded with Photoshop, MS Office, and other expensive software on top of the bogus XP copies.

Now if you can’t trust Acer and HP, who do you go to? The answer is Cleanshop, a network of trusted retailers where Microsoft guarantees you will get legitimate software that will authenticate, be registrable, and covered by warrantee.

The list covers shops in several major centres and gives you a way to ensure you don’t get ripped off by a fake copy that will cause you problems down the road.

A list of all Cleanshop outlets can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/thailand/cleanshop/

Popular news site Digg.com is currently being swamped by a massive user revolt after users complained that Digg was censoring stories and banning users who reported on the disclosure of the hex key for unencrypting HD-DVDs.

At 9am Bangkok time Digg was flooded with posts from it’s own users, many of them directing their anger at Digg founder Kevin Rose, whom many say has sold out to corporate interests in hopes of making a windfall off Digg.

One user responded with a rather creative reply, reciting the code in Haiku;

oh nine eff nine one
one oh two nine dee seven
four ee three five bee

dee eight four one five
six see five six three five six
eight eight see zero
-Digg user “Virak”

However this turns out, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out at Digg over the next few days. Further banning or censorship may strengthen the revolt, or Digg could cave in again, but this time to the users, the ones who really made the site what it is.

Response posted by Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder:

Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hel_l, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin