Suriyothai's Silicon secret revealed
Bangkok Post - Thailand; Aug 22, 2001
Producers held a gala royal command performance for the greatest Thai movie since the Ban Chiang era, and then introduced it to the public; M.C. Chatrichalerm Yugala spilled the beans and admitted that much of the glory of old Ayutthaya was made on the hard disks of Silicon Graphics Onyx2 systems and visual workstations; Than Mui said it actually cost more to use computer graphics for Suriyothai, but the results were far better. Here's a strange one _ the web site for the greatest movie ever made in the history of the universe is Suriyothaithemovie.com, and as of press time, you could still register Suriyothai.com if you want it, because the movie producers don't.
Two companies that have done remarkably well despite the economic downturn are Shin (ex-Shinawatra) Corp and its yuppiephone subsidiary, Advanced Info Service, a prosperity that has nothing to do with the fact they "belonged (past tense)" to a prominent politician and you should be ashamed of yourself for being so cynically suspicious; the tech companies both announced lucrative share splits that sent stock prices up; the firms are looking for cash, as well as a way to spread their shares around to more people.
The super sentimental and the super kinky got a new toy to play with from the Chicken People and their Wireless Communications subsidiary; the PCT can now be attached to a video gizmo to allow you to see your sweetie as well as hear him while you talk; the setup costs 34,000 baht per phone and TelecomAsia actually expects to sell 1,000 of them this year.
Minister Wan Muhamad Nor Matha was afraid to get his hands dirty, and handed off the third act of the ACT Mobile saga to the bureaucracy for handling; permanent secretary Srisook Chantrangsu said he felt the 29.9 billion baht price tag for SuthepNet was fine, but maybe the Turtlephone Organisation and the Communications Authority should run it jointly, to ensure that the spending of public funds was so completely fouled up that no one would ever be able to unravel the books.
Total Access Communication, Number 2 and trying harder, approached No 1 Advanced Info Service with a proposal to boost the flagging WAP (rhymes with "crap") technology jointly; maybe, DTAC reasoned, just maybe if both yuppiephone firms told everyone repeatedly how great WAP is, the public might eventually be brainwa er, convinced to use the wireless text service and make money for the operators, instead of that darned cheap SMS stuff.
Critical Path of Britain announced a major expansion of its messaging and directory management into Asian markets; the company signed a partnership with DataOne (Asia) of Singapore, which will try to convince companies in Thailand and other advanced Asean countries to trust their email and message deliveries to the company's more secure products.
Asia Internet Holding announced it will expand the A-Bone Internet backbone between China and Japan by adding two 90Mbps lines that should be working by September 1; the new lines run from Tokyo and terminate in Shanghai and Hong Kong; the A-Bone is a consortium that includes the Communications Authority.
Telenor of Norway said, again, it has no intention of throwing money at the LaoStar satellite venture, which is the complete responsibility of its partner United Communication Industry and Boonchai Bencharongkul, the managing director; the Norwegians think LaoStar has about as much chance of success as a whale that takes a tour of Norwegian fjords.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone of Japan denied reports it was trying to escape its partnership with up-country fixed-line phone firm Thai Telephone and Telecommunications; NTT said that while it was not crazy about getting involved directly in the telephone business, which is 44.1 billion baht in debt and counting, it sees possibilities in Internet connections; Hirohisa Yamakawa, NTT's man on the TT&T board, says a lot of up-country folk would soon be spending a lot of money to get to the Internet, most of them through TT&T.
Troubled Pacific Century Cyberworks of Hong Kong extended its leased-line service into Thailand, bringing the number of countries served to 16; the company guarantees 24/7 connections or a rebate.
Amnesty International Thailand went online, in English and Thai, with screeds against torture and the death penalty, and loads of background on human rights issues in Thailand, Burma and China; the site is at www.amnesty.or.th.
The Malaysian government banned the sale of CDs at outdoor markets, to nip the pirates and pornographers in the bud. The Malaysian government discovered that CD sellers were peddling uncensored speeches by opposition politicians, a major security threat to the nation, and moved to try to stop the under-the-counter business in such noxious material.
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