Cambodia bid to protect treasures

From BBC News:

Cambodia has invited international law enforcement agencies to help protect the country’s ancient temples.

US homeland security and FBI agents are among those who may be advising the new national heritage police force.

Looting is evident even at protected Angkor Wat

They are hoping to put an end to the rampant looting that has seen many monuments stripped of their statues.

Peace has not been kind to many of Cambodia’s ancient monuments. As decades of conflict ended in the 1990s, looting accelerated dramatically.

The local authorities and the United Nations’ cultural organisation, Unesco, moved quickly to protect the world-famous Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples.

But more remote sites were left to their fate.

Stolen-to-order

US agents and local officers have been meeting in Siem Reap to discuss ways of protecting what is left.

US special agent Ann Hurst said their experience of dealing with stolen artefacts from Iraq will be crucial.

“We can provide training in how to prevent these types of violations. There were stolen paintings and stolen coins being taken out of Iraq and smuggled in to the US,” she said.

“What we did in those cases was prosecute the people who smuggled the goods in – and the people who accepted the goods in the US.”

Many Cambodian items have been stolen to order for private collectors.

Others have turned up at international auction houses, so expertise in intercepting illicit shipments is badly needed.

Technical assistance in detection and policing will also bolster the thinly-stretched and poorly-funded local forces.

For Cambodia, stopping the looting is partly a matter of pride – the towers of Angkor adorn the national flag – but as tourism grows, so does the economic importance of preserving ancient treasures.

BOYS LIKE GIRLS – The Great Escape

Let’s ROCK but not like hell

Carlos Santana Feat Chad Kroeger-Into The Night

Wow Santana! The king of SOLO!

His solo in this song is like hell, especially from frame 2:10 to 2:40.

Cambodia: KhmerOS to have a social impact

The goal of the KhmerOS project is to produce the basic computer technology necessary for Cambodia to enter the age of technology. The requirements for this technology are clear: It must be in Khmer (Cambodian) language, sustainable, and well adapted to the socio-economic situation of the country. Cambodia not being a profitable market for software companies, the only option left to undertake this effort is to base it on free and open source software (FOSS), which allows translation, adaptation and free distribution of the software.

http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=5212173

Khmer Software CDs available on Cambodian market

Below is my original post at KhmerOS website:

KhmerOS would like to announce that Khmer Software and openSUSE CDs are now available on the Cambodian market. You can find the CDs at the following places in Phnom Penh:

• Toul Tom Pong Market
• Around Santho Mok High School
• Around National University of Management (NUM)
• Around Yokuntho High School
• Along Wat Langka Gate
• Central Market

The market will sell the CDs for the following prices:

• $1.5 for Khmer Software CD
• $3.5 for openSUSE 10.2 CDs (7 CDs)

To encourage the sellers, for those who want to get the CDs from KhmerOS office (Open Institute), we will sell the CDs for $0.5 more than the market price.

Paula Deanda feats Bow Wow-EASY: My favorite song this week

My dad’s blog gets more traffic?

Slide number 26th of Visal’s presentation about Blogging 102 during Cambodian Blogger Summit was really funny. It reminds me the time I was at grade 10th (about 10 years ago). My friend and I was playing a game with a stranger boy at about the same age (the same height but he looks stronger than my friend and me). We then had some argument and as the tender boy (we don’t like, well afraid I think, fighting), my friend and I tried to scare that strong boy. We tried all the tricks. We suddenly came up with a nice one. At school, my friend and I were considered as the smallest students at grade 10th. So we asked that boy loudly, “oh yeah!?! What is your grade then?”. He replied with wonder “11th, so what’s up?”.

Yesterday Italian GP

As one of the Ferrari fans, my younger brother and I were really upset of the Ferrari team performance at Monza, Italian GP. The pair drivers, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen were starting on 3rd and 5th position on the grid while the rival Mc-laren’s drivers, Fernado Alonso and Lewis Hamilton were on 1st and 2nd. Starting third, Felipe Massa fought really hard with Hamilton to get 2nd position (I never have doubt about Massa’s performance), but ten laps later was forced to retire from the race with a rear suspension problem. The failure to finish drops Massa to fourth in the championship, 23 points behind leader Hamilton.

The retirement of Massa was putting his fans (yes, me) nervous. Without him, who will fight the Mc-laren? That should be Raikonen. Yes, he made a good start from fifth on the grid to run fourth before Massa retired. With his one-stop strategy, he was later able to briefly run second (about only two laps) before Hamilton made an aggressive pass to re-take the position. Raikkonen finished third, 20 seconds behind Hamilton. That was another pain for his fans. My brother was really angry. Both of us wonder why he performed such a weak performance.

As the result, Alonso won the race while Hamilton and Raikonen finished 2nd and 3rd respectively. With such performance of Ferrari, I never slept tight. I tried to seek the answer behind the result and finally I found the explanation from Raikonen.

Actually he had a pain at his neck after his crashes in practice a day before racing (my brother and I didn’t know it). It was hard for him to hold his head steady under braking. That’s really pity for him. His fans should not have been angry with him.

Ok, here are some interesting photo from the race:

I’m one of those red flag holders.

Mass (3rd) fought with Hamilton (2nd) during the start.

Clever Hamilton went through shortcut.

Was Hamilton really happy with Alonso?

Linux Instant Messenger

Kenno’s post about Pidgin reminds me about Kopete, my favorite instant messenger in Linux.

Kopete’s logo

Sometimes ago, I wrote an article about communication via Kopete using Khmer Unicode. Sometimes it was really difficult to communicate in English if you are Cambodian. We can’t just find an equivalent English words of what you want to say in your native language. Most Cambodian chatters use language transliteration during their chatting.

Yap Man! – This is the English transliteration of the word “យ៉ាប់​មែន” (sorry, Khmer Unicode is required here to avoid the square boxes) in Khmer. I can’t find any English word equivalent to this Khmer word. One of my colleagues suggested “Bullshit” but I don’t think so.

Install OpenOffice Khmer Spell Checker

My cyber-friend, Kenno, has written a very step-by-step instruction on how to install KSC in Debian on his blog.

For how to install it on other Linux distribution and Windows, please follow the instruction contains in the Readme file of the KSC download package.

Discussion about how to install KSC at KhmerOS website:
- http://www.khmeros.info/drupal/?q=en/node/1942
- http://www.khmeros.info/drupal/?q=en/node/1939