Amusing iPhone

Don't ask me how I got to this one. I'm sure I can not repeat it. I can confirm you its not photoshopped..

I tried to call someone and then hanged up. The phone

didn't took the hangup instantly and went black. Somehow I ended up with this after having it on again.

Free SMS for your iPhone

If you want to send free SMS from your iPhone, simply download this iPhone application and you are all set.

http://www.global.aq/

The internet is not just USA

The internet once got invented in USA so it started there a lot. But it didn't take too long to spread the world. Today, the internet is the place where international businesses meet and do business together. Globalisation is common. However there are some industries which have completely forgot that.

In my case I was looking for an easy way to process credit cards. I knew the "local guys" who do that do it in a very secure and highly professional way. But they are also very expensive and timeconsuming to get there. So I looked around and found a few who offered a small iPhone App as a credit card terminal. Sounded good for the rare small amount charges I had in mind. The iPhone App was sold or given world wide in the AppStore. But then you need some account with a processor. If you try to sign up there, you get stuck. You cant enter your country (missing field), you must enter a US state. The phone number field didnt accept numbers starting with a +. So I tried entering it "us-centric" in the way an american would dial my number.

Here's what I got:


What can I say, that processor didn't get my busines.
I'm still not amused how many american companies are running around in the internet thinking they could only do valuable business with americans. But they will loose at the end.

Officially Unlocked iPhone 3GS in Switzerland

Here is the ultimate "how to" to get an unlocked iPhone in Switzerland

Step 1:

Go and buy a new iPhone 3GS in any Apple shop or at any Orange retailer. It is important that Orange is delivering the phone. Phones from Swisscom Mobile will not work. I got mines from Ingenodata in Basel for 999.- CHF (32GB iPhone 3GS model). This is the "full price" model which comes without any contract. (Orange told me full price was 1299.- but who cares. Your price might vary).

Step 2:

Take your purchase invoice and scan it in and e-mail it to info@orange.ch with the comment that you would like your full price iPhone to be unlocked. You should include the IMEI number and Serial number of your phone. You can find it at the back of the box. In my case I never got an answer from Orange that way (even I was promised Instant answer) but they need some proof you paid full price at some point.

Step 3:

Call 0800 700 700, the hotline of Orange and go through the too many menus to mobile phones and customer care. Ask them to unlock your iPhone which you purchased at full price. They might ask you to do what you did in Step 2. Be aware that depending on which person you end up talking to, the answer can be "send in the papers", "give me your IMEI and I activate it", "I'll pass it to the backoffice, they call you back" or "I have no clue, let me ask my collegue". But they all know that it is possible. And if they know how to do it, they can doit very quick.

Step 4:

If you end up on a friendly guy answering with "give me your IMEI and I'll enter it" then be sure your iPhone is connected via USB. Give him your IMEI, let him type it into the computer and once he has done that, launch iTunes. iTunes will ask the Apple activation server and should get the unlock code immediately. You get a message saying something like "Congratulation your phone is now unlocked". Don't believe the employees if they say it takes 2-3 days to be activated. It takes 2-3 days to get someone from Orange to enter the IMEI into the system but once its at Apple's server, its instant.

I've done that with 3 iPhone 3GS I bought this friday morning and even though it took me various calls (mainly because I was in a hurry as I was planning on traveling outside of country the next morning), it was an easy going process.

Note: even though I am a Swisscom Mobile customer since 1994 and I paid my previous iPhone 3G at full price, Swisscom does not want to unlock. This also means that if you buy iPhones from Swisscom, they wont unlock and you're stuck to be Swisscom customer and you can not put a foreign SIM card into the phone if you travel abroad (#1 reason for me to only buy unlocked iPhones). In my eyes this is illegal but I leave it to someone else to go to court for it.

I can only say, Thank you Orange for having this fair option, even though I'm not your subscription customer.

Pricing

This happened while I tried to buy a train ticket from SBB. Translated it means that there are some delays on the pricing information. Well things can happen. Not a problem by itself.
But then it says that doesn't affect the ability for you to buy a ticket.

In cleartext: You can buy a ticket and they charge your credit-card for the exact amount, but if you don't buy a ticket, they can't tell you what the price would be.

Does that make sense to anyone?

new version of 419 scam

Nigerian 419 scammers are getting on my nerves. Letters and emails are not good enough anymore. Now they start spamming via Skype.


[col alan] hello
can i have abrief word with you
[Andreas Fink] sure.what's up?
[col alan] im fine
how are u
[Andreas Fink] fine.
[col alan] im colone Alan Metler. us army
no cos for alarm
ok
[Andreas Fink] I see.
what brings me the pleasure to speak to the army?
[col alan] its all business
[Andreas Fink] sure of course
so what business are you in then
[col alan] some days ago my boys found a boy at the un office at iraq
with a consignment box
[Andreas Fink] and?
[col alan] so when i open up the box privately in my office i found out that the box contains 40million us dollars
[Andreas Fink] ah another 419 case...
[col alan] listen to me boy
this is serios
i have interv
the boy
i discover that the little boy father was the former owner of a oil company here in iraq
ok
bye


Will they ever give up?

Anarchy is coming to Europe

Politics in Germany and all over Europe currently goes mad. Politicians have spotted that the internet can do something they want. The discussion around the proposed law to block child pornography from the net has sparked ideas. The original idea was to block unlawful content. The original intention might be very well positive but the technical idea behind it is just nuts. A wall around a crime so you don't see it, wont stop the crime from happening. And there's plenty of laws to stop the crime already. The police are just too lazy to execute them.

Anyway, this discussion has sparked the idea to use network filters to block a few pages from the net. Now other politicians are getting the idea. Well if you can block child pornography with that, can't we use that tool to block something else too? And voilà the list of "we could stop this and that etc" starts.

http://netzpolitik.org/2009/buendnis-fordert-schaerferes-zensursula-gesetz/

The music and video industry wants to block the pirates of course. You know those few evil entities which ruined their business model. They just forgot to note that the music industry has ruined themselves because their business model just doesn't work in the new world and they didnt adapt.

Anyway, tomorrow it will be a politician who wants to block someone who says something bad him etc.

And there we go. The dangers are

- Censurship first class
- No more freedom of speech
- No more distribution of political power (see HADOPI). A single entity is accusing and judging and punishing. And that entity is not even voted in a democratic way. It is controlled by the music industry in the case of HADOPI in france.
- Small ISP's have to go out of business as they cant afford the investments needed in such net filters.
- The world gets split apart. Freedom of Information destroyed.

And no, this is not happening far away in a dictatorship controlled country. Its not china. Its right here in Europe. In front of your door!

Germans: go talk to your politicians. They have not understood the power of the internet yet. Explain it to them. Show them what they are trying to destroy. And vote for the petitions against censuring. And also consider voting for the petition to allow again to eliminate stupid digital right managements which has always been a pain in the ass in my eyes and its only purpose is to punish the legal user.

French users: go talk to your politicians. Ask them why they allow someone to get disconnected from the internet while still having to pay without a judge ever looking at the case! Its your civil rights which is at stake. You will suffer from it at the end.