- GSM init string for Panasonic GD87

- The Digest as a link between Epoc/Symbian users

- C******hip

- Spam, censorship, S3 power usage, PC card adapters...

- Sp*m

- Copying of contacts to UIQ phone

- B****r the S******s!

- Re: TFTD Debate | The Invisible Man

- Re: Mobile Phone Replacement

- SPAM,

Date: 29 Dec 2004 21:35:57 +0100
From: Sergio <address truncated>
Subject: GSM init string for Panasonic GD87

Hi there!

Has anybody (...Rolf are you listening???) any idea on how to use a Panasonic GD87 (Vodafone branded, aka GU87 "unbranded") as IR modem with my brother's new Palm Tungsten E?

I've tried various init strings from Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones with no success...

Thanks in advance!

Sergio

Date: 29 Dec 2004 22:43:14 +0100
From: Stéphane Sage <address truncated>
Subject: The Digest as a link between Epoc/Symbian users

Hello all!

    Following the recent and numerous contributions on censorship, spamming, non EPOC themes and the like, I should like to thank the "un-democratic" team of The Digest for their constant efforts (see the recent HTML version, quite  handy and professional) to maintain our small community of Epoc/Symbian users running on.

    I practically never miss reading the daily post of the Digest even though I am (much) less competent and preocuppied with computer tricks than most of its contributors and I mostly enjoy the various comments, incl. the TFTD but excl. those on other people's ways of thinking, and personalities that belong to it. (The human factor matters more to me than some rather boring, one-sided technicalities.)

    So keep going, Itamar, Rolf, Dick and the rest of you...!

    Greetings from Grenoble (France).

Stephane.

Date: 29 Dec 2004 22:49:02 +0100
From: Walker, Jan <address truncated>
Subject: C******hip

As a confirmed "lurker" who seldom writes in and has remained quiet on the subject, I would like to now make a statement.  Itamar and the rest of our digest ship's "captains" are doing an admirable job (without any compensation, I remind you) of providing a splendid service to all of us Psioneers and Symbian-otics.  I, for one, greatly appreciate it.  I also have derived many a chuckle from Owen's and others'  thoughts for the day. The continuous whining on the subject from those who don't enjoy them is growing ever more wearisome and tedious.  I suspect it may be a part of the reason Owen won't be continuing with us, which is a shame after his years of valuable contributions to the group.

Can we please focus on Psions and their derivatives from now on, and those who don't enjoy the TFTD's just skip over them?  Why is it such a big deal? It adds a bit of pleasure to the human condition for many of us and doesn't hurt those who don't want to be cheered up by them.  There, now I can breathe a sigh of relaxation and thanks to you all for letting me rant.

Happy New Year all of you!  And thank you to Itamar and the crew.

JW in SanFranBayArea

Date: 29 Dec 2004 23:05:53 +0100
From: Trygve Henriksen <address truncated>
Subject: Spam, censorship, S3 power usage, PC card adapters...

Greetings!

About SPAM....

It is NEVER any use to bounce spam.
This is because the ISP's server doesn't send it back until after it has received the complete email message, and then it must rely upon the sender/return-to information to do so.

One proposed solution, and which I hope will be implemented soon, is bandwidth choking, where the mail server which receives the messages scans them as they arrives, and based on simple rules decides whether or not it's probable to be spam, then slows down 'accepting' the message packets from that sender IP(by waiting a period to send 'acknowledge' return packages for each received package)
If the server keeps on 'flooding' without waiting for the acknowledge messages, it can be blacklisted completely.

Until this technology becomes common on email servers, I don't foresee any reduction in spam.
-----
On the 'discussion' of censorship and automating the digest...
I just wish someone could censor this topic as it is beginning to bug the h3ck out of me...
----
S3 machines and power usage...
I use Panasonic Powermax3 batteries in my S3c 2MB machine, and with 2 1MB SSD Flash cards inserted at all times I get an average 45 to 50Hours active usage out of a pair of cells. (About one and a half to two months usage)
If I removed the SSD's I expect it to go up an hour or two as having them inserted makes the S3c power up extra circuitry. (Assume about 1mA more on the average if you have one card inserted)
I almost never write to the SSD's, though(they contain reference texts) and only backup about once a week, and that takes at most 3minutes.
(Not that many files that changes)

I have a RAM SSD, but I only use that when I'm away from home for longer periods as these cards draw even more power from the S3c.
(About 1mA at all times even if the machine is powered down as it needs it to maintain the memory)
----
Onwards to other topics...

Today I went shopping for an external 160GB HDD to use on my Desktop PC
(I'm using a video capture PCI card to record TV programs as the VCR is getting on in years...) when I happened to notice something else in the store.

It was a Sandisk 6-in-one PC card Adapter, and geek as I am I bought it...
It is capable of taking MultiMedia Cards, SD Cards, xD Cards, SmartMedia cards, Memory Stick and MemoryStick PRO cards.

At the moment I've tested it with a 32MB MMC card(came with my Nokia 6230 camera phone), a 128MB SD card(was supposed to be used in an adapter on the Nintendo GameCube, but no game in my collection supports it...) and SmartMedia cards(a 4MB that worked, and a 8MB which didn't, possibly broken)

Not only did it work in my netBook, but as I have a Geofox One in my collection, i tested it on that, too....
Of course it worked.

Then I decided to have some fun, and dug out a HP LX95 and a HP LX200
(Dos based machines)
The 95 would refuse to turn on as long as any memory card was in the adapter, but the 200 had no problems with the Smartmedia card or the SD card, but gave a 'not ready' error when I tried the MMC card.

Maybe I'll try it in a Newton next?
Or see whether or not anyone at the office has a Memorystick?


:-)
Trygve

Date: 30 Dec 2004 08:24:35 +0100
From: Ian Chapple <address truncated>
Subject: Sp*m

Dear Phil,
I must admit to being extremely sceptical about your approach to dealing with spam, for a variety of reasons:

1. Spammers often have no ISP, or are at least not dependent on their ISP to send email, as they send their emails using unsecured mail servers. Their ISP won't be aware of them sending vast amounts of email, and therefore is not in a position to take any action.

2. Having attempted to reply to spammers from a Hotmail account, most spammers, assuming that they use a (their own) real email address, refuse to accept any incoming mail. Similarly, spammers often use real email addresses, but not their own.

3. Your approach simply allows the creation of more spam, by giving spammers easy access to a list of names. Whether or not these addresses are real or not doesn't matter; spam will be sent to these addresses, so clogging up the Internet.

4. Spammers are not discerning enough to worry about whether or not spam is actually received; as they send emails more or less for free (see 1.), they are more than likely not going to bother filtering their list of email addresses.

5. Any form of bouncing is basically counter-productive, for the reasons outlined in 2. Current estimates are that about 70-80% of all email sent is spam; bouncing spam only contributes to the problem, without offering any solution.

Cheers, Ian.

Date: 30 Dec 2004 15:01:41 +0100
From: Itamar Engelsman <address truncated>
Subject: Copying of contacts to UIQ phone

Searching my-symbian.com for further interesting programs I hit on a program to copy contacts to your UIQ phone. It is an excel spreadsheet with a macro to create a vCard from any contact I quote :

This tool is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which uses a macro to export data to the vCard format (*.vcf). UIQ phones can recognise vCard files and import the contained contacts to their phone book. You can either copy your old mobile phone contacts to this spreadsheet or just manually type in any new contact you want to ad to your new phone.

For further details look at http://egnatia.ee.auth.gr/~aki/dc/

The spreadsheet is free of charge.

Best regards,
Itamar Engelsman
London, UK

Date: 30 Dec 2004 15:10:53 +0100
From: Phil Aypee <address truncated>
Subject: B****r the S******s!

Hi Folks,

Bernard (Hill), the antispam methods I use are widespread, very widespread, and they are a reaction to spammers. If a spammer has used your eAddress as a return eAddress then the blame does *not* lie at anyone else's door. The spammer is to blame.

If everyone using a similar antispam strategy to mine stopped, all of us, spam would still be returned - and the spammers would be much happier.

There would still be thousands of returns. If abandoned accounts closed by the ISPs account for just 0.1 percent of all accounts that is 1,000 returns per million spams - and spams are sent out by the million. That's just 1 in every thousand. Add to them those who change eAddresses, change ISPs or for any other reason close eAccounts and over 0.1% seems quite reasonable.

So neither I nor anyone else poisoning spammers' lists can be responsible for your problem anyway. We may exacerbate it but that's all.

And all we are doing is poisoning spammers lists.

I don't bounce any eMail - none. But I understand why people do. They don't want the spam and they won't use a prophylactic method as I do.

I don't see why you can't migrate from one eAddress to another. The change doesn't need to be immediate. Set up another, protected, eAccount and send everything from that. Send a general eMail to all your correspondents informing them of your new eAddress - and never post it as text on your website (or permit it on any other). Read both eAccounts for a while then close the old one. Where the returns will go then I don't know - probably they will just disappear (but the spammer might get them!).

Doing this will not worsen your situation - little could. But it might improve your situation no end.

Thinking about it further, the spammer who has used your eAddress as a return eAddress must feel very happy that you are adversely affected. That spammer gives spammers a worse name than they already had.

It's disgusting!

Happy days,
Phil.

(ps: Bernard, if you haven't received my private eMail please tell me.)

"Who are we?
We find that we live on an insignificant planet
of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy
tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe
in which there are far more galaxies than people."

http://www.philaypee.co.uk/

Date: 30 Dec 2004 20:02:42 +0100
From: Owen H. Morgan <address truncated>
Subject: Re: TFTD Debate | The Invisible Man

Howdy!

Antony Booth wrote (> ):

> The very nature of publishing an article
> with several email addresses in it, makes it prone
> to become a source of email address harvesting.
> That's why I believe it would be better for the
> digest to only reveal one email address; its own.

Many people prefer to have their e-mail address appear in the digest. As the system works now, everyone can chose whether they want their address published on the digest or not. As it is, we all have a choice, so why not leave it like that? Surely, you don't wish to dictate that those who want their e-mail address to appear in the digest should not be allowed to do so?

If there had been any evidence that the digest was a source of spam, I suppose it might have made sense to make hiding the address the default option, but my own experience with NO SPAM received for the last couple of years in spite of being a reasonably frequent poster here implies that this is not necessary, so it should work just fine to leave it as an option for the particularly paranoid... :o)

If I had been participating to the digest from my WinLink (SSB radio) e-mail address, I would have joined up with the paranoid fraternity, as any unsolicited e-mail to that address would be a very big problem quite possibly preventing me from getting at my e-mail at all while I'm at sea.

> I agree it is unlikely a spammer will subscribe to
> get the list, but bots & spyware don't
> discriminate. They'll steal when the opportunity
> arises.

Is there any proof that spyware and viruses actually harvest e-mail addresses for spammers? I do sometimes receive viruses from virus infected computers and also receive bounced viruses where my address has been used as the from address, but I never receive spam, so this would imply that spammers and virus writers do not co-operate (yet...) Like armed robbers, rapists, child abusers and other mentally challenged scum, they probably despise each other. Actually, it's a long time since I've received any bounced or direct viruses now. Maybe my contacts are learning to practice safe e-mailing?

BTW, if you have a look at my web site, you'll find that my e-mail address has been very crudely camouflaged. This would imply that the spambots put very little if any effort into decoding camouflaged e-mail addresses as they have not got mine. This would make sense, as they won't make any sales to people who have taken measures to prevent spam however crude those measures are.

BTW, has anyone on the digest ever bought anything from a spammer, or does anyone here know someone who has bought something?

I may be wrong, but I have a strong feeling that the recurring discussions on TFTD cause a lot more annoyance than the TFTD ever did. I know the discussions take up a lot more bandwidth. Many people tell me off list that they enjoy and even collect the TFTD's. It's just a bit of harmless fun. From the off-list correspondence I have had on this subject, I would guess that the TFTD annoy less than 1% of users (and that's being generous) and the discussions annoy many more (even when they're not personal or abusive). (But let's not start a long-winded discussion on numbers.) Anyway, a large part of the "problem" will disappear when I leave the digest in a couple of weeks.

Owen

Thought for the day:
This thought has been omitted in deference to the 1% of digest users who don't like them. I'll try to remember to leave out 1% of my thoughts in future. :o)
--
Owen Morgan
Yacht "Naomi J.", LD-9311 / LA7QZ-MM
Anchored @ 27°46.28'N 15°41.65'W
Anfi Del Mar de Gran Canaria

http://home.no.net/naomij
Phone and SMS:
Spain +34 620520079
Norway +47 92053097

Date: 30 Dec 2004 20:02:51 +0100
From: Owen H. Morgan <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Mobile Phone Replacement

Howdy!

Steve Hodgson wrote (> ):

> Unfortunately while Bluetooth
> phones are 10-a-penny now they all come with
> integrated camera. Most of the companies I deal
> with now insist that camera phones are left at the
> desk and this really negates the whole benefit of
> the PHONE part of the thing.

My T39m seems to fit the bill admirably if you can find a second hand one. It has IRDA and Bluetooth and it even works fine for making phone calls!

Owen

Thought for the day:
A government is the only vessel known to leak from the top.
--
Owen Morgan
Yacht "Naomi J.", LD-9311 / LA7QZ-MM
Anchored @ 27°46.28'N 15°41.65'W
Anfi Del Mar de Gran Canaria

http://home.no.net/naomij
Phone and SMS:
Spain +34 620520079
Norway +47 92053097

Date: 30 Dec 2004 15:01:41 +0100
From: Itamar Engelsman <address truncated>
Subject: SPAM,

Answer to: Bernard Hill

Re.: SPAM - The problem of you rmailbox containing too much SPAM is a know one. However, I can think of two solutions :
1/ Spam Inspector :  A free program on your PC that checks each incoming email and quarantines the SPAM ones. This is useful while working in the office as you don't have to do this manually anymore (it picks up abt. 80 to 90% of SPAM)
2/ I use SPAMACHE on my private email account which is not constantly "in the air" which works 100%. It is not free, you pay something like up to abt. $ 10.- or so to have them check your mailbox every 10 minutes or so and delete all the SPAM from it. When traveling I send messages on from my business email address to my personal one and this eliminates ALL spam messages received. When I connect with my mBook and GPRS I ONLY get real messages. This service is certainly worth your while as it will save you tremendous on your connection costs.

Best regards,
Itamar Engelsman
London, UK