- Re: Re: Metadigest Principles

- Re: Mobile Phone Replacement

- C******d eMail

- Revo batteries/re-calibration

- Re: The Digest V1 # 659

- Re: The Digest V1 # 659

- Re: very large CFs, Various stuff, "phenomenal" BlackBerry

- Re: Revo batteries, spam, AntiSpam!

- mapSitnA & mapS

- Grab / Copy Screen Text

- UIQ model,

- Re: leave the digest,

- Re: 5mx replacement?

- Re: C******d eMail

Date: 26 Dec 2004 21:52:14 +0100
From: Rolf Vonau <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Re: Metadigest Principles

Owen H. Morgan <address truncated> wrote at 24 Dec 2004 23:31:21 +0100 in The Digest V1 # 658 (6)

> At that time I'll also leave the digest,
> probably for good.

Hi Owen,
it's not nice to hear that.

May be you can find a free of charge ISP in the countries you will visit. Then you can at least read our Digest.

I wish you Merry Xmess and a healthy and good New Year.

--
BR
Rolf

Date: 26 Dec 2004 23:15:36 +0100
From: Steve Hodgson <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Mobile Phone Replacement

>As to a phone replacement, I too have the same basic requirement -
>talking and IR connection to a palmtop.
>
>I found the Nokia 6610 meeting both without the other fancy stuff on the
>phone like camera and Bluetooth, etc.  Just a basic talk and IR phone
>that will "talk" to the Psions. The 6610 is also capable of GPRS.

I've recently found myself in the position of wanting a slightly different feature set but being unable to find it. Having moved from a netBook to a Palm Tungsten I would really like to have a Bluetooth enabled mobile but WITHOUT a camera.

While it is pretty straightforward to use line of sight and my current Nokia 6210i for email and SMS it would be great fun to have a Bluetooth link for this kind of stuff. 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.

The ideal would be the Nokia 6310i but it seems I have missed the boat on that one. I would have thought there must be some sort of gap in the market for a business phone (long battery, life good connectivity, no camera, no video, no MP3 etc) compatible with PDA use.

Cheers,

Steve
--
Regards,

Steve Hodgson                          mailto:steveaddress truncated

Date: 26 Dec 2004 23:42:02 +0100
From: Antony Booth <address truncated>
Subject: C******d eMail

To: Phil Aypee
>Did the admin. actually censor the Digest? If all they did was ask you to desist then surely that's not censorship, though it may be regrettable. Do you know whose eMails were omitted?<

They told me that some posts were removed. I do not know which ones and from who, or even if it was the case. You'd need to direct the question the admin. Asking me not to continue is not absolute censorship, but it must constitute some form? Had I refused, I'm sure my posts would have been added to the list of those removed"?

>You also say that an eAddress you posted from was subsequently spammed but it was *only* published in the Digest. That's sad and maybe someone let that Digest or that eAddress out - but I've not heard of anyone else suffering this way so I doubt your unfortunate incident is typical. But it is very unfortunate.<

Whether my situation was typical or not can not be determined without investigating spam on a digest wide scale, but the unique circumstances that resulted in an unused email address receiving spam does indicate the digest directly, or more likely, indirectly is a source of spam. As I created the mail server and have created dozens of unused email addresses for the same domain, only ones used and ones with predictable email addresses receive spam. I have created other "trap" addresses to receive spam email and then block the sender addresses. I have also created many obscure email addresses, which have not received any spam. The address in question was relatively obscure and is the only one of the obscure addresses to receive spam.

To: Itamar Engelsman

>No, not right, I just skip the TFTD's totally, don't look at them, don't read them. I don't see the problem with that, sorry.<

That's you, not everyone. The lack of choice means it is inevitable that even the most hardy of TFTD skippers will bump into one.

>I can categorilly state that the digest CANNOT be the source of an email address reaching a spammer.The website does not show ANY email addresses whatsoever and the digest is sent to the subscribers only while the database is held out of sight on the Psion of the operator.<

This assumes a digest recipient is not a spammer, or a victim of a trojan that has scavenged my address from a digest mail in his mailbox.

>You write "I personally see no need to include peoples email addresses" and that is your opinion. However, who says that others agree with this ?<
Again, it's a lack of choice. My email addresses are mine and I don't necessarily want you or anyone else sending me mail without my prior consent. If part of the subscription requirement is that others may email me, there should be some facility to email me without revealing an address, like many forums have a Instant/Personal messaging facility.

>I think that was the only occasion of the digest being "censored" and to continue to throw this at our feet I think is somewhat unfair. I don't think we censored anything else since and it was quite some time ago. I am very sorry if you were upset by this happening and we did what was in our subjective minds the best way to stop the digest from deteriorating into personal attacks. <

Perhaps this was the only time censorship was employed by the admin? As I am not an admin, I was unaware this was the case, but feel the number of occasions posts have been censored is irrelevant to my reply. I was not upset by this, but was just reaffirming to a digest member that posts have been censored. I wasn't actually stating there are occasions where there shouldn't be some form of censorship and perhaps this was one of them?
My personal opinion is that I'm a big boy and if I read something where I'm personally attacked, or there's some very crude or insulting remark posted by someone, I'll just add it to the list of trash the internet spews up. Especially if I have to manually filter TDTDs, why not manually filter someone degrading themselves? To me, there's little difference. 2 things I don't want to read, whether amusing or debasing. Also, 2 things that have nothing to do with EPOC, Symbian or a Digest for them.

Antony Booth

Date: 27 Dec 2004 08:15:54 +0100
From: Peter Rand
Subject: Revo batteries/re-calibration

>>Timothy H.D. Williams wrote:
>>Subject: Revo batteries

>>I was astounded to find that my battey read-out was at zero percent when it had been reading in the mid sixties a few moments earlier.  ... This would >>imply that the readout is wrong. What's the best thing to do? Leave it in the cradle to roast? Or accept that the seventy percent charge is really twenty >>percent and recharge regularly? ...

Hi T,
Unfortunately this a common problem with Revos - lots has been written on the subject. Basically, your battery gauge is out of whack, and needs to be re-calibrated before the Revo will charge again properly. You might want to check out <http://millican.info/Home/> for a summary Kevin Millican has prepared about dealing with this problem.

I experienced the problem myself a few days ago, and here's how I was able to re-calibrate the Revo battery gauge:


The battery had been extremely reliable the past four years, but it then
became a bit flaky, showing an abnormally high remaining charge level,
turning itself off before the charge fell below 10%, and during
recharges, jumping from 10% to 80% within a matter of minutes, shifting
to trickle charge before the battery was sufficiently charged.

I tried everything I could to really drain the batteries, but to no
avail. I finally decided to back up everything and then do a hard set.

Interestingly enough, making a full backup through the serial cable put
such a strain on the Revo's battery that it charged nicely for the
entire 45 minute back-up process. Since then, the battery's
charge/discharge cycle has appeared once again to be normal (knock on
wood).

In any case, it seems that if a Revo battery starts to behave a little
weirdly, draining the battery as far as possible and then doing a full
backup with the recharger plugged in directly to the Revo can help
restore the proper recharge settings. With luck, the red recharging
light will stay on for about an hour, thereby giving the Revo a full
charge and re-calibrating the gauge.

Good luck!

Peter

Date: 27 Dec 2004 10:03:33 +0100
From: Bernard Hill <address truncated>
Subject: Re: The Digest V1 # 659

In message <address truncated>, The Digest <address truncated> writes
>
>The idea is that the spammer sends spam to all these false eAddresses, thousands of them, and they are all returned! Even if the spammer can >automate deleting these returns it will take a v-e-r-y long time as the returns will keep coming in. And the spammers ISP/mail provider just >might notice too.

PLEASE don't bounce spam mail. It does not go back to the spammers but
the address they spoofed. I get dozens of returns each day (sometimes
thousands) and have never sent spam in my life. The spammer's apparent
address is NEVER his return address.

(I even get spam purporting to be from myself).

--
Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

Date: 27 Dec 2004 10:18:34 +0100
From: Bernard Hill <address truncated>
Subject: Re: The Digest V1 # 659

In message <address truncated>, The Digest <address truncated> writes
>
>But as I've now got a website I can do several things to deter spammers - and my eAddress isn't on my website except as a graphic. I've got a >page, over 600 KB, filled with spurious eAddresses and links to other pages of false eAddresses as well as links to scripts - like the Perl >script I've got that generates temporary pages of eAddresses for the spamBots (Psioneering are linked to that script at it's home - >www.monkeys.com).

AARGH!

Every time a message is sent to one of those spurious addresses it will
get bounced. And it might well bounce back to ME!

NEVER BOUNCE SPAM. It does not go back to the originator but to some
other innocent victim of spam whose address the originator has put in
the "return" field. I get hundreds of these a day already and you are
adding to the total load of spam on the internet as well as causing
problems to victims. Most of my mail is bounced spam.



--
Bernard Hill
Selkirk, Scotland

Date: 27 Dec 2004 10:29:45 +0100
From: Chris S Handley
Subject: Re: very large CFs, Various stuff, "phenomenal" BlackBerry

Subject: very large CFs [previous subject was lost in transit!]
Bernard Hill wrote:
>> Thats not quite true.  If you partition the CF disk into
>> four 2GB regions, then (apparently) EPOC will see four disks
>> (with four different disk letter).
>
> I'd need to see that to be persuaded. The OS would to be
> written with that as a possibility and frankly I don't
> believe that the 5Mx comes in that category.

EPOC (mostly) seems to have been written very well, e.g. supporting (at least) 1GB CFs when (say) 32MB was the maximum.  So I wouldn't be surprised.  Certainly something like SecureDrive is able to add additional disk letters to the system, so the support is at least partly there.


> FDISK and Partition Magic don't see USB drives so I can't
> partition a CF card otherwise I would have tried on one of my
> 1Gb cards. Ranish also does not seem to see my USB drive.

That's the driver's/Window's fault for not presenting the USB disk like normal HDs, IMHO.  Not that that helps you any :(

---
Chris Handley

=======

Subject: Various stuff . Lengthy so you may want to skip it
Antony Booth wrote:
>> The "thought for the day" issue is for me a non-issue as
>> said earlier. Someone doesn't like it, don't read it, and as
>> said I personally don't.
>
> The principle flaw in your suggestion I had when this topic
> was being debated initially, is that in encountering them,
> you've read them and so felt the annoyance at having done so.
> It's a bit like opening a spam email that looks legit, only
> to find it to be a Viagra advert.

I think both sides of this argument had already been stated once, without any sign of agreement, so this is now going around in circles...  Perhaps it would be better just to agree to disagree?  (A horrifying suggestion I know;)


> Either way, I concluded the Digest was the source of my
> email address ending up on a spammers distribution list.

Thats very interesting to know, thanks.  Of course, it isn't conclusive, but it is plausible.  One more reason to be very worried about the two (or more?) recent instances when the Digest's addressee list was accidentally included.

BTW, does anyone know the dates when that happened?  I was wondering if it might correlate with a relatively recent surge in spam that I've had.

---
Chris Handley

=======

Neil Thompson wrote:
Subject: RE: "phenomenal" BlackBerry
> You are comparing apples with pears - how many phone calls
> can you make from a Psion 3mx? None, that is why it has a
> considerably longer battery life.

Neil, sorry if I offended you.  I didn't mean my aside about a 3mx to imply a direct comparison with the BlackBerry (which would obviously be silly:) - it was really more of an indication about how far things have changed over the years.

Although since your mentioned battery life was withOUT using it as a phone, I don't think that such a comparison would be as inappropriate as you make out...

Personally, I would find anything with a battery life of less than a week to be a real pain.  I know that some manufacturers have tried to argue that most users only need batteries to last one day, but I think that's just them trying to justify their ridiculously poor battery life.

---
Chris Handley

Date: 27 Dec 2004 11:34:10 +0100
From: Chris S Handley
Subject: Re: Revo batteries, spam, AntiSpam!

Subject: Revo batteries
Timothy H.D. Williams wrote:
<typical Revo battery problems>
> What's the best thing to do? Leave it in the cradle to roast?

> I have always had battery problems with the Revo - and these
> latest batteries come from a German replacement that I had
> done when the memory was bumped up.

My personal experience is that Revo (and Revo Plus) batteries start going haywire when the charging system isn't treated carefully.  So generally speaking, it is not the batteries fault, but rather the system used by the Revo for charging.

While it is difficult to test what causes problems with the battery system, without ruining a perfectly good Revo, after owning several (and having had repairs more than once), I have devised these rules:

- Don't stop recharging until it has reached 100 percent AND the high-speed (i.e. red) charging light has gone out.  This is probably the most important rule.  Charging it over night automatically ensures this.

- Don't start recharging until it has gone below about 25 percent, ideally even less.  This rule is pretty important, especially if you repeat it several times in succession.

- Keep the Revo open when it is charging (esp. when fast charging).  The Revo can get quite hot during charging, and keeping it closed will make it harder for the heat to escape, and so trigger the battery heat sensor sooner.  This rule is not so important, but it can sometimes be helpful, so do it.

- Only use the *official* power supply from Psion, even if you have to get an adapter for your country's voltage. Unofficial power supplies often don't supply enough current, so that although it may look like the Revo is charging, it will be happening slower than the charging system realises - thus confusing it.  I don't have personal experience of this problem, but it makes a lot of sense, and explains many peoples problems.


There are (at least) some people who happily charge their Revo's however they want, and never have any problems.  But I think that in most cases their daily routine will automatically mean that they tend to follow the above rules without realising it.  Of course, this can't be proved (or disproved) without a comprehensive study - which will never happen.


As to how to fix your Revo if you have already violated these rules...  The recommended way is to discharge your Revo as far as possible, soft reset it, then charge it following all the above rules.  It is basically up to luck as to whether this will help your Revo - if not, then try repeating it again (perhaps using a hard reset instead).  If still no luck, you could try the "freezer method" that has been described on Psion Place, but I have no experience of that.

If still no luck, then perhaps you'd be better off buying a new/refurbished Revo, and keeping the old one for spare parts.  Personally I would never buy a second-hand Revo, because you don't know how it's charging system has been treated.

I hope that is of some help.  At least, it has worked for me.
---
Chris Handley

======

Subject: Re: spam (previous subject was lost by sender)
Bernard Hill wrote:
>> Pretty much, yes.  All systems which try to spot & delete
>> spam after it has been sent are fundamentally flawed (IMHO),
>> and are fairly easy for the spammers to outwit (or otherwise
>> they are so draconian as to be impractical).
>
> Why do you say they are flawed? The Brightscore method is to
> set up "Spam Attractor" email destinations, ie addresses
> which are no-one's real address and so any email received
> there is automatically spam. Then all other emails with the
> same content must be spam and can be safely ignored.

Easy, I think.  Here are my initial thoughts:
(I am sure I could think of alternatives given time)

The ratio of real addresses to "Spam Attractor" addresses must be pretty high.  Lets say 1,000,000 to 1 for the sake of argument.  In such a case, all the spammer needs to do is to split their recipients into groups of 100,000 , and send a slightly different spam to each address.  The chance of a "Spam Attractor" recieving any piece of spam would then be 10 percent, which should be quite acceptable, even if everyone subscribes to this system (which they won't).

Spammers could also try to identify which addresses tend to be "Spam Attractors", by subscribing to the service, then spamming a group of addresses (with some characteristic), and seeing which groups didn't recieve spam.  Such a process could easily be automated.  Once such charcteristics are known, they would (mostly) be excluded from recieving spam.

Both of the above techniques could be combined, to reliably circumvent your anti-spam system.
---
Chris Handley

======

Subject: AntiSpam!
Phil Aypee wrote:
> Chris. (Handley) my experience of Yahoo is different. I have
> had a Yahoo account for 3 years and had no spam either to it
> or because of it. I am a member of nearly 30 Yahoo groups

Do you subscribe to any anti-spam system?  If so, then you are not best placed to judge how much spam is caused (indirectly) by Yahoo Groups.


> I really doubt Yahoo sell eAddresses and I think they try
> very hard to keep their operation as clean as possible.

I never said otherwise, but I just don't think they are that successful, particularly when they still show the first letter of the domain name of each sender's address (which makes the spammer's job SO much easier it isn't funny).


> But Alan (Morris) is right about discovery of the leak being
> fairly pointless. The spammers concerned already have that
> eAddress - the best thing is to drop that eAddress if you
> can.

All I can say is that my experience shows otherwise.  My explanation goes something like this:

Spammers do not keep your address forever, precisely BECAUSE people change address due to spam (and sometimes other reasons).  And since spammers are constantly harvesting new addresses (which are much more likely to be current & valid), most will happily throw away their existing address list after a few weeks or months.  At worst, they will gradually send less and less spam to the older addresses, until it isn't a problem anyway.


And even if I am wrong about this, discovering a leak is STILL very useful, because it means you can prevent it happening again with your new address!
---
Chris Handley

Date: 27 Dec 2004 12:46:59 +0100
From: Phil Aypee <address truncated>
Subject: mapSitnA & mapS

Hi Folks,

Ian (Chapple), how do you think that the spammers are finding the relevant eAddresses? Surely they can't manually guess them as wouldn't that take far too long?

When I bought my domain the host-provider sent me *their* sales pitches (a form of spam itself, I suppose) to a sales@ eAddress so I set my account up to bin anything sent to all eAddresses *except* those I use (this one almost exclusively). My host-provider lets me set up as many or as few eMail accounts as I want, all at philaypee.co.uk (and they don't re-enable any I disable).

I imagine the most popular eAddress the spammers would use is webmaster@. If they don't "personalise" them then all they'd need to do is program a 'Bot to trawl for new domain registrations and spam common eAddresses - webmaster@, sales@, etc..

So I suppose the answer would be not to use such common identities for eAddresses.

Having a reasonable host-provider I can alter my eAddresses at will but I do know others can't. I suppose that, if they're spammed, they'll have to set up other accounts - Freeserve, HotMail, Yahoo, etc..

Bernard (Hill), you talked about "The Brightscore method" but I couldn't find the Brightscore method anywhere on the web. The URL www.brightscore.com is for sale.

I understand the method concerned but it seems an awful lot of work compared to stopping spammers sending you spam in the first place.

Happy days,
Phil.

"Whisky is the most popular of cold cures
that don't work."

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

Date: 27 Dec 2004 13:26:24 +0100
From: Eir <address truncated>
Subject: Grab / Copy Screen Text

Itamar Engelsman wrote:
>Re.: Grab / Copy Text - Am I missing something here ? >Can't you just use copy and paste to move text between >programs ?

I cannot see any way because as far as I can see TomeRaider does not have an option to copy text.  That is why I was looking for some way that the system itself could help with this function.

Many thanks,
Martin

Date: 27 Dec 2004 19:05:22 +0100
From: Itamar Engelsman <address truncated>
Subject: UIQ model,

Answer to: Moshe Nahir

Re.: UIQ model - There are different varieties of the Symbian OS for different types of phones. The UIQ model is basically phone without a keyboard with a vertical "portrait" screen and further with many other programs you would usually find on a PDA. For example, I have got Quickword, Quicksheet, diary, email. SMS, MP3, video, and many more. Of course it is easy enough to add a IR or bluetooth folding keyboard to it to use it more intensively for larger documents. It is a tri-band phone and  you should be able to use it in Canada as well. How do I use it ?
Besides being my mobile phone I use it a lot for the diary program and less but frequently to check my emails when my mBook is not with me. I use it for my reminders, my jotter, my tasks (to-do's). It is also my GPRS modem for my mBook and I have got some nice games on it as well to kill time.
No, it does not replace my mBook (or 5MX in your case) but it does allow me to leave it at home and walk around with only my phone/PDA. Having said that, if my mBook would break down beyond repair, I could see myself migrating more functions to the P910 and the balance of functions to a PC or small laptop or notebook.
Another alternative is of course to buy a 5MX Pro from Clove in the UK who stil sell this machine.
For more exact descriptions of the different Symbian Os systems Steve lichfield wrote an article on his 3Lib website.

Best regards,
Itamar Engelsman
London, UK

Date: 27 Dec 2004 22:31:07 +0100
From: Alan Morris <address truncated>
Subject: Re: leave the digest,

Itamar Engelsman <address truncated> wrote:-

> Sorry to see you leave the digest .... and thank you for your
> numerous postings in this digest. You will surely be missed !
> [Will your cat make the trip overseas too ?]

I guess that the cat will continue travelling, especially if Owen swaps to a catamaran; which with your name Itamar, you could make a big contribution!!!

I'll also add my thanks to Owen for his contributions (including his TFTD which I've been collecting in a 28Kb file).

--
Alan R Morris, G4ENS.
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK.
Using a Psion netBook & Nokia 6210e.

Date: 27 Dec 2004 22:31:17 +0100
From: Alan Morris <address truncated>
Subject: Re: 5mx replacement?

Date: 25 Dec 2004 22:56:35 +0100
From: Moshe Nahir <address truncated>


To  Malcolm Garrett, Rody Koops, Mike Dyer, Gary, Alan Morris,

As to spares for the 5mx as a long term solution, I too have two (by the way, what is a 5mx Pro, is it different from the 5mx?), but I would like to have the wireless connectivity now available in more and more machines.

Moshe Nahir
In deep-frozen (-30!) Winnipeg, Canada

Date: 28 Dec 2004 01:33:17
From: Rolf Vonau <address truncated>
Subject: Re: C******d eMail

"Antony Booth" <address truncated> wrote at Sun, 26 Dec 2004 23:42:02 +0100 (> ):
> Again, it's a lack of choice. My email addresses
> are mine and I don't necessarily want you or
> anyone else sending me mail without my prior
> consent. If part of the subscription requirement
> is that others may email me, there should be some
> facility to email me without revealing an address,
> like many forums have a Instant/Personal messaging
> facility.

Hi Antony,
1. you are free to ask us to make your address invisible in the digest. The From address of your distributions will be have the form:

From: Anthony Both

In this case no one will and can send you emails without your consent. Even a spammer, if such one camouflages as our subscriber, can not find your address.
If you want to see your address in this form in the Digest, let us know (email to the digest adress with ADMIN in the subject).

2. As for me, I hate the forms on Internet site, which send my message to any unknown address, which I can not whether  control nor check.

3. I think, for spammers our small community of subscribers is not worthwhile to subscribe and to find only 700 addresses.

--
Best Regards
Rolf Vonau
The Digest Team