- HTML version of digest

- 4 Owen &season's greetings# 658 (2)

- Re: Mobile Phone Replacement

- Re: 5mx replacement, battery life

- Revo batteries/re-calibration

- TFTD Debate | The Invisible Man

- Re: The Digest V1 # 660

- mapSitnA again

- And more mapSitnA

- Spam and email addresses

- Re: Grab / Copy Text From 5mx Screen?

- Re: The Digest V1 # 657 (7)

- Re: AntiSpam!

- Re: leave the digest,

- Re: Mobile Phone Replacement

- Re: Grab / Copy Text From 5mx Screen?

- Re: 5mx replacement?

Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004
From: Digest administrator
Subject: HTML version of digest

Hi folks,
the TheDigest team worked in the last time, to make possible to send out an html version of digest.
Today we can offer to you such a possibility. This version is readable only by email applications, handling html mails.
Thanks to the great SmtpAuth application by Marcus von Cube (www.mvcsys.de) we could arrange, that the Psion email application now can send html mails, as well. Thank you, Marcus!
You can see the html version in our archive www.psioneering.co.uk/digests/ShowDigests.html. We implemented it in the archived digests, starting at #601, dt. 23 of Sep.
The main advantage is, that you can skip distributions, beeing not of interest for you, by clicking on the topic link of other (interesting) mail. By clicking on the mail separator you will be taken back to the topics.
If you want to get this version, write an empty email to TheDigest with the keywords ADMIN SET HTML in the subject. Note, that each address can be used for either plain text version or html version. Of course, you can submit a second address for getting the html version.
At least I would point out, that this Digest is a digest, made for Psion / Symbian freaks by Psion freaks on Psion machines. All features, beeing not implemented at Psion machines, PHP-sites handling, are not possible.

With best regards
Rolf Vonau
The Digest Team

Date: 27 Dec 2004 23:59:31 +0100
From: Vlad A <address truncated>
Subject: 4 Owen &season's greetings# 658 (2)

> Owen H Morgan wrote on 26.12.2004 14:30:

> Seasons Greetings.....scrubbing....the boat. Sometime early in January > ..... points beyond. At that time I'll also
> leave the digest, probably for good. Maybe you'll all still be here when I > return to Europe and easy GSM connections some time in the distant future?

Dear Owen, don't if you can help it. Please _do_ keep in touch and send a tftd and your coordinates now and then... I wish you pleasant winds and people all along your ways and as many happy times as you can enjoy.

Season's Greetings and many many thanks to all of you,

best,

vlad

Date: 28 Dec 2004 01:29:55 +0100
From: Alan Morris <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Mobile Phone Replacement

g y reyes <address truncated> wrote:-

>> My Nokia 6210e is now getting old, so a replacement might be
>> needed soon.  I only want to talk on it and use it's IR
>> connected modem with my Psions, but finding a replacement
>> for that is now becoming difficult.
>
> 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.

Many thanks Gary that sounds ideal.  This 6210e has lasted longer than any of my other HT phones (or should I say the battery has lasted longer than any other battery!) and does everything I need.

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

Date: 28 Dec 2004 01:30:03 +0100
From: Alan Morris <address truncated>
Subject: Re: 5mx replacement, battery life

Itamar Engelsman <address truncated> wrote:-

> Looking at the website of Flipstart. It looks very much like
> the SE 50 something. The website reads however 2-3 hours
> running WindowsXP

I find my WinXP battery management is very poor.  Leave the fully charged laptop over night.  Switch on next evening and the battery level is reported at about 90-95%.  Use it for less than an hour and you get a warning that the battery is low - 1% and unless you can plug-in and switch on the mains PSU in a few seconds it shuts down.

Now on a nB or 7 you get a warning well before it switches off.  Also if you have been using SaveMail to save certain e-mails, it warns you that the battery is low and can't save to CF.  You have plenty of time to plug-in the PSU and then re-try the save.

Now that's not possible on XP, as while saving to disk and the battery warning comes up, then an immediate off occurs with a disk error.

The battery level as reported by ChaDis is always very reliable and consistent.  Unlike windows that is about as good as the time displayed to copy files.  And we all know how useless that is going up and down like a yo-yo.

My new PPC, using the same same type of battery as in my nB & 7, looses charge while switched off much faster.

I think that Psion did a grand job in designing their machines compared with the rest.

> You wrote "But, then again, if there is no Psion anymore,
> where can we go". The answer is : SYMBIAN with either Nokia
> 9500 / 9300 or a S60/80 or UIQ model.

Interestingly over Christmas we visited Carol's brother and saw that he had a new Sony-E P910i.  According to him it's spreadsheet is as good as that on a full WinXP desktop and the other apps are just as superb.

I guess that's the market being aimed at for these new Symbian devices!


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

Date: 28 Dec 2004 01:32:43 +0100
From: Timothy H.D. Williams <address truncated>
Subject: Revo batteries/re-calibration

Chris and Peter

Thanks to you both for your suggestions.

I recently had the machine fitted with a new screen and when it came back, I had to do at least twenty hard restarts before the gauge would read 0% rather than 66 %.

I have always tried to recharge by going to 10%, using the machine, then to 20 % but this is difficult to do when the gauge jumps from  20 0r so % to 60%. However, I have noticed that the drain of the serial cable can cause the gauge to drop to a more reliable reading.

I suspect the best solution is to always carry around the lightweight adaptor that I bought from Pulster !

Best

T

Date: 28 Dec 2004 01:57:46 +0100
From: Antony Booth
Subject: TFTD Debate | The Invisible Man

To: Chris Handley

>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;)<

I made the decision that it wasn't worth persisting with it in any form as they were here to stay regardless, but when the debate was raised once again, my input was not to continue where I left off, but to suggest a 3rd choice: "CHOICE". Where the digest subscription service could use whatever means it does to generate the digest for distribution now or in the future, to optionally ommit the TFTDs and anything else, such as email addresses and could also include optional features such a receiving the digest in xml, html, .pdf or as a spreadsheet. Being able to choose to receive TFTDs or not would please everyone and only the most unreasonable TFTD sender would argue that they expect their comments to be received by all members, including those who do not want to receive them. I think it is very generous of the admin to allow members to post off-topic messages with every post they submit, yet annoying that people who do not wish to receive TFTDs are not given any flexibility, but told to live with it and don't read them.

>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.<

My personal belief is some digest recipient somewhere has some spyware on their computer that has leeched all email addresses in their address book and trawled the message body of their saved emails. 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.

To: Rolf Vonau

>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:<

Will do, aswell as requesting making TFTDs & excessive signatures invisible aswell. No harm trying ;)

>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.<

Only when there's a blunder do we find out all the recipients who you send the digest to, so I fail to see the difference? When I send this, I don't know who the 700 are that will receive it.

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

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.


Antony Booth

Date: 28 Dec 2004 09:53:05 +0100
From: Bernard Hill <address truncated>
Subject: Re: The Digest V1 # 660

In message <address truncated>, The Digest <address truncated> writes
>>> 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).

The whole point about spamming is near-zero effort for the spammer. So splitting 100 million emails into 1000 different ones is no small effort.

>
>Spammers could also try to identify which addresses tend to be "Spam >Attractors", by subscribing to the service,

I'm not sure it's open to non-ISPs. (And note the correct name is Brightmail, not as I gave it.)

>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.

See my comment above about zero effort.

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

The simplest method of all is to send different spam to all the 100,000,000 addresses but it's a large effort. I don't think your arguments hold water. :-)


--
Bernard Hill
Selkirk, Scotland

Date: 28 Dec 2004 13:02:40 +0100
From: Phil Aypee <address truncated>
Subject: mapSitnA again

Hi Folks,

Bernard (Hill), I'm very sorry you get so much returned spam though the methods I use will, at worst, only increase that. They don't cause it.

But my methods are endorsed by a lot of anti-spam gurus, that's where I got them. Most spam is trying to sell something so a fully-shielded "from:" eAddress would be counterproductive to those spammers as well as unnecessary. The returned spam you get (I got just one at a now-defunct eAddress) is probably generated by a non-commercial spammer, someone else as useless as a virus writer.

Or those returns might be caused by a virus. No, not necessarily one you've got, just one using your eAddress. I had that experience, but only one false return from a non-existent eMail server saying the eMail came from me. It was a Windoze virus so my machine definitely wasn't infected.

Also the SWEN virus sends itself out from infected Windoze machines to every eAddress it can read. It reads eAddresses in newsgroups too (SWEN=NEWS). I used my old eAddress to post to the NGs and my eMail box was permanently full of the damn'd virus-generated stuff. Steve Litchfield had the same problem - and he didn't have the virus either. As it's a Windoze virus I knew I didn't have it - and my AV software is kept up-to-date anyway - I'm Macced.

Perhaps there's another, similar, virus out there. But either way the only real answer is to change your eAddress!

Happy Hogmanay,
Phil.

"Love is a many-splintered thing."

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

Date: 28 Dec 2004 13:02:50 +0100
From: Phil Aypee <address truncated>
Subject: And more mapSitnA

Hi Folks,

Chris (Handley), I don't subscribe to *any* anti-spam system. If I were to get spam then I would just dump that eAddress, much easier for me than for most but still the only really reliable way. In fact I have done just that - but only once.

I didn't mean to imply you said Yahoo sold eAddresses (though, looking at it again, I perhaps did imply it), I just meant that I think Yahoo are as rigorous about spam/antispam as they feel they can be. They're certainly rigorous about anti-virus measures.

But I honestly think you're wrong about finding the leak. The spammers *sell* each other eAddresses and duff ones are just as valuable to them as real ones that way. Duff ones only inconvenience the users - nice, that, spammers inconveniencing other spammers.

Of course you may be right about the preventing of a leak of a new eAddress - it makes sense. But there are many ways you can unwittingly let your eAddress be harvested - and you cannot control how it is stored by all your correspondents. I honestly believe that, in this case, "prevention is better than cure".

As I said, it works for me.

Happy Hogmanay,
Phil.

"Virtue is insufficient temptation."

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

Date: 28 Dec 2004 13:22:45 +0100
From: Ian Chapple <address truncated>
Subject: Spam and email addresses

Phil,

>>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?<<

The company (nominate.net) that I bought my domain from assured me that is exactly what they do. If you check out the WHOIS lists, you can find out the name of (almost) anyone who owns a domain. If John Smith buys the domain SMITH.NAME, then it is a reasonable guess that john@smith.name is a valid email address. This is certainly what seems to have happened in our case. Although I have created various (chapple.name) email addresses for myself, my wife, my mother and my children, all of which are forwarded to our actual email addresses by nominate.net as part of their service, I am the only one who gets spammed. Whether this is actually profitable seems debatable, although if the spammers are prepared to go to such lengths, I guess they must think that there is some profit to be had.

I recently created a new alias on my wife's email account with our Dutch Internet provider. The alias was quite short (only 3 letters), and within a week, she was being spammed at this address, despite it *never* having been used. Our ISP told me that because the alias was so short, it's actually quite easy to generate such an email address randomly, making it a soft target for spammers. Needless to say, we got rid of this alias as soon as we could, although our ISP only lets you delete an alias when it's been in use for at least 2 or 3 months, which is a bit of a pain.

Cheers, Ian.

Date: 28 Dec 2004 15:29:43 +0100
From: Owen H. Morgan <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Grab / Copy Text From 5mx Screen?

Howdy!

Martin O'Neill wrote (> ):

> Does anyone know of a way to Grab / Copy Text From
> 5mx Screen in the same way as was possible on DOS
> machines.

In most software you can simply select the text and type Ctrl+c or use the copy and paste icons second from the top on the left side of your 5mx screen.

> I am looking for a way of copying text
> data from TomeRaider screens for use else where on
> the machine.

There is no way of copying text from the current version of TomeRaider. Version 1 supported copying the text to the clipboard and then pasting it to another application and I used this feature a lot. When Tome2 was brought out, this feature had been removed (dumbed down). I wrote to them and complained, but never received a reply. This does not imply that users of TomeRaider 2 are dumb, but the authors may be!

One option may be to check whether the document you need to copy from is available in K2 format. I have the K2 version of Oxford English Dictionary, and the filesize is around half of the TomeRadier file. As far as I can see, the dictionaries are identical. In K2, typing Ctrl+a copies the entire article to the clipboard. Best of all, K2 is freeware and faster than TomeRaider (, but TR is pretty fast too.)

Owen and Tita the ship's cat.

Thought for the day:
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
--
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: 28 Dec 2004 15:30:00 +0100
From: Owen H. Morgan <address truncated>
Subject: Re: The Digest V1 # 657 (7)

Howdy!

Bernard Hill wrote (> ):

> 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.

I have a 20gig USB disk which was partitioned and formatted by the built in disk manager in Win 2k.

Owen

Thought for the day:
Ever stop to think and then forget to start again?
--
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: 28 Dec 2004 15:30:13 +0100
From: Owen H. Morgan <address truncated>
Subject: Re: AntiSpam!

Howdy!

Phil Aypee wrote (> ):

> 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).

How do you know that the e-mail addresses your script generates do not lead to a real person somewhere who will not be thanking you?

> 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.

A couple of years ago I joined the HPLX digest unaware that the messages were archived on the web with e-mail addresses intact. Within a few days I started receiving SPAM. I kicked up a stink about it nad the web archive was amended and after a few months I stopped receiving SPAM. A similar thing happened when this digest was first archived on the web which was also with intact e-mail addresses.

Owen and Tita the ship's cat

Thought for the day:
It's not often that you get so much class entertainment outside your bedroom window or outside your bedroom, period.
- Groucho Marx
--
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: 28 Dec 2004 15:30:30 +0100
From: Owen H. Morgan <address truncated>
Subject: Re: leave the digest,

Howdy!

Itamar Engelsman wrote (> ):

> Re.: leave the digest - Sorry to see you leave the
> digest, but maybe somewhere on your travels you
> will find a way to reconnect again.

I have found that one of my biggest expenses in the last year has been GSM charges. Around 2/3 of my GSM costs are related to e-mail. I'm now awaiting a Pactor modem which will allow me to send and receive e-mails via the SSB/HAM radio transceiver. This is a very slow system with limited bandwidth, so I'll have to limit traffic to short e-mails from friends and family. On the bright side, winlink e-mail is free and I'll be able to send and receive e-mails in mid ocean. It's a pity there is no way of using a Psion with Winlik, so I'll have to use the laptop.

> Anyhow, before
> disconnecting I wanted to wish you all the best
> and thank you for your numerous postings in this
> digest. You will surely be missed !

Thanks for that. It's been fun. I've enjoyed the company. Our Psions have come a long way since you and I joined the old UPS5 digest. I still remember a time when I had tested _every_ EPOC application there was!

> [Will your cat make the trip overseas too ?]

Of course! Tita is a very important member of the crew!

Owen

Thought for the day:
It's not the size of the ship, its the size of the waves.
- Little Richard
--
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: 28 Dec 2004 20:35:18 +0100
From: Mike Dyer <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Mobile Phone Replacement

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

Of course you could always 'blind' your cameraphone lens with epoxy resin and paint it the shade of the phones casing with enamel.

Regards,
Mike Dyer.

Date: 28 Dec 2004 21:39:15 +0100
From: Alan Morris <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Grab / Copy Text From 5mx Screen?

Eir <address truncated> wrote:-

> Does anyone know of a way to Grab / Copy Text From 5mx Screen
> in the same way as was possible on DOS machines.  I am
> looking for a way of copying text data from TomeRaider
> screens for use else where on the machine.

I guess that you are referring to that excellent program RPL - Resident Programming Language.  This was ideal at modifying any program and extracting automatically any amount of text from the screen.

> I have searched the Digest Index and I can only see
> references to grabbing screen shots as images.

Most texts are displayed on Psions as proportional rather than the fixed spacing used in DOS.  So making a memory search would not find the screen memory area in use.

Grabbing as you mention and then using an OCR program would be the only method that I'm aware of, but this would be very time consuming.  Unfortunately the automatic functions available in DOS are now lost with the use of windows programs.  Regretfully windows programs take up so much time performing tasks manually that could be done automatically under DOS & Unix.

Maybe a Linux program could be used to automate the OCR scanning of Psion screen dumps.

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

Date: 28 Dec 2004 21:39:26 +0100
From: Alan Morris <address truncated>
Subject: Re: 5mx replacement?

Moshe Nahir <address truncated> wrote:-

> 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.

Firstly, sorry for sending an unwritten reply!

A 5mx PRO is similar to a nB as far as the OS is concerned, but otherwise is much the same as a normal 5mx, but with more memory.

The OS comes on a CF card and when a full reset is done that CF card must be in the D: slot.  The OS is loaded into RAM and that part of RAM is effectively write protected.

The German market was (AFAIK) the only place where the PRO was available while Psion was still selling them.  But Clove have been selling British versions.

I suspect that Psion had to retain spares for a certain time after they stopped selling, to comply with EU regulations.  (Something that many UK companies don't do.)   With that period expired, Psion probably sold off the spares to Clove who did a little extra work in making a UK OS on CF, before assembling the spares into 'new' machines.

Clove are probably making more profit per 5mx/PRO than Psion ever did!  But I'm not complaining as I find the 5mx an ideal computer.  My main 5mx is in fact my 'Master' computer for all my important information except for digital photos.

My 5mx has 16Mb of memory and the 5mxPRO has 32Mb on the labels.

16Mb on the 5mx and 22Mb on the PRO is shown in 'Memory information'.

The 5mx is 1.05(260) and the PRO is 1.05(255).

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