...stuff I do and things I like...

So I have a tone of mobile phone numbers, different contracts and some pre-paid cards. The main problem is that using multiple cards at the same time is not really possible. There are almost no multi-sim-card mobile phones and the ones that exist normally take only two (2) cards. Although I don't want to use a specific multi-sim phone but rather any phone (so I can always use the latest and greatest). I tried one of these dual-sim card adapters but it sucked.

So what to do?

What I want is this:

I want to be able to have one (1) SIM card that does not belong to any operator. Then I want X number of mobile phone numbers with either a contract or without a contract (pre-paid). Then I just want to be able to tell the operators to connect the contract/pre-paid numbers to this one SIM card. The remaining problem would be what actual mobile network to use, since the phone can only connect to one network at the time. Ideally this would be solved through some roaming-like-agreement where each provider just provides bare network access and just deals with the service/contract providers in order to charge for usage.

I guess this kind of idea is not new but today I'm somehow pissed again because of all the stupid different SIM cards I have.

so daylight savings time switch again. My Palm Tungsten T3 again died from battery drain while waiting for user interaction to confirm the time switch. All data lost (I have a backup but still). This time I have enough, my T3 is going into the bucket (the box with old PDAs and phones). I don't really use it anymore but I still use to carry it around with me all the time. This will stop now.

Goodby Palm.

heute morgen (ca. 5 Uhr) hat sich Alice dazu entschlossen meine 16Mbit/s auf ca. 5Kbit/s zu drosseln. Der Support wusste auch nicht was nicht funktioniert und es haben ca. 5 verschiedene Personen meine Leitung durch-gemessen. Ergebnis keiner wusste was los ist. Eine halbe Stunde nach dem letzten Support Gespraech war dann ploetzlich wieder alles normal. Interessant war auch das die Upload Geschwindigkeit wehrend der ganzen Zeit normal war. Schon eine komische Sache, hat mich 1 1/2 Stunden heute Abend gekostet.

ARG!

(German only!)
hatte ich am 2. Oktober bestellt und die haben es bis jetzt immer noch nicht geschafft das zu schalten. Alleine fuer die Bestellbestaetigung (per Post) haben die 7 Wochen gebraucht. Bei der Bestellung hiess es damals 2-4 Wochen Lieferzeit. Nach mehrmaligem Nachfragen im Abstand von 2 Wochen hiess es dann: 4 Wochen sei ueber Trieben schnell weil ja noch der Rueckkanelverstaerker eingebaut werden muesste bzw. der/die Hauseigentuemer der Installation zustimmen muessen.

Das ganze ist in Darmstadt, mittlerweile habe ich auch Andere gefunden die auch massive Probleme mit Isey Kabel Internet haben. Haette ich das im Ansatz gewusst haette ich mich niemals auf Isey eingelassen.

ARGL

I know this is really really old, still it is totally annoying...

...so yesterday I tried to play a DVD on my Linux laptop (T42p) for the first time and found that the region code has to be set before playing or reading the disc at all. I known this is real pebcak, but WTF? Maybe the drive should be pre set to a region or should learn it from the first disc instead of just throwing I/O errors?

The actual point is an other. I rented a DVD in the US (while I am in the US) and my laptop is set to Region-2 (Europe), so I can't play the DVD until I change the region code to 1. If I go back to Europe I have to reset it to 2 again, if I go back to the US I have to reset it again, and so forth. After 5 times I have to get the drive reseted by the manufacturer, so I can change the code another 5 times. I can only do this 20 times and then I'm stuck with what ever region I have set last.

So what I figured out is, that I just wont buy or rent DVDs anymore and rather get movies from some where else. Traveling is not uncommon these days and people own laptops exactly for this reason. If you google around you will find many people reporting this exact problem. What the hell is wrong?!?

This is one of the best examples for DRM CREATED PIRACY that I can think of. This is a real average Joe problem, not something that only effects the hardcore-user or early-adopter.

See this report from Spiegel and look what kind of other crimes are equally treated as copyright violations. This just sucks!

I guess Germany will be the new center for developing better anonymous filesharing. Also hard disk encryption probably will become more popular now! See my dm_crypt freeofte setup.

jep its really so bad *autsch* found some nice pictures that really don't need any description.

found via google image search

I the last two weeks random people started IMing me on ICQ for no reason. I don't know how they got my number since I don't have it on the web - my guess is that they randomly chose a number. This is really annoying but fortunately you can just block them. I really hope this is not getting worse.

Is this a common thing to happen?

*ARG*

since more or less today Skype is not allowed anymore on the UCSB campus network. The reasons are: 1) providing bandwidth to people not involved with UCSB (Skype's P2P behavior) and 2) security of campus computers running Skype.

I guess this counts for the whole UC system so Skype is loosing a huge amount of users here. Also I know about other big companies which also have baned Skype from the networks. So is Skype dieing soon?

I don't know if I complained about this in my blog before but today I will!

Once again my HP iPAQ h6315 PocketPC PDA-phone crashed when I received a call. It just froze when I try to pickup the call. This is about the 100th time this happened. Its in no way consistent and happens randomly. My guess is low memory due to memory holes in other PocketPC applications - but who knows.

Anyway I really need a new phone - one that doesn't crash all the time. I would use my Nokia 7650 but since it doesn't support the US GSM bands I can't.

I just needed to say this! *ARG*

yesterday I did a big update, first apt-get dist-upgrade (testing) with about 600 packages (!). Then kernel update from 2.6.13 -> 14, xfree -> xorg, hotplug -> udev and finally cardmgr -> pcmciautils.

Only two things gave me problems, first something in the Synaptics driver config changed so my loved scroll function on the touchpad went away - this was an easy fix. But then swsusp stopped working actually only resume failed (WTF?). It took me quite some time to find the solution, which is modifying the kernel source. It's basically some stupid timeout, which needs to be increased. The file is: kernel/power/process.c and the part is change 6 * HZ to 30 * HZ (I guess a lower value should be ok too). The whole thing is described here, since I didn't figured it out myself!

1 day lost through updating - ARG

yesterday my ThinkPad silently rebooted as I unplugged my (external) USB disk, when it came backup USB was gone! The OS (Linux/Windows) still sees the USB host controller but non of the many devices I attached get recognized (dmesg shows nothing). Also some of the devices get power from the bus and others don't (I guess some of them only turn on the lights if the are ready). The internal Bluetooth is also gone (it's USB too) - so I guess the complete bus is gone or actually I think only a fuse got shot.

Anyway I spoke to the IBM support today and they told me it will be fixed within 7 days (wow!). To the question if this is a common problem I got told that it happens from time to time. WTF? USB is hotplug - it should be able to handle stuff like this.

Let's see how fast I get back my beloved black beauty :-]

I just can't get it to work in an acceptable way. The only mode that seems to work somehow is setting STV as the primary display - this leaves your LCD blank. Anything else doesn't work - you just see some flicker on the TV. I just want to run the LCD with 1600x1200 and use the TV-out in 1024x768 or 800x600 - this can't be too hard to do?! Stuff like this really makes me angry - but since nobody gets it to work I'm almost sure it's not *PEBCAK*.

*argl* 4 hours!