Archive for November, 2005
Configuring K608i for web access on T-Mobile USA
November 22nd, 2005 by ktula
It took me a while, but i finally managed to use my K608i to access web pages using the Opera Mini browser. I finally gave in and decided to subscribe to T-Mobile’s online service for $5.99 a month. Not sure if this service is unlimited but i have not seen anything on T-Mobile’s website that tells me otherwise. By the way, it took about 5 days before i could access any sites other than T-Mobile’s. Of course, T-Mobile’s support was of no help.
Because my K608i is originally from the 3 network in the UK, the phone has a firmware designed for accessing 3’s network. To configure the necessary settings to access the T-Mobile network, i installed the settings using the automatic configurator at the Sony Ericsson site. The site will guide you through in selecting the model of the phone, the country of your provider, your network provider (T-Mobile USA), and once you have entered your mobile phone number, it will send the correct settings to your phone. You will receive a message (”New Settings received Install?“) shortly prompting you to install the new settings. Just select “Yes” and the settings will be installed.
Review the settings to make sure it matches the following:
Connectivity –> Data comm. –> Data accounts –> T-Zones GPRS –> select “More” then choose “Account info” and it should look like the following (if not, modify accordingly):
APN: wap.voicestream.com
Username: empty
Password: empty
Login request: off
Allow calls: automatic
IP address: empty
DNS address: empty
Authentication: CHAP
data compression: off
header compr: off
Connectivity –> Internet settings –> Internet profiles –> Make sure T-Zones GPRS is highlighted and select “More” and choose “Settings”. The settings should look like the following:
Connect using: T-Zones GPRS
Internet Mode: HTTP (this is very important. If it is WAP, you won’t be able to use the Opera Mini browser)
Use Proxy: Yes
Proxy address: 216.155.165.50
Port number: 8080
Username: empty
Password: empty
I could have used the WAP browser that comes with the phone to do my browsing but it is not very user-friendly and i can’t change the huge font size so i downloaded the Opera Mini browser by going to mini.opera.com using the built-in browser. To use the built-in browser, go to “Quick Menu” (this may only be valid for the K608i phones from the 3 network), select “More then choose “Enter address”. Enter “mini.opera.com”. If you do not have any connectivity issue, you should be at the Opera Mini page. Select “Get Opera Mini” and this should download the Opera Mini browser. You will be prompted to select the location to install the Opera Mini browser, i installed mine in “Applications”.
Related posts
Boycott Sony
November 17th, 2005 by ktula
Until Sony issues a public apology over the DRM rootkit incident, i am boycotting its product.
Sory - seems to be the hardest word
Related posts
Moon in one cold November evening
November 16th, 2005 by ktula
Related posts
Is Hillary Clinton the Senator from NY or Israel?
November 14th, 2005 by ktula
On a three-day visit to Israel, Senator Hillary Clinton made a few unbelievable comments in support of the wall Israel is building. The route of the so-called “separation wall”, in some places, goes deep into the occupied territory of West Bank. She claimed:
‘This (the wall) is not against the Palestinian people’
‘This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change the attitudes about terrorism.’
I have a few questions of my own for the Senator from the state of New York.
- How is this separation wall not against the Palestinian people? In most places, the path of the wall cuts deep into West Bank, directly impacting the lives of more than half a million Palestinians. Some Palestinian villages are even cut off from the rest of West Bank, by virtual of being caged in by walls on all sides. The Palestinians in these “no man’s land” are pretty much prisoners in their own land, where even to tend their own fields, they need permissions from the Israeli authorities. The Israelis have, for the longest, claimed that the separation wall is in place for security purpose only. I, like most others, have absolutely no problem with Israel putting the security of its own citizens above all else. But why not build the wall on the internationally-recognized Green Line ? If Israel wishes to, she could build the wall to be a mile high and 1 mile wide, but west of the Green Line, on her own territory.
The path of the wall is designed to encompass all the major Israeli Jewish settlements in the occupied territory of West Bank. It is very clear to any observer that this is yet another attempt by Israel to create facts on ground. The idea is simple: If we steal the land and force the original occupants to leave, we then populate the vacant land with our own, and eventually, after a few generations, facts will be created on ground and it will be impossible for anyone else to remove them.
- How shall the Palestinians change their attitudes about “terrorism” when day by day they see more of their land being usurped away for the growth of existing Jewish settlements, for the constructions of new settlements, for the constructions of Jews-only bypass road, essentially cutting West Bank into apartheid-like Bantustans?
The only way, as i see it, for the Palestinians to change their attitudes about “terrorism” is for the US to finally act like an honest broker, which is way overdue. Senator Clinton cannot expect the Palestinians to remain non-violent when they continue to see Israel receive more than 3.1 billion dollars of military and financial aid from Uncle Sam while Israel continues to defy international law by settling its citizens into the occupied land and at the same time, abuse every known human rights law in its treatment of the Palestinians.
It is high time for Senator Clinton to remove the 3.1 billion dollars of aid to Israel, to publicly support the divestment compaign against Israel, and also to support economic sanctions, not unlike the one imposed upon South Africa during its apartheid days, against Israel. Without the support from its only sponsor, Israel will never be able to continue its bankrupt settlement policies.
- Senator Clinton, during your three-day visit, did you manage to speak to any Palestinians affected by the wall? Were you able to talk to the Palestinian farmers whose only livelihoods were crushed with the uprooting of the Olive trees, some of which were hundreds and possibly thousand years old?
- Senator Clinton, while you were there, did you visit groups, such as the International Solidarity Movement, which supports non-violent protests against the Israeli occupation and the wall, which was deemed illegal by the World Court? I was at a speaking tour organized by the ISM in Seattle less than 2 weeks ago and i came away from this talk with a renewed optimism in the effectiveness of non-violent protests. One of the two speakers, Ayed Morrar, came from the village of Budrus, located in the “no man’s land”, blocked on all sides by the original route of the wall. According to the ISM,
Ayed led his village of Budrus in a victory for nonviolence over the Israeli military in 2003-2004. Through a campaign of 50 protests, the village of Budrus pushed the Wall’s path off village land and to the Green Line. Day after day, Budrus’ men, women and children blocked the destruction of their land and construction of the Wall by marching to the land, despite soldiers’ attempts to stop them, and placing their bodies in front of the bulldozers.
Hundreds of residents were injured during the campaign by clubs, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. Ayed was jailed for eight days by Israeli authorities, but was eventually released due to international outcry and because his only offense was organizing nonviolent protests. Two of Ayed’s brothers were also arrested for organizing protests, but eventually released.
It is heart-warming to know that non-violent protests like the ones organized by the villagers of Budrus can be successful, even though it had taken a very heavy toll on them. Senator Clinton, shouldn’t you be supporting non-violent protests wholeheartedly if you want the Palestinians “to change the attitudes about terrorism” ?
Related posts
He won what ???
November 13th, 2005 by ktula
I am normally not a movie critic, but i know one shitty movie when i see it. Jackie Chan’s New Police Story (新警察故事) is one of the crappiest movie i have ever seen. And yet shockingly, this movie was recently nominated for three Golden Hen (金雞獎) awards in the categories of Best Actor, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. Incredibly, Jackie Chan won the Best Actor award for his role as the cop who got back on his feet after being responsible for the deaths of every member in his squad. For those who are not familiar with the Golden Hen award, it is supposedly the “most prestigious award of the movie industry in China.” Even a totally surprised Jackie Chan made a sarcastic comment about the “possible differences in how movies are critiqued between Hong Kong and China.”
I’ll give a brief summary of the movie here - i am not going into detail because i still intend to keep this morning’s meal with me. The story began when a gang of 5 robbers left their heist at a bank and Jackie Chan (as a cop) made a boastful claim in front of the cameras that he would apprehend the suspects in 24 hours. Based on a leak, Jackie Chan led his squad of 8 or so police officers into an abandon warehouse in search of the suspects. So far so good. When Jackie Chan split up his squad to seek out the suspects, each member of his squad was taken down by the gang. From here on, the story goes from bad to worse. Eventually, everyone in his squad, excluding Jackie Chan, was seriously hurt and caught by the gang, and every one of them was tied legs up 20 feet in the air. In this scene, Jackie started to cry hysterically and was begging the gang to release his squad. Oh man…i can feel the breakfast in my mouth now…must suppress it. This scene is supposed to elicit some sympathy, if not some tears, from the audience, instead, this incredulous scene brought out quite a few laughs from me.
I can’t continue…i will throw up all over my Powerbook if i have to remind myself any more of this totally illogical movie with one of the worst storylines i have ever witnessed. According to IMDB, this movie has also been nominated in the Golden Horse Film Festival and the Hong Kong Film Awards. So next time if you see any movies with claims that they have been nominated or they have won awards at the above-mentioned awards, take that with a grain of salt.
Related posts
My new phone - Sony Ericsson K608i
November 8th, 2005 by ktula
My first ever eBay purchase finally showed up on Monday. I bought the Sony Ericsson K608i phone from a guy in UK. I had been waiting very impatiently the previous two weeks for its arrival. The phone came in locked to 3’s network. I had to spend an additional $14 for a credit to unlock the phone.
I had been wanting to replace my old Sony Ericsson T610 for as long as i can remember. I truly believe that the T610 is one of the worst phones ever made by SE. It has really weak reception and the phone is not very durable. My T610 has a really noisy mic that makes listening to my conversation extremely difficult. At times, i was forced to use my bluetooth headset to be able to have any clear dialogue. And yet, i was holding to it for the longest time because i could not find any other replacement that i like. Cellular providers here, and probably in Canada, carry the crappiest and the most outdated phones in the world.
Anyway, back to the K608i. It has everything that i want in a phone - Bluetooth, high-resolution camera (1.3 megapixels) with a cover, tri-band (so that i can use it worldwide), speaker phone, candy bar style (i hate flip phones), able to synchronize with Mac OS X, and finally, compatible with the Salling Clicker. There are some additional features of the phone that makes it a plus - 3G, video camera for video call, infrared, mp3/mp4 ringtones and FM radio. MoBique.com has a really good review on it.
I have mentioned what i like about the K608i. Here comes the cons. Because the phone is currently only available exclusively to 3, a few hard and soft buttons on the phone are hardcoded to go to 3’s sites. The phone does not come with a web or WAP browser - i installed the WebViewer later using the Bluetooth connection from my Powerbook. These are not big issues and i am guessing that i should be able to update firmware or the customization to a more generic one in future.
Because i don’t have any online services with T-Mobile, i could not access the Sony Ericsson WAP site from my phone to download some free Java apps. Being a relative cheapo (i do not want to cough up $5.99 a month for the T-Mobile online service), i attempted to share the internet access of my Powerbook with the phone but found out that it is next to impossible to do that in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Since last night, i have also been trying to share my IBM notebook’s network access with the phone, following the instructions i found at Howard Chui’s forum, but i am running into issue with the Connection Proxy terminating whenever i try to use the WebViewer to access any site.
Update 11/17/2005 00:02
I can’t seem to send SMS or dial my contacts within Address Book as well. This sucks!
Update 11/17/2005 08:44
Finally got the Address Book to send/receive SMS and dial the contact numbers in Address Book! Thanks to this tip at mobile.feisar.com. This tip requires a little hacking of a preference file for the Address Book.
Update 03/07/2006
To go into the service menu of the K608i, enter these key sequences:
> * << * < *
Related posts
Issues with Airport Extreme Driver Update 2005-001
November 8th, 2005 by ktula
Ever since i installed the Airport Extreme Driver Update 2005-001 (version 1.0) on 11/2/2005, i noticed that the AirPort status in the menu bar was consistently showing only 2 bars. My D-Link DI-624 router is only about 15 meters away, unobstructed. At first i did not think too much of it. This latest AirPort update revealed its ugly end when i tried to transfer a 450-meg file today. I realized that it was taking unusually and excruciatingly long. I had to cancel the transfer a quarter way through, connect a patch cable to the ethernet port and restart the transfer. I ran Airport Client Monitor to find out more about the transfer rate and was shocked to see a maximum sustained transfer rate of only 2 Mbps. I didn’t remember what it used to be but i knew it was not 2 Mbps.
After reading about similar issues faced by other Mac users at VersionTracker, i decided to reinstall the older version of the driver - AirPort 4.2 for Mac OS X 10.4.2. After rebooting my Powerbook, the transmit rate in AirPort Client Monitor went up to about 25 - 35 Mbps and the AirPort status on the menu bar now hovers between 4 - 5 bars.
Update 2/1/2006
Not sure what’s up with the Airport Extreme updates from Apple lately. After installing the 10.4.4 update, my WiFi connectivity dropped significantly. It was taking forever just to transfer a large file again. So, i went back to installing to same Airport 4.2 update. After rebooting my Powerbook, everything was ok again.