Linux L2TP/IPSec with iPhone and Mac OS/X clients | PEEN.NET. Helped me install an L2TP/IPSec Gateway on my server that works with the iPhone. This is already a quite nice solution to not shout all data out loud at hotspots. However, due to the deactivated NAT transport in the Ubuntu package (due to security concerns), it is a bit fiddly because you really have to manually compile the strongswan package. Additionally, it's a bit annoying that you always have to manually activate the VPN on the iPhone - it doesn't stay active at the top. What you actually want with VPNs is for them to always be active - because otherwise you end up sending data accidentally over unencrypted and listenable paths.
mobilemurks
Samsung Galaxy S Phones Ice Cream Sandwich Update. Well, HTC has already done the same for a series of devices with Gingerbread - just because their stupid overlay story doesn't work with the new system on older hardware (and we're not talking about really old hardware - these are devices that are a year old and usually still under contract with the provider!), there's simply no new operating system. Because this silly overlay story is much more important than current system releases. And not only are the users being screwed - the developers too, because since these devices are not really old, they then have a beautiful jungle of systems to deal with. And users will eventually have to root and install Cyanogenmod or similar if they don't want to live with old (and yes, unfortunately often quite buggy) system releases. The freedoms that Google grants device manufacturers are the biggest problem in the Android world. Bigger than any patent threat that Apple can build. The real enemies of Google's Android vision are neither Microsoft nor Apple, but the device manufacturers and providers. Because they are mentally still in the 90s and put their own control above everything.
iPhone battery life issues may continue to vex users—even post iOS 5.1. Great, so still no end in sight for the problems. The iPhone 4s is by far the worst Apple product experience for me since the PowerBook 5300 and the Power Macintosh 6500 ... (what good are the features and performance if I have to plug the device into the charging station at least every day, sometimes even more often - that's the opposite of mobility)
BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps • The Register. Net - Android phones infected with rootkit/keylogger. And if I read that correctly, the software was apparently installed by network providers and/or device manufacturers. Oh, of course, it's just a "diagnostic tool" - just like the various trojans for PCs are only remote maintenance tools ...
A human review of the Kindle Fire – Marco.org. Sounds like the Kindle Fire is quite unnecessary. Good thing it's not even available on the German market (I wouldn't give up my Kindle with eInk display though, it's brilliant).
Deutsche Telekom can't seem to learn... | iPhone 4S: Deutsche Telekom exchanges SIM cards | Mac & i News Forums. Interesting - the Deutsche Telekom problem with SIM cards in the iPhone 4S doesn't seem to be new at all. Okay, it's a link to the Heise forum and thus anything but hard fact, but somehow still strange. In Google, for example, in various Android forums I also found something from April this year, it really seems to be the case - and the hotline also just accepted the order for the exchange without any problems. I'm curious to see if the replacement card is also a 3N card (you can apparently see this directly on the cards). And just as curious to see if my iPhone's tantrums will stop then. However, it's a weak image that the Deutsche Telekom service notes still claim that exchanging the SIM card won't help and that there is no normal announcement - I only saw this by chance in the Heise ticker.
iPhone 4S: Users report problems with new SIM cards. I would like to point out that I find it particularly unpleasant when such problems occur with me. Bugs can please have The Others (tm), ok? Definitely not only occurs with previously used MicroSims and turning off the SIM PIN only brings half the relief: then the miserable slow SIM unlocking is better, but the network connection still drops. The last time at least it helped to simply turn mobile data off and on again, but this is not a solution, as you don't notice it directly and therefore in the time when the phone desperately tries to get a connection outside, the battery is sucked dry. Bah.
Phone rates can really ruin the fun
When you look around at phone tariffs, you can indeed get minor to major fits of rage. The telephony components are now somewhat okay, the SMS rates are still ridiculous to absurd - there are no more expensive ways to send your data in 140-character packages. But okay, that's nothing new. But when you look at the data rates, you really start screaming.
The reason why I subjected myself to this madness: SMS from T-Mobile that I had used up my full-speed volume and now for the rest of the month I have to live with 64kbit downstream and 16kbit upstream. Checked in my iPhone under data usage: 1.1G downstream and 430 MB upstream. Unfortunately, but in a period of almost one year. How I suddenly should have used 200 MB in the first 8 days of this month was a mystery to me until I remembered that the providers conveniently bill started 100kbit chunks. So that the full-speed volume is used up as quickly as possible. Thanks, push notifications.
Looking at the three big ones (T-Mobile, Vodafone, and O2), you first see nice overviews with prices. And of course flat. Today everything is flat. But flat was probably only the mind of the marketing guy who came up with this nonsense. Although the volume is actually unlimited, but of course only in the fine print it says from which volume you are reduced to ridiculous 64kbit - and that is only the download, the upload is then reduced to 16kbit, almost unusable.
To O2's credit: if you click on the right paths, you get a relatively clear view of the throttling stage there. So not under the mobile tariffs with the smartphone specification, but via the internet and then surfing with a mobile phone. Why one is clear and the other is not, only the web designers know. Or the price hiders. Possibly, the other providers also have an emergency page where you get a reasonable overview, but at some point, I didn't feel like looking anymore.
The fine print is incidentally only with the Telekom referenced with numbers in the tariff - and already displayed unfolded at the bottom. With O2 and Vodafone, you first have to think that something could be hidden under "further legal notices" or "further notes," without being pointed out. Why bother, it's insignificant, it's all flat. Oh, and of course pale-gray font and only 10 points high, it shouldn't be too easy to read. For me, this borders on fraud.
Apart from the hidden placement: the normally affordable tariffs (sorry, but tariffs over 50 euros a month are simply an audacity but not an offer) have ridiculous 300 MB volume until the shutdown. Oh, sorry, Vodafone only has 200 MB ...
Then there are the funny ideas about contract bindings. Yes, I can understand the 2-year binding if you take a contract with a device - after all, the device has to be financed over it and I don't expect gifts. But the then casual extension by one year if you don't cancel at least 3 months before the end of the forced period, that is really cheeky.
Especially when you look at the budget brands of the big providers: Base, Fonic, Congstar. Strangely enough, you can see directly on the tariff overview which variants of throttling there are. In addition, there are several variants. And there are significantly clearer prices. Only strange - they run over the networks of the mothers. I don't have to mention that the budget brands have more moderate contract bindings, do I? Of course, the budget brands are not good either - there is not even the claim anymore that you would get service (which the big ones don't really deliver either - those are rather acts of desperation than service).
It's strange that the same service can be offered at drastically different prices, and the budget brand still makes a profit. Could this have something to do with the fact that the mother brand simply sells things at moon prices? Oh, and it is of course pure coincidence that they all have almost the same prices in their respective segments. I mean, this is a well-regulated market, there are certainly no agreements or anything like that. How can one even think of that ...
The enemy of mobile internet, the stumbling block of the development of this sector? The absurd ideas of mobile phone providers. It's time for alternative radio technologies that can be provided by providers outside this inbred bunch of purse snatchers. But hoping for that is probably also absurd, the telecommunications lobby will take care that the market is not accidentally opened.
PS: yes, I know that Base is not Vodafone's budget brand but E+'s. Or uses the E+ network. Does Vodafone even have something like a budget brand?
HTC Desire wont be getting an official Gingerbread update. Of course, Android is so great, but device manufacturers ruin it with their useless extensions and deliver devices with too little equipment, so that new system releases stay out. If I really switch to Android, it will probably only be one that is directly supplied by Google, then at least I don't have to deal with such nonsense like Sense (or be blocked from new system releases by its forced installation). Yes, I know, I can root and rom - but that's just as much of a non-argument for me as jailbreak on iOS devices.
IPhone PPTP VPN – GRE Protocol Issues | it-fabrik blog. Argh. That's exactly where my experiments failed - the VPN doesn't work over Edge - and it's probably because Telekom filters GRE (verified via a WLAN connection and then everything works fine). Why do these stupid mobile providers mess around in the network, they should just provide a connection and that's it. Now I have to manually turn on the VPN in WLAN environments that I don't trust, just because the Telekom people think I shouldn't be able to establish VPN connections over their sacred network. You're supposed to be able to do this via another APN that assigns public IPs and doesn't have a NAT box in between, but whether it's then billed as a flat rate with the tariff, of course, no one can say. I hate mobile providers and their protectionist behavior and their chaotic network structure.
Snooping: It's not a crime, it's a feature. The great new photo network Color? It turns on your microphone to have another clue about location based on sounds. Did you expect that a photo-sharing app for the iPhone would eavesdrop as well, or?
MobileMe sucks hamsters through straws
Twitter / Search - mobileme. It's really shitty when you have to search on Twitter to find out that MobileMe is crap again and you can't log in - because the stupid Apple status page provides no information again. The way Apple operates MobileMe is highly unprofessional. Unfortunately, sync methods other than MobileMe are pretty crap if you want to sync various Macs and iOS devices. And since I naturally searched on Twitter too late again, and had already tried to fix my problem with the support information provided by Apple, I will probably have to reconstruct my MobileMe access on my Air tomorrow or so. Because of course, checking various problems with MobileMe is only possible in a destructive way. Thanks Apple for this waste of time.