Repost: I do not accept your forced firmware update
Being that I had to endure the bullshit that Rogers placed upon me with my HTC Dream, my friend, Luke had something to say:
Hello Rogers Communications Inc,
I do not accept the premise that you can disconnect my paid data service unless I install your firmware on my device.
I understand and appreciate that you want your customers to be running stable, secure, bug-free phone software/firmware. However, I do not accept your premise that the only path is for me to install your firmware when you say. My phone is a small computer. I'm sure we'd both agree that it would be ridiculous for your Internet Service Provider to mandate what operating system you ran on your home PC or laptop. This is essentially the same issue.
Right now, as a customer of your service I have two options:
1) Use the firmware you give me. If I bought my phone from you I have firmware that you've chosen. I do not have access to details (read: code) describing what it does, it has no regular update schedule, it is locked down (restricting my freedoms), it is extremely slow to receive security updates (eg: a critical 911 fix left un-fixed for 4 months), the update process is bulky and difficult and it does not receive community support to add new features and improve it.
OR
2) Install the firmware I want to use. I can gain administrative access to my phone, and then install custom firmware created by an active open source community. I have full access to the source code (meaning I can verify it as well as improve it), I regularly get new features and performance improvements, security updates are available within days of discovery (eg: the 911 GPS fix), has an amazing built-in firmware updater ("over the air") and has an extremely active community for support.
I assert that provided that my device functions correctly on your network, I should receive the service I pay for regardless of the software or firmware running on my device.
I would strongly advise all Rogers customers with HTC Magic or Dream phones to immediately take steps to remove the locked down Rogers firmware on their phone, and replace it with the high quality open source "Cyanogenmod" firmware. Rogers customers should attempt the process themselves, or get in touch with their local hackspace and ask if anyone can help.
Rogers, I will not assume any bad intent on your part with this update. You are new to this new world of next-generation phones (via Android), and likely do not yet have business processes in place to enable fast turnaround on security issues or the core abilities to quickly backport features and add new functionality to the firmware your customers use. It is great that you are fixing this GPS/911 bug (finally) for all your customers and pushing out a firmware update, but do not force this on customers that have had this issue fixed for months and are running much better, newer firmware.
Rogers, please focus on building a solid network and trying to give me the best data service at the best price.
Thanks,
Luke Closs
I hope to $deity that Rogers fulfils their statement to me of giving me a month's worth of data for free. I am also overlooking my existing contract to see if I should just as well leave the carrier.
And for the record: I didn't bother with the plan in my previous entry. I am going to wait for WIND's arrival here in Vancouver this upcoming June and then decide on what I'd like to do.
Dealing with Rogers in the face of the incoming WIND
Being that WIND is still about 4-6 months away from reaching here in Vancouver, my options for my choice of mobile phone carrier are still limited to Rogers, TELUS, and Bell. Fortunately, all three carriers are running UMTS networks in the city, but being that they have a triopoly, my ability to get a better deal is still quite limited.
However, it seems that Rogers will bend to keep me even though I am within contract.
It works like this: my plan compared to WIND's offerings is $20 more than it really should be. With the time remaining left in my contract, it would be only a few months to recoup the losses incurred by the early-exit. By explaining this to the the rep, she worked out the following for $10-less than what I am currently paying:
- 200 daytime minutes
- 1,000 evenings/weekends (starting at 7 PM)
- Rogers-to-Rogers calling
- Voicemail
- Caller ID
- 1 GB traffic (2x what I have now)
It works out to be slightly better than what I have now and is $10 cheaper. I also get twice the data that I had before.
How does this stack up to WIND? Well, what it means here is that while I will not necessarily get WIND features (such as 5 GB traffic limits and no overages charges, just traffic shaping), I won't have to spend as much staying with my current carrier. On top of that, Rogers is requesting that I extend my subscription by a year to get this sort of pricing.
The last part is making it a bit harder to jump. Do I stay with Rogers for a few more months until WIND makes it way here and then try again, or do I take a gamble and just stay put?
I believe that I will check out TELUS and see what they have to say also.
Follow-up to my previous ScanLife entry
The day after my ScanLife write-up had appeared on this blog, I had received contact from David Javitch, Vice-President of Marketing at ScanBuy, Inc.
In said e-mail, he clarified a few things that I wondered about the software and even offered a chance to be in on future releases under the condition that I sign a non-disclosure agreement--I politely turned the offer down.
Snapshots from BazCampYVR at VHS
Half a week has passed since the first-ever BazCampYVR was held at the upper-level of VHS and I figure it's time that I share the photos before I forget.
Luke did take some video of the presentations and I believe that they'll be available shortly.
On a somewhat-unrelated note, I did receive a e-mail from ScanLife regarding my last blog entry and I will likely share its contents next week.
In case that you weren't there, here were the talks that were performed:
- Untitled, a short talk about guitars by Goldfish, yo!
- Interactive fiction in Shoes/Ruby via Fashion Quest - DJ Mike Cantelon
- Scanbuy's EZ Code - Colin (afreak)
- Collaborative Web Games (Zeitgeist) - Lukec
- Interferometry on the desktop - JamesG
- Making Worlds: Procedural Planet Generation - unconed
- Fun with MicroControllers - JoeB
- RFID & Embedded Linux Toys - Robbat
- Cybercraft - the tech & biz of trill adventure VR simulation theatres - John S.
Here are the photos! Regrettably, they're not the best due to my phone's terrible camera.
Stop reading The Metro (and other papers), Metro Vancouver!
Not too long ago, The Metro launched a barcode system to allow readers with mobile phones to link up with news articles online while reading the paper. A brilliant move in some ways because North American publications have up until now failed to keep up with their European and Asian counterparts. However, there is a huge flaw and privacy issue that needs to be addressed.
Slight edit before posting: I noticed that this is being used by the National Post also. I don't care to follow much in regards to CanWest Global's newspapers (or really Goldman Sachs' if you want to be technical), so I totally looked this one over. I am certain that other newspapers in this country are doing this as well.
What should and shouldn’t GVTAPS be tweeting?
Everybody and their dog has a Twitter account these days and it should be no surprise that the Greater Vancouver Transit Authority Police Service (or GVTAPS for short) has one for thesmelves.
While I am not here to make public my position on how the police conducts themselves overall, I do wish to put into question whether or not it is a bright idea to have an on-duty sergeant (in this case, Sgt. Tom Seaman) actively tweeting, I do wish to point out some oddball and questional tweets.
Repost: “Suppressed Texas Instruments cryptographic signing keys”
As per my friend, Peter Kieser:
This are the OS signing keys for different Texas Instruments calculators. The key for the TI-83 calculator was first published by someone at the unitedti.org forum in this message: http://www.unitedti.org/index.php?showtopic=8888. He or she needed several months to crack it. The other keys were found after a few weeks by the unitedti.org community through a distributed computing project. The keys make it possible to sign your own operating system for the Texas Instruments calculators.
Texas Instruments now contacted several people with a DMCA notice to take down the keys from their websites. Some of the websites which got a DMCA notice are: unitedti.org, brandonw.net and reddit.com. One of these DCMA notices can be found here: http://brandonw.net/calcstuff/DMCA_notice.txt
Here are the three keys:
TI-83 (Plus):
n=82EF4009ED7CAC2A5EE12B5F8E8AD9A0
AB9CC9F4F3E44B7E8BF2D57A2F2BEACE
83424E1CFF0D2A5A7E2E53CB926D61F3
47DFAA4B35B205B5881CEB40B328E58F
p=B709D3A0CD2FEC08EAFCCF540D8A100BB38E5E091D646ADB7B14D021096FFCD
q=B7207BD184E0B5A0B89832AA68849B29EDFB03FBA2E8917B176504F08A96246CB
d=4D0534BA8BB2BFA0740BFB6562E843C7
EC7A58AE351CE11D43438CA239DD9927
6CD125FEBAEE5D2696579FA3A3958FF4FC54C685EAA91723BC8888F292947BA1
e=11TI-84 (Plus):
prp77 factor: 67070508990537181066342707695603050521324524613874331879259881495826493920589
prp78 factor: 186923771200711284770368041572205320486346816476524340240220962467860568859381n=EF5FEF0B0AB6E22731C17539658B2E91E53A59BF8E00FCC81D05758F26C1791CD35AF6101B1E35
43AC3E78FD8BB8F37FC8FE85601C502EABC9132CEAD4711CB1
p=94489014C63CC9E1E1ADB192DBBDD1F78F90A630DA9C86EFC4CBCA44E5B4D54D
q=19D431AF2794229620B884E3750D622D1C74F2E4569DC15486FC8D5A3BCDFE2F5
d=2A3E1B2010F318D9BD7C7E19300980B055A0E2A9554B77E7142E23CDF7C7CA13C233A3D462FDFC
968B1F9CEAF2AC2CF305147992AD9E834192ACEBB517DB9941
e=11TI-89:
prp76 factor: 2231124525637629443181963045297394875470510167130210300957267082210173784611
prp79 factor: 3226885534240147415018248397410101286362761128614350056368675111071170873486957(these are factors of 71995834568684773636720438651160472297127884480206535156843307841378050889714332
73011970552138960583799368215373582308591928985045059261105298431035818727)
Best Bluetooth Antenna Ever!
I needed a really cheap bluetooth adapter that I could afford to destory or lose. Seeing that going to Best Buy or any other big box store for one of these is just pointless, so I bought it through an online store based out of Hong Kong. I have ordered a tonne of items from them before, so I didn't care too much about what I was going to get. It was likely to be modified so I went with the larger one instead of the tiny one that basically ate a USB port full-time.
However, I have a bad habit of cracking open the items I receive from them--warranty status with these guys? Yeah right! However, I didn't expect this when I bought it...
Decoding a simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher
This form of encryption was used in ancient times as well as around the time of the Renaissance period of Medieval Europe. It's a pretty straight forward method of swapping letters in favour of others. It looks daunting to decode without knowing what the swapped bits are at first, but once you start to look at repetition and patterns, it becomes straight forward.
We'll use the following example:
BT JPX RMLX PCUV AMLX ICVJP IBTWXVR CI M LMT'R PMTN, MTN YVCJX CDXV MWMBTRJ JPX AMTNGXRJBAH UQCT JPX QGMRJXV CI JPX YMGG CI JPX HBTW'R QMGMAX; MTN JPX HBTW RMY JPX QMVJ CI JPX PMTN JPMJ YVCJX. JPXT JPX HBTW'R ACUTJXTMTAX YMR APMTWXN, MTN PBR JPCUWPJR JVCUFGXN PBL, RC JPMJ JPX SCBTJR CI PBR GCBTR YXVX GCCRXN, MTN PBR HTXXR RLCJX CTX MWMBTRJ MTCJPXV. JPX HBTW AVBXN MGCUN JC FVBTW BT JPX MRJVCGCWXVR, JPX APMGNXMTR, MTN JPX RCCJPRMEXVR. MTN JPX HBTW RQMHX, MTN RMBN JC JPX YBRX LXT CI FMFEGCT, YPCRCXDXV RPMGG VXMN JPBR YVBJBTW, MTN RPCY LX JPX BTJXVQVXJMJBCT JPXVXCI, RPMGG FX AGCJPXN YBJP RAMVGXJ, MTN PMDX M APMBT CI WCGN MFCUJ PBR TXAH, MTN RPMGG FX JPX JPBVN VUGXV BT JPX HBTWNCL. JPXT AMLX BT MGG JPX HBTW'R YBRX LXT; FUJ JPXE ACUGN TCJ VXMN JPX YVBJBTW, TCV LMHX HTCYT JC JPX HBTW JPX BTJXVQVXJMJBCT JPXVXCI. JPXT YMR HBTW FXGRPMOOMV WVXMJGE JVCUFGXN, MTN PBR ACUTJXTMTAX YMR APMTWXN BT PBL, MTN PBR GCVNR YXVX MRJCTBRPXN. TCY JPX KUXXT, FE VXMRCT CI JPX YCVNR CI JPX HBTW MTN PBR GCVNR, AMLX BTJC JPX FMTKUXJ PCURX; MTN JPX KUXXT RQMHX MTN RMBN, C HBTW, GBDX ICVXDXV; GXJ TCJ JPE JPCUWPJR JVCUFGX JPXX, TCV GXJ JPE ACUTJXTMTAX FX APMTWXN; JPXVX BR M LMT BT JPE HBTWNCL, BT YPCL BR JPX RQBVBJ CI JPX PCGE WCNR; MTN BT JPX NMER CI JPE IMJPXV GBWPJ MTN UTNXVRJMTNBTW MTN YBRNCL, GBHX JPX YBRNCL CI JPX WCNR, YMR ICUTN BT PBL; YPCL JPX HBTW TXFUAPMNTXOOMV JPE IMJPXV, JPX HBTW, B RME, JPE IMJPXV, LMNX LMRJXV CI JPX LMWBABMTR, MRJVCGCWXVR, APMGNXMTR, MTN RCCJPRMEXVR; ICVMRLUAP MR MT XZAXGGXTJ RQBVBJ, MTN HTCYGXNWX, MTN UTNXVRJMTNBTW, BTJXVQVXJBTW CI NVXMLR, MTN RPCYBTW CI PMVN RXTJXTAXR, MTN NBRRCGDBTW CI NCUFJR, YXVX ICUTN BT JPX RMLX NMTBXG, YPCL JPX HBTW TMLXN FXGJXRPMOOMV; TCY GXJ NMTBXG FX AMGGXN, MTN PX YBGG RPCY JPX BTJXVQVXJMJBCT. JPX IBVRJ ACNXYCVN BR CJPXGGC.