Before entering into a discussion of the means and benefits
of unlocking your iPhone, two points of clarification need to be made.
In the first place, as declared by the US Library of
Congress in July of 2010,
it is not illegal to unlock or jailbreak your iPhone. In the
second place, the two terms, ‘unlock’ and ‘jailbreak’, while related, are
distinct processes. When you unlock an iPhone, you modify the phone’s software
to allow it to work on a network other than that supplied by the official
carrier. When you ‘jailbreak’ an iPhone, however, what you are doing is setting
it up to delimit the software you can install on it. In other words, jailbroken
iPhones can run a huge range of apps, not just those available from the Apple
store.
http://mrg.bz/kVVzMr
Unlock your iPhone and you unlock the monopoly afforded to
an “official” carrier This means that, as a telecommunications consumer, you
have choice, and choice inevitably signifies access to better deals and cheaper
plans. Moreover, the process of unlocking is both legal, as previously
discussed, and extremely easy to achieve.
Step 1: Decide
that you want your phone unlocked. This shouldn’t be too difficult, since the cost
to you ranges from free, at a site like JailbreakMe.com, to $35 if you ask
Apple to do it for you. (I know which site I’d be using!)
Step 2: Go to
your chosen website, click on a button and waita few minutes. Whether your phone is a 4s version 5.0.1 or any of
the earlier models, you’ll soon be free to choose your own carrier. Take a
pick: Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, Tesco, Sprint, Verizon, or any
other you may prefer.
Step 3: Jump in
and discover; the potential you have unlocked is waiting at your fingertips:
MMS messaging; MSN messaging with Yahoo and AIM; VNC client interaction. It
doesn’t end there.
Unlock. Escape.Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
I have little or limited interest in or experience with iPhones. Asked by a contractor on a freelance writing employment website, Odesk, to write two sample articles about iPhones, I did some research and wrote the following to showcase certain writing abilities. Having supplied the venerable Canadian gentleman, whose name reminds me of a brand of headache tablet, probably an omen in itself, I have never heard from said Canuck again. As for these samples of my work, I'm sure, Senor Northamerican Landshark found a use for them, God bless his integrity-saturated little soul.
For those in the know, the question of whether or not to jailbreak
an iPhone, is no question at all. Forget about the threat of legal action.
Forget the warnings emanating from Apple HQ or the dangers cited in your
favourite IT mag. Jailbreaking your iPhone is now legal, easy to do, and offers
so many advantages there really is no compelling reason to resist.
http://mrg.bz/JlBjNk
It was probably only ever a minority who baulked at the
legal sanctions set in place to deter iPhone jailbreakers. But since the US
Copyright Office declared it legal to jailbreak an iPhone even these have
ceased to exist.
Once legal restrictions had been lifted, technological restrictions
quickly followed suit. Within days, sites like JailbreakMe.com were offering
their services to the cyber world: “Safe and completely reversible (just
restore in iTunes), jailbreaking gives you control over the device you own. It
only takes a minute or two, and as always, it's completely free.”
So it’s not illegal, and it’s certainly not difficult to
accomplish, but why would you want to jailbreak your iPhone? What are the
advantages?
It’s quick: opening
your iPhone and getting where you want to go is so much faster when security
protocols aimed at combatting jailbreaking have been rendered redundant.
Achieving an active WiFi connection takes a fraction of the time.
It’s cheap: go to
a site like cydia.saurik.com and check out the apps available in the Cydia
store. There are a phenomenal number of outstanding jailbreak apps, which you
can purchase for a fraction of the cost of an equivalent product from Apple.
Finally, if something goes wrong with the phone, or if for some
reason you want to return to jail, the choice is yours. Simply reverse the
process; Apple will be none the wiser, unless of course you decide to inform
them.
Crisis is definitely too strong a word; let’s just say I
baulked, at a kind of mid-life hurdle. It was December twenty, another school
year was over and I was, quite frankly, to use an expression I would never
permit my students, stuffed. The nerves were stretched and I couldn’t face the
thought of a hectic family Christmas; all I wanted was to be alone.
Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The decision to do a runner was inspired. The old cabins in
the hidden mountain valley at Abercrombie would be perfect. Connie had gone
shopping with Rachel, our youngest, which meant, if I was quick, I could get
away without having to explain. I knew it was selfish, but I didn’t care. I
hunted down my old backpack in the shed, grabbed some things together, jumped
in the car and took off.
For three days I walked and walked and slept and read and
didn’t talk to a single soul. On the fourth morning I threw myself into the icy
creek and washed with a vigour that was almost savage. I knew then I was ready
for home.
In Targo I stopped for a haircut. The young hairdresser
invited me to sit and asked me if I was ready for Christmas; had I done all my
shopping? I said no, not really, I left that side of things to my wife. As for
Christmas itself, I’d be spending it with family, immediate and extended. She
said that was nice; it really was a family time. Then she started telling me
about her son.
He was a biter. She didn’t know where he got it from because
she and her husband had both been brought up strict. But as soon as he got with
kids, he’d get all excited and start to bite.
She’d tried slapping, putting him in a room by himself and taking away
his toys. It didn’t help. She brought him to a child psychologist, who assured
her it was fairly common with two year olds, and that rather than punish, she
should talk to the boy. That didn’t work either, and anyway, he was almost
three.
She was dreading Christmas. Her sisters-in-law wouldn’t
allow their children to play with her son, and he was never invited for a
sleepover, or even a visit. And it really hurt the little fellow, because he
was such a good kid really and he had a heart of gold.
I told her I was a teacher and I felt that kids, and maybe
not just kids either, were sometimes actually afraid of their feelings for
others. The intensity scared them, and this caused confusion, so that what they
ended up expressing was opposite to what they actually wanted to say.
She stopped cutting and looked at me as though she were
grateful.
“Yes, you’re right”, she said. “Sometimes Hunter climbs into
my bed and…”
I’d stopped listening. ‘Hunter’! Who could believe it?
On the drive home I remembered when we’d just arrived out
from England. I was a skinny, freckled kid and the teacher on duty in the
playground asked me my name. I blushed. ‘Fox’, I mumbled, but she heard
‘Scott’, and I was too ashamed to correct her. It’s funny how names act on us
in such powerful, mysterious ways.
At the risk of
setting off a spate of break and enters in the suburbs of the post-employed, it
must be said that the myth of old people with wads of money stuffed under the
mattress is an intriguing possibility. I, for one, remember my snowy-haired
mother producing the deposit for the last house she bought from a bed-sock. I
don’t think I’ll ever forget the stunned look on the agent’s face, and his
repeated disbelief as he counted out the eight hundred fifty-dollar notes… twice - “I was sure you were joking.” In
fact, he begged us before leaving not mention the cash to anyone. It was late
on a Friday afternoon, and naturally he felt a bit uneasy about having $40,000 sitting
in his top-drawer over the weekend.
FreeDigitalPhotos.net:
And that’s pretty
much it in a nutshell, isn’t it? Old folks have an unreasonable distrust of
banks, and none of us feels safe with any amount of cash over a hundred dollars
or so.
Well, actually, I’m
not sure about that. I would have thought a certain degree of distrust of banks
is an indicator of mental health,
rather than its opposite; and as for the hazard of being generously cashed-up, it
clearly can be a cause for concern. But is it really more worrying than the all
too frequent alternative scenario of the four-digit credit-card debt placed in
the hands of those legalised thugs we call ‘debt collection agencies’?
So, as a society, where are we at in our relationship with
the banks?
The answer, of course, is that there is no one answer. All
that you and I know is what we read or hear in the media. We are almost totally
dependent upon the reliability of our sources, and yet we cannot possibly even
begin to trust that reliability. It is a law of the media-infested universe we
inhabit that for every expert opinion there is an equal and opposite expert
opinion. It then becomes a matter of ‘Take your pick!’ Meanwhile, life goes on,
and we hear of members of the Big Four slow in passing on the interest rate
reduction granted by the RBA, and thereby making extra millions every day. A
week later we are told by various bank heads, like Michael Chaney (NAB) and
Mike Smith (ANZ), that customers won’t necessarily be receiving the fruits of
further interest rate reductions, at least not in full, for reasons that have
something to do with Europe’s financial woes. Are their arguments for this
policy reasonable, or even truthful? Again, some say yes, some say no.
There is, however, one issue we may have to take a stand on
sooner rather than later, and that issue is: ‘cash or crash’? It’s happened too
often in the past twelve months that a system crash has stopped the cash. The
other day it was the CBA, a “technical glitch” leading to “network connectivity
problems” and about four and a half hours of unfunded chaos in which people
suddenly couldn’t pay for the petrol they’d put in the car, or the meal they’d
consumed. Others had to flee checkout queues in deep embarrassment. No ATMs or
netbank either. There were stories of balances being altered and wages not
going through. If it were a blue-moon occurrence we could probably let it go,
but in a recent annual report published on the RBA website, in the last twelve
months Westpac, CBA and NAB have all suffered similar “glitches”, in some cases
on more than one occasion. And if you think it’s a pain for the individual,
what about the poor struggling small business that loses 80% of its Thursday
night sales in return for a recorded message of apology from the relevant bank.
Maybe it is time
for a return to cold hard cash, not a huge stash of it under the bed, not a
world without credit card or EFTPOS, but an amount to get you through those
“connectivity problems”. It would be a bit like carrying around a spare tyre;
you hope not to have to use it, in fact you probably don’t have to use it
except once every couple of years; but it’s there for when you’re stuck.
africa / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
And now that we’re on the topic, I’ve heard it said that
cash can actually benefit your financial health. Apparently, people are more
willing to hand over their card than their cash. When McDonalds, that renowned purveyor
of quality food, abandoned its cash-only policy and started accepting
credit-cards and EFTPOS, the average customer spend rose by 75%, from $4 to $7.
It may well be a case of ‘what you can’t see doesn’t hurt you’.
You can certainly see why the banks encourage the use of
plastic money. In the first place it means they never have to give you any of
the real thing; and in the second, whatever you’ve got you’re more likely to
get rid of more quickly, until you end up announcing, like American poet,
e.e.cummings: “I'm living so far
beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.”
Rick Santorum is a hated man. He is hated for two reasons: firstly, because he is a staunch conservative; and secondly, because he is a successful staunch conservative. The former US Senator has recently emerged as a possible Republican candidate for the 2012 Presidential Election. I’m not convinced that American politics should necessarily interest or concern us, but the Santorum case offers a few pieces of sobering advice, something we could probably all use at the back-end of the festive season.
One: choose your enemies carefully.
http://mrg.bz/25i5Xi
In a 2003 interview, Santorum offended the gay community by denying that there was any place in a “healthy, stable, family-based society” for homosexual unions. The backlash was savage. The homosexual lobby commandeered the name ‘Santorum’ and by sheer dint of usage made it to mean something absolutely filthy. The neologism ‘santorum’ was then incorporated into a website name, which website, using SEO principles, dominated Google search ratings for ‘Santorum’. Within months the moral assassination was complete. The name ‘Santorum’ was literally sh _ _.
Don’t quarrel with a queer.
Two: all opinions are equal, but some are more equal than others.
In polite society we insist to each other that we are all entitled to our own opinion, and that all opinions are equal. But, when push comes to shove, the society we actually live in is often less than polite. Mr Santorum has “a problem with homosexual acts”. In his view they are unnatural, and destabilising. Not unsurprisingly, the homosexuals have a problem with Mr Santorum acts. The tacit détente is broken, having never existed. Conflict really is a fact of life.
Don’t resort to bloodshed; learn how, peaceably, to disagree.
Three: accommodate generational change, even if you don’t embrace it.
In politics, as in business, visibility is vital. Parliamentarians, ask yourselves, who’s managing your public profile? When the gay lobby turned their guns on Rick Santorum, the heavy artillery were SEO and Social Media. Knowing how best to manipulate the processes that lead to prominence, the rainbow forces built their Trojan Horse out of tweets and posts and blogs and liked each other to the heights of Google. Bing and Yahoo. The man Santorum was left in their dust, feeling hard done by. Bad move.
http://mrg.bz/xmj2xM
Don’t stand around feeling sorry for yourself; the game moves rapidly on.
It is my first summer's day as a creature I have never been before and can scarcely believe I have become. "Old-fashioned, that's what you are" say all the key indicators of contemporary cool. "Stuck somewhere in the Middle-Ages, I suspect," echo those above suspicion, those whose being above suspicion is guaranteed by the speed at which they pirouette and continue pirouetting. Pirouette and silhouette, spinning shadows in the summer sun, twins of the French Revolution. All a play of light and dark, whose only substance is the suggestion of beauty. "But old fashioned, yes, he must be," prodding my disheveled creature form with indifference, which is about as close to kindness as he can manage. "Must be, he even quotes Chesterton." So now I am obliged to quote Chesterton, because it's expected of me; and I don't mind being old-fashioned, if that's what I am.
Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Whatever I am I am happy to be it. I don't want to make trouble. Though, just between you and I, I don't mind making trouble sometimes, especially when my old fashioned values are called into question. They can call me what they like. They can mock me all they want. But don't let them start telling me what is true and what is not. By the blazes, then they'll see me fire; they'll see my poorly hidden arrogance too. Then I'll call their dangerous superficial nonsense for all it is... But Chesterton. Yes. It's my duty. Chesterton writes: "Journalism is a false picture of the world, thrown upon a lighted screen in a darkened room so that the real world is not seen and the unreal world is seen...We live under secret government, conducted by a secret process called Publicity." I like Chesterton. He makes you think. I can only read a little bit at a time, because it takes so long to understand. It makes me feel stupid that I am so slow to understand things. But I tell you what, when finally the light does break through, though it be but a single ray in the interior gloom of my world of dust and ash, by God it is magnificent. It goes deep and does me a power of good. It's like oxygen to the soul.
http://mrg.bz/FiqDFA
God bless you Mr Chesterton for being such a big man with a mind like a lighthouse. Reading is good. That I think so is surely proof enough that I am old fashioned. And now I am afraid, and ashamed at what I have become on this the first of summer's days; a manufacturer of the false, a self-conscious publicist. A blogger. What a disgusting word, a word that redoles of an inchoate underworld of primeval urges and fallen aspirations. And the day is struggling to be bright, and yes a breeze has arisen and blue of sky has with certain courage shrugged off the rumour of cloud. Summer, a good old fashioned Aussie summer has arrived, freckled and plain speaking, only to find that...that...despite being o-f'd I'm joining the ranks of the blog. Flog me for treason. I deserve it. But a reader still am I. And will be. I'll do my page of Chesterton a day, or some other equally weighty author. Theredpenshop blog, let it be known, however long it may persist, will do so to defend the rights of the old fashioned, the literate, the grammatical, the oxygen breathing sons and daughters of an underworld seeking the light.
