IRC Channel

Well, talking with Woo (admin of tux-irc.net) we are starting a support project. Right now we are starting our own channel, and we try to support every solution and help every user... you can reach us now at irc.tux-irc.net:6667, channel #iphone-support

Hope to see u there!

IRC and help for iPhone users...

With all the drama and the "open war" surrounding the different methods for Activate/Jailbreak/Unlock the iPhone, I'm beginning to think that the support community is fading.

IRC is a great way to get in touch with people who share the same interests as you and, yes, to get support if you need it, but right now the "usual" channels for getting help or just to talk about the iPhone are either war campaigns or bashing meetings.

I have met some people who are actually glad when I, or any other room member, gives them support. That persons usually leave comments such as "hey, this is a great community, where people are willing to help, thanks!". That's what makes my day. I'm NOT in this for the money... in my particular case, I love apple and makes me happy when people walk away with their problems solved and happy because they can use their iPhone or iPod Touch the way they want to.

Maybe some of them are what I call "professional unlockers" or scammers, for short. Those people are in that just to make money and though I don't agree with that, there is no real way for me to know, so I help anyone I can.

My personal take on the different methods is theme for another post (STILL lazy...), but I wanted to get this out of my head.

If you need help with your phone/touch, look for me... I hang out at TuX-IRC.Net (known by some as irc.ziphone.org) in channel #ziphone and in irc.osx86.hu in channel #iphone. If I'm around, feel free to PM me and ignore the usual BS that floats around nowadays.

BTW, before finishing, I would like to mention that if I could have my way, I would have a channel just for helping and informing people. No war, No Bashing. 

If I EVER get around to create such a channel, I would be VERY happy if I could gather my personal "IRC list of good people/great helpers". In no particular order (I consider all of you my friends):

• SunnyD
• Eastyboy
  
• JEsTer
• DrkRealm
• LiKeFRe
• geeb

Well, here's hoping!

Vista and wireless networking...

In the company I work for, the standard is windows (duh!). One of the most "critical" aspects for the people who work there is wireles access to the network. See, a lot of people (myself included) have laptops (in my case, right now is a Lenovo ThinkPad X61), and they roam freely around the office building in meetings and so.

Since I upgraded to Vista (Ultimate first, now Business) my wireless connection SUCKS, and I mean SUCKS BIG TIME. Its slow as molasses and drops every 2 or 3 minutes. I know, all you windows lovers out there should be thinking its the wireless LAN itself, but I happen to have with me my trusty old iBook G4 running Leopard right beside the lenovo and the wireless is excelent. Speed normal, and NEVER drops.

In XP I didn't have that problem, so I could safely assume it was vista related. After some digging, I found out that vista has now an auto-tuning "feature" (it's not a bug, it's a feature :D) that in my case was, to put it mildly, not working as it should. In case any of you experience that particular issue, you could try disabling that feature by opening up a command prompt (as an administrator) and issuing the following command:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable

In case you want to enable it back, use the following command:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

And that's it!

Pwned!

Yep, as the title said (and in part thanks to a "little" pushing from a friend), I took the plunge and now my iPhone is officially "pwned" (without the frigging pineapple! yay!).

I have to say, though, that the results were, for me at least, anticlimactic. 

Don't take me wrong!, I respect and admire the wonderful work of the Dev Team on this project but, as I expected, right now there were no reasons for me to "pwn" my phone (except for testing/give support on the software). Everything is working fine (except for the crapload of apps I had installed which, obviously, were wiped during the restore), but it WAS working that way before... I think the fruits of this labor will present themselves when 2.0 finally is out, but for now I see nothing REALLY different (though my bootloader is now neutered). 

From a purely technical point, however, this software (and the Dev Team) raises the bar on iPhone jailbreaking/unlocking and in the future, modding. This. Is. HUGE. And it will get even better: the makers of iLiberty+ are creating an app that will extend pwnage so you can (among other things) preinstall apps on your custom firmware... It will be callled IPSWTool

In a nutshell, I would have to say that the software works beautifully, save for a little glitch where for some reason it failed to see the iPhone at the very beginning and I had to click the "pwn" button several times until it got the iPhone :-(. If you have already used either ZiPhone (successfully :-P), iLiberty+ or similar, and you are in 1.1.4, you won't see any difference right off the bat. In that case, you could wait until you really need it (or you could continue to use your preferred solution...).

I intend to write a longer piece on this later on, along with another that has been buzzing inside my head about all the drama surrounding ZiPhone, i+, iLiberty, iLiberty+ and now Pwnage, but that will have to wait until I figure out which apps do I really need on the phone to get them installed again (laziness....)

Yes, the iPhone future looks very promising...

Update: Well, after syncing my 7.odd gigs o'music, the iPhone gave me the (now familiar) error "the iPhone canceled the Mail syncing"... Why does this happpen? I don't have a clue. Fortunately, the fix (for me, at least) is simple: Install BSD Subsystem and OpenSSH (or Term-VT100). Get into the iPhone and change the permissions on /var/mobile/Library/Mail (the folder and the .plist file inside it) to 755 or 777.

All is working normal now.

An interesting start of the season

Well, a new season is underway... this also marks the start of my blog. My occasional rantings and ramblings in a web page. Cool. As if the world needs another one of these... Anyway... Let's get started!

This promises to be an interesting season for the Dodgers (last one was promising too and we fans know how it ended, but anyway...), the addition of Andrew Jones and Hiroki Kuroda should be a very welcomed one, leaving us "only" with the third base problem (and Juan Pierre, but thats a different story entirely). Joe Torre should bring order and a new direction to the club, which is also welcome, but we'll have to see how the season unfolds.

As of today we are in 2nd place, after winning the opening series (and the opening day game!) 2-1 against the Giants, trailing the Padres by half game. Tonight we start a 3 game series against them in PETCO Park, which could propel us into first place (hopefully) and also allow me to study the team a little more.

Hiroki Kuroda is starting, and the season rolls on...