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I always thought that the palm pilot was a great idea, but if it had phone functionality, it would be perfect. Blackberry never saw this idea too well. When Apple finally figured it out, Blackberry was dead man walking.

Apple? They arrived on the scene in 2007, fashionably late to the PDA-phone-combination party. Why not try that with Ericsson (1999) or even Microsoft (2002). Just because Apple did a good spit-and-shine job on the concept of the touchscreen smartphone does not mean they invented it.

The white/black/grey lists are held in the EIR (Equipment Identity Register), which may or may not exist at all (it's optional, some providers don't have one) and is sometimes integrated within the HLR

This is an explanation (a bit dated, but still) of how to decode manufacturer code, country code, approval code etc from the IMEI: http://www.cellular.co.za/ieminumbers.htm

More info (just relevant stuff which came up googling "imei hlr eir"):
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/wireless/TCH_WIR/612218-35166861
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/wireless/TCH_WIR/608687-35166861
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/HLR#EIR

Brief description of the (global?) IMEI DB at the gsmworld site: http://www.gsmworld.com/our-work/programmes-and-initiatives/fraud-and-security/imei_database.htm

Yes GSM isn't necessarily as heavily adopted everywhere as it is in Europe, but it is most definitely more widespread than anything else. Despite what Japan and Korea do, the rest of Asia uses GSM fairly consistently. At least China (#1 GSM market worldwide), Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, and Thailand. India also has a growing GSM market.

CDMA may well be a technology that is chosen as it is growing more rapidly than GSM due to 3G application apparently, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. People like the ability to move around the globe and use local providers, and right now GSM is the only way to do that I know about but I'm not up on the latest mobile technologies, admittedly, so there may be some other technology that allows that easily.

http://www.cellular.co.za/news_2002/120302-cdma_now_has_159m_users_worldwid.htm

Motorola would contend otherwise.

Car phones, that used a predecessor to radio "cells" without multiplexed signals, were developed by Bell Labs, and sold/leased by AT&T. This was in the post-war 1940's.

It is worth noting that cell phones have been used in assassination attempts. See for example this.

I think this is actually not a terrible bad idea. A bit heavy handed. If you want to get a remote triggering device up fast a mobile phone makes a pretty easy option.

Cat. Mouse. Cat. Mouse.

So now we just counter this illegal wiretapping (yes, its still illegal, even though they've passed a law that makes it "legal") with extra strong encryption and Civil Disobedience.

Use TrueCrypt with the AES-Twofish-Serpent algorithm on your PC (Linux, Mac or Windows). If you want to use something simliar on BSD, look into GELI encryption for those partitions.

For phones, you could look into encryption handsets or telephone scramblers. There's this one too, or the Cryptophone GSM Phone Encryption solution. Google around, there's quite a few hundred solutions in this space... stack them together for even more security.

Disclaimer: I don't personally know how strong these algorithms are on these handsets, so use at your own risk.

With VoIP, you could easily layer whatever encryption you want on top of it. Bounce your call through a few foreign routers, run it through Privoxy, Tor and i2p and you should be good to go. Yes, it will incur some latency.. but I'd rather sacrifice speed for security or privacy, wouldn't you? Here is an article on securing VoIP. Worthwhile reading if you're using it or considering it.

Cat. Mouse. Cat. Mouse.

Now its OUR turn.

You take from us, we take back.

I know there is at least one law {47 U.S. Code 227) it is illegal to send advertising to any device capable of translating it to paper - IE fax machines/servers. Unfortunately not even the FCC is sure where SMS stands in this reguard. They feel it's covered under the same ruling, but it's not been tested in court.

GSM phones with encryption have already existed for a while. (The Siemens S25 that the model in the link is based on was sold around 1999).

Thirty seconds on Google shows the media has reported on how Al Queda communicates before. (Feel free to be picky about 'headlines' if you want.)

In a major breakthrough, U.S. Customs agents intercepted a cache of 250 cell phones that were to be shipped to the al Qaeda network, said John Babb, U.S. Customs director.

Osman was arrested in Rome on Friday after investigators traced his travels by monitoring cell phone activity from England to France to Italy.

But Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did not heed these warnings. He regularly used cell phones and email, and this apparently led to his capture.

Why not use Faraday's Principle of Induction like these LED torches or a windup charger? Both are independent of external factors.

Hanging out your phone from a car, bus or (shock!) train is pretty dangerous stuff, maybe superman will find this thing handy.

I hope they haven't patented this technology yet, 'cos I'm rolling out my air-powered fan next month.

...as the FCC has sole jurisdiction in this area. See for example this ruling where the landlord (Denver International Airport) was not allowed to prevent tenants (airlines) setting up independent networks, even though it was claiming safety grounds. AFAIK landlords cannot include a prohibition on private 802.11 networks in a lease, and if they do, that prohibition will not be upheld by a court.

The point is, if you want a guarantee against interference, you need to get a licence for a *licenced* band, pay the FCC fees, and do your thing there - 802.11 is unlicenced, and as such you have no guarantee to be free of interference.

I don't see how the university would be any different (perhaps in some jurisdictions university residences can fall outside normal tenancy law; still in this case it appears that the FCC is quite clear on it being the body with total jurisdiction.)

Cell phones are one of the few pieces of technology that is truly global. There are 1.5 billion cell cell phone subscriptions in the world and only 140 million are in the US.
While many people in the US can purchase better cameras, music players, & PDAs than what's on the cell phone, people in most of the world cannot. The cellphone has become their electronics center and they otherwise could not afford those accessories if they were not on the cellphone.
Text messaging is annoying to do, I'd rather take my laptop to a hotspot, or just connect via modem through my cellphone, but in some countries it is the primary form of electronic communication (cellphone air times are too expensive, and many places do not have traditional internet access). The 1Mpixel camera phones take poor quality pictures, but for people in 3rd world countries, its the only digital camera they have.
I know many americans complain that cellphones are getting to annoyingly complicated with 2nd rate gadgets, the reason is the cellphones are not being designed for the US market, they are being designed for what much of the rest of the world wants.

The specs to which GSM phones are implemented list a number of AT commands to allow you to send an SMS among other things. With a bit of scripting, it should be easy to automate the sending of SMS's repeatedly, should you want to!

Info here.

Sorry, no. CDMA is code division multiple access, a technique that is totally different from the FDM+TDM combo (frequency hopping) used in GSM. It is not proprietary at all. It is even an International Standard.

Except that you aren't REQUIRED to use AAC. There's this other format that iPod will use. Maybe you've heard of it.

It's called MP3.

So much for vendor lock-in. 'Course, if you really want to use AAC, you could use iPod or this from Nokia and while we're talking about Nokia, what about that cool new N-Gage . Then again there's this new model from O2. And of course, it won't be long before you can buy HP's iPod clone.

Java has a very rigid security system, which works well on phones because users view them as a hardware device (a phone!) and not a software platform, and so they must be reliable and secure.

However, I would think that this would prevent you from replacing all the menus with your own code. Instead, you might want to get her something like this

What I'd do with that, in order for it to remain undetected, would be to attach it to a Cybiko. The cybiko has a documented expansion port and a known instruction set, so this should be relatively trivial compared to other hacking tasks. With a better antenna it would have quite a bit of range and while someone could sniff it with a cybiko, they're more likely to check for 802.11.

Making something this small would really only be useful for espionage if you used it to compromise a device by installing it in place of an ethernet port. The problem with that is that the other interface on it is so damned slow. You need one of these with dual ethernet before there's any point in doing that.

Sorry, but you're wrong - I suggest you read this. The important part for you to read:

" It concluded that the radio frequency signals emitted by phones generated heat in the brain, but said it was not clear whether this could have other biological effects, such as triggering cancer. "

When I said your head gets hot, this is what I was talking about. I doubt a tape player puts off enough raditation to heat your brain.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to sue to recoup airtime costs. For example, California has passed an anti-mobile-spam law.

Unfortunately, unless you're bored and otherwise unemployed, this is hardly worth the while.

There are still a bunch of them on eBay.

um... UMTS (not UTMS) is more like CDMA because it IS CDMA.

GSM is a TDMA (time division multiplex) protocol and UMTS is a CDMA (code division multiple access) protocol.

More information on cdma and UMTS and on GSM and TDMA.

Here is that link properly formatted and correct.

More?

Don't give CmdrTaco too hard of a time, even ZDNet got it wrong. The Motorola cell phone uses Methanol (a liquid), not methane (a gas).

see:

http://www.cellular.co.za/battery_technology.htm

and

here

I hate to break it to you and mess up all of these posts about gas, gasoline, etc..., but the ZDNet article is screwed up. The Motorola Fuel Cell uses Methanol, not methane!

See: http://www.cellular.co.za/battery_technology.htm

and http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2000/09/09272 000/upi_fuelcell_31950.asp

Sorry, GPS was the wrong acronym. It's GSM.

You can check it out here.

Do a search for "mandatory cell phone gsm" with your favorite search engine to find out more.

I applaud all those creative technical minds trying to come up with interesting and useful applications for this networks, but without hard info, we're just pissing in the wind and blowing hot air.

There's a fairly recent and detailed IEEE report on the Iridium network

Here's a chart of competing systems that are up, or will be up soon

Here's a fairly complete description of several current satellite telephone systems with info on frequency allocations, ground stations, and other important network details [has a chapter on iridium]

Here's a article in Test System News testing Iridium handsets and network for real world performance

More to come....

You could use an EPOC PDA : they have good email and web browsing apps - but you'd need a data capable mobile phone to go with it..

I'd go for either the Ericsson MC218

or

The Psion revo

oh yeah, and there's more revo info here.

For the phone, something like a Nokia 7100 Series or 8200 Series would do.

There's currently an HTML browser for the psion devices, with a WML one promised. The MC218 already has a WML browser.

The Unfettered Mind: Takuan Sôhô - ISBN: 0-87011-851-X
My contact details are here.

You could use an EPOC PDA : they have good email and web browsing apps - but you'd need a data capable mobile phone to go with it..

I'd go for either the Ericsson MC218

or

The Psion revo

oh yeah, and there's more revo info here.

For the phone, something like a Nokia 7100 Series or 8200 Series would do.

There's currently an HTML browser for the psion devices, with a WML one promised. The MC218 already has a WML browser.

The Unfettered Mind: Takuan Sôhô - ISBN: 0-87011-851-X
My contact details are here.

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