Avoid T-Mobile compatible phones for this service. Straight Talk is an MVNO and T-Mobile is a bunch of dicks. They won't let outside SMS messages thru. AT&T doesn't do that to MVNOs and SMS/MMS works fine.
While you are correct about Straight Talk being a better overall value for a primary phone (and T-Mobile being a bunch of dicks), it is patently false that T-Mobile does not allow SMS from other carriers. They most certainly allow SMS/MMS to and from all major carriers foreign and domestic. They DO block non-mobile SMS short codes for obvious billing reasons (prepaid users racking up huge charges with 3rd parties that they don't have the funds to cover).
The main reason NOT to get T-Mobile for any service in my opinion is because they censor their internet access unless you give them your (valid, verifiable) ID/SSN. That is a complete joke, their WebGuard blocks many perfectly acceptable sites that they deem "unacceptable to minors", whatever that means. Avoid them like the plague if you care about freedom, but their SMS/MMS system actually does work fine.
Frequencies which used to be TV channels now have (much stronger) cellular transmissions on them.
What are YOU talking about? Much stronger? The average cellular base station maxes out around a watt or two and has a coverage area of a few miles.
A local analog UHF here in Chicago used to broadcast around 1MW and had about a maximum coverage of 75 miles or so. I highly doubt there are any million-watt 4G LTE towers around here, but I could be mistaken.
Exactly. So, when I hear stories of how there are millions of jobs just waiting to be filled out here in 'Murrica, if only you sell your soul and dignity for $7.25 an hour, I don't bat an eye when I see that folks would rather choose welfare or unemployment benefits over indentured servitude. In fact, given the same situation, I believe I'd probably have to choose the same.
And will secure boot not have an "off" switch? I would assume it will. Just like how I never install the drivers for the "TPM" when I rebuild an image.
Sure, Windows will refuse to boot if secure boot is turned off, but isn't that a feature, anyway?
I'm not going to invoke Godwin, but *lots* of things start out as being "good-faith initiatives". I know UEFI has tons of advantages over a standard BIOS, and I'm a flat-earther for wanting to stick with the old tried and true methods, but anything that takes away control over hardware I own, especially anything that takes control and gives it to a multinational corporation, I'm passing right over.
And I assume plenty of other tech-minded people will do the same, and the system will fade off into the sunset.
Anytime anyone ever uses "herp" or "derp" or any derivative thereof in their comments, they immediately get ignored by me. That childish crap should stay on Fark or Reddit or wherever the hell it originated. If you don't have something intelligent to add to the discussion, then please refrain from posting here.
It doesn't help that anyone who ever uses these terms are only using them to insult someone who made a valid point, so even though it is a probably a 13-year old kid who actually thinks he's being humorous (note to AC, it's not even remotely funny now, nor was it when it first started happening on other sites) because insults are the only humor mechanism a stupid child can really use effectively.
Well, when the job is one that is nearly impossible save for the NSA-level superspy computers, it helps to get some input from the tech community. If only to realize how ridiculous your idea is. Oh, and the fact that turning off Wi-Fi and pushing the "3G data ON" button on the smartphone completely bypasses his "security" mechanism.
So, either you are clinically paranoid, and should probably address that issue before any technical ones...or you need to take a step back, relax, and realize you don't have control over everything. Your "client's" requirements are completely ludicrous, and even if you wrote a script for "him" to scrape messages out of Words with Friends, what about EA's Scrabble, or TextFree, or any of the 10,000 other iPhone/Android apps that can communicate privately between two parties?
My advice? Cancel your hardwired ISP, cancel all smartphones with network access, harden your doors, windows, and other points of entry and lock you and your family in your basement. There you go, no "unsavories" or "scammers" can ever access you or your family. I'm sure that will go over well with the wife and kids, but at least you're being upfront about it and not covertly spying on them through their electronic communication (which is what you *really* want to do).
When they object, tell them the other option (your little Napoleon complex and your in-home Echelon system), and be prepared for your, sorry your "friend's" wife to serve up some divorce papers.
Oh, that's right, you just want them to be "safe". Give us a break, even the most hardened Fox News or CNN watcher isn't really *that* scared of unsavory types messing with their lives, and if you are, please turn off the television and go for a walk in the park for a few hours.
I don't disagree that lies and hyperbole work. But it is the lies and hyperbole that I've had enough of. As I said, I'm more interested in what the scientific truth of a matter (AGW or otherwise) is than whether or not my "team" wins. And if you really can't see that the left AND right are both yanking that window around with enough fecal matter to fertilize an Iowa soybean farm, then I'd say someone along the way is manipulating you.
Regardless of the way superconservative fundamentalists operate, sinking to their level is not a solution. If I replace the word conservative with AGW supporter in your post, it still reads correctly.
On the right side, you have people who think everyone should still be driving 1969 Pontiac GTOs that get 6 miles per gallon on leaded gasoline, that we should just burn through all of our nonrenewable resources until they are gone, and just pray because God will give us the answer. On the left, you have people full of liberal guilt who think we should forcibly kill of 90% of Earth's population, and that the 10% that are left should live like third-world peasants.
The real, logical, rational answer lies somewhere in the middle. I'm not going to stop taking showers or washing my clothes because someone wants to make me feel guilty for living in a modern society. I'm also going to do what I can to help, I use CFLs, my 4-cylinder car gets 35mpg, I try to recycle when I can, and I turn lights and appliances off when I'm not in the room.
Beyond that, the way I see it, is if I have the choice between letting the left soft-kill me because we just *have* to reduce population, or dying off because the planet can't sustain my modern way of life, I'll take my gamble on the latter. Especially since from the evidence I've seen, every chicken little "the sky is falling" scenario that I've been brainwashed with since I was in elementary school in the early 80's has failed to come to fruition.
Shouldn't a major city/state be underwater by now? Shouldn't I not be able to go outside without a suit to protect me from the sun? Shouldn't we be getting snow in July in Atlanta? Or was it that it was never supposed to snow again? I just can't remember, because of all the crap I've been fed, on both sides of the debate, for decades now, there's just no way to determine the signal from the noise. And being a man of science, who needs to see evidence with my *own* two eyes of something before I believe it, without actually becoming a climate scientist myself, there's no way for me to determine who is right and who is wrong.
I've got karma to burn, so I'll bite. This is the problem with you people, instead of rationally talking about what the problems are and practical things we can all do to help, you jump straight to the end of the world scenario. This makes people tune you out, and you sound like a fool.
Saying shit like that is the equivalent of saying that if we don't have mandatory internet ID and censorship, that pedophiles and terrorists are inevitably going to break into our homes in the middle of the night and rape our daughters, and take control of the nuclear power plants and run them up to 1000% causing Chernobylfukushimas at every generating station, respectively.
Both are hyperbole, and do nothing to get logical folks considering your point of view. Try being rational and practical instead of religious and fanatical for a change, and I bet you'll find people are a bit more receptive to your ideas.
So, by the time you really know what you're doing, you cost too much and don't "think outside the box" anymore (read: write sloppy ^W innovative code), so they can you.
Really explains a lot about Facebook as well, actually!
AT&T sells a service. They are NOT the police. We need to remove ourselves from this thinking that a mobile phone somehow needs to be treated differently than any other theft.
AT&T sells me telephone service. That service is tied to my SIM card. Any device I place my SIM card in now has my telephone service tied to it. If anything, this blacklist will make MORE money for AT&T than they are making now. CDMA carriers have used a blacklist for years, and the only thing it has EVER done is screwed over unsuspecting buyers of second-hand devices who are then stuck with an unusable brick that they have spent, sometimes, hundreds of dollars on while the thief gets away scot-free.
So, three things will happen if a GSM blacklist is instituted:
1) Resale values of phones will fall due to those in the know not wanting to deal with the second-hand market anymore for fear of being screwed by a blacklisted phone.
2) Thieves will still sell stolen phones to those who aren't in the know, and still make their money and get away with it because the police never investigate these types of petty thefts.
3) AT&T will make more money selling new phones since most smart people will not buy second-hand.
But I guess since we love "security theater" in this country, this law will be a magical fix-all that stops phone thefts and makes everyone feel better while adding another layer of bureaucracy to an already over-complicated (for most people) process of obtaining and using cellular service. Don't want your phone stolen? Don't use it in public in shady or high crime areas, and always keep it in your pocket when not in use. Not on the table at the coffee shop, not laying on the front seat of your car, not lying on the bar when you're out to have a few pints. Don't make your failure to secure your personal property AT&T's problem!
But when they were busy censoring and re-writing history at the behest of the Communist Chinese everyone bemoaned "following the local laws if you want to do business in that country". Right.
So we only have to bow down to communist dictatorships who own practically all of our country's debt, but our "allies" get told to get bent. God Bless America!
It's OK. I'll be the first to admit you got me. I usually don't fall that hard, but I guess a stressful workday combined with 3 hours of sleep threw my troll-o-meter all out of whack. Well played.
Either my usually finely-tuned sarcasm detector is broken this morning or you're trolling me.
Please explain how installing a completely separate system for gray and black water, that all ends up in the same city sewer, did absolutely anything to help the environment? Are you doing something useful with the gray water, like Google, or did you just want to use a bunch of extra resources (thereby increasing your carbon footprint, if you believe in all that) so you could say you did something to help the environment and hope no one asked any questions?
I need to find a way to cash in on all this enviroguilt so I can stop actually working for a living...just wow.
Wait, let me get this straight. By adding a completely separate, unnecessary and redundant wastewater system in your home that dumps into the same sewer pipe anyway, you are helping the environment? You realized you caused more resources to be consumed, more labor hours, the plumber probably had to drive his 8-cylinder work truck around town to get more parts, etc. etc. But somehow that helps the environment?
I'm the farthest thing from an environmentalist you can find, and even I find what you did to be wasteful and unnecessary. If you want to do something to help the environment, just plant a tree, man.
But if the person in question happened to be working *for* a private corporate interest with an unlimited bank account or a government with unlimited bombs, his actions would have been summarily ignored by any and all relevant authorities. If he had happened to challenge the status quo in the process, it would just bring a harsher punishment.
As I said before, and will say again, I am in no way defending ANYONE who commits crime for ANY reason, but if someone hasn't learned by now that "some animals are more equal than others", they are naive and have their heads in the sand, and really need to start paying attention.
Please sir, pray tell...how blatantly obvious do the powers that be have to make it to you that they are hardcore criminals before you will remove your head from the sand?
I am in no way defending LulzSec or anyone who commits crime for any reason. But if you honestly haven't learned yet that crime for corporate profit or expansion of government power is completely ignored while anyone who challenges the status quo is given life in Federal PMITA prison, you are naive and blissfully childish, and I only wish I could enjoy your blasé sense of morality.
Not everyone who commutes to work lives in the "countryside". I'm not sure if you've ever been to the United States, but we have something called the "suburbs", and some people enjoy them just fine, thanks.
And I find it offensive, to be honest, that you are fine with it becoming "untenable" to live where you want and work where you want. This is a basic tenet of existence to me. One more freedom I plan on fighting for from you change agents, when and if the time comes, my personal freedom to be able to live where I want and work where I want. I will not be forced to live in a walk-in closet in a controlled compact city, to be taxed and poisoned to death.
People who "focus their lives in the urban centres" (centers in the USA, btw) are, by and large, some of the most spiritually and emotionally empty, uninformed sheep I have ever met in my life. I want to be as far away from them as possible when it becomes "untenable" to live there.
Because black people are from Africa. Any time you point out something bad about any area which is primarily black you are automatically a racist. It's actually a method used, ironically, by racists to project their hate onto someone else.
Nevermind that Nigeria is in Africa, and that no one said anything like "See all those black people will have to stop trying to scam us whites now that they have no Internet connection."
The pseudo-intellectual trendies on here will always try to point out some grand injustice to cover up their own hatred.
Slashdot Mirror
Avoid T-Mobile compatible phones for this service. Straight Talk is an MVNO and T-Mobile is a bunch of dicks. They won't let outside SMS messages thru. AT&T doesn't do that to MVNOs and SMS/MMS works fine.
While you are correct about Straight Talk being a better overall value for a primary phone (and T-Mobile being a bunch of dicks), it is patently false that T-Mobile does not allow SMS from other carriers. They most certainly allow SMS/MMS to and from all major carriers foreign and domestic. They DO block non-mobile SMS short codes for obvious billing reasons (prepaid users racking up huge charges with 3rd parties that they don't have the funds to cover).
The main reason NOT to get T-Mobile for any service in my opinion is because they censor their internet access unless you give them your (valid, verifiable) ID/SSN. That is a complete joke, their WebGuard blocks many perfectly acceptable sites that they deem "unacceptable to minors", whatever that means. Avoid them like the plague if you care about freedom, but their SMS/MMS system actually does work fine.
If I have this correctly, here's what the government has just told us:
1. We violated the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.
2. If you would like redress to your grievances, see line 3, below.
3. Fuck You.
Am I still a tinfoil-hatter, now?
Frequencies which used to be TV channels now have (much stronger) cellular transmissions on them.
What are YOU talking about? Much stronger? The average cellular base station maxes out around a watt or two and has a coverage area of a few miles.
A local analog UHF here in Chicago used to broadcast around 1MW and had about a maximum coverage of 75 miles or so. I highly doubt there are any million-watt 4G LTE towers around here, but I could be mistaken.
Exactly. So, when I hear stories of how there are millions of jobs just waiting to be filled out here in 'Murrica, if only you sell your soul and dignity for $7.25 an hour, I don't bat an eye when I see that folks would rather choose welfare or unemployment benefits over indentured servitude. In fact, given the same situation, I believe I'd probably have to choose the same.
And will secure boot not have an "off" switch? I would assume it will. Just like how I never install the drivers for the "TPM" when I rebuild an image.
Sure, Windows will refuse to boot if secure boot is turned off, but isn't that a feature, anyway?
I'm not going to invoke Godwin, but *lots* of things start out as being "good-faith initiatives". I know UEFI has tons of advantages over a standard BIOS, and I'm a flat-earther for wanting to stick with the old tried and true methods, but anything that takes away control over hardware I own, especially anything that takes control and gives it to a multinational corporation, I'm passing right over.
And I assume plenty of other tech-minded people will do the same, and the system will fade off into the sunset.
Unless we are declaring war on American citizens...
Now you're starting to understand.
Anytime anyone ever uses "herp" or "derp" or any derivative thereof in their comments, they immediately get ignored by me. That childish crap should stay on Fark or Reddit or wherever the hell it originated. If you don't have something intelligent to add to the discussion, then please refrain from posting here.
It doesn't help that anyone who ever uses these terms are only using them to insult someone who made a valid point, so even though it is a probably a 13-year old kid who actually thinks he's being humorous (note to AC, it's not even remotely funny now, nor was it when it first started happening on other sites) because insults are the only humor mechanism a stupid child can really use effectively.
Well, when the job is one that is nearly impossible save for the NSA-level superspy computers, it helps to get some input from the tech community. If only to realize how ridiculous your idea is. Oh, and the fact that turning off Wi-Fi and pushing the "3G data ON" button on the smartphone completely bypasses his "security" mechanism.
So, either you are clinically paranoid, and should probably address that issue before any technical ones...or you need to take a step back, relax, and realize you don't have control over everything. Your "client's" requirements are completely ludicrous, and even if you wrote a script for "him" to scrape messages out of Words with Friends, what about EA's Scrabble, or TextFree, or any of the 10,000 other iPhone/Android apps that can communicate privately between two parties?
My advice? Cancel your hardwired ISP, cancel all smartphones with network access, harden your doors, windows, and other points of entry and lock you and your family in your basement. There you go, no "unsavories" or "scammers" can ever access you or your family. I'm sure that will go over well with the wife and kids, but at least you're being upfront about it and not covertly spying on them through their electronic communication (which is what you *really* want to do).
When they object, tell them the other option (your little Napoleon complex and your in-home Echelon system), and be prepared for your, sorry your "friend's" wife to serve up some divorce papers.
Oh, that's right, you just want them to be "safe". Give us a break, even the most hardened Fox News or CNN watcher isn't really *that* scared of unsavory types messing with their lives, and if you are, please turn off the television and go for a walk in the park for a few hours.
Yeah. Here's one stunning example of that, civilized, liberal love.
I don't disagree that lies and hyperbole work. But it is the lies and hyperbole that I've had enough of. As I said, I'm more interested in what the scientific truth of a matter (AGW or otherwise) is than whether or not my "team" wins. And if you really can't see that the left AND right are both yanking that window around with enough fecal matter to fertilize an Iowa soybean farm, then I'd say someone along the way is manipulating you.
Regardless of the way superconservative fundamentalists operate, sinking to their level is not a solution. If I replace the word conservative with AGW supporter in your post, it still reads correctly.
On the right side, you have people who think everyone should still be driving 1969 Pontiac GTOs that get 6 miles per gallon on leaded gasoline, that we should just burn through all of our nonrenewable resources until they are gone, and just pray because God will give us the answer. On the left, you have people full of liberal guilt who think we should forcibly kill of 90% of Earth's population, and that the 10% that are left should live like third-world peasants.
The real, logical, rational answer lies somewhere in the middle. I'm not going to stop taking showers or washing my clothes because someone wants to make me feel guilty for living in a modern society. I'm also going to do what I can to help, I use CFLs, my 4-cylinder car gets 35mpg, I try to recycle when I can, and I turn lights and appliances off when I'm not in the room.
Beyond that, the way I see it, is if I have the choice between letting the left soft-kill me because we just *have* to reduce population, or dying off because the planet can't sustain my modern way of life, I'll take my gamble on the latter. Especially since from the evidence I've seen, every chicken little "the sky is falling" scenario that I've been brainwashed with since I was in elementary school in the early 80's has failed to come to fruition.
Shouldn't a major city/state be underwater by now? Shouldn't I not be able to go outside without a suit to protect me from the sun? Shouldn't we be getting snow in July in Atlanta? Or was it that it was never supposed to snow again? I just can't remember, because of all the crap I've been fed, on both sides of the debate, for decades now, there's just no way to determine the signal from the noise. And being a man of science, who needs to see evidence with my *own* two eyes of something before I believe it, without actually becoming a climate scientist myself, there's no way for me to determine who is right and who is wrong.
I've got karma to burn, so I'll bite. This is the problem with you people, instead of rationally talking about what the problems are and practical things we can all do to help, you jump straight to the end of the world scenario. This makes people tune you out, and you sound like a fool.
Saying shit like that is the equivalent of saying that if we don't have mandatory internet ID and censorship, that pedophiles and terrorists are inevitably going to break into our homes in the middle of the night and rape our daughters, and take control of the nuclear power plants and run them up to 1000% causing Chernobylfukushimas at every generating station, respectively.
Both are hyperbole, and do nothing to get logical folks considering your point of view. Try being rational and practical instead of religious and fanatical for a change, and I bet you'll find people are a bit more receptive to your ideas.
Really explains a lot about Facebook as well, actually!
AT&T sells a service. They are NOT the police. We need to remove ourselves from this thinking that a mobile phone somehow needs to be treated differently than any other theft.
AT&T sells me telephone service. That service is tied to my SIM card. Any device I place my SIM card in now has my telephone service tied to it. If anything, this blacklist will make MORE money for AT&T than they are making now. CDMA carriers have used a blacklist for years, and the only thing it has EVER done is screwed over unsuspecting buyers of second-hand devices who are then stuck with an unusable brick that they have spent, sometimes, hundreds of dollars on while the thief gets away scot-free.
So, three things will happen if a GSM blacklist is instituted:
1) Resale values of phones will fall due to those in the know not wanting to deal with the second-hand market anymore for fear of being screwed by a blacklisted phone.
2) Thieves will still sell stolen phones to those who aren't in the know, and still make their money and get away with it because the police never investigate these types of petty thefts.
3) AT&T will make more money selling new phones since most smart people will not buy second-hand.
But I guess since we love "security theater" in this country, this law will be a magical fix-all that stops phone thefts and makes everyone feel better while adding another layer of bureaucracy to an already over-complicated (for most people) process of obtaining and using cellular service. Don't want your phone stolen? Don't use it in public in shady or high crime areas, and always keep it in your pocket when not in use. Not on the table at the coffee shop, not laying on the front seat of your car, not lying on the bar when you're out to have a few pints. Don't make your failure to secure your personal property AT&T's problem!
They've been perpetuating disasters since 1945!
But when they were busy censoring and re-writing history at the behest of the Communist Chinese everyone bemoaned "following the local laws if you want to do business in that country". Right.
So we only have to bow down to communist dictatorships who own practically all of our country's debt, but our "allies" get told to get bent. God Bless America!
It's OK. I'll be the first to admit you got me. I usually don't fall that hard, but I guess a stressful workday combined with 3 hours of sleep threw my troll-o-meter all out of whack. Well played.
Either my usually finely-tuned sarcasm detector is broken this morning or you're trolling me.
Please explain how installing a completely separate system for gray and black water, that all ends up in the same city sewer, did absolutely anything to help the environment? Are you doing something useful with the gray water, like Google, or did you just want to use a bunch of extra resources (thereby increasing your carbon footprint, if you believe in all that) so you could say you did something to help the environment and hope no one asked any questions?
I need to find a way to cash in on all this enviroguilt so I can stop actually working for a living...just wow.
Wait, let me get this straight. By adding a completely separate, unnecessary and redundant wastewater system in your home that dumps into the same sewer pipe anyway, you are helping the environment? You realized you caused more resources to be consumed, more labor hours, the plumber probably had to drive his 8-cylinder work truck around town to get more parts, etc. etc. But somehow that helps the environment?
I'm the farthest thing from an environmentalist you can find, and even I find what you did to be wasteful and unnecessary. If you want to do something to help the environment, just plant a tree, man.
I never said it did.
But if the person in question happened to be working *for* a private corporate interest with an unlimited bank account or a government with unlimited bombs, his actions would have been summarily ignored by any and all relevant authorities. If he had happened to challenge the status quo in the process, it would just bring a harsher punishment.
As I said before, and will say again, I am in no way defending ANYONE who commits crime for ANY reason, but if someone hasn't learned by now that "some animals are more equal than others", they are naive and have their heads in the sand, and really need to start paying attention.
Please sir, pray tell...how blatantly obvious do the powers that be have to make it to you that they are hardcore criminals before you will remove your head from the sand?
I am in no way defending LulzSec or anyone who commits crime for any reason. But if you honestly haven't learned yet that crime for corporate profit or expansion of government power is completely ignored while anyone who challenges the status quo is given life in Federal PMITA prison, you are naive and blissfully childish, and I only wish I could enjoy your blasé sense of morality.
Not everyone who commutes to work lives in the "countryside". I'm not sure if you've ever been to the United States, but we have something called the "suburbs", and some people enjoy them just fine, thanks.
And I find it offensive, to be honest, that you are fine with it becoming "untenable" to live where you want and work where you want. This is a basic tenet of existence to me. One more freedom I plan on fighting for from you change agents, when and if the time comes, my personal freedom to be able to live where I want and work where I want. I will not be forced to live in a walk-in closet in a controlled compact city, to be taxed and poisoned to death.
People who "focus their lives in the urban centres" (centers in the USA, btw) are, by and large, some of the most spiritually and emotionally empty, uninformed sheep I have ever met in my life. I want to be as far away from them as possible when it becomes "untenable" to live there.
Because black people are from Africa. Any time you point out something bad about any area which is primarily black you are automatically a racist. It's actually a method used, ironically, by racists to project their hate onto someone else.
Nevermind that Nigeria is in Africa, and that no one said anything like "See all those black people will have to stop trying to scam us whites now that they have no Internet connection."
The pseudo-intellectual trendies on here will always try to point out some grand injustice to cover up their own hatred.