Howto Hack SprintPCS / Palm (pt3)

The moment of truth: Configure the Palm for network access via a paired SprintPCS phone.

At this point, our Palm has a trusted connection to the phone via Bluetooth, but no way to tell the phone to get it online. We need to establish a Network Service over which we can connect. The fastest way to configure the connection is from the Preferences screen, and selecting Network.

Tap New and change the name from "Untitled" to "SprintPCS" (the name is arbitrary). The username will be the device phone number. The password is the same password used to access the SprintPCS account management website. If you do not know the website password, you can do another human engineering hack: Call Customer Service and tell them you can need to know how to access your phone's e-mail account via your browser. The password will get reset in the process.

It is best to save the password in the device, as the connection will only give you a few seconds to respond to the prompt. Tap the word "Prompt", enter the password in the window, and tap OK. For connection type, select "Edit Connections...".

We will need to couple the Network Service to the Trusted Device. Tap New and select a new name-- perhaps the phone's model number. Change "Connect To" to "Phone" and "Via" to "Bluetooth". Now we will identify our Trusted Device, by selecting Tap to Find. In the new window, select the Trusted Device configured in the previous section. Tap OK to return. The model will remain "Standard GSM".

Next tap Details, and change the speed to 115,200. A tap of OK returns to the Edit Connections screen and another tap of OK will prompt for a confirmation. Tap Yes to make this the default connection. Tapping Done will return to the Network screen. Clicking Connection should now show us the option we just defined. Highlighting the option will select it.

The box labeled "Tap to enter phone" will open a new window. First try the number #777. (Yes, the pound symbol is part of the phone number.) Tap OK to save the number. If #777 does not work, you may need to use #999. To test the settings, tap Connect.

If the connection is properly defined, the phone will open a window indicating "Connected as data modem". The Palm will display a window indicating "Connecting", "Signing On", and lastly "Established". Once the connection has been tested, tap Disconnect. This should return the phone to the service screen.

Now lets test the system in production. Tap the Home Icon and select Web to launch Blazer. Input the URI http://wap.oa.yahoo.com and tap Go. The Palm should connect to the phone, and load the page.

Warnings:

1. The phone will not remain connected. This is correct-- and good, as it will allow incoming calls.
2. IT is normal for the Palm to take up to a minute to establish a connection.
3. When done, it is best to turn Bluetooth off. This prevents an application from trying to bump you off a call, and makes your device more secure.

So... Is it worth $959.76? Probably not.

I do, however, have one more trick up my sleeve. Before we go that route, we need to get a laptop running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the network. Stay tuned.

Howto Hack SprintPCS / Palm (pt2)

Today's mission: Interface the Palm Tungsten E2 with the Samsung MM-A940 via Bluetooth.

We will focus more on the Palm device than the phone, as it is actually the Palm, which is the weak link. The first step is going to be to assign a unique device name. From the Preferences menu, selectBluetooth, and tap Device Name. Input a unique name and tap OK.

Ensure Bluetooth is set to On and the phone is "discoverable". On the Samsung MM-A940, click Menu, Bluetooth, Options, Settings, and adjusting Visibiltiy. To pair the Palm to the phone, execute a search from the Bluetooth menu by clicking Options, Add New, and Search. Highlight the device with the Palm's unique name, and click Add to list.

It is important that the Palm be on and ready. A new window will open asking for the phone's passkey. The default passkey value is 0000. A window will appear on the Palm asking for the phone's passkey. Enter the same code and tap the Trust Device checkbox before clicking OK. On the phone, confirm the pairing in the Bluetooth menu. Return the phone to the service screen (sometimes called the "Time And Date Screen" or "Sceen Saver".

On the Palm, click Setup Devices and Trusted Devices. The phone should be listed. It would seem that we could have tapped Phone Setup instead of Trusted Devices, but that leads to a dead end... if you do not have a preapproved Verizon phone.

The phone and Palm are now paired. There is an option in Communcations on the Preferences page for phone integration, but this is leads back to the same dead end as before. Without a Bluetooth initialization string, the Palm can not access the keypad for contact dialing.

That's okay, however, because our next step is to connect to the Sprint data network.

Howto Hack SprintPCS for Palm Network Access

The Problem: Use a Bluetooth enabled SprintPCS phone and Palm computer to access the Internet.

In a perfect world, this should be easy-- seemless, in fact. As I have previously stated, it is not. So what went wrong? First, it turns out that Bluetooth is not as platform independant as I had anticipated. Second, when I bought my Samsung cell phone from Sprint, I was miss informed as to the base capabilities of the Power Vision (EV-DO) Network.

As a result, we will have to approach this hack from three fronts. We will need to hack the Palm to talk to the Samsung, via Bluetooth (it only knows Motorola and Ericson). We will need to hack the Samsung to connect the Palm to the network (the default config only allows the phone to access the Internet). We will need to authenticate on the network.

The toughest part is the network. Sprint has made the brilliant decision that a customer must pay an extra fee to run data across the network. When they first introduced high speed data, around 2000, data was billed both as minutes and as kilobytes. They soon dropped the minutes fee, as it is cheaper for them to carry data than voice. (Data is not time sensative or prone to collision, which means they can carry it in between voice conversations. Effectively, this allows them to get use of idle voice channels.) With the introduction of the 3g Vision Service, they charged a flat fee for unlimited data.

With EV-DO Power Vision, they decided to take a step backwards, and charge both for megabytes, and a fee. Furthermore, their operators (the bane of SprintPCS) are being told that users must commit to a 2 year Phone As Modem plan at $39.99 per month to get external data service. That's $959.76... but who's counting.

Luckily, a simple human engineering hack can get us around this problem. By visiting the SprintPCS store, I was able to get a sales rep to grant me access to the service for one month, in order to evaluate its potential. He was willing to do this, because I'm still under contract, and the brochures do not actually state that you have to agree to the feature for 2 years, just that you must have a 2 year contract.

The good news: In theory, we now have a valid authentication on the Sprint network. The bad news: We can not contact Tech Support, because Sprint does not realize that any data systems exist other than Microsoft Windows XP. Therefore, any other system will be summerily dismissed as non-usable.

Part Two: Get the Palm and Samsung talking.

Bluetooth Disappointment

On paper, Bluetooth sounds like a wonderful idea. Once you actually apply it to a real product, the luster of this wonderfully technology quickly fades from the limelight. At the beginning of the year, I upgraded my cell phone, an ended up with Bluetooth. How wonderful, I thought, dreaming of seamless integration.

So, I bought a Nokia Bluetooth headset. It beeped... constantly. Every three minutes, it would play the Nokia jingle. Whenever I would get a call, I'd click the connect button, but I couldn't answer the phone, because I had to wait for the jingle to finish. I called Nokia, and they said their headsets were only designed to work with Nokia phones.

I though Bluetooth was a platform independent protocol?

So, I bought another headset Scala. The good news is: the Scala jingle is shorter than the Nokia jingle. Then it occurred to me, two brands of headsets, same problem-- the common factor was the phone.

So, I called Samsung. No, they explained, Bluetooth is extremely particular about whom it will talk. They were surprised that either headset worked. They suggested a change that would decrees the frequency with which the tone played, but couldn't silence the tone.

As if I didn't have enough headaches in the world... I bought a Palm Tungsten E2 with Bluetooth. It won't exchange data with the phone, because it only understands the Bluetooth dialects spoken by Motorola, Nokia, and Siemens. Even if it could, it doesn't know how to access the internet via SprintPCS... only Verizon.

So, I bought a Bluetooth USB dongle. The Windows XP desktop recognized the device. It paired with the Palm, Samsung, and even the Scala headset. In the end, however, the only thing it let me do was sync the Palm via Bluetooth. Unfortunately, it has to be reconfigured every time the system gets booted.

Bluetooth, schmoo tooth.

Wired News: Airlines Try Smarter Boarding

Here's and interesting article about how Wired News: Airlines Try Smarter Boarding. What I found humorous is that their example of efficentcy was American West Airline, which I just flew to San Jose. I found them to be no more efficent than my preferred airline, Southwest (who was also mentioned).

American West was using a new boarding process they called "reverse pyramid". Southwest uses chaos theory. Pyramid says load back seats first, starting at the windows. The Southwest system is based upon the theory that if you tell a hundred people to get on the plane, as fast as possible, that they will adjust their movements to accomplish the task. As long as everyone's goal is the same (fly), everyone will work collectively (think ants).

What distressed me is that no one identified the actual problem with boarding, which is passengers loading carry on luggage in the overhead storage. The good news is that many airlines are beginning to enforce carry on regulations: one item, limited size. Before long, they take a page from the cargo services-- all carry on must be in a uniform box, of a specified size. No more fumbling in the aisles, as the box will fit in your alloted space.

When In Doubt: Reboot

I have been struggling with a problem for about two weeks, and finally solved it this morning. The problem was with Logical Volume Management under Red Hat Enterprise Linux, version 4. Logical Volume Management (LVM) allows sysads to dynamically resize Linux file systems, in similar manner to the way that Partition Magic allows Windows uses to resize partitions. The principal difference is that LVM can resize a live file system on the fly. This mean no outage, and uptime is a good thing.

Unfortunately, one of my production systems TvFerret was running out of space in /home. When I attempted to grow the file system, it would refuse, complaining about an unable to resize or no space left on device. The error messages would also reference ioctl.

Turns out, I had applied a few updates, including a patch to LVM. The patch did not tell me, however that it required the rev-level 34 kernel. As I had not booted the system since last year, it was still running on rev-level 5. I held my breath, issued a remote reboot, and waited. A moment later, my phone signaled that the boot was complete. I logged in and resize the file system without error.

Bunger Tracker 2.0

The new Bunger Tracker is now online. I deployed the first version of the tracker, when I was traveling extensively, as a way for friends to keep track of me. The new version is a vast improvement, as I have out-sourced the mapping to Google Maps.

Perhaps the coolest feature is the ability to zoom in. Most of the maps will get you within a few city blocks. I've not yet perfected the process. The system is suppose to recognize landmarks and display a Keyhole image of the landmark. Is most cases, it is still showing the map.

At the moment, it's close enough. I need to focus on re-engineering the website. I'm dropping Google Adwords, and building som e banners to TvFerret.

So Long Fedora Core 5

Hate to have to do it, but I had to give up on Fedora Core 5. I'm not certain that its Fedora's problem-- it may be a hardware problem. This is to say that my hardware configuration does not seem to be supported in 5, though it is in 4.

The critical issue is my dual head configuration. My system has an onboard ATI (AGP) video and an ATI video expansion card (PCI). The card feed two identical monitors with a 1280x1024 resolution that form a spanning desktop. Unfortunately, I can't get the AGP video to function under FC5. Not even in a single screen mode.

Its as if the expansion board completely disables the onboard video. If I do an lspci, I can see the card, but the X server will not energize it. I've tried several installs, configurations, and even replacing the PCI with an old Voodoo 3 board. As I've not seen any head way, I've kickstarted back to FC4.

Loosing dual head is just too big a sacrifice.

Stack 'O RPMs

On several occasions, I have found myself with a stack of RPMs (usually updates) that needed to be installed, but did not want to have to do each manually. I've tried several commands, but have never been satisfied with the results. I finnally found one I like.

  find /start/dir -name "*.rpm" \
    -exec rpm -Uvh {} \;

Regardless of errors, or dependanies, this command will keep processing the updates. The command may need to be run two or three times to resolve such dependancies.

Comcast matches Verizon Fios speeds | CNET News.com

I get allot of my tech news from CNET News, but I think their headlines are sometime misleading. Today they reported Comcast matches Verizon Fios speeds, implying that Comcast is reacting to Verizon. Of course the Verizon spokesperson chotelled such in the article.

For those of use that have worked in telecom, we know that this is bunk. Cable so far exceeds any offer a wire line carrier can give you that there is no rational comparison. See, to most people, the networks of the world are just a big nebulous cloud in the middle of a wiring diagram. As for me, I helped build the cloud.

Here's the deal: Phone companies (like Verizon) use a star topology. They run wires from the CO (central office) to your home. This was an architecture that Bell designed for Washington, DC, in the 1880's. Cable companies run trunk lines, and peel off a network segment to your home. This is the same construction we see in an ethernet architecture. Now which would you rather have-- 1880's wire line service or ethernet?

Still not convinced? If a cable trunk line fails, thousands of customers loose service. If the phone company looses a DSL repeater in the CO, a dozen customers loose service. Needless to say, the cable companies are much more responsive.

Then there is basic physics. Most cable companies actually have fiber trunk lines. Most phone companies still have wire trunk lines. Until they migrate to fiber, they'll never match what Comcast offers.

The bad thing about this story is they are only upgrading service in four cities. The good news is-- I live in one of the four! Woo Woo Woo. More bandwidth! Yeah!