This is Nomad’s Land

!!GPRS SETUP GUIDE MOVED!! This post has been updated recently. For the GPRS setup guide, see: http://psichron.za.net/wordpress/?p=10 Cell Phone Network Operator Review: This is a review of my experience with Vodacom, MTN and Virgin Mobile’s prepaid GPRS options. Includes comparison of cost, reliability, ease of use, marketing, support, and overall impression.

Cost:
+1 Vodacom: About R5 for the sim, including no airtime. Data @ R2/Mb
+2 MTN: About R4 for the sim, received R10 free airtime. Data @ R2/Mb
+3 Virgin: R55 for the sim and starter pack, including R50 airtime. Data @ 50c/Mb

Reliability:
+1 Vodacom: Poor. Sometimes difficulty connecting, especially in certain areas. Frequent Disconnects.
+2 Virgin: Inconsistent. Would work fine one day, serious difficulty connecting the next. Sometimes suffer from domain name lookup issues. Occasional disconnects, some days worse than others.
+3 MTN: Excellent. Admittedly I only tested it before their last systems upgrade. Always connects, always on. Disconnects rare.

Ease of use:
+1 Vodacom: You need to call an operator to have your sim activated for GPRS. Dial *111# ,select “MMS settings” and follow the prompts for vodacom to send you the correct configuration settings.
+2 MTN: Call *123* to get the correct settings for your phone. GPRS works out the box.
+3 Virgin: GPRS works out the box, settings automatically sent to phone.

Support:
+1 for all. All three networks have representatives on myadsl.co.za.

Marketing:
-666. Vodacom: If it was not for that meerkat, they wouldn’t have lost any points. Their ads used to be witty, but the sheer retardedness of its current campaign makes me choke on my own bile every time I see an ad. That meerkat should burn in hell.
-100. Virgin: All I can say is “What a joke.”. Are we all mentally handicapped that their advertisement team decided to write everything as if for primary school kiddies? I guess you can’t do any better if you have a sub-100 IQ yourself, or maybe it’s their American Mentality. Their website is horrible.
0. MTN: “Y’ellow summer”. Irretating ads and severely challenged slogans, but they do much for promotion. Cancels out.
1. CellC: I just put this in here to show that not all ZA’s operators have 3rd rate morons in their marketing dept. Ads range from OKish to brilliant.

Connection type:
All GPRS users connect from behind a single gateway IP address. There is no way you will get your own IP for GPRS. Unless you know some important people, you are stuck behind NAT. (There is cases of 3G users with unique IPs on some networks.)

Overall:
If you leave out marketing the totals are as follows:
4. Vodacom: (YOU FAIL!) Vodacom’s reliability issues might be due to oversubscription.They should definately lower data costs. They have some cool extra features though.
8. MTN: (THINKOFTHECHILDREN!) Reliable, but should also definitely look at their data pricing.
9. Virgin: (LOZL!) After being with Vodacom, there is nothing like checking your balance and seeing you still have airtime left.

Winner: VIRGIN MOBILE. The other two network are just way too expensive.

I am currently working on Labyrinth (http://labyrinth.za.net), a program that tunnels data via DNS queries and replies. It is being coded in python, and at time of writing I have a working proof of concept that can only transmit about 32 characters at a time. (Update: labyrinth uses openVPN’s tap-win32 driver for packet tunneling.)

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Geocaching is a type of global treasure hunt. Each geocache has a set of GPS coordinates and is hidden out of public view. The idea is to find a geocache, take something from it, put something back, and record your visit in a log book and on the website.

There are at least two geocaches hidden near my house, in the Paarl Rock and Taalmonument reserves.

How could a pirate resist the lure of treasure? Yesterday Zelphar and I set forth to find the nearest cache. Due to a mixup with coordinates on my part, we only found it today…. Here is a picture of me at the cache site in explorer mode: http://www.div0.co.za/public/treasurehunt/668F0002.jpg
Here is the map we used:
http://www.div0.co.za/public/treasurehunt/real2.jpg

Of course I can rant about the insane cost of telco’s in South Africa, and with justification, but that wouldn’t bring us anywhere.

So I’d like to introduce Vodacom subscribers to def’s website and his WAP page that allows you to use Vodacom’s free online-SMS service from your mobile phone, at a fraction of the rate it would have cost to send the actual SMS. You get 20 free SMSes per day. This is the link to the WAP site: http://wap.defza.com

Def, like myself, is also a Student at Stellenbosch University.

I came across two interesting anonymous proxy concepts this evening. The first involves Google’s translator and the second a php script that retrieves a website and translates all URLs.

A short description of the google “proxy” method can be read here, (ohgizmo.com) and a long description here(oreillynet.com).
Basicly, if you have half a nut, you can figure it out by looking at this url:
http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.forbiddensite.com

I’ve looked at three different php “proxy” scripts, and the one that actually worked was PHProxy by this person.
I copied the latest version here: http://div0.co.za/php*****
Due to abuse, this link now forwards to a shocksite.

Another project worth looking at is CGIProxy.

Now you don’t have to worry about corporations with blue balls suing you because of your slanderous, anonymous forum posts…

One of my favorite tools under windows OS is Servant Salamander – a two-pane file manager, network client, archive manager, etc, etc. I definitely recommend you have a look, it is like the swiss army knife of file handling. The closest linux alternative I’ve seen so far is krusader.

However, the latest version at time of writing is 2.5 beta10a, which includes an annoying 3-second splash screen on startup, as well as an even more annoying 30-second splash screen once it has expired.

So, armed with my knowledge from the hackr.org challenges I did in an obsessive haze after seeing the link on karnaugh.za.net and getting hooked, I tried my hand at removing the splash screens.

The end result is available here: Servant Salamander 2.5 beta10a no-splash exe

(edit)
I decided against sharing the “cracking” method, since I don’t want it to be distributed on a large scale. Basicly, I used a debugger to skip the function that creates the annoying splash-screen dialogues.
Also, in my opinion it is much better than total commander (as krusader is better than midnight commander). Almost not comparable.

And in case you were wondering, I have a legally licensed version of Servant Salamander.