On T-Mobile UK with their branded HTC Hero.

I haven’t tried it on any other MSN app. Maybe its normal. Maybe it needs more bandwidth than a 2G data rate can provide just to stay signed in.

Thought it might be an interesting post to someone else finding the same thing.

Sam, the first commenter, did your’s stop working again shortly after?

It is weird how clearing the cache and/or changing to the 2G network seems to give me access for a short while. I’m surprised how many hits this post has had!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Forcing the phone to only connect over 2G networks did make it work for a while but then…. back to the failed signing in and auto sync not auto syncing! I also tried the option at the bottom of GMail where you can view account activity and click to “Sign out all other sessions.” I turned off the Android phone, shut down Google Talk on the computer, and then signed out all other sessions to my account. Still no further.

Some US forums are busy with this problem occurring on the Rogers network and AT&T. Reports suggest after an update was pushed out over the air. The thing is, as far as I know, T-Mobile don’t use Over The Air updates….

Anyone else having the same issues with their Android device?

UPDATE: Selecting to use only 2G networks seems to fix the issue. I have been running fine on it for about an hour. Seems like there is an issue with the 3G network for some of us.

To use only 2G networks go to the Android menu and go to Settings. Then go to Wireless Controls. Then go to Mobile Network Settings and tick the box next to Use Only 2G Networks.

Please comment to confirm if this works for other users or if the problem still persists!

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It is Tuesday the 16th of February 2010. I have had a whole day of constant problems getting Google Talk to sign in on my UK T-Mobile G2 Touch. Emails are also not automatically synchronizing anymore and have to be manually refreshed.

The error that keeps being displayed when attempting to sign into Google Talk is “Could Not Connect To Server. Will Retry Shortly.”

This has been happening all day today and started last night. As I have been out most of the day, I haven’t had a good chance to take a look at it until now.

Before calling T-Mobile Tech Support, I took the time to Google the problem itself which brought back a couple of scattered reports of the same problem also posted today on some forums.

I found posts where people had reset their phones back to the factory defaults and started again but were still having problems. I read another post where one guy was given the Californian number for Google and told to call them by T-Mobile! Some other people also re-installed the firmware on their handsets which still resulting in no luck.

I cleared the cache on my phone for the Google Talk and Google Talk Service to see if it made a difference. It didn’t fix the problem for me but it might be worth trying on your handset if you happen to be reading this.

For those that don’t know, below will explain how to clear those caches.

1. Go to the Android menu and select Settings.
2. Then scroll down and select Applications.
3. Select Manage Applications and let the list load.
4. Scroll down the list to find Google Talk. Click on it and click Clear Data. You will be asked to confirm the action with the message “All information you’ve saved in this application will be deleted permanently.” Click OK to confirm this action.
5. Underneath the Clear Data button, there is a Clear Cache button. If it is selectable, clear the cache. You will also be prompted by the same confirmation box that appeared when pressing the Clear Data button.

For me that didn’t help at all but was worth a try. I turned the phone off and also removed the battery. I then put the battery back in, turned the phone on again, let it start-up and the problem was still happening.

The whole situation evidently seems to be a network related issue. I can browse the Internet fine. I can receive emails fine although I do have to manually refresh now and they aren’t coming in automatically.

The ‘Internet Eyes’ service involves players scouring thousands of CCTV cameras installed in shops, businesses and town centres across Britain looking for law-breakers.

Players who help catch the most criminals each month will win cash prizes up to £1,000.

Crime deterrent or snoopers paradise? The CCTV website allows access to a network of cameras where watchers can report crimes to camera owners

The Internet Eyes’ website will also feature a rogue’s gallery of the so-called ‘criminals’ along with a list of their offences and which internet user caught them.

But civil rights campaigners today condemned the game, which launches in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, next month, and branded it ‘a snoopers paradise’.

They claim nosey neighbours could snoop on homeowners putting the wrong rubbish in bins and even motorists guilty of the most minor misdemeanors.

But businessman Tony Morgan, a former restaurant owner, said it would give local businesses protection against petty criminals, and act as a deterrent once ‘Internet Eyes patrol here’ signs are prominently displayed.

He will charge those who use the service, which could eventually include local authorities and even police forces as well as shop owners, £20 a week per camera to have their CCTV included on the site – amounting to thousands each year.

Internet Eyes: David Steele, Tony Morgan and James Woodward

He said: ‘This could turn out to be the best crime prevention weapon there’s ever been.

‘I wanted to combine the serious business of stopping crime with the incentive of winning money.

‘There are over four million CCTV cameras in the UK and only one in a thousand gets watched.

‘Crimes are bound to get missed but this way people the cameras will be watched by lots of people 24-hours-a-day.

‘It gives people something better to do than watching Big Brother when everyone is asleep.

‘We’ve had a lot of interest from local businesses and hope to roll it out nationwide and then worldwide.’

He said the team had seen a wave of support and denied that liberties were being affected.

‘There are more than four million cameras in the UK so everybody is on camera already, it is just that no one is watching the cameras.’

Players collect points by watching the cameras, which show CCTV images in real-time, and click a button every time they see something suspicious taking place.

An SMS or text message, along with a still image of the alleged crime, is sent to whoever controls the camera. They can then decide whether or not to take action.

The camera controller will send a feedback email back to the player indicating whether a crime has taken place.

Players are awarded one point for spotting a suspected crime and three points if they see someone committing an actual crime.  Players also lose points if the camera operator rules that the alert was not a crime.

The game has been condemned by civil rights campaigners who claim it will encourage people to spy and snitch on each other.

Charles Farrier, director of the No-CCTV pressure group, said: ‘It is an appalling idea for a game and will create a snoopers paradise.

‘It is something which should be nipped in the bud immediately. It will not only encourage a dangerous spying mentality by turning crime into a game but also could lead to dangerous civil rights abuses.

‘What if a group of racists decide to send alerts every time a black person is seen on screen and what’s stopping criminals using the cameras to scope out where to commit crimes.’

James Woodward, head of the technical team for Internet Eyes, which is based in Devon and Stratford-upon-Avon, said safeguards – including blocking players out for sending three incorrect alerts – would prevent the game being abused.

He said: ‘For privacy reasons users will not know the location of the cameras. They will find it very difficult to work out where the camera is.

‘It is possible that someone who is blocked out could see a crime taking place but be unable to alert the operator.

‘But it is probably safe to assume someone else looking at the same camera will raise the alarm.

‘Whoever has a CCTV camera, be it the police, local authorities or business or home owners can sign up to have their cameras watched. We hope to include police cameras very soon.’

The game will initially use CCTV cameras in shops and businesses in Stratford-upon-Avon but will be rolled out across Britain by December before going worldwide next year.

Last month it was revealed that Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras – the equivalent of one per 14 people – one-and-a-half-times as many as Communist China.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218225/Internet-game-awards-points-people-spotting-crimes-CCTV-cameras-branded-snoopers-paradise.html#ixzz0TF3wlOGD

Subject: UPS Delivery Problem NR.9618

Hello!

Unfortunately we failed to deliver the package which was sent on the 24th of June in time because the recipient’s address is wrong.

Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office.

United Parcel Service.

Interesting thing was this. Saved the attachment to the C: drive with it still inside the zip folder. Then scanned the .zip folder with AVG and AVG reported no viruses found.

On the other hand, it could have been a program with non malicious code to the system, which still sent off details and is only malicious in principle rather than code. Only an idea because I didn’t open it….!

This was an official warning released on the UPS website:

Attention Virus Warning
Service Update

We have become aware there is a fraudulent email being sent that says it is coming from UPS and leads the reader to believe that a UPS shipment could not be delivered. The reader is advised to open an attachment reportedly containing a waybill for the shipment to be picked up.

This email attachment contains a virus. We recommend that you do not open the attachment, but delete the email immediately.

UPS may send official notification messages on occasion, but they rarely include attachments. If you receive a notification message that includes an attachment and are in doubt about its authenticity, please contact customerservice@ups.com.

Please note that UPS takes its customer relationships very seriously, but cannot take responsibility for the unauthorized actions of third parties.

Thank you for your attention.

The attachment contains malware, detected as Trj/Agent.JEN by Internet Security company PandaLabs, that can replace an important file on Windows computers and then download other malware to the infected computer. PandaLabs notes:

This malware is copied in the system, replacing the Windows Userinit.exe (this file is the one which runs explorer.exe, the interface of the system and other important processes), copying the legitimate file as userini.exe, so that the computer can work properly.

Additionally, it establishes a connection with a Russian domain, which has been used on some occassions by banker Trojans. From this domain it will redirect the request to a German domain in order to download a rootkit and a rogue antivirus, detected as Rootkit/Agent.JEP and Adware/AntivirusXP2008 respectively.

Apparently, the reported sender is now coming from DHL.

It’s every schoolboy’s dream: an easy way of looking through walls to spy on neighbors, monitor siblings, and keep tabs on the sweet jar. And now a dream no longer…

Researchers at the University of Utah say that the way radio signals vary in a wireless network can reveal the movement of people behind closed doors. Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari have developed a technique called variance-based radio tomographic imaging that processes the signals to reveal signs of movement. They’ve even tested the idea with a 34-node wireless network using the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol, the protocol for personal area networks employed by home automation services such as ZigBee.

The basic idea is straightforward. The signal strength at any point in a network is the sum of all the paths the radio waves can take to get to the receiver. Any change in the volume of space through which the signals pass, for example caused by the movement of a person, makes the signal strength vary. So by “interrogating” this volume of space with many signals, picked up by multiple receivers, it is possible to build up a picture of the movement within it.

In tests with a 34-node network set up outside a standard living room, Wilson and Patwari say they were able to locate moving objects in the room to within a meter or so. That’s not bad, and the team says there is ample potential for improvement by increasing accuracy while reducing the number of nodes.

The advantage of this technique over others is, first, its cost. The nodes in such a network are off-the-shelf and therefore cheap. Other through-wall viewing systems cost in excess of $100,000. The second advantage is the ease with which it can be set up. Wilson and Patwari say that adding a GPS receiver to each node allows it to work out its own location, which should dramatically speed up the imaging process. Other systems have to be “trained” to recognize the environment.

Wilson and Patwari have even worked out how their system might be used:

“We envision a building imaging scenario similar to the following. Emergency responders, military forces, or police arrive at a scene where entry into a building is potentially dangerous. They deploy radio sensors around (and potentially on top of) the building area, either by throwing or launching them, or dropping them while moving around the building. The nodes immediately form a network and self-localize, perhaps using information about the size and shape of the building from a database (eg Google maps) and some known-location coordinates (eg using GPS). Then, nodes begin to transmit, making signal strength measurements on links which cross the building or area of interest. The received signal strength measurements of each link are transmitted back to a base station and used to estimate the positions of moving people and objects within the building.”

That’s ambitious, but if they do get their system to the point where it can be used like this, it raises another problem: privacy.

How might such cheap and easy-to-configure monitoring networks be used if they become widely available? What’s to stop next door’s teenage brats from monitoring your every move, or house thieves choosing their targets on the basis that nobody is inside?

Of course, in the cat-and-mouse game of surveillance, it shouldn’t be too hard to build a device that disables such a monitoring network. But only if you know it’s there in the first place.

There are fun and games galore to be had with this idea.

Source

Well, it cost me a support incident at MSFT so hopefully what I learned
will help others.

I am running Outlook 2007 as part of Office 2007 Ultimate on Windows XP
SP2.

There have been numerours threads around with people complaining that
searching in instant search in Outlook 2007 or through Windows Desktop
Search 3.0 doesn’t return any results. Some have said that PST files
work fine but results from Exchange mailboxes were missing.

The solution on my machine turned out to be related to the fact that
the Exchange 2003 system management tools were installed on my
machine.There was a problem discovered whereby the Exchange tools
replace certain MAPI DLL files used by WDS and the DLLs used by the
Exchange tools don’t support WDS. Unfortunately there isn’t any logging
that this is actually occuring so it makes it hard to figure this
problem out.

The solution to the problem is to run the fixmapi.exe tool located in
your system32 directory and then reboot. You can run fixmapi.exe from
the command line if you like. Please note that fixmapi.exe does not
write anything out to the screen so it seems like it runs for a second,
exits and has done nothing. This is normal. Just run it and reboot.

There is a KB article on this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927676

After your computer reboots you will need to rebuild your index and
open Outlook so that indexing can begin.

That should fix it.

So, if you’ve got the Exhcange management tools installed on your
machine and are having problems with Outloook 2007 instant search not
returning any result then this should hopefully fix it for you.

Good luck.

Thanks,
Brian

(BJS)

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.outlook/browse_thread/thread/a5cb5f6d30df747e/ca7080cef90939ec

A new species of giant rat has been discovered deep in the jungle of Papua New Guinea.

The rat, which has no fear of humans, measures 82cm long, placing it among the largest species of rat known anywhere in the world.

The creature, which has not yet been formally described, was discovered by an expedition team filming the BBC programme Lost Land of the Volcano.

It is one of a number of exotic animals found by the expedition team.

Like the other exotic species, the rat is believed to live within the Mount Bosavi crater, and nowhere else.

“This is one of the world’s largest rats. It is a true rat, the same kind you find in the city sewers,” says Dr Kristofer Helgen, a mammalogist based at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who accompanied the BBC expedition team.

Very few people – even the Kasua tribe – venture inside the crater Enter a ‘lost land of the weird’

Initially, the giant rat was first captured on film by an infrared camera trap, which BBC wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan set up in the forest on the slopes of the volcano.

The expedition team from the BBC Natural History Unit recorded the rat rummaging around on the forest floor, and were awed by its size.

Immediately, they suspected it could be a species never before recorded by science, but they needed to see a live animal to be sure.

Then trackers accompanying the team managed to trap a live specimen.

“I had a cat and it was about the same size as this rat,” says Buchanan.

The trapped rat measured 82cm in length from its nose to its tail, and weighed approximately 1.5kg.

It had a silver-brown coat of thick long fur, which the scientists who examined it believe may help it survive the wet and cold conditions that can occur within the high volcano crater. The location where the rat was discovered lies at an elevation of over 1,000m.

Initial investigations suggest the rat belongs to the genus Mallomys, which contains a handful of other out-sized species.

It has provisionally been called the Bosavi woolly rat, while its scientific name has yet to be agreed.

The giant rat was first sighted using an infrared camera trap

Other rodents, the group of animals that includes rats, grow to a bigger size.

For example, the largest rodent of all is the capybara, which lives in or near freshwater in South America.

It can grow up to 130cm long and weigh up to 65kg.

The Philippines is also home to a few species of cloud rat which can reach over 2kg in weight.

In Pictures: Weird crater creatures

But of the true rats, which includes urban brown and black rats that belong to the genus Rattus, few can match the new species.

In 2007, an expedition to New Guinea led by Conservation International discovered another closely related giant woolly rat, which can weigh up to 1.4kg. It also belongs within the genus Mallomys.

However, that species lives in the Foja Mountains, part of the Mamberamo Basin.

Mount Bosavi, where the new rat was found, is an extinct volcano that lies deep in the remote Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

The expedition team entered the crater to explore pristine forest, where few humans have set foot.

Even members of the Kasua tribe, who acted as trackers for the expedition, live outside the crater, which is 4km wide and has walls up to 1km high, trapping the creatures that live within.

The island which includes Papua New Guinea and New Guinea is famous for the number and diversity of the rats and mice that live there.

Over 57 species of true “Murid” rats and mice can be found on the island. The larger rats are often caught by hunters and eaten.

Broadcast of The Lost Land of the Volcano series will begin on BBC One on Tuesday 8 September at 2100 BST. The discovery of the Bosavi woolly rat is broadcast as part of the series on BBC One on Tuesday 22 September.

Source