Home Brew solar powered cell phone towers now a reality

I knew it would be a big thing back when I saw software radios being introduced back in the late 90's that could run open software, but not setting up inexpensive cell phone networks has become a reality and I know I want to be involved. For around $4500 you can setup a cell phone tower that is solar powered, self contained and can be used to bring voice calling and texting to an area that has absolutely no service. Connect that to the internet, and you have international calling at extremely reasonable rates. Ability to set this up in a relief zone where there is no infrastructure? Priceless.

SHSH Blobs and Installing Older Versions of iOS

We have several iOS devices, and all of them are jailbroken. Apple put restrictions on what versions of their software you can run on the hardware you purchased from them. They literally say today you can install version X, but tomorrow you can only install version Y. When you try to install the operating system on your iPhone/iPod/iPad, they make you ask them (over the internet) if it's ok! I think that the walled garden they are trying to create started feeling like a prison long ago.

The technology they use to keep the door of the prison shut is based on digital signatures. You have to get an apple 'signature of permission' to install a particular version of the operating system that runs on the device. This signature is specific to both that exact device and software version combination. You can and should save these digital 'signatures of permission' so that you can install older software after apple decides to stop granting permission.

I recently had to do that myself using a combination of Firmware Umbrella and the fact that Saurik's Cydia retrieves and stores these signatures for you if you ask it to. If Saurik has your specific device + software version signature, then you can ask him for it when you try to install new software on your phone.

Basically you change your computer to go to Saurik's server at 74.208.10.249 when you ask to goto gs.apple.com. It pretends to be that apple server that hands out signatures (or that refuses to once they choose to force you to upgrade). I was stuck for a while until I realized that you need to put the device in DFU mode.



Even if you don't want to jailbreak for whatever reason, I would suggest saving your 'signatures of permission' (SHSH blobs) with Firmware Ubrella.

Homebrew Apple Club

Let's take a mental meandering back to the beginning of Apple in the mid '70s. The original Apple computers where hobby, for-fun machines. Heck the schematics for the Apple I were passed around at the early meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club and Wozniak himself (co-founder of Apple) would go to people's houses and help them build their own. Freely exchanging, modifying, and giving software and hardware designs back to the community was the norm.

Fast forward into the early 80's and you see a shift in that open culture. Most companies adopted copyright and restrictive licenses to limit or prohibit copying or redistribution. Richard Stallman had been modified the software for printers to work well at MIT before Xerox showed up with one of the first laser printers. He was quite frustrated when Xerox would not give him access to the source code so he could utilize the improvements he had used on the previous printers. For the first time we began to see centralized control of the functionality of the hardware we purchase.

Stallman went on to found the Free Software Foundation, and write the General Public License upon which Linux is based.

Free software is simply software that respects our freedom — our freedom to learn and understand the software we are using. Free software is designed to free the user from restrictions put in place by proprietary software, and so using free software lets you join a global community of people who are making the political and ethical assertion of our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others. - Working Together for Free Software

Not being able to share software shortly extended to not being able to share music, and then electronic books. Much of this being controlled by Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) software which limits how you can read, view, or listen to books, video, and music. Of course Apple is on the forefront of this.

Apple's iPod/iPhone/iPad software, now called iOS, is designed not only to control and restrict the books, music, and content you can listen too but also the applications. They would like to keep track of every piece of software you have and make sure you can only buy it from them. We've gone from sharing everything that can run on a computer with each other to requiring that you have a credit card and billing address tied to an iTunes account so that we can run even free applications!

The limitations that Apple puts on what we can run on the hardware we own are arbitrary and we are not bound by them. Essentially they would prefer us to sit inside a jail they control. It's a silly prison that it's very legal to just break out of. To break out of this jail, you just have to open the door. However they keep making the door harder and harder to open. The software they would prefer you run on your iPhone is one they completely control.

This is a big jump over the past 30 years from helping people build the hardware from scratch in their homes. Apple, I'm disappointed. You are becoming the dispensary of Information Purification Directives in your walled garden of iOS.
Why do I feel like I'm staring at a big iPad in the 1984 commercial?

Text of "1984" Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

We shall prevail indeed...

Boulder Bohemian will code for karma - Boulder Daily Camera

The Daily Camera did an article on me about two years ago. I sure do miss my '79 VW Bus Wally, but the spirit moves on as a friend told me about the song "free" by the Zac Brown Band. It's a fairly repetitive song, but does reflect Shalom and my life pretty well up to this point:


So we live out in our old van
Travel all across this land
Me and you

And we'll end up hand in hand
somewhere down on the sand
just me and you

Chorus:
Just as free
Free as we'll ever be
And ever be

We drive until the city lights
dissolve into a country sky

lay underneath the harvest moon
Do all the things that lovers do
Just me and you

Chorus...

No we don't have a Lot of money
No we don't have a Lot of money
No we don't have a Lot of money (X 10)
All we need is love

Chorus..

So we live out in our old van
Travel all across this land
Me and you