Unlocking Cellphones Becomes Illegal

The article Unlocking Cellphones Becomes Illegal Saturday reports that today, January 26, 2013, the government has declared that it is illegal to unlock a new cell phone.



Myself, I did not even consider the issue as this seems to me to be clearly stated in the contract that people sign with the big mobile carriers.

However, it is amazing that the government will prosecute people for breaking private contracts, using Copyrights as the excuse.  Big corporations that are overcharging people for phones and for mobile services now have the US Government to enforce their contracts.

Sadly it is no longer ironic that the US Government does not take interest in prosecuting the big corporations for violating the contracts with their customers.  The US Government has absolutely no concern for the fact that these corporations promise good service but do not supply good service.  The government takes no action regarding the abuses of these corporations with poor reception, dropped calls, bad connections, and a host of other issues.

Instead, the government helps the corporations to enforce the contract in a one-sided action against the little people.  Suing these companies is restricted to class action law suites because of the cost factors.  These suits are a joke as they never actually punish the corporate thieves and most customers never even see any substantial refunds.

Moreover, the corporations are allowed to track the customers’ activities without restriction and without customer consent.  “Minority Report” type selling of the customers’ activities and even location is now common.  People are even being conned into accepting retinal scanning “for their protection.”

In the end, it is the willful gullibility of the customers that allows this.  Greed, a.k.a. “envy” and “idolatry,” lusting after every new technological gimmickry.  If people did not buy the overpriced phones and plans, and if they demanded proper service or stopped using the phones, and if they voted for officials who actually cared about people rather than enslaving them through economics and promotion of lust, things would be different.

But that requires an otherworldly mindset.

Philippians 3:20

Colossians 3

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Is this Cool, or What?

My wife sent me this link with the video that shows below: iPhone 5 with “Rubberband” Electronics Turns into iPad mini [Concept Video].




Wow!

Is there any other immediate response that one would expect upon first viewing this?

Of course, no such device actually exists.  But the animation is fantastic.

Do people think beyond the “Wow” moment after viewing this video?  Do people consider how short the durability of such a gadget will be?

Do people consider at all how this sort of video is programming their thinking?

The music chosen is powerful.  It creates the immediate sense of something heroic being accomplished.  It leaves a person feeling as though the creation of this gadget is going to accomplish liberation and empowerment of the people who own them.

If one really considers what these gadgets are designed to accomplish, the exact opposite purpose will be perceived.  They are designed to make people more dependent upon the already failing cellular networks.  They are designed to bind people to these tracking devices.

Notice what is being taught about genuine customer service where a person can expect to have actual contact with another person and obtain real help when things go awry.  We are being taught even in this video that such personal interaction will no longer be available and that a computer will tell us what we can and will do.  Don’t bother calling.  All that you will receive is an extended litany of harassing, preprogrammed automation.

All of our personal information will be (and is) stored in a massive data base which will be immediately accessible to those who have the right connections.

In the meantime, the smaller independent businesses are being eliminated and real jobs are evaporating.  Freedom to operate and function independently is being eliminated.  Thinking that stretches beyond what is promoted by those who have predetermined the new societal programming is diminishing.

Thus the title for this post is: “Is this cool, or what?” with the emphasis on the “or what.”

Do most people even ask “or what” anymore?

I find it alarming to realize that if I drive away from the house without my cell phone that my first thought is that I should drive back to get it, even if I am only going to the store to purchase a gallon of milk.  This has actually happened on a couple of occasions recently.  I was aghast when I heard myself think, “Oh, what will I do?  What if I need to call Stephanie with a question?”  For crying out loud!  I was only to be away for 15 minutes or perhaps half of an hour!

Yikes!  I’ve been programmed!

And this is only a tiny example of the social programming that is prevalent in society today.

Perhaps it is time for people to stand back a bit to gain a broader perspective and to begin asking the “or what” and not merely allowing the reflex response of “Wow!  How cool!”


The Lord Jesus gave a very powerful warning:

     No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.  (Matthew 6:24)

Mammon is treasure, things, possessions.

What happens when mammon becomes one’s god?  What happens when a person becomes dependent upon and puts one’s trust in mammon?  Does one not subject oneself and willingly make oneself the slave of the things that one loves?

Furthermore, who in this world controls these things, these gadgets and the networks through which they are connected?

Are these not questions that people would do well to ask themselves?

I myself find it amazing that so many people are afraid of being enslaved to God and religion but eagerly enslave themselves to welfare and other government assistance, to gadgetry and those who sell and control the gadgetry, to social media, to health care providers, to insurance companies, to Social Security payments, and to employers who provide benefit packages.  All of these demand subjugation and servitude.  They all offer very low levels of security.  And, they all ultimately fail those who give them their trust.

Yet God, the Lord, who makes Himself known through the Scriptures and through His means of grace, gives freely even to those who refuse to trust Him.  He makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall for both the just and the unjust.  He gave His Son for the sake of the entire world, even those who would reject and hate Him and work against all of the good that He desires to provide for all.  He promises a life of hope and peace and contentment and joy to all who trust Him and receive His grace as He gives it. What is His demand?  He demands that we receive His gifts and His mercy and His love through the means that He has established, means that guarantee that the true giver is acknowledged so that His beloved do not cut themselves off from Him and the life that He gives.

Oh my.  What a meanie!  “Trust Me and receive My gifts and life as I give them so that you remain in the safety of my Communion.”  Oh what a tyrant!

Yet those who do trust Him and abide in His Word, acknowledging the goodness of His commands and precepts, do indeed enjoy what He promises to work through them.  Even those who do not truly know Him and do not truly live in His Communion, when they embrace what is taught in the Commandments and other declarations of what is good, they do indeed experience the goodness therein proclaimed.  Such is the way of this God and His decrees.  What He says is.  What He promises actually is observed.  And this efficacious way is everlasting.

Test this with a cell phone or other gadgetry.  Test this with your own feelings.  Test this with your own bodily strength.  Test this with your own mental prowess.  Test this with the health care industry.  Test this with your government and leaders.  Test this with your family and friends.  Test this with your whatever.

As for myself, I know that the Lord is faithful.  He never fails.  Even when I imagine that He fails, I eventually see that His promise in Romans 8 is true:

     And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to   his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate   to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God   be for us, who   can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?  (Romans 8:28-32)

I may not always perceive the good that the Lord is working, especially through the hardships and suffering that I face.  For sometimes the good is being worked for someone else, someone who observes from a distance the faithfulness of the Lord in preserving me through the fiery trials that I face.  Sometimes the lessons that I learn I do not realize that I have learned.  Yet the good has been worked for me, most especially the good of not losing hope and not despairing completely and the good of not becoming the monster that I would otherwise become.  Looking to the Lord and waiting upon Him in faith is truly a great and even immeasurable good.

For me, this is the “or what” that is truly exciting!  This is the gift that truly stretches to cover all of my needs through faith.  It especially stretches to cover my most essential need, the need for forgiveness and the new life of holiness that exists only in true communion with Christ.  In Him my guilt and my shame and my fears are drowned and washed away and replaced with confidence and freedom to live with hope and joy.

Why would I ever trade this for the temporal mammon that fails?



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Cricket TXTM8 3G A410 by ZTE

Help for people owning a Cricket TXTM8 3G A410 by ZTE

If you have any problems or need help for your Cricket TXTM8 3G A410 by ZTE this is where both Cricket and ZTE place your customer service requests.

Don’t bother calling or e-mailing them, unless you enjoy extended wait times, being placed on hold for even longer periods, and finally receiving no intelligible answer or perhaps even an insult.

I purchased this phone in part because it was advertized as having a 2 Megapixel camera and as being Bluetooth Compatible. But it is not. It is only designed to connect to Bluetooth headphones and the like. Moreover, no driver is available for the USB port. Thus, unless a person purchases an SD mini card there is no way to upload the pictures to one’s computer. Even with an SD mini card one must remove the back of the phone, remove the battery, remove the mini card, so as to insert the card in a card reader.

However, I did discover a way to utilize the blue tooth on my computer. Perhaps this method will work for others as well. I find it easier to use this method than it is to disassemble and reassemble my phone each time. Moreover, if one does not have a mini card, this method works to upload the photos to the computer.

Here are the steps:

First, on the computer screen, click on the Bluetooth icon.

Next click on “Receive a File.”

The following Screen will appear:

Then access the phone screen menu and go to “Multimedia” and then to “My Pictures.” Then select the first picture that is to be uploaded via Bluetooth to the computer.

Click on “Send” and then select “Via Bluetooth”.

Then select the device/computer to which the connection is to be made.

After clicking on the selected device, the following screen will appear on the computer screen:

Here one may rename the file if desired and can select the directory to which the file is to be saved.

Clicking “Next” saves the file and brings up the following screen.

Clicking finish closes the screen and allows the process to be repeated for the next photo.

Of course, one must first create the Bluetooth link/connection/pairing on the computer and on the phone.

The process feels tedious, but I find it to be less troubling than tearing my phone apart each time that I wish to save a few photos.

Anyway, I thought that I would share my discovery for anyone who may benefit. I called Cricket and ZTE, emailed both, scoured the Internet, called multiple phone accessory providers, and found no answers from any of those sources. Other telephone manufacturers supply the necessary drivers and sometimes even supply software for synching with an address book or even with Outlook. The method above is what I learned through my very limited knowledge of this technology.

I hope that someone else may benefit as well.

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As an addendum, I should note that the local Cricket people either at the Cricket corporate store or at Chit Chat are not to blame for the lack of service provided nor the insulting attitudes. The disrespect shown to customers and the complete lack of concern for providing drivers that make the phones functional is at the company levels of Cricket and ZTE. Local representatives can only give what is provided, including information.

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Foreign Customer Service

Customer Service today from any of the companies from whom customer service is truly needed seems to be a facade. In most cases the company has exported its customer service to third party providers in other countries. The customer service representatives usually do not have proper access to do what is needed to fix the problem. In addition they usually have not been well trained. Furthermore, they themselves are weary of the constant complaint regarding the language and culture barriers to productive communication.

The problem is real. It is not an imaginary problem that exists only in the perception of the frustrated customer. Even though the customer service representative may have spoken the English language for a lifetime, it is not the person’s primary language. Moreover the culture and geographic differences influence how people think and respond.

Even with British speakers of English the speech patterns and word usage and especially pronunciation is very different from American speakers. If the speaker is Irish or Scottish, the differences are even larger.

So the problem is not primarily the fault of the poor customer service representative in a country foreign to the calling customer. The fault is primarily the company’s. The company does not genuinely care about customer service. The company only cares about providing the facade of customer service, and doing so with the least cost that can be arranged.

In this day, even local companies, such as the Wichita Eagle newspaper, have their primary customer service phone service through the Philippines! How can someone in the Philippines know what is happening with newspaper delivery in Wichita, Kansas?

Telephone companies likewise port their phone calls everywhere except where the customer is. Cell phone providers often are the worst. The bottom line is that they don’t care whether or not the customer receives the service that has been promised. All they care about is promoting the false perception that the company cares about the customers. And this is true even when the customer service is within the USA.

And so from the banking institution to the newspaper agency to the cell phone provider, the customer is attacked with idiotic and worthless surveys. The surveys are conducted by telephone, by e-mail, and via the postal service (snail mail). And what is the intent of these surveys? Is it to improve customer service? Do these companies actually change what is wrong with and lacking in their service? No! What they do is add to the idiotic and mindless mantras that they require their customer service representatives to use in their responses to the customers’ questions. These prepared responses do not answer the questions. Neither do they improve the quality of understanding and communication. They simply present a pretense of politeness and caring. They are designed to give a false display of politeness and genuine concern while leaving the customer without any real answers or help.

Why do these companies do this? Is it merely to save money? Apparently not. So what is the real reason?

Consider the cell phone providers as an example. Over the years I have used Verizon, Cingular (which was hijacked by AT&T), AT&T, and now Cricket. I have experienced the same problems with each company: dropped calls, poor reception, handset issues, software/program issues, delayed or non-delivered voice mail, etc. I have experienced the same sad excuse for customer service with each company.

And I believe that I know why this is. It actually produces more sales for the companies!

If the customer does not receive satisfactory service, eventually the customer switches providers. Each of the providers use systems that require specific phones and accessories. Thus, they sell more phones. Some offer “free” or “discounted” phones for the contract snare. “Insurance” is offered on the phones, insurance that has a deductible that is higher than the company’s cost of the phone. The phones are designed not to be water resistant so that even heavy perspiration can eventually render the phone inoperable (and often not covered by the insurance). So the company gets to sell another phone.

In the meantime, customers are tortured with phone calls to representatives who are not properly trained and who use the language differently and therefore are unable to communicate effectively regarding technical issues that require the highest level of communication. The customer service representative receives abuse from the frustrated customers, which only makes the issue more severe. In fact, since there is no accountability for the representative, many of them simply hang up on the customer. Thus both the customer and the representative develop prejudices concerning people they have never truly met, and these are extended to their countrymen.

Meanwhile, the companies reap huge profits and their CEO’s siphon off huge bonuses.

Do I sound frustrated? Imagine that!

What frustrates me more is knowing that people continue to elect the same frauds to public office so that these companies will never be held accountable for not honoring their promises.

What frustrates me even more is knowing that in the most important matters of life, the everlasting matters, people are willfully choosing such facades and abuse. False doctrine in the churches is not only tolerated, not only accepted, but promoted and sought. And so, even in the one place where people should receive the comfort and peace that surpasses all understanding, instead they receive more pretense and abuse, often without even realizing what they are choosing for themselves.

The Lord Jesus and His apostles warned that these times would come. They warned that people would become more and more blind and non hearing and that their hearts would grow cold and that government would become corrupt beyond imagination and that the faith would be so abused and corrupted that the final days would be like the days of Noah. In the days of Noah, how many true believers remained? What was God’s answer to this? What answer does He say that He gives concerning the Last Day? In Noah’s days the world had become so corrupt that without the Lord’s intervention the last man of faith would have been overcome. Moreover the line from which the Savior would be born would have been eradicated by the enemies of the faith. The Lord saved Noah (and all the world) through water. The sinful world was washed clean through the great flood. At the return of the Lord Jesus at the Last Day, the cleansing shall be by fire. Those who have sought the destruction of the true faith and those who have been regenerated by it will be sent away forever and all sin shall be obliterated. The corruption and deception that now rules the world shall be gone and those who through faith are in Christ Jesus shall be forevermore set free from the frustration and disappointment and anguish of the lies and the sin.

John records the final word on this matter at the end of Revelation 22:

I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

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Cell Phone Power

Here is a demonstration of the power that is emitted by that little device that so many of us hold less than an inch from our brains.



Perhaps the speaker phone option is a good idea!