Search: “cop”

I passed by and picked up my copy of Call of Duty 4 today from Rihab in Hawalli. I’ve been playing it for around an hour now and so far I think its the best military first person shooter ever. There are sooooo many enemies all trying to kill you at the same time its just non stop chaos all the time.
COD4 > Halo 3.

As I’ve mentioned before I get a lot of strange emails, at least one a day and sometimes when they are really strange I decide to share them with you. This is one I just received now, I have no clue what it says! By the way, I received it exactly the way its written below.. with the spaces and all…

ｙｅｓｔｅｒｄａｙ　ｉ　ｂｏｕｇｈｔｆｒｏｚｅｎ　ｔｗｏ　ｍｉｎｃｅ，ｂｕｔ　ｔｈｅ　ｐｒｉｃｅ　ｉｓ　ｖｅｒｙ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ．ｂｕｔ　ｔｒｕｔｈｆｕｌｌｙ　ｏｎｅ　ｐｉｃｅｓ０．５４５ｆｉｌｓ，ｉｍ　ｂｕｙ１．０２０ｆｉｌｓ　ａｎｄ　１．０４０ｆｉｌｓ．ｉｍ　ｓｔａｙ　ｉｎ　ｆｉｎｔａｓ，ｓｈｏｐｓ　ｕｎｔｉｌ　ｖｅｒｙ　ｄｉｓｔａｎｔ．ｗｈａｔ　ｉｓ　ｔｈｅ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｃｅ　ｍｉｎｕｔｅｓ　ｙｏｕ？

Update: For those of you just seeing shapes instead of copy, here is what it says:

Yesterday I bought frozen two mince. but the price is very different. but truthfully one pieces0. 545fils. im buy1. 020fils and 1. 040fils. im stay in fintas. shops until very distant. what is the difference minutes?

A friend of mine passed me his two iPhones today to unlock. He purchased them around the same time I purchased my last iPhone except his arrived with the 1.1.1 firmware while mine luckily arrived with the 1.0.2 one. Yesterday an updated version of AnySIM got released which I posted about and which supposedly unlocked the 1.1.1 iPhones but I tried it and it didn’t work.

The steps to unlocking a 1.1.1 iPhone are fairly easy, its just one tiny extra step compared to unlocking the 1.0.2 phones.

1) I downloaded the latest version of INdependence
2) I ran it and clicked on the option to Enter DFU mode (this is the option that you didn’t have to do with 1.0.2)
3) I quit INdependence, ran iTunes and restored the phone to version 1.0.2
4) I quit iTunes and ran INdependence again
5) I clicked on Activate
6) I then clicked on Jailbreak
7) I then clicked on install SSH
8) I FTP’ed to the phone and copied AnySIM
9) I ran AnySIM

Thats all the steps required to activate and unlock the iPhone. I also installed AppTapp but that can be done later. Now my issue is everything went smoothly except for the AnySIM unlock. It ran and gave me an error at the end which is normal, but when I rebooted it still wouldn’t work with the local GSM network. I tried unlocking both iPhones and had the same issue. Everything else on the iPhone works except for the phone. I don’t know if this is happening with other people or if I missed a step somewhere but whatever the reason might be it’s too late at night to figure it out.

I just found a limited edition copy of one of my favorite movies, Ichi the Killer. It comes in a blood bag! (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

Moey took a picture of a Eureka ad in the newspaper for Eureka in which they are selling the 8GB iPhone for KD400! Thats over KD250 more expensive then if you bought it yourself off the Internet. If that wasn’t bad enough Moey also pointed out that the visual of their press ad was copied off a Deviant Art user! The picture above is of the Eureka advert side by side with the original artwork which can be found [Here]

Thanks Moey

I got a lot of emails and some people left comments asking me how to unlock the iPhone. Well if anyone took 2 seconds to google it they would have found a ton of “how-to guides”. If you have a mac just download INdependence, activate the iPhone then copy anySIM to the iPhone and launch it to unlock it. It can’t get any easier and its free.

Update: If you have a Mac follow this guide [Mac Guide] and if you have a PC follow this one. [PC Guide]

This post is a bit technical but its meant to be a small guide for bloggers who want to post using their phones.

The past two days I have been experimenting with different softwares and ways of moblogging. The easiest way I found to moblog was with a software for my Nokia called Shozu. It’s very easy to use, I just take a picture and a small window pops up asking me if I want to send it to my blog. I could then click yes and it sends it or I click on more options and add more details like a subject title and body copy. But I had two problems with Shozu. The first one is the fact that it resized my images down to a thumbnail size and you could only see the larger picture by clicking on the link. I didn’t like that and there was no option to change it. The second problem I had was that since the software is free, Shozu places their logo at the end of your posts. I also didn’t like that, they should at least have an option where if you pay for the software they remove the logo but they don’t so I looked for an alternative.

After a bit of experimentation and googling I found a better solution (for me at least). It’s not as practical as Shozu but I am in total control of everything. I decided to go with the Blog by Email route and here is what I did:

1) Created two new email accounts
2) Got a plugin for wordpress called Postie
3) Got a software for my Nokia called Resco Viewer

I setup one email account on my Nokia to send emails from. The second email account would be the one I would send my posts to. I then installed the Postie plugin in WordPress which is a must have plugin if you are planning to blog by email. Firstly, Postie allows u to attach pictures and videos to your emails and then posts them for you. it also gives you a lot of other options for example Postie has an option where it could palce the image above or below the body copy, I chose above so it would match my regular posts. Postie could also resize your images and compress them before it posts them which is really important if you can’t resize images on your phone. Finally I purchased the software Resco Viewer for my Nokia. With my phones camera I have two size options when it comes to taking pictures, 1600×1200 and 640×480. The max size for images on my blog is 400 pixels wide. If I wanted to I could take pictures at 640×480 and have Postie resize them for me but by resizing the pictures myself on the phone and compressing the images slightly, the file sizes would be a lot small meaning it would be cheaper for me since I pay per kilobyte.

So the process now goes something like this:
1) I take a picture on my phone at 1600×1200 pixels
2) I resize the image to 400×300 and compress it
3) I send an email to my blog and attach the resized image
4) Postie checks my email constantly, when it finds an email it posts it on the blog under the category Moblogging

Now the biggest problem is my phone doesn’t have a spell checker to expect a ton of misspellings. So thats basically how I will be moblogging while in Paris. I will continue to post regular posts but the photo ones are meant to be something new and something I haven’t done on this blog yet. It should prove to be entertaining.

I am at the Kuwait Bookshop in Muthana and just picked up the last copy of the Paris City Guide by Wallpaper*

Did anyone check out the back page of Al-Watan newspaper today? There is an advert for these two Kuwaiti magicians who recently made a helicopter disappear in Las Vegas. The magic duo go by the name Majstick and I checked out their website and they don’t have the video of their helicopter disappearing trick but they do have videos of other tricks like a bouncing tissue and a floating ball. I took the courtesy of uploading their videos to YouTube to make it more available to everyone, you can check out their magic tricks by following the links below.

The tricks:
MajBall
MajTissue
MajStick

You can check out their website for more information on them. [Link]

Thanks Holla!

Last month I posted about how Bazaar used an illustration for the cover of their dining guide without crediting the illustrator, without paying for the image and without permission from the artist. They replied thanking me for finding the artist and that they contacted him and were going to reimburse him.

Well they did contact him but the amount they offered to pay the artist was just $200. Considering that rights managed images start at a $1000 and upwards then you could imagine how low $200 is. Anyway the original artist had this to say about the whole incident:

I have been invited to comment the case with Bazaar copying an image that once was created by me. The image was used without my permission. I was therefore never compensated financially and for good reasons I assume that I was never mentioned in the credit line. I was made aware of the unauthorized usage before Bazaar contacted me.

When they contacted me they offered to compensate me financially. I am sure they found that the compensation was fair but I have a different opinion. In fact we are in a position where we don’t seem to be able to reach an agreement. I have therefore decided that it is not worth to take this any further due to the cost and time that I would have to spend on this.

I have also decided that I will not accept money that Bazaar offers me since that would be accepting the terms of how they have used my image. So case is closed.

I think it is vital to defend the copyright law for many different reasons. In most countries it is seen as self-evident that you shouldn’t use an image without paying for the copyright, but from what I can tell by following the debate on this website I understand that Q8 might not be one of those countries. The sad thing is that in countries where the copyright law is not taken seriously the originator has little or no chance at all to protect his work.

I am a freelance illustrator and my only source of income is the images I create. I have a family to support and bills to pay. If I manufactured, let’s say bikes and someone took one of my bikes form the warehouse and used it without telling me, how would you characterize that? Should the unauthorized use of images be treated differently?

I have been featured on design blogs all over the world. I take it that most of the people who are publishing my work there are very young. But they all have something in common – they contact me before or shortly after publishing my images and very often they write “Copyright Bo Lundberg” . What is it that they understand and that some publishers don’t?

Another aspect is that when I create an image it is commissioned by a client. They are paying for the usage of the images. To illustrate what can happen when people copy my images I would like to give an example. Once I had a call from a publisher in the US that I had done more than 80 illustrations for. They were extremely upset with me since they had found all my illustrations in another book printed in Asia and now they were contemplating on suing me. What had happened was that someone just ripped my images from the original book and created a whole new book, obviously without informing me. I managed to reason with the original client but as you might understand it was quite a situation to have been copied and then facing a possible trial.

I wish all the designers in Q8 good luck in your efforts. And to those who commission work I would just like to ask you to think twice before using an image without authorization. In the long run – who wants to work as an illustrator or photographer if you are not compensated and protected by copyright law?

Bo Lundberg

The reason I think we have a big problem here is because Bazaar is one of the biggest and most respected magazines in Kuwait. If they aren’t going to abide by copyright laws and set an example to the smaller publishers who will? They might as well do what Campus Cruise did and just take pictures off flickr and put them on the cover.

I was sitting at home watching TV when I heard sirens outside. They were getting louder and louder so I looked out the window and saw a bunch of fire trucks coming towards my building. I figured they must have taken a wrong turn but to my surprise the trucks started parking under my building and a crowd started to gather. I was thinking WTF? Their were 8 trucks, a cop car and an ambulance parked under my building so I figured something must be wrong. I took my camera and headed downstairs to see what all the commotion was about.

Once I got downstairs I saw the building keeper (haress) and asked him what was going on. He told me a store inside the mall (I live over a shopping mall) must have had a short circuit but there wasn’t anything to worry about. Fire fighters were running into the building with full gear on so I decided to take a few shots. Luckily the fire was put out quickly before any other stores caught fire.

The Ministry of Information Interior has a competition to find the best driver in Kuwait. You can apply online and the grand prize is I think KD250.
To qualify you need to:

1) Own either a car or motorbike
2) Not have gotten any traffic violations between 07/31/2006 and 01/07/2007
3) Not have had any car accident between 07/31/2006 and 01/07/2007

To enter the competition visit the MOI website. [Link]

I am Am I the only one who finds this competition funny? Funny or not I am still going to sign up.

update: Imagine if the cops start recruiting drivers…

“Hi, sorry to pull you over but we’ve been tailing you for the past 30 minutes and we’ve noticed your driving skills are unparalleled. We would like you to consider signing up to the “Role Model Driver of the Year” competition because we think you have a strong chance of winning. What do you say?”

If you are going to copy paste articles from blogs and put them on your website at least have the courtesy to link the original blog properly. Gulfnews had no problem copying and pasting my Faloda post onto their website but when it came to copying and pasting my blogs website address they misspelled it and it ended up as 248.am.com!

Its cool they are into blogs and actually publishing them on their website BUT I would do things differently. For one thing I would make the url’s for the blogs at the very least clickable. That way their readers could just click on the links and be taken to our sites helping us get more traffic.

The second thing is I wouldn’t copy and paste blog posts word for word and publish them like that on the site. Instead I would actually get one of the writers to summarize the articles (like we bloggers do) and then provide links to the original posts in case their readers want to read more. That way they would be supporting bloggers again by sending traffic their way.

The way Gulfnews has things set up now they aren’t sending any traffic to the blogs and instead are just using blogs to add more content to their own website. Thats basically stealing since they are taking articles without permission and then not giving anything back in return.

As I said its cool that they are into blogs but I would take things a step further and actually try to support bloggers by sending traffic to them.

Make sure you check their blogs section at gu.lf.news.com

A nice list when planning your vacation:

1. Moscow
2. London
3. Seoul
4. Tokyo
5. Hong Kong
6. Copenhagen
7. Geneva
8. Osaka
9. Zurich
10. Oslo
11. Milan
12. St Petersburg
13. Paris
14. Singapore
15. New York

Kuwait isn’t in the top 50. Actually the only country from the Gulf which is on the list is UAE and it takes two spots, 34 for Dubai and 45 for Abu Dhabi. Here is the top 50 list. [Link]

A commenter posted a link to a Kuwait Times article entitled “What not to do in Kuwait”. K.thekuwaiti replied back to the commenter telling him the article was retarded because every piece of advice ends with a warning that you would be raped if you don’t do this.

I decided to check out the article myself and its true what K.thekuwaiti said. The article is giving the worst impression on Kuwait and a lot of things are really taken to the extreme. Here are some examples from the article:

Avoid starting friendly conversations with taxi drivers. This would give him the impression that you want him to have sex with you and of course, he would ask you if you are married and if your husband is with you. Never admit to be single and alone or even to confess that you are a runaway maid or employee. Many of them would not hesitate to rape you and leave you empty handed and get you pregnant.

So tip #1, don’t talk to taxi drivers or they will rape you.

Avoid accepting gifts or laughing over sexual jokes with your boss unless it is really okay with you and this is what you want .If you came from an environment where you are very open with the opposite gender, then you might think that such jokes are okay but here, it is not. This would give men a hint that you are ready to have sex with him and you could find yourself a rape victim. Besides, accepting someone’s gifts means approval.

So tip #2, don’t be friendly with your boss or he will rape you.

Avoid trying to look sexy by showing the sexiest parts of your body. You may think that you have a sexy body and want the world to see that because it is okay for you, but do not do that here. Lots of men here would think of you as a prostitute and may try to reach or touch you by any means. You may not mean it but this would be hard to convince them because they came from a different culture. The culture here associates clothes with manners. The more you cover yourself, the more respected you will be.

Tip #3, if you are hot people will think you are a prostitute and you will get raped.

Avoid fighting with a Kuwaiti. He simply wouldn’t hesitate to use any wasta to make you the wrong person of the dispute and make you take the blame. You might end up begging to him just to let you go!!!!

Tip #4, don’t fight with a Kuwaiti or he will rape you.

You can check out the full article on the Kuwait Times website but in case they decide to remove it you can grab a copy from [here]. The writer of the article is Muna Al-Fuzai. [Link]