Lazybit

Fixed Dialing Number (FDN) is a feature of a phone's SIM card that can restrict outgoing calls only to a special list of numbers, or to numbers that match a certain template (like 0793519xx or 069xxx906). Incoming and emergency calls are not affected by this option, so 911 and 112 are always reachable.

As a parent, you can control the phone numbers your children can dial. For example, you can configure the SIM such that the kid can call only you, your spouse and your other child.
A business can use FDN as a security measure to prevent employees from dialing numbers outside the company from their corporate-paid account.

Fixed dialing is activated by entering PIN2. This prevents others from changing or disabling the FDN list. This number is usually distributed with the card itself. If you can’t find it, contact the mobile operator.

You can enable FDN on your phone, but editing the list of fixed dialing numbers can be cumbersome if you use the phone’s tiny keypad.


SIM reader with SIM Manager can enable FDN and edit the fixed dialing numbers much faster and easier.

1. The first thing you have to do is add the numbers you want to be able to dial. You can write them from scratch or copy them from your contacts.

   

2. Click Enable FDN feature in the option SIM menu:

   
3. Enter PIN2.
   
   

FDN is now enabled on your SIM card. No outgoing calls can be made to any numbers, other than those in the list of fixed dialing numbers, or emergency numbers. Even if the SIM card is plugged into a different phone - calls to numbers other than the allowed ones are not possible.

Things to keep in mind:

• If you enter an incorrect PIN2 three times in a row, it will be locked. You can unblock PIN2 if you know PUK2. If you’re not sure what these numbers are, contact your mobile operator.
• Even though not all SIM cards support FDN, practically any SIM card issued these days has it. If your card does not, see if your mobile operator can replace it.

If you use Google's two-step verification feature, you will stumble upon an authentication error with SIM Manager, when attempting to synchronize your SIM with the online phonebook.

Two-step authentication is something that can easily slip out of your mind, so you may think that the problem is with your password, or with the software. After repeated attempts to synchronize your phonebook, you just give up (and maybe blame it on SIM Manager)

To fix this, you have to create an application-specific password in your Google account settings, and use that password with SIM Manager.

1. Log onto your Gmail account and click account settings

   

2. Edit your two-step verification settings

   

3. Click Manage application-specific passwords

   

4. Generate a password for SIM Manager

   

5. Use this password with SIM Manager

   

That's it. Have fun synchronizing your contacts!

p.s. the password in the screenshot has been changed, don't try to use it ;-)

The SMSC stands for "SMS center", it is a system that manages the traffic of SMS (texts) in a mobile network. That's the place where the messages are kept for a while if they cannot be delivered instantly to the recipient.

Normally none of us has to be aware of it, because the SMSC is written to the SIM card by the mobile operator, so we don't have to configure anything.

On the file system of the SIM card, the SMS center is stored in EF SMSP (short message service parameters), the full path to the file is 7F10\6F42. The file can be read and updated, if you know PIN1.

The easiest way to change it is with SIM Explorer. It can display the file in a nice, human-readable form.

And if you prefer raw data - you can have that too:

Version 3.1 is about to go public, this story provides details about some of the entries in the changelog.

+ improved SIM card write speed, only updated records are written
+ the .manifest file is now embedded into the program
+ notifications about missing readers can be optionally disabled
+ automatically enable and start the smart card service, if possible
+ detect ActivClient and let people disable it, for it renders the reader unusable
+ gracefully handle AT&T cards that have incomplete USIM phonebooks (no email file)
+ added support for PTT (push to talk) records available on some 3G cards
- fixed the problem of pasting contacts to FDN sections
- addressed issue of a limited number of contacts copied from Google
- Facebook deprecated their contacts API, so the feature is removed

Full story »

If you sell your product on Amazon, you have to keep an eye on your feedback - a comment left by the buyer after the purchase. This article reflects everything I know about this subject, these tips are distilled from personal experience on the Amazon marketplace.

I am not a guru, and if you find anything that is explicitly contradicted by Amazon's documentation - it means that I am wrong, please point that out and I'll update the text.

Seller feedback is very important

• It helps you improve your service - people tell you what's wrong with it;
• People rely on this information when deciding whether to make a purchase or not;
• Amazon uses the feedback, among other things, to determine your product's position in the search results;
• A lot of negative feedback can cause your merchant account to be closed;
• Seller feedback is not the same thing as a product review. The former is shown on the seller's profile page, the latter - on the product page. Both types are important.

To see your seller feedback, log on to Amazon seller central.

The rules are simple

• Keep your average rating above 4.3
• Neutral feedback is not counted as positive, it reduces your rating
• Negative feedback is bad for you, learn from your mistakes and don't repeat them
• Negative feedback can be removed

What you should know about feedback on Amazon

• It can be removed within 60 days after it was published, so react swiftly; if you're late - the negative rating will stay there forever
• Feedback cannot be edited, only removed
• Only the buyer can remove the negative feedback
• Amazon will remove certain types of feedback, but they don't do this unless you ask them to; these cases will be reviewed below

What you must do

• Read the negative feedback, address the problem and make sure it never happens again. Feedback is a great way to see what your flaws are. It is easy to see the buyer as an enemy, but quite often they're just telling the truth.
• Contact the buyer and talk about the problem. If there is a way to solve it - do it. Explain how to deal with the error they ran into, give them a partial refund, etc. The solution varies from case to case, the point is to talk to the person and find a fair way to resolve the conflict.
• Calling is better than emailing. Amazon's internal mailing system is not always effective, some people simply don't read those messages, there is also a chance they will be flagged as spam.
• Be polite and remember that the customer is not an enemy. Think about the conversation before you make that phonecall. Ideally, a person who talks to clients is someone who knows about social engineering and who has read William Ury's "Getting to Yes", "Getting past No" and "The power of a positive No". You can also practice the conversation with a colleague, who will simulate the customer's answers; ideally - you'll have an answer for every case, such that nothing the customer tells you will catch you off guard. Prepare your BATNA too. Remember, the customer who left negative feedback is not your archnemesis.
• If you can't reach the customer, keep trying - call later, leave a voice message, write an email.
• Once you manage to address the problem and the person is happy - ask them to remove their negative feedback.
• If the customer is unreachable, write a response to the feedback. If you can't talk to the person, at least react in such a way that other people who read the negative feedback will see that you tried to deal with it, that the company has people in it - rather than insensitive zombies that read scripts.

If the customer is cooperative and they are willing to remove the feedback, they can do so:

• Go to the Amazon homepage
• Go to Community\Personalization\Seller Feedback Submitted By You
• Find the entry and click Remove

When Amazon removes negative feedback for you

• If the product is fulfilled by Amazon (i.e. they handle the handling and shipping for you) and the comment is about a late or lost package. Obviously, this is not your problem and the feedback is actually about Amazon's modus operandi. It is fair to remove it, and they do so, if you ask them.
• If the comment contains obscene language.
• Or if it reveals personally identifying information.
• If the entire comment is a product review, rather than a seller review. What this means is that negative feedback is not about the speed or quality of delivery, but it focuses on product features or faults.

Amazon won't remove the negative feedback automagically, you have to get in touch with them and ask them to remove the comment, and point out the rationale for the request (one of the reasons above). Do so via the contact seller support section, then click Orders\Customer feedback problems.

Good luck selling!

If you're someone who checks the system logs every now and then, to make sure things are running smooth - you may have noticed some errors related to Private Disk:

The PRVDISKAMD64 service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.

The program works fine, despite these log entries.  The error is not critical and it has no impact on the program's functionality. But why is it there? And what does it mean?

Private Disk comes with several flavours of drivers - 32-bit and 64-bit. Upon installation, both driver types are registered, but only one of them is successfully loaded by the system.

The other type, which is not compatible with the platform, fails to load - hence the log entry is generated.

In other words, you can simply ignore these notifications.

This behaviour will be changed in the next release, so the system won't bother loading modules that are not designed for it. Until then, here is a simple solution:

1. download Autoruns from Sysinternals
2. run the program and switch to the Drivers tab
3. find the drivers the pubisher of which is Dekart
4. uncheck the versions that do not correspond to your system
5. the new settings will come into effect after a restart

On choosing the entries:

• if you have a 32-bit (x86) system, disable the ones ending with "amd64"
• for 64-bit platforms, disable the other ones (as in the example below)

What the modules mean:

• pdfilter - Disk Firewall, the application-layer access filter;
• prvdisk - virtual disk driver (the thing that makes the encrypted drive show up in My computer as a regular disk);
• prjndl - the disk encryption driver that implements AES-256 in CBC mode, our NIST-certified implementation of it.

The best way to gather detailed troubleshooting information about Windows is the built-in System information tool. It generates a report that contains details about the hardware and software configuration. Here's how it works:

1. Press Start\Run
2. Type msinfo32 and press Enter
3. Once the program is loaded, press File\Save
4. Send the generated NFO file to your geeky friend who knows what to do with it

Here's what the report will contain:

• exact version of Windows and service packs;
• installed software;
• currently running applications;
• start up programs;
• system services and their status;
• hardware and hardware drivers (and their versions);
• partition table (indicating the size and file system of each drive);
• users and user-groups.