Ed Stoffel

The British are coming unglued at revelations that the British media fakes things. At issue is the discovery that phone-in contests were rigged over a number of years, preventing the public from winning anything. In another matter, the royal family is upset at liberties taken in a documentary about the Queen, distorting actual events with editing trickery. It seems to escape the public notice that the media is in the illusion business.

 A Right Royal Media Mess, Forbes

 BBC sets up new standards panel, BBC

Dale Stoffel just wanted to be paid for work he had done in Iraq. He refused to pay kickbacks, and eventually began reporting to Washington on corruption of American officials in Iraq...

From the start, the Iraq reconstruction effort had been haunted by talk of corruption. It was a cash economy, and existed in a legal black hole with little accountability. Contracts were issued quickly, and written sketchily, by the CPA; frequently, businessmen dealing with the agency said, they'd be posted on a CPA Web site with bids due the very next day--an impossible deadline to meet for any contractor who didn't have advance warning. It was a climate ripe for corruption. Stoffel was naming names, his associates say, and telling startling stories--cash stuffed inside pizza boxes, kickbacks to purchasers inside the Green Zone. He told these stories to a new office set up specifically to ferret out financial wrongdoing in Iraq, the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq.

Then, believing he was about to be paid for the work he had done in Iraq, Stoffel and an associate were gunned down.

A mysterious insurgent group has claimed credit for Stoffel's killing; another terrorist group celebrated the murder and called him an American spy. His friends, though, aren't convinced that this was just another act of violence by militants in Iraq, and neither, apparently, is the FBI, which is now investigating his death.

  The Unquiet American, Washington Monthly

  FBI probes shooting of contractor in Iraq, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

  The Dale Stoffel mystery solved, Writing Company

I got a strange impulse yesterday to download a ringtone to my Sony Ericcson W600i cellphone. So I went online to the AT&T website and browsed through the available ringtones. Finding one I liked, I clicked to purchase and download it to my phone. That sent a text message to my phone to click and pick up the ringtone through the cellphone's browser. Problem is, I got a message saying there was an error processing the transaction, and to call customer service, telling them it was error code 63490. I called customer service, and was on the phone with them for over an hour. They tried unregistering and reregistering my AT&T MediaNet ID. They had me try my phone's SIM card in another phone, and I tried another phone's SIM card in my phone. I tried ordering through the computer, and ordering exclusively through the phone. I tried different ringtones. None of these allowed the download of a ring tone. In the end, they said they suspected there was something wrong with my phone AND its SIM card. That sounded like a guess to me, but I smelled an opportunity. I asked when I could upgrade to a new phone, and they allowed me to do so immediately, rather than waiting the standard amount of time.

So I hopped in the car and drove to the nearest AT&T store, only 5 miles away. I've been looking online at phones with iTunes in them. Motorola's website says iTunes can be installed on the Razr, Slvr, and always comes on the Rokr. I asked the salesperson if it was available on the new Razr V3xx, and she said it could be downloaded to it. So I got the Motorola V3xx and a nice case to protect it. I asked about cables to allow file transfer, and audio hookup. She had nothing in stock to help in this regard.

Once home, I went online and purchased a USB cable, and audio cables (one from the phone to RCA, one from the phone to 3.5mm stereo) from the Cellphone Shop and Wireless Market.

I then went to MemorySuppliers to purchase additional storage in the phone for music files. I was able to get a 2Gb MicroSD memory card there for $39 including shipping.** (They told me I would get a credit for this link, but they never paid!

Checking out the phone features, I found that iTunes is NOT already installed on the Motorola V3xx. Instead, it has something called AT&T Music. This seems to be a basic music player with lots of links to buy music services. It does not appear to be something that will sync with iTunes on my computer.

Going back to the Motorola website, it appears that iTunes is only available on the V3xx in some foreign countries... not in the U.S. There are some hacks around to try and install a form of iTunes, but at your own risk without support... and doing so could crash the phone.

So the way to put music files on the phone seems to be using a USB cable for file transfer onto the phone. If I find that iTunes does sync to the phone, or install on the phone, I'll post an update.

Oh... one more thing. I went back online to download that ring tone to the V3xx... it wasn't compatible. None that I like are.

Having recently moved, my wife and I changed our cellphone numbers to our new local area. Only two days later, we've begun receiving marketing text messages from AT&T.

First, my wife got one. I called AT&T to find out if I was being charged for receiving such text messages, and how to shut them off without it also costing us money. The message says to stop receiving them, text "STOP" to 3713. The AT&T rep said that the incoming messages were free, and that sending a stop request should also be free. Then doing so, I received a text message back saying that I had opted out of marketing messages, but that it would take 10 days to update my marketing preferences. I decided to do the same thing on my phone too, and while I was composing the text message to prevent the spam, I received the first spam message. They don't waste any time.

Visiting with President Bush at Kennebunkport, Russian President Vladimir Putin is really trying to dissuade us from building missile shield sites in Europe. Putin is offering site locations within Russia instead, so he can be sure we can't use the system to defend against Russian aggression. Will we take the deal?

 Putin offers U.S. missile site concession, Joseph Curl, Washington Times

Wired Magazine notes that CIA operations in Italy were reconstructed by examining cellphone records there...

 In Italy, CIA Agents Were Undone By Their Cell Phones, Matthew Cole, Wired Magazine

And it's nice to know there are honest people out there. AP reports on a woman who discovered $20,000 in a bank's drive-thru tube. Maybe it was too heavy to make it into the bank? Would you have done the same?

 Woman Finds $20K in Bank Deposit Tube, Associated Press