Using an iPhone on a Pay as You Go plan in Canada

Note: This post is more than a year old, so I’ve edited it with updated info. Edits are indicated.

If you’re interested in using an iPhone in Canada, but aren’t interested in being stuck in a lengthy contract, perhaps using a prepaid service can be an option. Here’s my 3-step guide to using an iPhone on a Pay as You Go plan in Canada.

Step 1: Acquire an iPhone in Canada.

First thing you’ll need is an iPhone. You can grab one on eBay or from your friendly neighbourhood iPhone seller. I’m not going to go into how to acquire an iPhone in Canada, you can figure that bit out yourself. Maybe your husband just bought a new iPhone and wants you to have his old hand-me-down iPhone or something like that.

A few things to watch for, though. If you get a first generation iPhone (sometimes called a 2G or 2.5G iPhone), you’ll have to unlock it, since it was never sold in Canada. This is trivial, and can be accomplished using the iPhone Pwnage Tool on either Mac OS X or Windows.

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Age of Persuasion Podcast

The very awesome CBC Radio show, The Age of Persuasion apparently now has a podcast.  “Terry O’Reilly is back exploring the countless ways marketers permeate your life, from media, art, and language, to politics, religion, and fashion.”

You can subscribe in iTunes by following this link: subscribe to Age of Persuasion Podcast.

Slackware Linux Tips

Slackware Linux is arguably one of the oldest, surviving versions of Linux; it is my distribution of choice. I am currently running Slackware 12.1 with the shiny 2.6.24.5 smp kernel. Slackware is very robust and secure, it does not use a lot of system overhead to run. This means that Slackware will run very efficiently on high-end machines and also on older hardware. Slackware has a reputation for being very difficult to use, this reputation is partly deserved.

Slackware does not use many graphical interfaces to set-up, configure your computer. You will be required to use a text editor and a root shell prompt to set-up many of the system functions. The installation procedure uses a ncurses based installer, an easy-to-use text based installer. If you are willing to learn, read, and have a lot of fun, then give Slackware Linux a try. If you feel comfortable with navigating on the command-line interface and using a text editor you will love Slackware. Once a Slacker, always a Slacker:-)
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