Samsung Gets Stupid With WiFi-Only Galaxy Tab

From an owner Comment at the Circuit City site listing for the WiFi-only Samsung Galaxy Tab:

Samsung in their infinite wisdom, decided that we don’t need to pair a bluetooth keyboard or mouse with the device and disabled it. Bluetooth with T-Mobile and AT&T 3G tabs can do this but this one cannot.

And Bluetooth is not mentioned in the specs, either!

Update: Looking at Amazon user comments — as well as the specs — there is Bluetooth, but it’s 2.1, not 3.0. Which makes me wonder what the Circuit City buyer was trying to connect Bluetooth-wise that led him to believe it was totally disabled.

Update 2: Wow, it seems the WiFi version should be avoided altogether:

i bought a wifi only version yesterday, the processor is a TI not a hummingbird, but they are both ARM cortex a8 (i think) the screen and resolution are the same, the Graphics chip is indeed a power VR sgx530 instead of the power-VR sgx540 in the GSM version

Samsung Galaxy Tab Jacked To Prepaid Boost Mobile

I was doing some research about the Samsung Galaxy Tab today and found out there’s a thriving business hacking it to work with Boost Mobile’s prepaid data plan. If the prices are to be believed, the monthly data plan is just $11/month!

Here’s one link: Samsung Galaxy Tab Boost Mobile Unlimited 3G Only $11/Month

Here’s a Craigslist ad: White Samsung Galaxy Tab (BOOST CDMA) NIB – $500 (Parkchester)

And here’s a very convincing — but very annoying, so stick with it — YouTube video showing the same cell number on the Tab as well as his Boost Mobile cellphone:

I don’t know how this is accomplished. From what I understand, Samsung has updated the firmware with signed/protected bootloaders. Plus, this is the first time I’ve encountered hacking a tablet for prepaid data service. I wish Sprint offered prepaid data service for the Galaxy Tab!

If anyone has a Samsung Galaxy Tab jacked to work with Boost Mobile, leave a Comment about how that’s been working out for you and if there are any gotchas.

Would this even be possible with MetroPCS?

Fort Breendonk

Fort Breendonk

In the camp punishment consisted of beatings, torture in a specially designed chamber, hanging or execution by firing squad, either in the camp or nearby. The camp commander Lagerkommandant Phillip Schmitt was known to set his German Shepherd dog loose on the inmates. His wife was also known to wander the camp, ridiculing the inmates and ordering punishments at whim. Severe and arbitrary beating occurred daily. Once an inmate, a Jewish boy of less than 20 years of age, was unable to continue working. The Flemish SS guards threw him into the moat, he could not swim and they refused to let him out. He struggled for over 15 minutes before finally drowning.

The Forgotten Camps: Breendonk (Belgium)
Breendonk Memorial

Read A Lost du Maurier Story For Free!

The Doll

Lost for more than 70 years, this dark story of a man’s obsessive passion for Rebecca, a mysterious violinist, hasn’t been published since it appeared in a small collection in 1937

This is probably the only time you will see “Daphne du Maurier” as a byline in a modern newspaper feature.

Anonymous At It Again

UPDATED: Anonymous Hits Chamber!

As we speak I’m sitting on a mile high pile of data released about the US Chamber of Commerce. Thousands and thousands of docs released a few hours ago. Wanna help read through the docs and see what crazy things the Chamber is up to? There’s thousands of these docs. It’s a 1.2 GIGABYTE download. My computer is choking on it. Looks like a lot of docs scraped from their sites.

This evening I came across a reference to a torrent on Twitter that caught my eyeball — A “torrent” in this case is basically a document dump. Basically. The message intrigued me not only because it mentioned secret documents from the US Chamber of Commerce, but also….

A. It’s a document dump from Anonymous

and

B. It contains documents from an organization that particularly makes my teeth curl, the Michigan based Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Those are the dudes who brought us the Overton Window. They’re kind of nuts.

Two Of Thirty-Eight

38 Lessons I’ve Learned in My 38 Years

2. Possessions are worse than worthless — they’re harmful. They add no value to your life, and cost you everything. Not just the money required to buy them, but the time and money spent shopping for them, maintaining them, worrying about them, insuring them, fixing them, etc.

Yes. Also see: Why Your “Collectibles” Are Worthless

And oh hell yes:

21. Let go of expectations. When you have expectations of something — a person, an experience, a vacation, a job, a book — you put it in a predetermined box that has little to do with reality. You set up an idealized version of the thing (or person) and then try to fit the reality into this ideal, and are often disappointed. Instead, try to experience reality as it is, appreciate it for what it is, and be happy that it is.

Go see the other thirty-six.

Those Who Change Things

The Complete Guide to Not Giving a F**k

FACT NUMBER 4. Those who don’t give a fuck change the world. The rest do not.

Yes.

Google’s Grunt Workers: ScanOps

Workers Leaving the Googleplex

However, a fourth class exists at Google that involves strictly data-entry labor, or more appropriately, the labor of digitizing. These workers are identifiable by their yellow badges, and they go by the team name ScanOps. They scan books, page by page, for Google Book Search. The workers wearing yellow badges are not allowed any of the privileges that I was allowed – ride the Google bikes, take the Google luxury limo shuttles home, eat free gourmet Google meals, attend Authors@Google talks and receive free, signed copies of the author’s books, or set foot anywhere else on campus except for the building they work in. They also are not given backpacks, mobile devices, thumb drives, or any chance for social interaction with any other Google employees. Most Google employees don’t know about the yellow badge class.

I wondered how the scanning was done, where, and by whom.

I guess I know some of that now.

It’s too bad Google treats them like shit.

“Do No Evil,” my ass!

Hey, Google, in the real world, temps for lawyers, consultancies, and financial firms get more privileges than this!

The Inadequacy Of The Book

The “book” is dead

IMHO you are not losing money to piracy, you are failing to make money due to the inadequacy of the book as a medium for technical data.

I’ve been wondering for several years when the big collapse for some technical books would happen. You don’t have to pirate such books these days to get the information they contain. It’s all over the damn Internet, many times in better ways (“Just clip this code and paste!”). It looks like that collapse is happening now.

The original complaint, however, is like Encyclopedia Brittanica in print wanting Wikipedia to be made illegal.

Gas Jumps Ten Cents

Photo taken today, Saturday April 30, 2011:

Note that’s the Cash Only price. If you do the Rob Me Now And I’ll Pay You Later via plastic, that $4.39 is $4.45 at the pump!

Previously here:

Gas Jumps Four Cents In Two Days