I would bet that she would have normally lost this case on every count if it were not for the issue of the police lied about having a warrant for her arrest. I believe the police can lie about a lot of things to catch a criminal but I do not believe that they can lie about a warrant to gain access to a home to search it for stolen material. That is the part of this case that is going to be the problem. Not that they had nuddie pictures of her. Sounds like the police jumped the gun and should have gotten a warrant from the prosecuting attorney to search the residence but didn't bother to wait for one and just tried to pressure her in to letting them in, which may have been illegal. That is going to be the main issue here and I would bet money that is why the judge didn't just simply throw out her case. She is probably going to loose on the privacy grounds but how the police searched her place and ended up arresting her, is probably going to be the big problem for the police.

The security firm has absolutely nothing to fear from her. They were acting in good faith on behalf of the actual owner of the laptop. They had no idea that she wasn't the one who stole the laptop. So them collecting documents and pictures of her, the user of the laptop, is all within the scope of finding out who is using the stolen laptop that is probably the thief and where the laptop is. Why isn't she suing her ISP for telling the police that she was the one with that IP at that time so that is where the police needed to go look? Unless the laptop had built in GPS the ISP had to tell the police exactly where the laptop was being using . There isn't some magic thing that automatically tells you the exact GPS location of every assigned IP address.

I don't see how there is going to be a Constitutional violation here at all. Exactly which amendment of the Constitution was violated and by whom? Unlawful search and seizure? Well the police didn't do the search and seizure of the laptop, the security company did. The laptop wasn't her's so it wasn't unlawful. So exactly where is the unlawful part? Was her privacy violated? Maybe, but I don't think so since everything was done in an attempt to find out who was using the laptop, to make sure they got the right person, and where the laptop was. Only the security company's people (maybe 1-2 people), maybe the owner (1 person), and the police and prosecuting attorney who got the warrant and the judge (maybe) saw the pictures. Doesn't seem like a lot of people to me, and all of them but the owner are professionals so I don't see the problem here.

I absolutely do not think that any kind of ruling should be done that removes rights from the rightful owner to trackdown and recover their stolen property. Why didn't she register the laptop with the manufacturer in case the laptop was recalled for product defects and safety issues? The fact that she didn't, I suspect is because she knew it was sold to her cheaper than the market is for it. I always register my used equipment with the manufacturer to make sure I know about product recalls or whatever. If I get a stolen used item then I will know instantly when I register it with the manufacturer.

It would have to be a pretty old laptop to be realistically worth only $60. Why the kid couldn't just reinstall the OS to fix the problem himself should tell you a lot about the fact it was probably a stolen laptop. I don't feel sorry for her one bit.

WRONG! Actually go and look at what the court said. It didn't say that anyone went to far. It said that the case wasn't cut and dry and thus would not be simply thrown out. The court did *NOT* decide any facts about the case one way or the other, other than to say there might be a case here, and it wasn't a situation where the case should definitely be thrown out right at the start. That is a huge difference from the court saying someone screwed up. This is just the court saying...ehhh maybe there is a case here, we don't know for sure so we are going to allow the case to go forward at this point.

The security company can *NOT* be an agent of the police. They are absolutely *NOT* acting on behalf of the police. They could care less about the police and what the police will or won't do. The security company is acting on behalf of the rightful owner of the laptop. If the owner of the laptop said send me the information and I'll take care of the issue from here, then that is exactly what the security company would have done. I would bet that in fact is exactly what the security company did. The owner said track it, they did and then sent the laptop owner the results for him to take to the police or whatever he wanted to do. The police can't activate the Lo-Jack on a car without the owner's permission or a warrant. So they are not acting on behalf of the police. The same thing here. The police can't just call up and say hey tell me where this laptop is.

So no the security company absolutely is *NOT* an agent of the police. An agent of police could be told hey go do this by the police and they would, without a court order. That is the nature and whole point of being an agent of the police, the person isn't acting under court order but simply the authority of the police. No security company is going to do anything simply because the police tell them to do it, not without a court order, and then they are not an agent of the police, but rather complying with a lawful court order.

It depends on the state. Most states have said you can record as long as at least 1 person knows they are being recorded. Given that the true owner of the laptop knew that the laptop was recording, I would find it hard to believe that the courts would say that the owner can not record pictures via the web cam to prove who actually stole or was using the stolen laptop at one point. That would have to be the most stupid legal ruling out there and would cause huge problems for other issues where people are trying to retrieve stolen items.

Sorry but the criminals or those dealing in stolen merchandise do not deserve more protections than the actual owner who is trying to retrieve their stolen property. If she has a problem then she should go after the kid and his family that sold her the stolen laptop. Why she didn't completely reformat and reinstall the OS if it was messed up I will never know. That is one of the first things you should do with a used computer or laptop. Is completely reformat the system and install the OS fresh. If she didn't get reinstall disks then she should have known something was not quite right. She could have also called the manufacturer and ordered the disks if she didn't get any and she would have known it was stolen then. So I don't feel for her one bit. Whenever I buy used computers and electronics the very first thing I do is register as the new owner with the manufacturer, so if there is a problem I will know right away and so I get any support available to me, or any offers they have for people who buy their device used.

IP address does not prove anything. It doesn't even prove where the laptop is/was. How do you know that the laptop wasn't connected to her neighbor's wifi? Do you know that for a fact? The IP address would not tell you that she was using her neighbor's wifi. It would make it seem like the neighbor was the one with the laptop, but the pictures of who is actually using the laptop tell a different story. This is exactly why all of these type of programs take a picture with the web cam when possible so they can see who exactly is using the computer.

There are only 2-3 states where that is an issue. All the other states say that only 1 person has to know about the recording for it to be legal. This goes right back to being able to film police and if it is legal or not. You might want to actually read up on this before you comment.

Does this mean we are finally going to eliminate some of the layers of X and go with a more sane and modern approach to video display or did we just throw in a few new bells and do some performance tweaks. We really need a better, more responsive/modern display system.

login problems (sigh) and double posts before edits. Some days you can't win for losing.

If Apple wants to claim that other people are stealing their ideas and their work, then I would love to know how they justify all the stealing that they have done. I would love to know how Apple can justify stealing other people's work and then patenting it.

I want to know how Apple thinks it is ok to steal the trade dress of legal tablets/paper and act like they invented it and that they can be protected from others using the exact same thing. Is Apple licensing the legal tablet/paper look from one of the paper companies? If not then Apple needs to be sued for stealing too. I also recall several programs that used this exact icon for their simple note editor program that wasn't a full blown word processor. I recall it being used on almost every OS, Apple IIgs, Windows (all versions), Linux, Mac, etc. Apple point blank stole this from earlier programs because people have already been trained that the picture of a notepad means a small note taking program, not full blown word processor. So Apple is not original or the first, so they never should have been given a patent, not to mention so obvious and not at all innovative.

The same goes for the envelope for email. I believe that either one of the early graphic computer BBSes or Prodigy might want a word with Apple for stealing their interface icons. I would look at Prodigy, Hawayii FYI, Minitel, Habitat (pre-AOL) or early NAPLPS BBS (TurBoard, Searchlight, TBBS, Renegade, etc) or the Excalibur BBS, the first windows BBS. They all used an envelope of somSo ae sort to represent email. Apple point blank stole this from earlier programs because people have already been trained that the picture of an envelope means email. So again not original or the first so they never should have been given a patent, not to mention so obvious and not at all innovative.

I also believe that the cartoon bubble was used by early graphic BBS to indicate chat with the SYSOP as well. I know it was in fact used in Habitat as well (pre-AOL). So all Apple did here was re-purpose the icon for SMS chat/msgs. So many Windows, Internet programs (chat, IRC, Palace chat, etc) and communication software packages have used the cartoon bubble as an icon over the years. Apple point blank stole this from earlier programs because people have already been trained that the picture of cartoon bubble means talk/chat/message. Again not original or the first, so they never should have been given a patent, not to mention so obvious and not at all innovative.

The patent on the dial icon is going to fall into the exact same problems. Apple point blank stole this from earlier programs because people have already been trained that the picture of a phone or a handset means to call or use phone functions. I am pretty sure some of the early BBS programs used the phone handset and the phone itself as icons in the graphic terminal programs they used. So once again Apple is not original or the first here. Apple may have even stolen from their own developers. Early Apple II BBS programs used the mouse characters to make a full blown graphic interface for a BBS. I remember GBBS and a couple of others did this. I might even still have the floppies around here for those BBS programs and the dialers. You should also look at any of the contact managers that would dial a number for you as well. Apple point blank stole this from earlier programs because people have already been trained that the picture of a phone or handset means to call or use telephone functions. Again not original or the first, so they never should have been given a patent, not to mention so obvious and not at all innovative.

The settings icon of gears, once again Apple is not the first to use this. In fact they point blank stole this from earlier programs that used the gears icon for settings. The gears icon with gears interlocking and without gears interlocking have been used long before the iPhone, which is exactly why they used this icon because people had already been trained as to what it meant. Again not original or the first so they never should have been given a patent, not to mention so obvious and not at all innovative.

Sorry the same is true of the contact icon. All they did is combine two icons that were already long in use before the icon. They combine the outline of a person for contacts and the address book icon of the image of a typical address book. There are also several address book programs and several email programs that have already used this idea of an outline of person on top of an image of an address book. Apple once again took this icon because people have already been trained as to what it meant by earlier programs, not to mention it is just common sense to use something like this.

Apple apparently thinks it is ok to steal icons from other programs and then patent them and try to pass them off as their own brand new completely original idea that deserves a patent.

Apple also did not invent the form factor for tablets. Apple might want to go back and talk with Alan Key who came up with the idea of a tablet computer with that form factor back in 1972 and called it a Dynabook. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook Then Apple should go talk with Gridpad, invented by GRiD Systems, who actually invented the first tablet that you could put your hands on and use, not to mention it had stylus input system even though it was running on DOS. http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/gridpad/index.html Tandy was the company who actually got in stores for the public to buy. Jeff Hawkins, father of GRiD system pitched the company a new device, but they deemed it was too risky. So he left GRiD System with a license of their software and founded Palm in 1992. GO Computing came out with the pen OS that used pen gestures called the PenPoint Operating System in 1992.

Apple didn't even invent the idea of mixing a PDA with a cell phone to get a smartphone. The IBM Simon, released to the public in 1993, had a touch screen and no buttons at all on the face of the phone. There was also the Kyocera 6035, the first Palm smartphone released February 2001. The first iPhone wasn't released until June 29, 2007.

All Apple did was remove the buttons down to 1 on the face of phone compared to other smartphones. The form factor wasn't original. The interface wasn't original. The iPhone interface was very much like the Palm interface. In fact nothing about the iPhone was original other than Apple would make and control the iPhone rather than just selling it to the carriers.

Nothing Apple did with the iPhone or iPad was original or innovative. If Apple hadn't made the products eventually someone else would have since the interface design and form factors were already headed in that direction or had already gotten there. Apple didn't invent these devices in a vacuum. They looked at what was currently going on and where things were headed. Apple looked at science fiction and movies for ideas, and even looked to Japan for form factor ideas. They pretty much admitted all this when the iPhone first came out. Apple getting patents on any of this is completely absurd and shows just how broken the patent system is world wide. If I had thought of the idea first of patenting other people's work, designs, graphics and idea and then use those patents to sue people to make a fortune. Oh wait someone already did that even before Apple, the patent trolls. Seems nothing Apple is doing these days is truly innovative and original.

I called it as soon as I heard the deal was closed and it wasn't Google who won the patents. There is no way that Google or the government was going to let that go unchallenged.

They already do that. Exactly how many cases have the media companies actually taken to trial and all the way to a jury verdict? Why is that? Exactly how many case of software "piracy" have be taken to trial and all the way to a jury verdict? Once you look at these numbers you see they are not worried about "pirates" or their filed court dates set for trials would be through the roof.

It is about one thing and one thing only, preserving the status quo. It's about ripping off artists of their copyrights. It's about controlling what music gets out and the music that does get out all the expenses are paid by the artists before they see any money. You only have to look at cases against the artists who try and leave the record companies to see they are far more worried about keeping artists in line and keeping control of the distribution channel for as long as they possibly can. Take a look at what the record company did to 30 seconds from Mars, telling them they couldn't leave because they owe the record company money for "a poor album that didn't recover costs". Your telling me a platinum record can't pay for the costs? Give me a break. How about what New Line Cinema did to Peter Jackson, trying to tell him that the Lord of the Rings didn't make a profit so there was nothing to split with him. He ended up suing them and won, which is extremely usual. "Pirates" are absolutely the last thing they are worried about. if demonizing "pirates' allows them to grab more control or keep control longer term.

That's your best reply to defend your position is to call people names? How old are you, because that is the kind of thing a child does.

You going to post the entire conversation you are quoting there so it can been seen in context and the other parts of what he said about that or would that invalidate your position so you won't bother to mention it? You do actually know what Christ said about full filling that law and what he came to and what the greatest law above all others and replaced them is right? Or did you just read that on some web site without knowing the full details around this supposed information.

You clearly are letting your political bias override the raw facts that show you are 100% incorrect. You really need to do a lot more study of societies across the world and in the US before you can claim what you did, because it simply isn't true and has never been true. Only those on the far radical left want to see their community change in to anything other than what it currently is because they are not the ones in charge or feel like the community owes them something that they shouldn't have to work for.

The only problem with this is that if you read the guy's whole manifesto yourself, which I have done. It becomes very clear that he is not right wing but a radical leftist in every sense of the word. Go read the entire thing yourself and then tell me his ideas would match up in any way with conservative right wing politics. If after reading the whole thing you believe that then either your reading comprehension is low or your trying to be blind to the facts so you can blame the conservatives when in fact yet again it is a leftist going radical and shooting up people again. Yea he must be a right wing conservative when he says he wants a one world government. He is clearly right wing when he says that the entire world should have 1 currency. He is right wing when he says that governments should give away more services and money to people and to "redistribute the wealth". Yep sounds exactly like a right wing conservative, oh wait those are all the things the radical leftists believe.