Submission + - The Legality of Gizmodo's iPhone Acquisition (dailyfinance.com)
gyrogeerloose writes: A report at Daily Finance examines whether Gawker Media's possession of the iPhone constituted possession of stolen property or left it open to civil charges due to misappropriation of trade secrets.The key aspect of the question is whether the person who found the phone made the "reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him," that are required by California law. While Gizmodo claims that the iPhone's finder apparently "asked around" at the bar where the device was found and attempted to call several Apple support numbers the following day, the finder failed to take some of the most basic steps to reunite the device with its owner, including speaking to the bar management (who stated that the engineer who lost it called "numerous times" looking for it) or contacting the Redwood City Police Department.
Adobe Stops Development For iPhone 497
adeelarshad82 writes "Adobe's principal product manager Mike Chambers announced that Adobe is no longer investing in iPhone-based Flash development. The move comes after Apple put out a new draft of its iPhone developer program license, which banned private APIs and required apps to be written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine. According to Chambers, Adobe will still provide the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5, but the company is not currently planning any additional investments in that feature."
Daring Fireball points out approvingly Apple's rebuttal to the claim that Flash is an open format, however convenient it might be for iPad owners. Related: The new app policy seems to be inconsistently enforced. Reader wilsonthecat writes "Novell have released a new press release in response to Apple's announcement that none-C/C++/Objective-C based iPhone application development breaks their SDK terms. The press release names several apps that have made it past app review process since the new Apple SDK agreement."
Google Acquires Chip Maker Startup Agnilux 150
bobwrit points out a story at PC Magazine, from which he extracts "Google has purchased Agnilux, a secretive chip house made up of engineers who architected the heart of the iPad, then left the company. Reuters' PEHub reported the story Tuesday night. A Google spokesman also confirmed the acquisition to PCMag.com. 'We're pleased to welcome the Agnilux team to Google, but we don't have any additional information to share right now,' a Google spokesman said Tuesday night via email."
McAfee Kills SVCHost.exe, Sets Off Reboot Loops For Win XP, Win 2000 472
Kohenkatz writes "A McAfee Update today (DAT 5958) incorrectly identifies svchost.exe, a critical Windows executable, as a virus and tries to remove it, causing endless reboot loops."
Reader jswackh adds this terse description: "So far the fixes are sneakernet only. An IT person will have to touch all affected PCs. Reports say that it quarantines SVCHOST. [Affected computers] have no network access, and missing are taskbar/icons/etc. Basically non-functioning. Windows 7 seems to be unaffected."
Updated 20100421 20:08 GMT by timothy: An anonymous reader points out this easy-to-follow fix for the McAfee flub.
Steve Jobs Recommends Android For Fans of Porn 909
hansamurai writes "After being asked about the App Store's recent ban on 'sexy apps,' Steve Jobs responded, 'We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone. You know, there's a porn store for Android, you can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That's a place we don't want to go, so we're not going to go there.' Apps such as Playboy's and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition are still available on the App Store, however, as they come from 'more reputable companies.'"
Most Expensive Laptop Ever 7
snkiz writes "As if MacBooks weren't expensive enough — now we have this. 'This is the most expensive laptop in the world, fitted with 25.5 carats of flawless diamonds. A total of 53 diamants individually set in a solid 24ct gold apple logo.' Although eBay iPads aren't much cheaper."
NYC OB/GYN Sells Sex Toys 2
Knowing that nothing makes a woman feel more sexy than a trip to the OB/GYN, Dr. Andrew Scheinfeld has decided to start selling sex toys at his practice. Scheinfeld says the idea was born out of personal experience. He found himself embarrassed while shopping for some things to spice up his own marriage and decided he wanted to offer woman a less embarrassing place to do their adult purchasing. "I was very paranoid, thinking everyone was looking at me saying, 'Look at the old guy with the sex toy in a briefcase,'" he said. "Here I am, an OB/GYN. If I felt that way, how a woman might feel going into a shop like that would be very difficult."
Comment Re:Seems Reasonable (Score 2, Interesting) 13
I work for one of the cable companies(I shall remain nameless in that regard). The amount of customers that fly off the handle when there's a box update and the box reboots to channel 1, when they have set to previous channel, is amazing.
Comment Commuting... (Score 1) 31
I can understand this person's situation. I started a new job almost 2 years ago, I was driving approximately 550 to 635 miles per week (not including around town driving), now this mileage could vary depending on driving conditions since the weather(I live in Upstate New York) could actually affect the route I would have to take. I've thankfully got friends that let me stay at their home during the week which brings my commute down to about 140 miles per week(again, weather permitting). Unfortunately, I can't afford to change my living arrangements currently and I've been doing this for nearly 2 years. It's the culture that we live in now that forces us to do these types of things, the guy in this article is lucky enough to have other people to "carpool" with, some of us don't have that luxury. I can say that the benefits of my employer are great which is the reason why I gave up a 30 minute round trip commute to a 3 hour round trip commute.
Comment Re:PS3? (Score 2, Informative) 211
A to Mini-B
Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris" 319
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Released 284
Shining Celebi writes "Mozilla has released Firefox 3.6 today, which adds support for Personas, lightweight themes that can be installed without restarting the browser, and adds further performance improvements to the new Tracemonkey Javascript engine. One of the major goals of the release was to improve startup time and general UI responsiveness, especially the Awesomebar. You can read the full set of release notes here."
Google Applies To Become Energy Marketer 160
necro81 writes "Google consumes massive amounts of electrical energy to power its data centers across the country and world. Now it has created a subsidiary, Google Energy LLC, and applied (pdf) to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to become a utility-scale energy trader. Google's stated aim is to be able to purchase renewable energy directly from producers at bulk rates, pursuing its goal of becoming carbon neutral. It is likely that Google Energy would also permit Google's own renewable energy projects to sell their energy at more favorable rates. Google reportedly does not have plans to actively become an energy broker, a la Enron."
Why Everyone Has High Hopes For Apple Tablet 596
waderoush writes "The deafening roar of anticipation around Apple's expected 'iSlate' announcement on January 27 is strange, to say the least, given the public's utter apathy about tablet computers to date. What's going on? Xconomy's analysis makes three points. 1) Previous tablet makers have shown little imagination around UIs and how a touchscreen changes things. 2) With the iPhone, Apple has shown what's possible in this regard. 3) There's latent demand for a mobile computing device that's smaller and lighter than a laptop but has more screen real estate than a smartphone — something reminiscent of a Star Trek tricorder or PADD. Hence the hopes for the iSlate — which are so high that it may be difficult for even Apple to meet them."
