Well, this is unexpected. The iPhone 4G saga just got a whole lot crazier - dare I say it, a whole lot more ridiculous. Have you ever reported anything like a phone or something similarly small stolen to the police? What was their reaction? Did you ever get the device back? Did they send an army of officers to get your device back? No? Odd. They raided Jason Chen's house, and took four computers and two servers. Update: And thus our true colours reveal. "The raid that San Mateo area cops conducted last week on the house of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen came at the behest of a special multi-agency task force that was commissioned to work with the computer industry to tackle high-tech crimes. And Apple Inc. sits on the task force's steering committee." Update II: According to TechCrunch, the investigation has been put on hold while the DA ponders Gizmodo's shield defence. Update III: Some legal insight from a constitutional law and first amendment expert and a law professor. The gist? The DA has said no one has been charged with anything here, making this just an investigation - however, this makes the search and seizing of material worse. "If the police are literally just gathering information, with no suspect targeted yet, then a subpoena against a journalist would have probably been smarter than a search warranted that resulted in the front door of Chen's home being bashed in."
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-06-28
Well said. I could not decide between the iPhone 4G and the Nexus One my husband got for me as a gift months ago (and I refused to use it as my main phone because I didn't like its UI as much as the iPhone's). But now it seems certain that I won't be buying an iPhone 4G, and the Nexus One will just have to do, to replace my old and dying iPhone 2G.
Member since:2006-01-16
Member since:2006-07-25
Member since:2005-06-29
Well I love OS X, I think it's the best commercial OS available. Now, take a look at that word "available" and you'll see why I don't like Apple as a company. It's only officially available on their hardware. Of course they have some great hardware, but I can't afford it. Someone like me is left with two choices for running OS X: Buy used Macs, or build a Hackintosh. I've done both in the past, and currently have a very fast (for my needs), well-built machine that triple boots Leopard, Linux and Windows.
And as much as I love working in OS X, I'm getting ready to go with Linux Mint as my main OS, with Slackware and Haiku partitions just for fun. I am only holding on to Windows right now for old games and my son's archaic non-MSC MP3 player.
Now that most of what I do is cross-platform, I can soon leave OS X behind with few regrets. Sure, I'll miss the fluid, consistent interface, the cool little tricks and tools under the hood, easy iPod syncing, GarageBand...but I don't need any of that. I'd much prefer to have a computer unencumbered by overbearing corporate entities.
Member since:2005-08-28
And by the same token, don't expect Gizmodo to be any less ga-ga over Apple's latest hype. They will forever be searching for that same wonderful taste of excitement they had when they realized that this... this was the secret iPhone! This magical technology... the colors man, the colors!
Seriously, though... to this layman the entire thing looks bizarre. Apple got their device back, but is still acting like they suspect the guy who works at Gizmodo has it. It's not like Gizmodo is hard to find, or that obscure in technical circles. Hey, we have it! Good, send it back to us NOW.
Member since:2010-04-21
Either that or, aside from a few dozen random internet retards like us posting on an obscure website ... 99.9% of iPhone users couldn't give a rat's ass about this. They just like the phone, because it works.
The market has spoken. If Apple does something to piss of that 99.9%, the market will shift away from Apple.
Everyone here needs to take a few economics courses.
"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Member since:
2005-07-06
There are people who just get all lathered up about anything new Apple does. They spend endless hours trying to guess what Apple will do next. Here they go on a total frenzy about this phone.
These are Apple's most hardcore fans. So what has Apple historically done to these folk? They issue gag orders, try to get them shut down. Here they even brought in the Feds. In other cases, they have caused journalists to be fired.
I'm just saying it seems like strange behavior. When a company does its utmost to destroy its most hardcore fans, why do those fans keep lining up? It seems like a co-dependent relationship. The more they hit me the more they must love me?
I don't know, I've just never understood it. Wait, I got to go, there's a knock at my door...