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I was confused by that too. And why would China want to *help* a US company by giving Boeing Airbus info?

Gratitude?

Obviously he didn't live long enough to see what happened to Disney, and their brutal, $200 million loss on John Carter.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/20/bloomberg_articlesM15FX36JTSE801-M1793.DTL

This is why your post is good advice rather than a joke.

(I live in Berkeley)

You are mixing up the laws between countries. In the US you can get a search warrant for both. Only in Holland are the police and courts so lazy they dont want to do their jobs. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/03/BAL01NFOUT.DTL

His "Airtight Garage" was the basis for the fantastic architecture of the San Francisco Sony Metreon's original game arcade. (Unfortunately, after years of deterioration and changes in ownership, the Metreon has been torn out and replaced with a Target store.)

San Francisco Target Store? Ain't no such thing, yet. Apparently development is to be completed by fall of this year after having been originally projected for this winter.

His "Airtight Garage" was the basis for the fantastic architecture of the San Francisco Sony Metreon's original game arcade. (Unfortunately, after years of deterioration and changes in ownership, the Metreon has been torn out and replaced with a Target store.)

San Francisco Target Store? Ain't no such thing, yet. Apparently development is to be completed by fall of this year after having been originally projected for this winter.

You must not be familiar with the San Francisco Crime Lab. Or how the fallout impacted the people involved.

From Eco-Libris' analysis of the iPad2, the break-even point at which the device has a lower carbon impact than an equivalent production of print books is 14. A widely cited study by research firm Cleantech Group found that the carbon emitted in the life cycle of an Amazon Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use, as long as the owner downloads more than 22 books in a year, and additional years of use result in net carbon savings equivalent to an average of 168 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

If your using your existing laptop to read an e-book then your footprint is even lower.

After all, the company probably needs to make a big donation to make up for CEO Jamie Dimon's assertions that journalists make too much money,. . .

The chemical/fertilizer run off to produce Ethanol is highly toxic to the environment. While your end use in the vehicle might be better, you're killing the Earth and our waterways with the creation of Ethanol.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/05/MNF91E84SL.DTL

I wonder how many Yuan it will take to "show" that...

$10 million and they can buy iPad from Proview China "A Hong Kong court document shows that once the dispute arose, Proview demanded $10 million for the iPad name in China."

10 million is what, about what Apple makes in an hour? Just pay it.

According to this article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/02/20/bloomberg_articlesLZNZ0D07SXKX01-LZO0R.DTL

"There is a limitation to the latest finding: The atom must be kept at minus-391 degrees Fahrenheit to keep it from migrating out of its channel"

has an effective tax rate less than even Oil Barons. Yeah, that seems progressive. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/21/BUIJ1M2635.DTL

Romney edges Santorum in conservatives' straw poll

Gingrich plunges, Santorum surges

This seems like a good idea. I live near SF, and see bus lanes blocked occasionally, usually by double-parked delivery trucks.

Delivery services consider those tickets just a cost of doing business.
Here's a nice article from 2007 about SF, delivery trucks, and parking tickets
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/24/MNGMPOAK521.DTL

"This is part of the price of doing business," said Jim McCluskey, a spokesman for FedEx, which paid San Francisco $434,046 for 7,711 tickets [in 2006]. "We encourage our operators to park legally, but we also need to meet the needs of our customers who want reliable, on-time service."

Because of the sheer number of tickets, most big cities have special programs for the largest corporate offenders.
This keeps the court system from getting clogged up and streamlines collections.

This has been in the works for a while. And people have been improperly ticketed.

The same California that will be broke and paying employees/contractors with IOU's *AGAIN*? Eventually (not just California, we're going to realize that maybe, JUST maybe, we can't afford everything we want. Me thinks it would have cost a lot less to build a Nuke plant vs. massive wind farms. Not knocking the technology, I fully intend to go solar/wind for personal use (Home owners assoc won't allow either at this point though), just saying... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/31/MNHF1N10BT.DTL

They do occasionally find stolen cars. Mine was found after 3 weeks, sitting on a side street. They called me to come get it, didn't run prints or in any way investigate who might have stolen it, "just get it out of here"

At least they let you come pick it up -- in many cities they'll treat it as an abandoned vehicle and tow it and charge you the tow and impound fees:

http://blog.sfgate.com/cwnevius/2009/11/11/car-stolen-that-will-cost-you-300-part-ii/

Absolutely, if you knew it was poison. But if the elected town chief and witchdoctor told you the mushrooms were ok, you would have some wriggle room. Maybe it would be better not to have a well?

Today comes the news that "sugar is a toxic, addictive substance" http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/01/BA891N1PQS.DTL

I guess the sugar companies will be hounded, just like the tobacco companies and Monsanto, while the actual producers (farmers) continue to be subsidized.

Government oversight can prevent instances of harm, to the benefit of those affected. However, I believe the overall, nett effect on society is negative. For example, since DDT was banned worldwide, how many have died from malaria, against what benefit? Some argue that when human life is at stake, no cost is too high. I obviously disagree.

Also, complexity hastens the downfall - http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X

"The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way." Henry David Thoreau

Parking tickets...now delivered with greater efficiency than ever before.

Actually, they've found the opposite to be true:

Prior to the new meters, 55 percent of the revenue came from payments drivers used to buy time and 45 percent from fines. After the new meters went in, the amount from payments increased to 70 percent and the amount from fines plummeted to 30 percent.

The reduction in fines is because "In addition, the new meters have less restrictive time limits, generally allowing drivers to park for four hours or more." So people can actually put enough money in the meters to cover the length of their visit now.

Parking tickets...now delivered with greater efficiency than ever before.

Actually, they've found the opposite to be true:

Prior to the new meters, 55 percent of the revenue came from payments drivers used to buy time and 45 percent from fines. After the new meters went in, the amount from payments increased to 70 percent and the amount from fines plummeted to 30 percent.

Sarah Shourd
Piper Perabo

No comparison.

We are all taught that this is the best way to let our voices be heard by government, but unfortunately unless your name happens to be listed on a major stock exchange your voice will just be ignored. It's naive to think that writing your congress(wo)man or senator will have any affect and it hasn't for decades. If your write to one of these people your letter will be processed by an intern and if you are lucky you will receive a form letter reply after having your name and address entered into a database associated with the issue at hand. Here is an interesting take on the issue from the inside: Write your congressman? Don't even bother / His signature is phony, so is his interest
http://articles.sfgate.com/2004-01-11/opinion/17406204_1_beltway-signature-smudge
Here is an excerpt from the above link:
Letters written by people who will vote for or against the congressman in the next election receive the following treatment: 1. The letter is scanned by an intern for the central issue. 2. The letter is labeled with the issue. 3. The writer's address is entered into a database. 4. The address is married to the issue's form response found in another database. 5. The response is printed and fed into the signature machine (when it's working). 6. The response is stuffed into the envelope printed with the matching address. 7. The response is mailed. If this sounds like a worthwhile process, then you should go ahead and send that letter on solar energy you've been working on so hard. I
It's sad that that's what things have come to.

The short and simple of it is that there is a cash grab by MLK's heirs based in copyright law.

This is what happens when someone is a major public figure, and their kids are nobodies. The heirs have been trying to monetize King's legacy. The heirs have a corporation ("King, Inc.") to manage the assets, and have used Intellectual Property Management, Inc. to handle licensing deals. The head of the Elvis Presley operation, who'd been consulted by King's heirs on marketing strategy, said "There's a distinct difference in the role Martin Luther King played in society and Elvis the entertainer. But the basic mechanisms of protecting, guarding and nurturing the value of the name, image and likeness are the same.":

The heirs have been fighting over the assets for years. There's a long litigation record. The whole thing is embarrassing.

They're certainly not the first company to make an All-in-one that was clearly a response to the iMac, and thus far none of those other (and there have been several) designs have faced lawsuits.

No lawsuits for responses to iMac? CNET disagrees, as does SFGate.

Agreed. Companies that don't need political protection to survive, don't need favors from politicians, nor seek value by political manipulation of the marketplace don't need to be Occupied.

I couldn't disagree more. Political manipulation of the marketplace? How about political manipulation to shift the burden of paying taxes onto the individual instead of the corporation? Like lobbying congress to keep tax loopholes in place? And if Google doesn't need to lobby politicians then why give them money?

Now can someone tell me about the Occupy movement's actual goals and desired outcomes? It seems to me that without an end in mind, this movement could be corrupted and taken over by celebs just like the Tea Party.

Well, as I've posted before, I'd imagine economic justice. To specifically address my point above about tax dodging, I feel that our taxpaying dollars present these companies with one of the best and safest environments in the world to run a business. From police forces to firefighters to the highway infrastructure to educating your customers in the public schools. The reason you might think that all those things are going to shit is -- as I see it -- companies reap the benefits from them and then shift revenue through Ireland or The Netherlands to avoid paying for them! There's something specific you can fix. Right now it's you and me picking up the slack in income and sales tax!

Shortly before a San Francisco Mayoral election a friend by the name of Andy Hasse registered the .coms of all of the expected candidates. One such candidate, upon finding that his domain was cyberly squatted upon, asked what he could do about it. Andy pitched his web consulting services then was hired by that candidate to do his site.

Andy was at the time a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz and was living the Bohemian lifestyle in The Mission District. He was just starting out. Imagine his great surprise - and mine as well - when Andy made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle when the Willie Brown campaign discovered that willybrown.com was owned by one of the staff for a competing campaign.

That was a long time ago; I'm not sure that the article would still be online. Let me check... Ah! Here We Go!

Willie Brown is to San Frasncisco politics as the Kennedys were once to American politics. While Willie has many supporters in San Francisco, it's quite definitely old-skool big-city machine politices.

I suggested that Andy take advantage of his fifteen minutes by offering him some free hosting. The Willie Brown website is no longer online, with the registrant being hidden by a private registration service. But based on the creation date, that domain just has to still owned by Andy.

Let's ask The Wayback Machine... Service With A Smile.

Sometime later an incredibly right-wing guy by the name of Dan Lungren was running for California State Attorney General. "Did you register Dan Lundgren's domain?" I asked Andy.

"Yup," he replied. "Com, Net and Org."

The Israeli government is systematically stripping non-Jewish residents of Jerusalem of their residence and forcing them from their homes as a method of making it Jewish. It's a fairly slow process, but it's inexorable and has been going on for decades. If that doesn't count as ethnic cleansing, the systematic, planned and violent forcing out of non-Jewish Palestinians from their villages during the formation of Israel, with the odd massacre to encourage the rest, followed by the demolition of those villages and the creation of new Jewish settlements with new names certainly did. (Yes, they literally wiped the Arab population off the map. Also, I really do mean Jewish here and not just Israeli; they were and are places where only Jews were allowed to live.)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/12/14/financial/f150316S91.DTL

"[...] the Galaxy Nexus can record high-definition videos in 1080p — the best resolution you can get on a consumer camera. I had some fun taking sunset videos with a time-lapse feature, and there are some goofy filming effects to play around with, too."

"Generally, though, the Galaxy Nexus is a well-rounded smartphone that serves up a noticeably freshened-up version of Android with sleek hardware. Delicious, indeed."

Moffett Field is becoming Google's private airport.

Moffett Field was a former Navy facility, but the Navy moved out years ago, when they stopped patrolling the seas with P-3 Orions. NASA had a presence there because they had a big wind tunnel at Ames. Once the Navy moved out, the place was way underutilized. Parts of the base are leased out to startups, the west coast branch of CMU. The airfield itself is barely used. NASA doesn't do much there. I've been over there for NASA meetings, and the place is dead.

So Page and Brin cut a deal with NASA in 2007 to keep their private planes (their Boeing 767 airliner, etc.) there and use the field. That was controversial at the time, but Moffett was so underutilized that nobody cared.

Hangar One, the big dirigible hanger, has been out of use for years, and there's a "Save Hangar One" group. It's a nice structure; I've been inside it. But it needs work and the Navy doesn't want to maintain it. One of the Austin Powers movies had a scene in Hangar One, which is probably the biggest unused indoor clear space on the planet.

So if the Google guys want to convert it to their lair, that probably won't upset many people locally.

Just FYI, most other reports are saying that the United States acknowledges this the only incredulity surrounds how the drone went down -- not whether it was there or not. US says technical malfunction. Iran says Allah helped them hack it and control it themselves.

Back when regulated public utilities couldn't sell content, we didn't have this problem. The remaining independent ISPs still don't.

It's not a technical limitation. Sonic.net, which serves Northern California and the Los Angeles area, continues to offer unlimited data access up to the bandwidth purchased. Their deal is that you buy, say, 3mb/s to 6mb/s, and they guarantee the lower figure. (I get about 4mb/s on that deal.) There are no additional bandwidth charges, and their CEO says they're aren't going to be any. Since AT&T announced caps, he says Sonic has been "overwhelmed with demand".

They buy a local DSL connection from AT&T and backhaul it to their switch in Santa Rosa, CA. Sonic is also putting in fiber to the home in some areas.

Of course, Marx was completely absurd in that he never considered labor a capital asset of the worker, and he never considered that the worker will always seek to profit by trying to increase their wages without working any extra. That is, there is a market of labor in addition to a market of goods, and that an employer must compete with other employers on the labor market. And who would pay more than necessary for anything? It would be as irrational to pay the higher of two amounts for the same labor (assuming all else is equal) as it would be for the same good.

If you actually read Marx's Capital, you'll find that he spends 3 chapters on the topic of the labor market. The basic problem is that as long as there's unemployed people, and no government safety net, it will be better for the worker to get $50 a day for 12 hours of work than it is for the worker to get nothing. So the equilibrium price of labor is not the actual productive value of the labor, it's the minimum a worker needs to survive and (in good times) produce 2-3 children on average to be future workers. That minimum doesn't change based on how much work that worker needs to do to earn it, so the employer can do pretty much whatever they want to the worker so long as they pay that minimum.

In your version of the labor market, Wage theft can't exist (because no worker would accept it), but it does because accepting wage theft is not infrequently the least bad option for workers.

The fault of GroupOn is an inability to set limits in the number of coupons issued....If GroupOn allowed a limit to the number of coupons, say 2,500 then she many not have needed the extra employees and not suffered the losses from it.

You are absolutely right....except for that fact that you are absolutely wrong. Groupon DOES allow limits. I know I've intended to buy a groupon before but waited before purchasing, and when I later came back, the deal was over BEFORE the expiration because it reached the max quantity. Don't believe me? How about from the Groupon CEO himself:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/09/17/businessinsider-groupon-ceo-posies-2010-9.DTL#ixzz0zp2ktgaQ

Also, to clarify one important point: it has always been Groupon policy to allow merchants to cap deals. If a merchant sells too many Groupons, they’ll have a bad experience, the customer will have a bad experience, and therefore, Groupon loses. We’re longer-term thinkers than that. In fact, we have the opposite problem more often – where merchants protest a cap we recommend, convinced they can handle more customers than we think they can.

look at Mr. Elite University's $100k debt and have a good chuckle.

Except schools like Stanford and MIT offer free tuition for families making less than $100k and $75k respectively. My university took 50% off my tuition for all 4 years. It ended up costing less than state school and I graduated with $15k debt for an "elite" degree.

Read something other than Slashdot for a change. ;) Adobe ‘Restructures,’ Eliminates 750 Jobs In North America And Europe

I don't see any information about being "disabled" she is clearly a functional (physically) human with a nice Mercedes to drive, you know... prior to it being taken away.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Police-Fed-prosecutor-looking-into-Texas-beating-2249787.php

http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2011/11/02/police-investigate-judge-over-disturbing-online-video/?tsp=1

Since you didn't post anything about her "disabilities" and the first 2 articles I find do not mention it, the answer is yes, beat her again.
It appears to some he went overboard but consider that she had no problems stealing, lying and then blackmailing her parents who thought enough of her to provide her with a nice car and financial support, she is the perfect example of what's wrong with this country.

What people like you don't seem to understand is the behavior I see today, compared to what was expected from people 40 years ago, if you are under 30 you wouldn't know this and you are most likely a self serving narcissist with little empathy for others and a gross exaggeration of your own abilities.
Which I think you have shown quite well with your absurd post.

It sounds like you're screwed and your music collection is no longer accessible. MSN Music Store, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, Wal-Mart... FTFA it sounds like when each one of these services was discontinued, the customers were warned that all the music they purchased would no longer be accessible. This is why I crack the DRM off every ebook I buy from Amazon (I know I should go to the B&N Nook) and why I won't "buy" streaming movies from them that get stored in their cloud.

Too bad the article only covers music. There are so many half-brained lessons from the history of DRM in other media. Remember DIVX from 1998 the DVD you bought and then had to pay each time you wanted watch it? And don't even get me started on video games, where DRM has condemned so many great titles to the graveyard of unplayability.

So does anyone have the answers to the puzzles posted on here?

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

        Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?

        You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it? (Hint: One pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold.)

        Distance is defined like this : If a[i], b[j] and c[k] are three elements then distance=max(abs(a[i]-b[j]),abs(a[i]-c[k]),abs(b[j]-c[k]))” Please give a solution in O(n) time complexity

SPOILER ALERT

For Problem #2, I would say that all 100 men get killed. I am basing it on the Khan Academy explanation of the Blue Forehead problem

For Problem #3, It seems like the optimal answer is for Pirate #5 to give himself 98 coins, Pirate #4 one coin, and Pirate #2 one coin. (Pirate #1 knows that he can get all the coins if it ever gets down to two pirates. So he'll vote down every proposal. And Pirate #3 knows that he can get 100 coins, if it ever gets down to three pirates (because at that point, pirate #2 will vote for pretty much anything, lest he die!) And Pirate #4 knows that if it ever gets down to four pirates left, he will need to satisfy two out of three, and there's no way he'll be able to do that (since #1 and #3 won't vote his way no matter what). So he'll take whatever he can get. So no sense in giving any to pirates 1 or 3, because you'll never get their vote.

So by giving pirates 2 and 4 one coin each, you are buying their votes.

Do you even know which state pays the most? Do you know which state has the largest economy? The most people? Federal tax revenue by state. Maybe when those state(s) actually contribute more than they leech out you can say that.

As you can see from the list of US state GDP California has a massive economy and subsidizes many other states, such as the Dakotas.

California ranks 43rd in the country among states in the amount of tax dollars paid to the federal government versus the amount of federal aid that comes back to the state, according to the Washington-based Tax Foundation. The state gets 78 cents for every dollar sent to the federal government.

Sf Gate. Just seven other states receive a worse deal.

OK, fine. Turn it around. Why should the good people of California have to pay to salt the roads in N. Dakota? Maybe California would be in a better financial situation if they were not paying so much to subsidize those lazy N. Dakotans!

California ranks 43rd in the country among states in the amount of tax dollars paid to the federal government versus the amount of federal aid that comes back to the state, according to the Washington-based Tax Foundation. The state gets 78 cents for every dollar sent to the federal government.

Sf Gate. Just seven other states receive a worse deal.

I'm pretty sure all those salmon are swimming upstream to discover the cure for senescence ending the nasty business of spawning for ever and ever.

This is the least conservative line of investigation in the history of the human species. Stem cells? Totally passe. Surf upon mighty Morforgeddon, and despair!

Hi. Will you marry me? For a week?

But it will lower the abortion rate, so let's not be hasty to call it a bad thing. An aging base could potentially be a godsend once we repeal term limits.

I put 'criminal' in quotes be cause honestly I don't feel he committed a crime. Is it a crime on the books?

Yes, it is.

One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.

Sure, so's spitting on the sidewalk, carrying an ice cream cone in your pocket and a woman driving while wearing a house coat. My personal feeling is it's one of those laws prosecutors like to pile on, in the hopes maybe one will stick. It's totally up to the prosecutors discretion if they wish to pursue the case.

There might be somewhere but California police considers selling property which does not belong to you the same as selling stolen property. This isn't some ancient ordinance about not sneezing in the presence of horses.

But they didn't just call the police. http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-04-30/business/20877418_1_iphone-tech-blog-gizmodo-steering [sfgate.com] They went to their special tech task force, which they have a seat on the steering committee of.

By calling a task force of the police, did they not contact the police? Did you expect Apple to call 911 for what was not an emergency situation? Did you expect them to call Homicide division? Your complaint is that they contacted the division that specifically deals with the situation that they were in?

Yes, I'd try to get my phone back. Just they way I stated. Go to the house of the person possessing it, with a lawyer and perhaps an officer if I, being a normal person, could convince one to spend the time on my case, and politely say "Hey, you found my phone, that I lost. Kindly return it, and here's a small reward for finding it. Btw, keeping it is a crime and I'd rather not take it further but I will."

And would you then complain about how Apple sent their thug lawyers after some poor guy who found a phone? And do you know if that person isn't a dangerous unstable individual with a cache of weapons? I would let the police do their jobs.

Perhaps the judges & prosecutors should stop selectively enforcing laws for the benefit of giant corporations that make more money per minute than this 'criminal' will in his lifetime.

...in a story about how a guy just got convicted of a crime for stealing and reselling an iPhone prototype...

If you're unsure where I got your spin from, maybe you should re-read your comment. You used air quotes around "criminal" to indicate that you disagreed with the court's decision that he had, in fact, broken the law. Then you said that it's selective enforcement, because it happened to be a case involving

[a] giant corporation[s] that make more money per minute [...]

and that this conferred special treatment over

Joe Schmoe

and then threw in a non-sequitur about a "police taskforce" (that would be the police, investigating crime) as if they were on some sort of Batphone link to Apple's HQ.

If you weren't taking a stab at the police being the personal private security of a large fruit-logo-themed company than what exactly *was* your point, because it got missed in your post.

You say they had "dozens" of ways to get the phone back, and then effectively suggest vigilantism - ie, taking the law into their own hands. If the phone is stolen, they did what anyone else would do - they reported it to the police.

Or are you suggesting that if Joe Schmoe loses his phone and finds where it is by GPS that he go over to the thief's house with his lawyer and cuts the guy a cheque?

Talk about selective enforcement! Is Apple not allowed to use the same route that any other person or business can pursue?

I put 'criminal' in quotes be cause honestly I don't feel he committed a crime. Is it a crime on the books? Sure, so's spitting on the sidewalk, carrying an ice cream cone in your pocket and a woman driving while wearing a house coat. My personal feeling is it's one of those laws prosecutors like to pile on, in the hopes maybe one will stick. It's totally up to the prosecutors discretion if they wish to pursue the case.

And 'police taskforce' wasn't a non-sequitur, Apple is on the steering committee of the task force that investigated these events and performed the highly unnecessary raid on the house of a Gizmodo writer. http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-04-30/business/20877418_1_iphone-tech-blog-gizmodo-steering

Where, in your world, is contacting the person in possession of the phone vigilantism? Do you think the only way to resolve a dispute is police in riot gear?

You have a lawyer contact the person in possession of the phone and offer a reward for finding the thing. Minimal fuss or drama. Have them sign some contract so your trade secrets stay secret a little longer and then you walk away.

And no, Apple is not 'any other person'. Apple is not a person, it's a corporate entity with a legal fiction of some person like rights. Like any other corporation they have an interest in minimizing bad press and not presenting themselves to the world as shady. Everything they've done in this case, and in the more recent case of a second lost iPhone, in regards to how they handled the event and their use of, indeed their ability to access the use of, strongarm police tactics, screams shady however.

I put 'criminal' in quotes be cause honestly I don't feel he committed a crime. Is it a crime on the books? Sure, so's spitting on the sidewalk, carrying an ice cream cone in your pocket and a woman driving while wearing a house coat. My personal feeling is it's one of those laws prosecutors like to pile on, in the hopes maybe one will stick. It's totally up to the prosecutors discretion if they wish to pursue the case.

Thats debatable, even on a good day. They're more like a gang of hoodlums who write about their exploits on a blog than a journalistic organization. Most highschool journalism classes are more advanced, more professional, and more useful than the immature douches at Gizmodo.

So, I guess you hate Gizmodo then.

That is not journalism, that is extortion, Google it. You want to call someone spoiled? You might want to look at the extortionists.

Yes, because Steve did not have a well known and publicized history of throwing hissy fits when people reveal well known product details before his big spotlight moments. He's never crushed hobbyist blogs, had a guy fired for showing Woz, the same guy who built the first Apple an iPad for 2 minutes before it's official reveal.. nope, not spoiled there.

Also, interesting that the the same system you cheer for convicting this guy didn't find evidence to support extortion or theft charges against Gizmodo.

When I steal your phone, and you locate it via GPS, what exactly are you going to do other than call the police? Would you not attempt to get your phone back when you know where its being held hostage? You'd just let me have it?

But they didn't just call the police. http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-04-30/business/20877418_1_iphone-tech-blog-gizmodo-steering They went to their special tech task force, which they have a seat on the steering committee of.

Yes, I'd try to get my phone back. Just they way I stated. Go to the house of the person possessing it, with a lawyer and perhaps an officer if I, being a normal person, could convince one to spend the time on my case, and politely say "Hey, you found my phone, that I lost. Kindly return it, and here's a small reward for finding it. Btw, keeping it is a crime and I'd rather not take it further but I will."

End of drama, minimal cost.

Instead, how many govt. man hours & public tax money were wasted on this, in a cash strapped state with honestly, way more important things to deal with.

Jobs didn't have the "regular" adenocarcinoma that has a 5% five-year survival rate, he had a rare form that has an estimated 80%-90% ten-year survival rate when detected and acted upon early.

Alternative medicines on the whole are snake-oil treatments that sucker the desperate and ill-informed. Anecdotes do not make science. Unsurprisingly some hold the opinion that there is a greater than zero chance that Jobs would be alive today had he not attempted to treat his cancer with alternative therapies.

In many places, it's not that easy. Money for towers is just a part of the problem. I imagine that people screaming, "Oh NOES! Radiaaashun!", are probably the major obstacles these days. For example, as much as people like to whine and moan about AT&T coverage in San Francisco, here is one small example of what AT&T has to deal with (yes, it's a bit old, but likely still 1000% valid): http://cdn.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/06/BAT01E8QTQ.DTL

Other examples:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/west-virginias-quiet-zone-becomes-refuge-for-those-on-the-run/
http://gawker.com/372440/?tag=television (this is for wifi, but I'm sure the sentiment extends to cellular)

The victim should NOT be punished for a criminal act performed against them. However the victim may be financially liable for any losses incurred by third-parties who suffered from any negligence of the victim. Also there are laws already on the books in the US that sets standards on how certain types of data should be secured (medical, financial, etc).

Here's the kind of lax data security I'm talking about - Stanford hospital left confidential medical data on an open website for a year:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/09/BA1Q1L23AP.DTL&tsp=1

As far as I can tell from the article, their only "punishment" for the data disclose is having to report it to the patients and some government agencies:

California law that went into effect in 2009 requires hospitals and other health care facilities to report any loss or misuse of medical data to the state health department. Federal regulations require that medical security breaches involving more than 500 patients be reported to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

We'll never know who the worst president was, with apparently unprovable, but circumstantially supported, stuff like this: http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-12-05/news/17131315_1_lbj-library-nixon-s-associates-peace-talks

for photographing the event? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/travel/detail?entry_id=96365