I can't stress enough that the people who are suggesting talking to a lawyer are right.
Still, if I may hazard a guess, if you started the project before you were hired, and you have a standard relationship to your employer, there's a good chance that both you and your employer have a claim to the overall work, because it contains parts that you wrote on your own, and parts that you wrote as their employee. In this case, then yeah, you don't have ownership nor license to the parts that they own--and over time, those parts may have become inseparable from the original parts that are yours.
How is a stock's value tied to a company's performance? If a stock's value is based purely on the demand for the stock and what other's bid for it, what incentive do they have to buy the stock?
If you buy a stock now at $X a share, in 10-15 years it will be obvious whether $X was a good price to pay for that stock. Because by then it will be obvious whether it was a good buy, so its price will be an accurate reflection of whether it did well over those 10-15 years. More on this below.
All the explanations of stock price I see seem to have no relation to the value of the company, except in those cases where the company pays a dividend. So for non-dividend paying stocks why would there be a demand for the stock?
There are a few reasons why the stock of profitable companies is still valuable in our market even if they pay no dividend:
We have a highly liquid stock market that's efficient over the long term. What I mean by that is fairly conservative: while the short- and medium-term prices of stocks are very often bullshit, over the longer term companies can't hide: the successful ones will see stock price increases, and the unsuccessful ones will see their stock suffer. This means that long-term investors of a successful company don't need to wait for dividends to cash in from the profits of their company--they can just sell when they want.
Companies are usually controlled by a narrow group of investors who run the company, and either have been in it for a long time or are planning to. That is, the people who decide whether to pay dividends are the sort of folk who don't need them, given the fact that the moderately efficient stock market allows them to use capital gains instead. (If the stock market stopped being liquid, then you bet they'd demand dividends.)
A controlling interest over a profitable company is a very valuable thing, because if you control a profitable company, you can force it to pay you dividends (or not, as you wish), or even disband it and sell its assets in the worst case. But even if you're a minority shareholder, big investors who want to buy control of a company have to buy it from people like you.
Here's another way to look at it: the value of a company is made of two parts:
The value of the stuff it actually owns minus its liabilities. This is called its book value, and very roughly, it is the price that you would get if you disbanded the company and sold off all of its stuff. For this reason, the book value tells you a lower bound for how much the company is worth, assuming it stopped operating today and thus never produced one more penny of profits. The book value of a company can be estimated with reasonable accuracy.
The value of all the profits or losses the company will make in the future. This value will only be known for certain in the future, so to the extent that a company's market capitalization exceeds its book value, this excess is due to people's bets about what its future profits will be.
So, the argument that the stock market is moderately efficient over the long term, in these terms, would be that a profitable company will see its book value increase significantly over the long term, as the once only-potential profits become actual over the years. So while the stock price will always be uncertain, the lower bound on the reasonable prices will go up over the years.
The major lesson here should be that stocks are really best as long-term investments, and diversify your portfolio very widely (e.g. by using a total market index fund). If the economy actually grows over the term that you invest, you will almost certainly profit from a widely diversified stock investment.
When I said "Accenture went down to 1 cent from about 40," I assumed everybody would understand that the "40" referred to 40 dollars. Likewise for the others.
Accenture (ACN) went down to 1 cent from about 40, for all of one or two minutes, then went back to about 40. The iShares Russell 1000 Value Index Fund (IWD) had a similar ride, from around 60 to 8 cents. Centerpoint Energy (CNP) went from 14 to somewhere under a penny (I saw a number, but I can't remember if it was 0.007 or 0.0007). There may well be other cases like these.
I really suspect there was a software bug that affected several stocks, not fat fingers.
As far as I know, all keyboards around the world can type ASCII characters.
And as far as I know, all major desktop operating systems have input method support that allows you to use a Latin keyboard to input any script in common use. If you don't know how to use it, well, that's your problem.
While every keyboard can type A-Za-z, that's not true of Chinese or Arabic, so sites using those TLDs will be effectively off-limits to those that aren't "native".
Bullshit. My conservative estimate is that every major version of Windows, OS X and Linux over the past 7 years supports input methods for Arabic and Chinese, using an ordinary Latin keyboard. Also, you can buy Arabic keyboards if you like, or even just Arabic character stickers for your existing keyboard. And of course, there's also the fact that you can reach Arabic or Chinese-content sites from links or search engines, or the fact that you can copy and paste a foreign script URL on your browser bar.
When un-crippled devices proved to complex to use and maintain.
If it weren't for the existence of the Macintosh, you might have a point.
No, he still has a point. Macs may be less annoying than PCs, but they're still computers, and therefore, still overly complex and annoying. I've had Macs for six years back and I'd rather never go back to PCs, but I still get more than my fair share of beachballs, crashing software and distracting crap popups while I'm doing something else (I'm looking at your extension updates Firefox).
Wow, that's a slippery slope. So the police can "encourage" third parties to obtain evidence illegally, then use that evidence. For various definitions of "encourage" which will include pay, bribe, threaten, trade, plea-bargain, extort, harass, intimidate, and some I probably haven't thought of.
As a general rule, if a cop gets a third party to do a search for him, the third party is acting as an agent of the cop, and therefore as an agent of the authorities, and the evidence then becomes unadmissible. There are all sorts of edge cases, and setting out the rules to deal with these is the bread and butter of appellate courts.
I wonder if they found him using the Gizmodo journalist's computer, which according to the EFF, was an illegal warrant.
It sounds like no, they managed to identify him without searching Jason Chen's computer. According to reports, Apple already knew who found the phone before Chen got raided. From that story, it just sounds like the guy showed the phone to a number of people, and some of them must have notified Apple and/or the cops.
First off, people keep saying the finder should have "returned the phone to the bar/bartender". That's insanity! Most bars I've been to, I *hardly* trust the bartender or other staff not to just lie to me, promising they'll "try to get it back to the rightful owner" and then just turn around and sell it themselves!
You're missing the point of the advice to give it to the bartender. It's not a claim that bartenders are particularly reliable in this regard. It's an explanation of the fact that you can avoid legal responsibility for returning a lost item by leaving it at the place where it was found (unless you do something completely unreasonable like return it to the bar one month later, after renting it).
Second, I don't think it really matters what part of Apple the guy says he tried to contact. The point is, he made an initial effort. He didn't just sell the thing off immediately.
No, he didn't sell it off immediately--he spent weeks trying to get the best offer. That's very incriminating.
About the only sensible thing you've said so far is that he could try to contact the engineer whose name was supposedly in the phone. Still, even that's a little questionable. I thought Apple killed the phone pretty quickly after they realized it was lost, so that would mean he couldn't get back in it to see any info at all.
So how was he able to tell Gizmodo the engineer's name?
Fourth, giving it to the police?! Another foolish idea.
Are you aware of the fact that in California you must turn in items to the police if you can't or won't return them to the owner in a reasonable time? Whether you think it's foolish or not, it's the law.
So the guy who found the phone could perhaps be uncertain whether it belonged to a guy who worked at Apple, or or to Apple itself. The reasonable course of action is the same: call Apple, and tell them you need to get in contact with that guy because you found the cell phone he lost. Mr. Powell and Apple can sort out which of them owns the phone.
Well, in California selling lost property is equivalent to selling stolen property under certain conditions, mostly depending on whether the person who found it made reasonable efforts to return it to the owner first.
That's not quite accurate. Selling goods you don't own is stealing, yes, but you don't get to claim lost property simply because you think you made reasonable efforts to return it. Section 2080 of the California Code requires the finder of missing property, if they are unable or unwilling to find the owner in a reasonable time, to turn the lost goods in to the police and tell them what they know, so that police can attempt to contact the owner. The finder can only take possession of the lost goods after the police gives the owner a 97 day window to claim them first.
I don't think holding on to this phone for 3 weeks counts as reasonable efforts to return it, especially given that the guy was trying to sell it.
Gizmodo aren't the ones who claimed they called Apple Care (a different company than Apple!) as an attempt to return the phone. The guy who sold it to them is the one who claims he did (according to Gizmodo).
Let me reiterate that according to Gizmodo's story, the guy held on to the phone for three weeks before he sold it. Then Gizmodo held on to it for a week without telling Apple before they published their story. They collectively spent like a month not returning the phone to Apple or to the police.
Under Californian law if you find some item over a given amount you must either:
A) Contact the owner of the item and offer to return it.
B) Notify the police of the lost item.
No, it's not an "either" deal. Look up the California Civil Code. If you cannot return the item to its owner, you must turn it over to the police and tell them what you know. The police will then try to contact the owner.
According to the ONLY SOURCE OF INFORMATION on this story, the person who found the ipod did contact the owner and offered to return it. They refused. Later the journalist also offered publicly to return the item as soon as Apple requested it, which he did.
An owner does not automatically lose their claim to their property simply because they refuse an offer to return it due to a mistaken belief that the offer is not true. A finder's obligation to return an item to its owner is not contingent on the owner claiming or requesting the item; they're supposed to return it promptly or give it to the police, not to spend a week playing around with it before telling the owner that they have it. Also, the finder is not allowed to make use of the item in any way they see fit while it's in their possession.
1) No sale occurred. The payment from the journalist to the finder was for information and the interview, NOT for the ipod.
Oh yeah, riiight. The journalist gave the guy $5,000 for the info and interview, and nothing more. Certainly he didn't give him a single cent for the secret next-generation iPhone protoype that the guy gave him together with the info and interview!
3) The journalist contacted the owner, offered to return the items in question, THEN RETURNED THE ITEMS IN QUESTION. Notice in the text of the above law that the purchaser has to attempt to keep the items from the rightful owner? Notice that the journalist did in no way keep them from the owner?
The journalists kept the item for a whole week before returning it to the owner, in order to use it for their own gain. That's straightforwardly a case of keeping the item from the owner.
Seriously, do you believe that if you find a stolen car it's ok to spend a week joyriding it around as long as you return it to the owner in the end? Do you believe that in that case, you wouldn't have kept that car from its rightful owner for a whole week?
My understanding is that if Gizmodo had paid $5000 for taking photos and observing the finder while he uses the new and improved and top secret address book on the iPhone and the new and improved and top secret Mail application to find the owner, they would have been in the clear.
Unlikely. You know, just use common sense for a bit. Suppose somebody accuses you of buying a car you knew was stolen. How well do you think this defense is going to work: "Sir, I knew the car was stolen. However, I didn't buy it. I just rented it for a week!"
Name me *ONE* case of someone "stealing" $5,000 worth of goods (read: it was left somewhere by its rightful owner), returning it, then being raided by police.
Of course, if you found $5,000 worth of goods that was left by its rightful owner, and you returned it to them the next day, you wouldn't get raided by the police. If you tried to return it to them and failed, so then you took it to the police two days later and told them what you knew, you'd also be fine. Hell, you'd be fine if you'd never bothered trying to contact the owner and just took it straight to the cops.
But you are leaving out the part where the hypothetical finder keeps the goods for three weeks so he can sell them to the best bidder for $5,000 dollars, who then spend a week using it for their own personal gain knowingly causing a loss to the owner, and only then return it.
Let's assume, for the sake of this really silly argument, that the fact that the guy talked on the phoneto some random dude in Apple Care who thought he was on crack somehow actually does mean that Apple denied ownership. He's still not supposed to sell stuff that he doesn't own. Gizmodo's not supposed to buy stuff that they can reasonably know does not belong to the guy.
The guy was certain this phone was an Apple prototype. The story we've heard about his "efforts," assuming it's even true at all, only shows at best that he didn't nearly exhaust his alternatives for returning this phone to Apple. He doesn't even have to go out of his way trying to return it if it is not convenient to him: the law allows (and requires) him to hand it over to the cops if he's unwilling, unable or unsuccessful at returning it, and tell them the circumstances in which he found it and what information he has about its ownership. Which he didn't do.
But, there's more! The law explicitly forbids him from selling the phone for his own gain. So what does he do on top of not returning it promptly or giving it to the cops? Spend three weeks trying to sell it to the highest bidder, of course!
You and I and Gizmodo are under no obligation to help Apple keep Apple's secrets. That's not our job. It would be an unfair burden to place upon us -- a limit to our freedom.
IANAL, but I'm pretty confident about two points:
Something along the lines of what you say is indeed true.
However, it probably goes out the window if Gizmodo committed a felony to acquire Apple's secret.
[...] the guy/gal who found it tried to give it back. APPLE DIDN'T WANT IT. The device was bricked so he couldn't find out the phone # of the "owner." So couldn't call them.
Except that according to the story they told, the guy who found it knew whose phone it was all along--the name of the Apple employee who lost it.
He/she thought they knew it was something real, (despite Apple's dismissal of him/her) so sought out a journalist to have a look.
Just because some low-level Apple CSR (who might not even be an Apple employee!) doesn't believe that the phone in question belongs to Apple, doesn't mean that Apple therefore lose ownership of the phone. If the guy truly called the Apple help line and didn't succeed in getting the phone back to Apple, then he's required by California law to turn it over to the police. Instead he spent 3 weeks trying to sell it around to the highest bidder.
Gawker scooped everyone else (with only $5K) and here we are.
Or, in other words, no other news organization was dumb enough to pay a few grand and commit a felony to get their hands on a phone they probably didn't even believe was real. I bet you a few of them called the cops with what they knew after they learned that it was real from Gizmodo's story.
Is it stealing if you return a lost item to the owner before said owner reports it stolen?
It is theft to sell an item that you know is not yours, or to knowingly buy an item that you reasonably believe doesn't belong to the seller. $5,000 was exchanged for this phone because the buyer and the seller knew it was Apple's prototype, and the buyer intended to make use of it for their own gain, which they later in fact did. Whether it was returned to Apple later or whether Apple reported it stolen is just not relevant.
The finder and Gizmodo collectively spent 4-5 weeks trying to gain from their possession of the prototype. During those 4-5 weeks, there was ample opportunity to give the phone to the police as required by California law.
The finder of the phone and Gizmodo, instead of simply going to the police station and turning it in as required by the law, collectively spent 4-5 weeks doing all they could to benefit from the possession and use of an item that they knew was not theirs, and whose owner they had identified.
I keep hearing this but Apple asked for it back and they complied.
They have a duty under California law to return the phone either to the place where it was found, to the owner, or to the police. That duty is not contingent upon Apple asking for the phone back, or even knowing that it's lost. Again, instead of doing that, they spent 4-5 weeks trying to milk it for their own benefit. During all of this time, they had ample opportunity to return it.
Perhaps someone knows more about this story than I do. But is it truly stolen property? If you find something on the ground, it is my understanding that it is yours unless you know whose its is (say if you saw someone drop it, or if it has an name/address) and then it is your if you make a good-faith effort to return it to its owner but are unable to do so (for whatever reason). Are my assumptions true for the state of California?
Your assumptions are not true in California. I'd also recommend that you look up the laws of your state regarding lost goods and theft. But as a general rule of thumb, if you find a item on the ground it's not stolen property unless you try to sell it or use it for your own gain; those actions constitute theft.
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I can't stress enough that the people who are suggesting talking to a lawyer are right.
Still, if I may hazard a guess, if you started the project before you were hired, and you have a standard relationship to your employer, there's a good chance that both you and your employer have a claim to the overall work, because it contains parts that you wrote on your own, and parts that you wrote as their employee. In this case, then yeah, you don't have ownership nor license to the parts that they own--and over time, those parts may have become inseparable from the original parts that are yours.
If you buy a stock now at $X a share, in 10-15 years it will be obvious whether $X was a good price to pay for that stock. Because by then it will be obvious whether it was a good buy, so its price will be an accurate reflection of whether it did well over those 10-15 years. More on this below.
There are a few reasons why the stock of profitable companies is still valuable in our market even if they pay no dividend:
Here's another way to look at it: the value of a company is made of two parts:
So, the argument that the stock market is moderately efficient over the long term, in these terms, would be that a profitable company will see its book value increase significantly over the long term, as the once only-potential profits become actual over the years. So while the stock price will always be uncertain, the lower bound on the reasonable prices will go up over the years.
The major lesson here should be that stocks are really best as long-term investments, and diversify your portfolio very widely (e.g. by using a total market index fund). If the economy actually grows over the term that you invest, you will almost certainly profit from a widely diversified stock investment.
When I said "Accenture went down to 1 cent from about 40," I assumed everybody would understand that the "40" referred to 40 dollars. Likewise for the others.
Accenture (ACN) went down to 1 cent from about 40, for all of one or two minutes, then went back to about 40. The iShares Russell 1000 Value Index Fund (IWD) had a similar ride, from around 60 to 8 cents. Centerpoint Energy (CNP) went from 14 to somewhere under a penny (I saw a number, but I can't remember if it was 0.007 or 0.0007). There may well be other cases like these.
I really suspect there was a software bug that affected several stocks, not fat fingers.
And as far as I know, all major desktop operating systems have input method support that allows you to use a Latin keyboard to input any script in common use. If you don't know how to use it, well, that's your problem.
Bullshit. My conservative estimate is that every major version of Windows, OS X and Linux over the past 7 years supports input methods for Arabic and Chinese, using an ordinary Latin keyboard. Also, you can buy Arabic keyboards if you like, or even just Arabic character stickers for your existing keyboard. And of course, there's also the fact that you can reach Arabic or Chinese-content sites from links or search engines, or the fact that you can copy and paste a foreign script URL on your browser bar.
Can you read any Arabic or Chinese, anyway?
No, he still has a point. Macs may be less annoying than PCs, but they're still computers, and therefore, still overly complex and annoying. I've had Macs for six years back and I'd rather never go back to PCs, but I still get more than my fair share of beachballs, crashing software and distracting crap popups while I'm doing something else (I'm looking at your extension updates Firefox).
As a general rule, if a cop gets a third party to do a search for him, the third party is acting as an agent of the cop, and therefore as an agent of the authorities, and the evidence then becomes unadmissible. There are all sorts of edge cases, and setting out the rules to deal with these is the bread and butter of appellate courts.
It sounds like no, they managed to identify him without searching Jason Chen's computer. According to reports, Apple already knew who found the phone before Chen got raided. From that story, it just sounds like the guy showed the phone to a number of people, and some of them must have notified Apple and/or the cops.
You're missing the point of the advice to give it to the bartender. It's not a claim that bartenders are particularly reliable in this regard. It's an explanation of the fact that you can avoid legal responsibility for returning a lost item by leaving it at the place where it was found (unless you do something completely unreasonable like return it to the bar one month later, after renting it).
No, he didn't sell it off immediately--he spent weeks trying to get the best offer. That's very incriminating.
So how was he able to tell Gizmodo the engineer's name?
Are you aware of the fact that in California you must turn in items to the police if you can't or won't return them to the owner in a reasonable time? Whether you think it's foolish or not, it's the law.
So the guy who found the phone could perhaps be uncertain whether it belonged to a guy who worked at Apple, or or to Apple itself. The reasonable course of action is the same: call Apple, and tell them you need to get in contact with that guy because you found the cell phone he lost. Mr. Powell and Apple can sort out which of them owns the phone.
Well, I'm sure the criminal justice system would be perfectly happy to convict this guy for renting stolen goods if that is the case.
That's not quite accurate. Selling goods you don't own is stealing, yes, but you don't get to claim lost property simply because you think you made reasonable efforts to return it. Section 2080 of the California Code requires the finder of missing property, if they are unable or unwilling to find the owner in a reasonable time, to turn the lost goods in to the police and tell them what they know, so that police can attempt to contact the owner. The finder can only take possession of the lost goods after the police gives the owner a 97 day window to claim them first.
I don't think holding on to this phone for 3 weeks counts as reasonable efforts to return it, especially given that the guy was trying to sell it.
Gizmodo aren't the ones who claimed they called Apple Care (a different company than Apple!) as an attempt to return the phone. The guy who sold it to them is the one who claims he did (according to Gizmodo).
Let me reiterate that according to Gizmodo's story, the guy held on to the phone for three weeks before he sold it. Then Gizmodo held on to it for a week without telling Apple before they published their story. They collectively spent like a month not returning the phone to Apple or to the police.
No, it's not an "either" deal. Look up the California Civil Code. If you cannot return the item to its owner, you must turn it over to the police and tell them what you know. The police will then try to contact the owner.
An owner does not automatically lose their claim to their property simply because they refuse an offer to return it due to a mistaken belief that the offer is not true. A finder's obligation to return an item to its owner is not contingent on the owner claiming or requesting the item; they're supposed to return it promptly or give it to the police, not to spend a week playing around with it before telling the owner that they have it. Also, the finder is not allowed to make use of the item in any way they see fit while it's in their possession.
Oh yeah, riiight. The journalist gave the guy $5,000 for the info and interview, and nothing more. Certainly he didn't give him a single cent for the secret next-generation iPhone protoype that the guy gave him together with the info and interview!
The journalists kept the item for a whole week before returning it to the owner, in order to use it for their own gain. That's straightforwardly a case of keeping the item from the owner.
Seriously, do you believe that if you find a stolen car it's ok to spend a week joyriding it around as long as you return it to the owner in the end? Do you believe that in that case, you wouldn't have kept that car from its rightful owner for a whole week?
Unlikely. You know, just use common sense for a bit. Suppose somebody accuses you of buying a car you knew was stolen. How well do you think this defense is going to work: "Sir, I knew the car was stolen. However, I didn't buy it. I just rented it for a week!"
Of course, if you found $5,000 worth of goods that was left by its rightful owner, and you returned it to them the next day, you wouldn't get raided by the police. If you tried to return it to them and failed, so then you took it to the police two days later and told them what you knew, you'd also be fine. Hell, you'd be fine if you'd never bothered trying to contact the owner and just took it straight to the cops.
But you are leaving out the part where the hypothetical finder keeps the goods for three weeks so he can sell them to the best bidder for $5,000 dollars, who then spend a week using it for their own personal gain knowingly causing a loss to the owner, and only then return it.
Let's assume, for the sake of this really silly argument, that the fact that the guy talked on the phoneto some random dude in Apple Care who thought he was on crack somehow actually does mean that Apple denied ownership. He's still not supposed to sell stuff that he doesn't own. Gizmodo's not supposed to buy stuff that they can reasonably know does not belong to the guy.
The guy was certain this phone was an Apple prototype. The story we've heard about his "efforts," assuming it's even true at all, only shows at best that he didn't nearly exhaust his alternatives for returning this phone to Apple. He doesn't even have to go out of his way trying to return it if it is not convenient to him: the law allows (and requires) him to hand it over to the cops if he's unwilling, unable or unsuccessful at returning it, and tell them the circumstances in which he found it and what information he has about its ownership. Which he didn't do.
But, there's more! The law explicitly forbids him from selling the phone for his own gain. So what does he do on top of not returning it promptly or giving it to the cops? Spend three weeks trying to sell it to the highest bidder, of course!
That almost certainly doesn't work if they committed a felony to learn those trade secrets.
Dude, if you think it's ok to sell something you don't own, I've got a bridge in New York City I'd like to sell you.
IANAL, but I'm pretty confident about two points:
It is theft to sell an item that you know is not yours, or to knowingly buy an item that you reasonably believe doesn't belong to the seller. $5,000 was exchanged for this phone because the buyer and the seller knew it was Apple's prototype, and the buyer intended to make use of it for their own gain, which they later in fact did. Whether it was returned to Apple later or whether Apple reported it stolen is just not relevant.
The finder and Gizmodo collectively spent 4-5 weeks trying to gain from their possession of the prototype. During those 4-5 weeks, there was ample opportunity to give the phone to the police as required by California law.
The finder of the phone and Gizmodo, instead of simply going to the police station and turning it in as required by the law, collectively spent 4-5 weeks doing all they could to benefit from the possession and use of an item that they knew was not theirs, and whose owner they had identified.
They have a duty under California law to return the phone either to the place where it was found, to the owner, or to the police. That duty is not contingent upon Apple asking for the phone back, or even knowing that it's lost. Again, instead of doing that, they spent 4-5 weeks trying to milk it for their own benefit. During all of this time, they had ample opportunity to return it.
Your assumptions are not true in California. I'd also recommend that you look up the laws of your state regarding lost goods and theft. But as a general rule of thumb, if you find a item on the ground it's not stolen property unless you try to sell it or use it for your own gain; those actions constitute theft.