Yes, his father let him in - a very bone-headed thing to do.
Brian probably co-operated because he knew he had no hope of winning in the impending suit against him, and decided to appear co-operative to lessen the sentence (I do believe courts do that?)
You've been watching too much TV.
Any lawyer would have told him "You're saying that there are no charges yet? In that case, my client has absolutely nothing to say." The "yet" means that charges ARE coming, so SFTU. People too often interpret that the exact opposite - as an implied promise that, if they cooperate, the police will put in a good word. The police have NO say in the matter - they cannot "put in a good word" for you.
The proof is in the pudding - look how they used his call - that THEY asked him to make - as the excuse for seizing his cell phone.
Stop being so naive - you're making geeks everywhere look bad.
But don't take my word for it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc "An law school professor and former criminal defense attorney tells you why you should never agree to be interviewed by the police."
Listen to what the cop says... decades of experience count for something. They have plenty of experience trolling people.
Next time that a cop asks "do you know how fast you were going?" - you're not obliged to supply an answer that question. STFU.
If you had followed the links I've posted elsewhere, you would see that you indeed get TITLE, not a "security interest in the car". Maybe you should get out more often, your experience is too limited and is blinding you to the fact that there are plenty of places that will transfer the title.
You're thinking of lien-holders for loans against the vehicle. NOT the same thing. Different laws apply, because of consumer protection laws and the terms of the contract.
The problem isn't there - it's the "What have you done..." remark, which is rude, and a stupid way to avoid answering what has become wide-spread criticism.
The flash thing is just another example. "Battery life" my behind! Let the user decide.
"Oh, but it will crap out the system!" Then build a better system, duh! Or work with Adobe to make improvements. If others can, why can't Apple?
It's not a trade secret if you negligently leave it outside your care and control. Apple should have just called the phone and told whoever picked it up that they'd please like it back. Most people would have gone "Sure". But Apple has to be different. Apple has to be in 100% in control, and when they aren't they freak.
The minute they bricked the phone, they screamed "this is not a regular phone!!!"
"Exposing trade secrets" - there's an App for that.
One small problem - the concealment bit went out to lunch within 24 hours - to the finder - LONG before any pics were made.
To compound this, not only did Apple leak their trade secret by their own negligence - they then went on and confirmed it by letting it be known that they had "lost a prototype". At that point, the existence of the phone was not a trade secret by any reading of the facts, all due to Apple's actions.
To put it back into the Coca-cola analogy: You negligently leave the secret formula for Coca-cola in a wallet, and leave the wallet in a restaurant. I look in the wallet, hoping to find contact information so I can return it to you - and I find the Coca-cola analogy. You cannot argue that it was secret because it was concealed in a wallet.
Same thing with the prototype - you cannot argue that it was successfully concealed when it looked different enough from a regular iPhone that people were thinking it might have been a cheap knock-off.
Trade secret only remains in place if the original act of leaking it was criminal. It wasn't. It was negligence on Apple's part. They knew it, which is why they went all Gestapo.
This could have all been avoided by, instead of bricking the phone, calling the phone and asking for it back, perhaps along with a finders fee. "Hi, I lost that phone, I might get fired if I don't get it back - can we work something out?" Even ten grand would have been less than what Apple's already spent - and they probably could have got it back for the price of a few beers and a thank-you.
I've had to parse xml in c - I've seen what generic parser code is like, and it's both ugly and time+space-consuming. Eve replacing it with use-case-specific code isn't that great an option, because of problems inherent with xml as a format - it sucks.
The easiest? SDF. Second-easiest, delimited - whether it's with with tabs, spaces, fixed fields, colons, or whatever. Both are quick and easy, don't suffer from memory bloat, and also easy to detect and recover from errors in formatting, dropped data, etc. SDF also has the advantage of being blazingly fast for searching for/rewriting/updating a specific record by number - a major failing of xml. Also, indexing SDF is quick and easy. XML? Nope. Remember all the fuss about "binary xml"?
Dude calm the frick down. Google is a massive corporation with thousands upon thousands of employees simultaneously working on thousands of projects, using code created over a span of several years by programmers who may have already moved on to another project or left to a different company. It's not inconceivable they would have missed this "feature", especially if it doesn't register as a "bug" that destabilizes their intended operations.
No, because the trade secret - the existence of the phone - was already exposed to someone else - the finder of the phone - by Apple's negligence. Once a trade secret is exposed by the trade secrets' owner through their own negligence, it is no longer a trade secret.
If I find the formula for Coka-cola in a bar because an employee of Coke left it there, it's no longer a trade secret due to Coke's negligence. I can't be convicted of subsequently selling a trade secret because I obtained it legally, and it lost its "trade secret" status forever at that moment.
So person B making photos of the iPhone after it lost its "trade secret" status because it was divulged to person A through Apple's negligence is not "copying a trade secret."
... if a trade secret is acquired by improper means (a somewhat wider concept than "illegal means" but inclusive of such means), the secret is generally deemed to have been misappropriated. Thus if a trade secret has been acquired via industrial espionage, its acquirer will probably be subject to legal liability for acquiring it improperly.
Since in this case the prototype was acquired by Gizmodo illegally, they must face the full consequences of the law.
No - the first disclosure of the trade secret was to the person who found the phone in the bar. What happened after is irrelevant - by then it was already no longer a trade secret, since Apple's employee had negligently exposed it to a member of the public. Once a trade secret is exposed to ANY member of the public by the trade secret holder's negligent actions, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. Gizmodo making copies or photos cannot qualify as exposing a trade secret, even if they obtained the device illegally, since someone else already had obtained the trade secret legally - through Apple's negligence.
Vote for the ugliest, most unattractive, most disgusting. Lets see them analyze THAT!
It's easy. If it's too fat or too skinny, click on the +2. If it's decent, click on the -2. throw in some -3 and +1/-1 at random. If it looks like the prototypical slashdotter or Steve Balmer, click on +3.
You're absolutely right. And certainly, if you don't feel that you're free to go, it sure will feel like a custodial interrogation.
Years ago I reported a couple for child abuse. No good deed goes unpunished, so one of them made up some pretty awful accusations against me. Word got to me that the police wanted to question me, so I went down to the police station, armed with a pen and paper. When they asked me to give a statement, I took out my pen and paper.
Cop: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Same as you - I'm taking notes."
Cop: "You can't do that!"
Me: "Then I have nothing to say."
Cop: "I can arrest you!"
Me: "Then I CERTAINLY have nothing to say, except go ahead, you're making a mistake and you'll lose in court/"
Yes, I purposefully goaded the cop into doing an arrest. It was the best way to get back at the idiot making the accusations and forcing them to put up or shut up. I had the time of my life cross-examining the two "witnesses" over several days as they repeatedly perjured themselves, digging their holes deeper and deeper, until they finally started screaming - at the judge! Bad move:-) I guess they thought they could get away with it because I went head-to-head with the judge rather loudly for several minutes on a point of law (he finally saw the light - that the witness had in fact NOT answered the question, had done everything except answer the question, and had tried to pull a fast one over him).
I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for the faint-of-heart, but it sure beats watching Law and Order on TV.
No, it doesn't. There's no problem losing a chunk of video - the rest plays just fine (been there, tried it). It's just an mpeg2 stream, after all. The player will skip over it. It'll find the next key frame and start playing properly again.
It's not protected by trade secret if you negligently expose it to the general public. Leaving it in a bar has GOT to be negligent.
The formula for Coka-cola (which changes, btw, with the price of raw materials) was kept as a trade secret because trade secrets don't have an expiry date. However, to continue to be a trade secret, the owner has to take reasonable precautions against exposure of the secret.
The existence of the phone was no longer a trade secret when it was left behind in a bar. Ditto for anything that it contained. That's the risk you take when you go the trade secret route. You lose your protection to your "trade secret" if someone either independently discovers it (like if someone manages to duplicate the formula for Coka-cola, as PepsiCo did when it looked like Coca-cola wasn't going to re-introduce "Old Coke"), or if you accidentally divulge it by, for example, leaving it where the general public can see it and play with it.
So photographing it wasn't making a copy of "trade secret material", since Apple's own negligence resulted in the phone no longer being a trade secret, and it being available for someone else to photograph who hadn't signed an NDA. If the warrant was based on preventing the leaking of a trade secret, it should be invalidated.
Remember how SCO tried to claim trade secret on some of the stuff they had already distributed via gpl, saying it was "unintentional"? Negligence doesn't protect trade secrets. Ever.
It was in connection with making copies of trade secrets (the phone). It's not a trade secret any more when you negligently expose it to the world by leaving it in a bar. To be classed as a trade secret, the owner has to take reasonable precautions against exposing it. This is akin to leaving the formula for coka-cola in a bar and then claiming that someone who makes a photocopy of it is making a copy of your trade secret. No, they're not, because while they ARE making a copy, it's no longer a trade secret thanks to your negligence.
Spiders - 8 legs. They're arachnids, not insects. Ditto for scorpions, ticks, etc.
Mammals - Siamese dogs, cats, etc. (Ever see a 6-legged chihuahua? Kind of gross, actually. Still-borne, in a jar. It's mother was BIG for a chihuahua - more like a largish cat)
And if you look at a real dvd, you'll see that the movie is also split into multiple files. So what's the big issue? Even if, for some weird reason, you wanted them all in one big file locally, just cat them. You can even just cat them to a pipe to your output device - cat/mount/gfs/movies/123/crappy_movie*.mpeg |/dev/video0... it's not like you NEED to have them in one file - your dvd or blu-ray player doesn't.
They were storing the payload for the last 3 years. Three years, and NOBODY noticed? Nobody said "is this even legal in all the places we operate?" Nobody said "Can this come back and bite us on the ass?"
3 years is a long time to "accidentally" be doing something when it's your profession.
The article indicates that the original software was expressly written with logging capability. They somehow "forgot" to remove it. And nobody noticed. For three years!?!
The owner of a trade secret must take reasonable precautions to preserve secrecy. In other words, don't leave your trade secret behind sitting in plain view in a bar. Whether it's an iPhone or the recipe of Coka-cola, once it's known by anyone in the general public, thanks to YOUR negligence, it no longer is a trade secret.
So no, there was no copying of trade secret material.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, his father let him in - a very bone-headed thing to do.
You've been watching too much TV.
Any lawyer would have told him "You're saying that there are no charges yet? In that case, my client has absolutely nothing to say." The "yet" means that charges ARE coming, so SFTU. People too often interpret that the exact opposite - as an implied promise that, if they cooperate, the police will put in a good word. The police have NO say in the matter - they cannot "put in a good word" for you.
The proof is in the pudding - look how they used his call - that THEY asked him to make - as the excuse for seizing his cell phone.
Stop being so naive - you're making geeks everywhere look bad.
But don't take my word for it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
"An law school professor and former criminal defense attorney tells you why you should never agree to be interviewed by the police."
Listen to what the cop says ... decades of experience count for something. They have plenty of experience trolling people.
Next time that a cop asks "do you know how fast you were going?" - you're not obliged to supply an answer that question. STFU.
You're thinking of lien-holders for loans against the vehicle. NOT the same thing. Different laws apply, because of consumer protection laws and the terms of the contract.
The problem isn't there - it's the "What have you done ..." remark, which is rude, and a stupid way to avoid answering what has become wide-spread criticism.
The flash thing is just another example. "Battery life" my behind! Let the user decide.
"Oh, but it will crap out the system!" Then build a better system, duh! Or work with Adobe to make improvements. If others can, why can't Apple?
Note to Steve: don't be a total iDork, mkay?
It was a low blow ... he seems to forget that he got his good stuff from Xerox, and then got a real operating system from BSD.
"There's an App for that ..."
"Your App has been rejected by the Apple Store. Because we said so!"
The minute they bricked the phone, they screamed "this is not a regular phone!!!"
"Exposing trade secrets" - there's an App for that.
One small problem - the concealment bit went out to lunch within 24 hours - to the finder - LONG before any pics were made.
To compound this, not only did Apple leak their trade secret by their own negligence - they then went on and confirmed it by letting it be known that they had "lost a prototype". At that point, the existence of the phone was not a trade secret by any reading of the facts, all due to Apple's actions.
To put it back into the Coca-cola analogy: You negligently leave the secret formula for Coca-cola in a wallet, and leave the wallet in a restaurant. I look in the wallet, hoping to find contact information so I can return it to you - and I find the Coca-cola analogy. You cannot argue that it was secret because it was concealed in a wallet.
Same thing with the prototype - you cannot argue that it was successfully concealed when it looked different enough from a regular iPhone that people were thinking it might have been a cheap knock-off.
Trade secret only remains in place if the original act of leaking it was criminal. It wasn't. It was negligence on Apple's part. They knew it, which is why they went all Gestapo.
This could have all been avoided by, instead of bricking the phone, calling the phone and asking for it back, perhaps along with a finders fee. "Hi, I lost that phone, I might get fired if I don't get it back - can we work something out?" Even ten grand would have been less than what Apple's already spent - and they probably could have got it back for the price of a few beers and a thank-you.
The easiest? SDF. Second-easiest, delimited - whether it's with with tabs, spaces, fixed fields, colons, or whatever. Both are quick and easy, don't suffer from memory bloat, and also easy to detect and recover from errors in formatting, dropped data, etc. SDF also has the advantage of being blazingly fast for searching for/rewriting/updating a specific record by number - a major failing of xml. Also, indexing SDF is quick and easy. XML? Nope. Remember all the fuss about "binary xml"?
B.P. would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
If I find the formula for Coka-cola in a bar because an employee of Coke left it there, it's no longer a trade secret due to Coke's negligence. I can't be convicted of subsequently selling a trade secret because I obtained it legally, and it lost its "trade secret" status forever at that moment.
So person B making photos of the iPhone after it lost its "trade secret" status because it was divulged to person A through Apple's negligence is not "copying a trade secret."
No - the first disclosure of the trade secret was to the person who found the phone in the bar. What happened after is irrelevant - by then it was already no longer a trade secret, since Apple's employee had negligently exposed it to a member of the public. Once a trade secret is exposed to ANY member of the public by the trade secret holder's negligent actions, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. Gizmodo making copies or photos cannot qualify as exposing a trade secret, even if they obtained the device illegally, since someone else already had obtained the trade secret legally - through Apple's negligence.
It's easy. If it's too fat or too skinny, click on the +2. If it's decent, click on the -2. throw in some -3 and +1/-1 at random. If it looks like the prototypical slashdotter or Steve Balmer, click on +3.
You're absolutely right. And certainly, if you don't feel that you're free to go, it sure will feel like a custodial interrogation.
Years ago I reported a couple for child abuse. No good deed goes unpunished, so one of them made up some pretty awful accusations against me. Word got to me that the police wanted to question me, so I went down to the police station, armed with a pen and paper. When they asked me to give a statement, I took out my pen and paper.
Cop: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Same as you - I'm taking notes."
Cop: "You can't do that!"
Me: "Then I have nothing to say."
Cop: "I can arrest you!"
Me: "Then I CERTAINLY have nothing to say, except go ahead, you're making a mistake and you'll lose in court/"
Yes, I purposefully goaded the cop into doing an arrest. It was the best way to get back at the idiot making the accusations and forcing them to put up or shut up. I had the time of my life cross-examining the two "witnesses" over several days as they repeatedly perjured themselves, digging their holes deeper and deeper, until they finally started screaming - at the judge! Bad move :-) I guess they thought they could get away with it because I went head-to-head with the judge rather loudly for several minutes on a point of law (he finally saw the light - that the witness had in fact NOT answered the question, had done everything except answer the question, and had tried to pull a fast one over him).
I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for the faint-of-heart, but it sure beats watching Law and Order on TV.
No, it doesn't. There's no problem losing a chunk of video - the rest plays just fine (been there, tried it). It's just an mpeg2 stream, after all. The player will skip over it. It'll find the next key frame and start playing properly again.
It's not protected by trade secret if you negligently expose it to the general public. Leaving it in a bar has GOT to be negligent.
The formula for Coka-cola (which changes, btw, with the price of raw materials) was kept as a trade secret because trade secrets don't have an expiry date. However, to continue to be a trade secret, the owner has to take reasonable precautions against exposure of the secret.
The existence of the phone was no longer a trade secret when it was left behind in a bar. Ditto for anything that it contained. That's the risk you take when you go the trade secret route. You lose your protection to your "trade secret" if someone either independently discovers it (like if someone manages to duplicate the formula for Coka-cola, as PepsiCo did when it looked like Coca-cola wasn't going to re-introduce "Old Coke"), or if you accidentally divulge it by, for example, leaving it where the general public can see it and play with it.
So photographing it wasn't making a copy of "trade secret material", since Apple's own negligence resulted in the phone no longer being a trade secret, and it being available for someone else to photograph who hadn't signed an NDA. If the warrant was based on preventing the leaking of a trade secret, it should be invalidated.
Remember how SCO tried to claim trade secret on some of the stuff they had already distributed via gpl, saying it was "unintentional"? Negligence doesn't protect trade secrets. Ever.
It was in connection with making copies of trade secrets (the phone). It's not a trade secret any more when you negligently expose it to the world by leaving it in a bar. To be classed as a trade secret, the owner has to take reasonable precautions against exposing it. This is akin to leaving the formula for coka-cola in a bar and then claiming that someone who makes a photocopy of it is making a copy of your trade secret. No, they're not, because while they ARE making a copy, it's no longer a trade secret thanks to your negligence.
Spiders - 8 legs. They're arachnids, not insects. Ditto for scorpions, ticks, etc.
Mammals - Siamese dogs, cats, etc. (Ever see a 6-legged chihuahua? Kind of gross, actually. Still-borne, in a jar. It's mother was BIG for a chihuahua - more like a largish cat)
And if you look at a real dvd, you'll see that the movie is also split into multiple files. So what's the big issue? Even if, for some weird reason, you wanted them all in one big file locally, just cat them. You can even just cat them to a pipe to your output device - cat /mount/gfs/movies/123/crappy_movie*.mpeg | /dev/video0 ... it's not like you NEED to have them in one file - your dvd or blu-ray player doesn't.
It was a very stupid move. The kid cooperated, and got penalized for it. Even the cops and JUDGES will say you shouldn't talk to the police.
Also, there's no problem storing the video in 25meg chunks. Take a look at a real dvd - the video for your movie is in multiple files.
That's not a problem. Look at your dvds - the video is split into multiple files (sure, they're 1 gig apiece, but the principle holds).
Besides, the overhead is on the server - what do you care?
And the loss of a 25-meg "chunk" means the loss of less than a minute of video, not an hour.
They were storing the payload for the last 3 years. Three years, and NOBODY noticed? Nobody said "is this even legal in all the places we operate?" Nobody said "Can this come back and bite us on the ass?"
3 years is a long time to "accidentally" be doing something when it's your profession.
The article indicates that the original software was expressly written with logging capability. They somehow "forgot" to remove it. And nobody noticed. For three years!?!
He didn't make a copy of any trade secret. Trade secrets are no longer trade secrets once they've been leaked.
The owner of a trade secret must take reasonable precautions to preserve secrecy. In other words, don't leave your trade secret behind sitting in plain view in a bar. Whether it's an iPhone or the recipe of Coka-cola, once it's known by anyone in the general public, thanks to YOUR negligence, it no longer is a trade secret.
So no, there was no copying of trade secret material.