I can't believe it! When they release a major revision to their operating system, it sometimes takes them weeks to finalize a new release of the source code? That's... that's...
Perfectly reasonable in a world where there are only so many hours in the day, and so many engineers whose time can be devoted to a given effort.
Maybe Stallman is holding off on attacking Apple because he's developing some manners - you know, "Don't talk when your mouth is full of toe jam."
And if you listen to all the talk here on slashdot, you'll easily conclude:
1) Microsoft is bad at anything they do. Terrible. Absolutely no business attempting anything in technology because they only exist for their goal of returning us to the dark ages.
2) Free Software-supporting high school students are the smartest people on earth, and write software that is orders of magnitude better than any of these "pros" who work wage-slave jobs for proprietary-software companies.
Given that, I'd say it's entirely reasonable to expect that SourceForge and other FOSS repositories would be orders of magnitude more active, well-supported, and well-constructed than anything those bumbling idiots in Redmond would be capable of.
Really? They give user accounts on routers in your organization? How exotic.
You're splitting hairs in an attempt to find a way that this guy is a hero. He's not.
He failed to implement a disaster recovery plan in case he were incapacitated and unable to give the passwords to someone. He stonewalled the request for the passwords, rather than offer to provide the passwords in a more secure manner. Instead of working with them, he sent them emails gloating about how they were no doubt struggling to get logged in.
At what point do you stop looking for excuses that he's been railroaded, and acknowledge that he behaved in an unprofessional and malicious manner?
Did he also CC the HR personnel and the Police Defective on that e-mail? They where also in the conference call when he was asked for the password.
If you're a super anal-retentive security guy, a reasonable response in that situation is, "Due to security concerns, I can't give that information to you out loud, but I will write down the passwords and account names, seal them in a security envelope, and hand that sealed envelope ONLY to you (or some other person I feel is authorized), and then I will consider my responsibility for securing this network to be finished."
Instead, Mr. Childs stonewalled, then provided false logins, and appeared to gloat in an email too (see the article).
Did you bother to read the article? This was specifically talked about there. I quote:
Eventually we looked at it and we saw that in late June his manager had requested certain accounts to be created that would have access to certain routers and switches. And he did create those accounts, and he sent that back in an email with the user IDs and passwords, to which Richard Robinson was also copied. If his big concern was that Richard Robinson was not authorized to be a user, why -- just a week before -- did he copy him on an email that has user IDs and passwords?
So what changed between "late June," when he sent an email with user IDs and passwords to Mr. Robinson, and the time of this meeting, when suddenly "Mr. Robinson isn't authorized to have passwords."?
It does matter what you say to them. There is no law saying "Private corporations may not send representatives to someone's house." Shit, private organizations (some corporate, some nonprofits) send people to my door all the time, asking if they can come in to show me something, or talk to me about something.
They all get a polite, "Sorry, no, I'm not interested," and I close the door. If they were to break into my house, they would be guilty of breaking and entering. Since they did not force their way in, and they complied with the roommate's refusal to grant them entry... what, exactly, is the horrible outcome we're supposed to be concerned about?
I'm not particularly concerned with a private corporation sending representatives to search my house, because any representative of a private corporation who shows up at my house without a search warrant and a representative of local law enforcement will be told to fuck off and come back when they have a search warrant.
Do you also find yourself haplessly compelled to invite door-to-door salesman in for a spot of tea and conversation?
Yes, it's a civil requirement. And violating that means you violated a civil statute, which then opens you up to a pretty severe judgement when you're talking about an unreleased prototype which is also probably covered at least tangentially by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
There is also a criminal statute, section 485 of the penal code, which may apply, which could result in somebody sitting in a small cell.
I think you can make a pretty good case that the finder violated both civil and criminal statutes - whether or not the charges will hold up in court, there certainly does appear to be a violation from the published facts.
What is so hard to understand about this? The civil code states that you are obligated to make a reasonable attempt to return it to the owner, if you know who the owner is. If you do not know the owner, or cannot contact them, and the item is valued at more than $100, you are obligated to turn it over to the police, who will then attempt to return it to its owner.
If they fail in doing that after 90-100 days, the finder may take ownership of the device after paying any storage fees / publication charges the police incur while taking an ad out in the newspaper in an attempt to return the property to its owner.
Until you return it to the rightful owner, or turn it over to the police, you have the status and obligations of a depositary-for-hire on behalf of the owner. What this means is that you are obligated to make "reasonable" efforts to safeguard the property in your care. If you rent a storage unit to put some furniture in, wouldn't you object if the person you're renting the unit from turned around and rented out your furniture to someone else? And wouldn't you be even more pissed if somebody spilled beer all over your sofa & left cigarette burns in the cushions?
Let's grant that calling apple's tech support constitutes "reasonable" effort. You've satisfied that part of the statute. But you're ignoring the fact that the same statute goes on to state that if the item is valued at more than $100, you are required to turn it in to the police.
The law doesn't contain a "shop it around to media outlets hoping for a payday" clause.
Under California Law, finding lost property grants you the equivalent of depositary-for-hire status. Which means you need to take care of the item you found until it is returned to its owner, or failing that, turned over to the police. The civil statutes are very clear on this. As the depositary, if you don't trust the bar staff, you shouldn't leave the item with them - you should turn it over to the police, as the law requires.
Second, I don't think it really matters what part of Apple the guy says he tried to contact.
Third, what about an Apple store?! Do you have any idea....
You're right. He felt that Apple was the owner, and he attempted to contact them to return the item. So far, he's run afoul of no law. He could have attempted to contact Apple more aggressively by bringing it to a store, or bringing it to corporate headquarters. But assuming that calling tech support was a "reasonable" effort to return the item to the owner, the law is very clear that if you are unable to return it to the owner, you must then bring it to the police if it's worth more than $100. He didn't do that - he began shopping it around to web sites trying to make a few bucks off it. This is where his defense falters.
Fourth, giving it to the police?! Another foolish idea.
Only if you consider "following the law" to be a foolish idea. California's civil code (section 2080) is very clear that this is exactly the step that should be taken if the item is worth more than $100 and the finder cannot contact the owner.
I'm not saying what he did, trying to SELL the phone, was completely ethical -- but this is far from being a clear-cut "criminal" case either. He didn't pick-pocket the phone from the engineer in the bar. He found it after it was LOST. And neither Apple corporate nor the engineer made a huge rush to get the phone back either.
Clear-cut? No, but California Penal code section 485 also have some things to say about whether or not this could be considered a criminal matter.
I'm not even sure exactly what I would do, if I was the one who found this thing.... Knowing what I know about Apple and their paranoia about leaks of info, I'd be sort of afraid to drop by their HQ with it - for fear I'd get blamed for stealing it or something. I'd also realize the value it would have to the tech-geeks and Mac fans out there, and think I'd rather see them "win one" for a change, vs. helping Apple protect trade secrets they weren't able to sufficiently protect themselves this time around.
So you're saying that you're okay with violating the law, as long as Apple gets screwed. That's fine, and we appreciate your input.
If you are unable to contact the owner, under California law, you are obligated to turn the item in to the local police if the item is valued at more than $100.
California Civil Code, section 2080. Please familiarize yourself with it if you wish to issue an informed opinion on the legality of selling property which is - under the terms of this section - stolen property.
California Civil code, section 2080, outlines the following procedure for dealing with lost property:
1) Find lost property;
2) Do I know who owns this?
If yes - I must make a reasonable effort to return it to them.
If no, or you know who the owner is but cannot contact them - continue on to 3.
3) Is the item's value more than $100?
If yes - I must turn the item over to to the police who have jurisdiction over the location where I found the item.
If no - I commit no crime by keeping the item.
Keeping a found penny is only illegal if you have a reasonable knowledge of who the rightful owner is. The California Civil code is very clear on the value threshold of the found item.
The law specifically states that if you know who the owner is, you're obligated to attempt to return it to them - regardless of value. If the value is worth more than $100, and you cannot find the owner, then you are obligated to then turn the item in to the local police who have jurisdiction over the location you found the item / money.
If you find $100 and don't know who the owner is, you bring it to the police. If you find $99, don't know who the owner is, and you keep it, you have not violated any laws.
Not entirely. Under California law (Section 2080, specifically), if you find an item, and you have knowledge of who the owner is, you are obligated to attempt to return it to them. If you have no knowledge of who the owner is, or are unable to contact them, you are then obligated to turn the found item in to the police who have jurisdiction over the location where you found the item, if the item is worth more than $100. The police will then attempt to find / contact the owner; If they are unable to do so, the found item may then be turned over to the finder.
If you see 50 cents in change drop from someone's pocket, you are obligated to return that to them. If you find 50 cents on the sidewalk with no indication as to who the owner is, you are not obligated to turn that in to the police, since it falls below the minimum value of $100 set by Section 2080.1.
The California civil code is very clear on this issue, and in violating the procedure outlined in the law, it does appear as if the finder of the iPhone is in violation of that law. Now if the finder is guilty of theft, it would then appear that Gizmodo is in the unenviable position of receiving stolen property; furthermore, they may be open to prosecution under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, because they absolutely profited from the publication of this "trade secret" information. I'm sure there will be a lot of very smart lawyers arguing a lot of nuance, precedent, and case law. But you cannot look at the details of this case as published by Gizmodo and conclude that "nobody did anything wrong."
First, you claim the Mac is nothing but a toy, and unsuitable for IT "grunt work". So I point out that it is a POSIX-compliant UNIX operating system, running on commodity Intel hardware, which means that it is perfectly capable & suitable for just about any IT "grunt work" you'd care to name that is not tied to the.NET platform.
Then you claim that that doesn't matter, because Macs have a low market share, and so they'll never sell. So I point out that Apple has some of the highest profit margins in the industry, and that their sales and their share of units sold & market share have been steadily increasing since the release of Mac OS X.
Then you claim that doesn't matter, and Apple users are all smug prius drivers who are metrosexual and enjoy playing with childrens' toys.
I agree that better doesn't always sell - but in this case, the Mac is better, and it is selling - so everybody wins except you, and Microsoft. I'd also like to note that I got a chuckle from your citation of Windows 7 as the "worse" side of that equation.
Macs will always be 2nd to PC regardless how good they get, now they just sell phones.
I don't know where you get your data, but if it's full of fanciful ideas and wishful thinking like this, then sir, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Yes, you're right. All the years people have spent working on UNIX and its derivatives have been playing with toys, not doing real IT grunt work.
You DO realize that Mac OS is a POSIX compliant UNIX operating system with a pretty graphical interface, right? And that they run the same hardware components that you will find in Dell, HP, IBM, and just about any other PC manufacturer's case, right?
The reason Macs are not as prevalent in the enterprise/business space is pretty simple: 1) Apple offers less flexibility in hardware & pricing, so unless you absolutely must have the capabilities of the systems Apple sells, you can get a cheaper "good enough" system elsewhere; 2) For years prior to Steve Jobs' return, Microsoft was cementing its lead in the business world.
Stating that they are "toys" that can't handle the grunt work displays a shocking ignorance of the capabilities of the operating system and the hardware. Your assertion that "if macs were better they'd already own the business space" displays a shocking ignorance of the "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" principle.
Like it or not, you're not "sharing an opinion," you're trolling. You willfully ignore the facts before you, and then include these gems:
1) "Imagine if Mac ever released a 2 clicker mouse, the amounts of confusion and hysteria that would cause for the poor bastards would be huge."
2) Your commentary on South Park, the smugness of Mac users, and that you apparently feel Prius drivers also share this trait;
3) "Apples are for metros or 2 year olds."
Ignoring any facts while making incendiary comments most certainly makes you an ignorant troll. But fail harder some more, twit.
It doesn't matter it's possible, its whats viable. Macs cant and never will compete as being "big person" computers, they are still just shiny one click calculators with big screens.
It's clear that you have no interest in facts, and would rather rant and lie. That's not how a "big person" behaves, you should really try to grow up.
On the side of computational evolution Macs sit somewhere in between those kids learning computers and your standard Windows pc.
The fact that you cite "your standard windows PC" as exemplary of some sort of desirable end-state in terms of 'computational evolution' is frightening, Mr. Ballmer.
Your business advice shows a startling lack of any familiarity with the realities of the market. That you would claim that the company that has consistently had some of the highest profit margins in the computer industry "doesn't see where the possible money making opportunities" are is mind boggling. Perhaps you don't approve of their strategy and would use a different one, but to state that it's a dead end, or that it's failing, simply makes you look like a doofus.
How many will enter into a paranoid state and delete everything in their hard drives, including critical info?
God, just imagine - every poor girl named Jenna Haze or Jenna Jameson or Chasey Lain will accidentally have her records deleted in the social security database, I bet! A whole generation of girls with porn star names... lost!
So the proper thing to do is... let them all look at porn instead? I'm not certain what the SEC's failure to prosecute anybody under Bush has to do with the discovery that 30+ highly-paid employees there were spending vast amounts of time not doing their job and surfing porn instead?
BOTH of those circumstances can correctly be described as "the SEC dropping the ball in some way, and neglecting its duties." It's not an either-or proposition.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe it! When they release a major revision to their operating system, it sometimes takes them weeks to finalize a new release of the source code? That's... that's...
Perfectly reasonable in a world where there are only so many hours in the day, and so many engineers whose time can be devoted to a given effort.
Maybe Stallman is holding off on attacking Apple because he's developing some manners - you know, "Don't talk when your mouth is full of toe jam."
And if you listen to all the talk here on slashdot, you'll easily conclude:
1) Microsoft is bad at anything they do. Terrible. Absolutely no business attempting anything in technology because they only exist for their goal of returning us to the dark ages.
2) Free Software-supporting high school students are the smartest people on earth, and write software that is orders of magnitude better than any of these "pros" who work wage-slave jobs for proprietary-software companies.
Given that, I'd say it's entirely reasonable to expect that SourceForge and other FOSS repositories would be orders of magnitude more active, well-supported, and well-constructed than anything those bumbling idiots in Redmond would be capable of.
At the Microsoft site, nobody responds to your questions.
At the SourceForge site, someone responds to your questions with, "You have the code, figure it out yourself, asshole."
Worlds of difference, you see.
Really? They give user accounts on routers in your organization? How exotic.
You're splitting hairs in an attempt to find a way that this guy is a hero. He's not.
He failed to implement a disaster recovery plan in case he were incapacitated and unable to give the passwords to someone. He stonewalled the request for the passwords, rather than offer to provide the passwords in a more secure manner. Instead of working with them, he sent them emails gloating about how they were no doubt struggling to get logged in.
At what point do you stop looking for excuses that he's been railroaded, and acknowledge that he behaved in an unprofessional and malicious manner?
If you're a super anal-retentive security guy, a reasonable response in that situation is, "Due to security concerns, I can't give that information to you out loud, but I will write down the passwords and account names, seal them in a security envelope, and hand that sealed envelope ONLY to you (or some other person I feel is authorized), and then I will consider my responsibility for securing this network to be finished."
Instead, Mr. Childs stonewalled, then provided false logins, and appeared to gloat in an email too (see the article).
DUH, why not? Got to run a little Seti @ Home somewhere.
So what changed between "late June," when he sent an email with user IDs and passwords to Mr. Robinson, and the time of this meeting, when suddenly "Mr. Robinson isn't authorized to have passwords."?
It does matter what you say to them. There is no law saying "Private corporations may not send representatives to someone's house." Shit, private organizations (some corporate, some nonprofits) send people to my door all the time, asking if they can come in to show me something, or talk to me about something.
They all get a polite, "Sorry, no, I'm not interested," and I close the door. If they were to break into my house, they would be guilty of breaking and entering. Since they did not force their way in, and they complied with the roommate's refusal to grant them entry... what, exactly, is the horrible outcome we're supposed to be concerned about?
I'm not particularly concerned with a private corporation sending representatives to search my house, because any representative of a private corporation who shows up at my house without a search warrant and a representative of local law enforcement will be told to fuck off and come back when they have a search warrant.
Do you also find yourself haplessly compelled to invite door-to-door salesman in for a spot of tea and conversation?
Yes, it's a civil requirement. And violating that means you violated a civil statute, which then opens you up to a pretty severe judgement when you're talking about an unreleased prototype which is also probably covered at least tangentially by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
There is also a criminal statute, section 485 of the penal code, which may apply, which could result in somebody sitting in a small cell.
I think you can make a pretty good case that the finder violated both civil and criminal statutes - whether or not the charges will hold up in court, there certainly does appear to be a violation from the published facts.
What is so hard to understand about this? The civil code states that you are obligated to make a reasonable attempt to return it to the owner, if you know who the owner is. If you do not know the owner, or cannot contact them, and the item is valued at more than $100, you are obligated to turn it over to the police, who will then attempt to return it to its owner.
If they fail in doing that after 90-100 days, the finder may take ownership of the device after paying any storage fees / publication charges the police incur while taking an ad out in the newspaper in an attempt to return the property to its owner.
Until you return it to the rightful owner, or turn it over to the police, you have the status and obligations of a depositary-for-hire on behalf of the owner. What this means is that you are obligated to make "reasonable" efforts to safeguard the property in your care. If you rent a storage unit to put some furniture in, wouldn't you object if the person you're renting the unit from turned around and rented out your furniture to someone else? And wouldn't you be even more pissed if somebody spilled beer all over your sofa & left cigarette burns in the cushions?
Let's grant that calling apple's tech support constitutes "reasonable" effort. You've satisfied that part of the statute. But you're ignoring the fact that the same statute goes on to state that if the item is valued at more than $100, you are required to turn it in to the police.
The law doesn't contain a "shop it around to media outlets hoping for a payday" clause.
Under California Law, finding lost property grants you the equivalent of depositary-for-hire status. Which means you need to take care of the item you found until it is returned to its owner, or failing that, turned over to the police. The civil statutes are very clear on this. As the depositary, if you don't trust the bar staff, you shouldn't leave the item with them - you should turn it over to the police, as the law requires.
You're right. He felt that Apple was the owner, and he attempted to contact them to return the item. So far, he's run afoul of no law. He could have attempted to contact Apple more aggressively by bringing it to a store, or bringing it to corporate headquarters. But assuming that calling tech support was a "reasonable" effort to return the item to the owner, the law is very clear that if you are unable to return it to the owner, you must then bring it to the police if it's worth more than $100. He didn't do that - he began shopping it around to web sites trying to make a few bucks off it. This is where his defense falters.
Only if you consider "following the law" to be a foolish idea. California's civil code (section 2080) is very clear that this is exactly the step that should be taken if the item is worth more than $100 and the finder cannot contact the owner.
Clear-cut? No, but California Penal code section 485 also have some things to say about whether or not this could be considered a criminal matter.
So you're saying that you're okay with violating the law, as long as Apple gets screwed. That's fine, and we appreciate your input.
How this was marked insightful, I don't know.
If you are unable to contact the owner, under California law, you are obligated to turn the item in to the local police if the item is valued at more than $100.
California Civil Code, section 2080. Please familiarize yourself with it if you wish to issue an informed opinion on the legality of selling property which is - under the terms of this section - stolen property.
California Civil code, section 2080, outlines the following procedure for dealing with lost property:
1) Find lost property;
2) Do I know who owns this?
If yes - I must make a reasonable effort to return it to them.
If no, or you know who the owner is but cannot contact them - continue on to 3.
3) Is the item's value more than $100?
If yes - I must turn the item over to to the police who have jurisdiction over the location where I found the item.
If no - I commit no crime by keeping the item.
Keeping a found penny is only illegal if you have a reasonable knowledge of who the rightful owner is. The California Civil code is very clear on the value threshold of the found item.
The law specifically states that if you know who the owner is, you're obligated to attempt to return it to them - regardless of value. If the value is worth more than $100, and you cannot find the owner, then you are obligated to then turn the item in to the local police who have jurisdiction over the location you found the item / money.
If you find $100 and don't know who the owner is, you bring it to the police. If you find $99, don't know who the owner is, and you keep it, you have not violated any laws.
Not entirely. Under California law (Section 2080, specifically), if you find an item, and you have knowledge of who the owner is, you are obligated to attempt to return it to them. If you have no knowledge of who the owner is, or are unable to contact them, you are then obligated to turn the found item in to the police who have jurisdiction over the location where you found the item, if the item is worth more than $100. The police will then attempt to find / contact the owner; If they are unable to do so, the found item may then be turned over to the finder.
If you see 50 cents in change drop from someone's pocket, you are obligated to return that to them. If you find 50 cents on the sidewalk with no indication as to who the owner is, you are not obligated to turn that in to the police, since it falls below the minimum value of $100 set by Section 2080.1.
The California civil code is very clear on this issue, and in violating the procedure outlined in the law, it does appear as if the finder of the iPhone is in violation of that law. Now if the finder is guilty of theft, it would then appear that Gizmodo is in the unenviable position of receiving stolen property; furthermore, they may be open to prosecution under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, because they absolutely profited from the publication of this "trade secret" information. I'm sure there will be a lot of very smart lawyers arguing a lot of nuance, precedent, and case law. But you cannot look at the details of this case as published by Gizmodo and conclude that "nobody did anything wrong."
First, you claim the Mac is nothing but a toy, and unsuitable for IT "grunt work". So I point out that it is a POSIX-compliant UNIX operating system, running on commodity Intel hardware, which means that it is perfectly capable & suitable for just about any IT "grunt work" you'd care to name that is not tied to the
Then you claim that that doesn't matter, because Macs have a low market share, and so they'll never sell. So I point out that Apple has some of the highest profit margins in the industry, and that their sales and their share of units sold & market share have been steadily increasing since the release of Mac OS X.
Then you claim that doesn't matter, and Apple users are all smug prius drivers who are metrosexual and enjoy playing with childrens' toys.
I agree that better doesn't always sell - but in this case, the Mac is better, and it is selling - so everybody wins except you, and Microsoft. I'd also like to note that I got a chuckle from your citation of Windows 7 as the "worse" side of that equation.
I don't know where you get your data, but if it's full of fanciful ideas and wishful thinking like this, then sir, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Yes, you're right. All the years people have spent working on UNIX and its derivatives have been playing with toys, not doing real IT grunt work.
You DO realize that Mac OS is a POSIX compliant UNIX operating system with a pretty graphical interface, right? And that they run the same hardware components that you will find in Dell, HP, IBM, and just about any other PC manufacturer's case, right?
The reason Macs are not as prevalent in the enterprise/business space is pretty simple: 1) Apple offers less flexibility in hardware & pricing, so unless you absolutely must have the capabilities of the systems Apple sells, you can get a cheaper "good enough" system elsewhere; 2) For years prior to Steve Jobs' return, Microsoft was cementing its lead in the business world.
Stating that they are "toys" that can't handle the grunt work displays a shocking ignorance of the capabilities of the operating system and the hardware. Your assertion that "if macs were better they'd already own the business space" displays a shocking ignorance of the "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" principle.
Like it or not, you're not "sharing an opinion," you're trolling. You willfully ignore the facts before you, and then include these gems:
1) "Imagine if Mac ever released a 2 clicker mouse, the amounts of confusion and hysteria that would cause for the poor bastards would be huge."
2) Your commentary on South Park, the smugness of Mac users, and that you apparently feel Prius drivers also share this trait;
3) "Apples are for metros or 2 year olds."
Ignoring any facts while making incendiary comments most certainly makes you an ignorant troll. But fail harder some more, twit.
It's clear that you have no interest in facts, and would rather rant and lie. That's not how a "big person" behaves, you should really try to grow up.
Just a note: double tapping on a playing video zooms it to fill the screen for me. Did you try that?
The fact that you cite "your standard windows PC" as exemplary of some sort of desirable end-state in terms of 'computational evolution' is frightening, Mr. Ballmer.
Your business advice shows a startling lack of any familiarity with the realities of the market. That you would claim that the company that has consistently had some of the highest profit margins in the computer industry "doesn't see where the possible money making opportunities" are is mind boggling. Perhaps you don't approve of their strategy and would use a different one, but to state that it's a dead end, or that it's failing, simply makes you look like a doofus.
God, just imagine - every poor girl named Jenna Haze or Jenna Jameson or Chasey Lain will accidentally have her records deleted in the social security database, I bet! A whole generation of girls with porn star names... lost!
So the proper thing to do is... let them all look at porn instead? I'm not certain what the SEC's failure to prosecute anybody under Bush has to do with the discovery that 30+ highly-paid employees there were spending vast amounts of time not doing their job and surfing porn instead?
BOTH of those circumstances can correctly be described as "the SEC dropping the ball in some way, and neglecting its duties." It's not an either-or proposition.