Jacqui Cheng’s article at Ars Technica points out the dilemma facing consumers who want to hack their iPhones so they are not tied to Apple’s exclusive service provider in the USA, AT&T. While hacks are available, they are quasi-legal at best. And, users who do it face the possibility that their $600/$400 iPhone could become…
Category: Musings
Detecting government spyware
Here’s an interesting article, written by Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, entitled “Will security firms detect policy spyware?” There are currently no rules that specifically require companies to comply with requests for government spyware to be installed on users’ machines. There similarly is no current requirement for anti-spyware vendors to write software that doesn’t detect…
Microsoft claims Open Source software violates its patents
Although I’m not a patent attorney, I was drawn to news of Microsoft’s statement in a Fortune article that free and Open Source software violated 235 of its patents. Mary Jo Foley covered the news in detail here. In particular, the claim was made by Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierrez that the Linux kernel violates 42 Microsoft…
INTA 2007: Muddy waters: Evolving Law and Policy on Internet Advertising
I attended the session this morning at INTA 2007 on Internet advertising, specifically the focus was on keywords but popups were discussed as well. The speakers were Peter Becker of Microsoft, Laura Covington of Yahoo, Lauren Fisher of AOL, and Rose Hagan of Google. The most interesting part for me was a comparison of the…
Practice Tip: Use Truecrypt to secure portable media
Imagine you need to take a file with sensitive data on it with you on a trip, but the only method you have available is a small USB thumb drive. You get to your destination only to discover the drive fell out of your pocket somewhere along the way. What a disaster, the hardest for…
Techshow Roundup
I attended only one day of the ABA Techshow here in Chicago on Friday, March 23rd. I initially wrote this post on the train using my latest gadget acquisition, an EvDO Mobile Broadband Card I won at Techshow courtesy of Sprint. I was one of the lucky winners of their giveaway, and wow, it’s nice. …
Commentary: Google/YouTube sued by Viacom
It’s often been said that when Google, Inc. bought the YouTube service, it bought a lawsuit. There have been several, but the biggest one yet was filed on March 13, 2007. There are six counts, the first three are for infringements of the exclusive rights granted to copyright holders, and the remaining three are for…
RIP: Bitpass
I first wrote about Bitpass, a micropayment service, here, back in July of 2005. I was sad to read that the service will shut down as of January 26th. Matt Marshall at VentureBeat has a great article discussing the demise here.
Be Proactive: Know Your Systems and People Before Facing a Lawsuit
The following is an article I wrote about the recent changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and its impact on record keeping responsibilities and issues. —- As of December 1, 2006, the Federal Courts have adopted new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that explicitly acknowledge the fact that information that may be relevant…
Odds & Ends: Search & Seizure
Today was my first day back at work after two weeks off. My excuse? Parental leave after the birth of my third son. Mother and baby are doing fine. So are his older brothers. I was pleased to see that Blawg Review #70 was posted on Monday by Dave! Gulbransen. I had the pleasure of…