law

There are those who believe machines have minds of their own.

In which case, the cell phone belonging to a 16-year-old from Peoria, Ariz., is of a mind to uphold truth, justice and to make 16-year-old thieves look really, really stupid.

The unnamed teen was allegedly hanging with his buds and regaling them with what seems to be the story of how he had ripped a stereo from a car and stolen a Cricket phone.

While his friends were apparently unimpressed with the Cricket (they're rather more moved by BlackBerrys), I am stunned to discover that people these days … Read more

Google Street View seems to have caused a little friction in the United Kingdom, as the British whisper loudly to defend their sense of privacy.

However, one group of people seems to have stared at the Street View camera cars, smiled, and been inspired.

Yes, the police took one look at the 360-degree cameras perched on top of innocent little cars and said to themselves: "We can do that."

Which is why residents of Greater Manchester will be delighted to hear that two Smart Cars, with cameras soaring skywards from their roofs will be patrolling their neighborhoods in … Read more

You might be forgiven for thinking this is Mob Week in Britain.

Protesters have twittered to organize themselves into groups that storm banks and protest the G20 Summit. But things have gone way beyond that.

A poor, innocent Google Street View driver was merely doing his duty in the village of Broughton, Buckinghamshire, England. Broughton is a posh village, a little on the snooty side.

But when Paul Jacobs spotted the Googlie snooper rolling down his street, the village became positively snotty. He rushed around to other people's homes to tell them to come outside and help him thwart … Read more

Hitachi executive Sakae Someya was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in San Francisco for his role in a conspiracy to fix the prices of LCD screens.

Someya is accused of conspiring with others in the LCD display business "to suppress and eliminate competition" by fixing the price of the panels sold to Dell for notebook PCs. Someya is accused of participating in the scheme between January 2001 through December 2004. That would be a violation of the Sherman Act, which can result in a $1 million fine and a 10-year prison sentence.

Someya's indictment brings … Read more

Microsoft and TomTom have settled their patent dispute, including claims related to the FAT file system and Linux. But the rest of the open-source world, which could be affected, isn't ready to lie down and accept Linux's possibly besmirched reputation.

Red Hat, for its part, declares that "without a judicial decision, the settlement does not demonstrate that the claims of Microsoft were valid." And Pamela Jones of Groklaw, a highly influential open-source legal blog, deprecates Microsoft's claims ("What? You thought Microsoft's spin on things was always gospel?"), citing the Software Freedom Law … Read more

Editors' note: Some readers have pointed out that the Sun's story appears to have been debunked.

Further update 1.58pm PST: The Times of London quoted an esteemed lawyer a couple of days ago who related the broad facts as being true.

He didn't even say he was working late. No, no. He said he was away on business.

However, his wife, bathing in uncontrollable suspicion, decided to do the only thing she could. She dialed up the local detective agency. Yes, Google Street View.

In the story as related by the Sun newspaper (and which still, as … Read more

Courtney Love is in a hole.

It appears that her temper, which occasionally flares wider than her nostrils, seems to have attracted a libel suit--the first libel suit, as far as I am aware, to have been engendered by Twitter tweets.

The person who believes she has been besmirched beyond all reasonable social networking is Dawn Simorangkir, Ms. Love's former fashion designer.

Some might say that Ms. Love's style is less a feast for the eyes and slightly more an evening meal for a friendly pet. But she appears, according to the court documents, to have had a … Read more

I know people will do anything online these days.

But it is hard not to rubber-neck when someone does something so astonishingly witless that even your serially drunken aunt wouldn't do it at Christmas dinner.

Please consider the curious case of Benjamin Ryan.

He gets himself a VW Golf. He has it tweaked for maximum torque. Then he goes a little torque mad. He decides to race a friend of his along a freeway, his friend being the proud owner of an Audi RS4. They travel at speeds that touch 130 mph.

It so happens that another friend rides … Read more

Traffic cameras have some company. Uniformed law enforcers could get a portable third eye soon, if the Taser Axon eventually becomes standard police equipment.

Like the military-inspired Sanwa Throat Microphone which clips around a person's throat, the Axon wraps around the head, with a GPS-enabled camera eye peeking over the ear for full audio-video recording, even in low light.

Fortunately, there's a privacy mode to temporarily suspend recording. After all, who needs to watch our friendly officers take bathroom breaks?… Read more