bells

anton zuykov said:

macseeker said:

You know what!

I blame both Santa Clara County Fire Department (SCCFD) and Verizon.  SCCFD should have looked for the worst-case-scenario for their data usage and Verizon should have cleared the SCCFD data limits as both a public service and good will service.

On some rare occasions, contracts aren't set in stone.  Yeah, the lawyers might think otherwise.

Less blame on verizon, as they did not specifically know who the clients were. It was a single rule that gets applied to everyone. As for SCCFD , that is a different story, as they knew who would be using those data plans.

I’m not sure why more blame on the Fire Department. It purchased a plan called unlimited sold to government entities. Buried in the fine print is the details about throttling. These so called unlimited plans are purposfully deceptive. Further, how is a regular person supposed to know how much data it needs to fight a disaster that is raging on? 

So more blame to Verizon. Verizon shouldn’t sell plans as unlimited that really aren’t unlimited. 

When the Fire Department called, Verizon should have lifted the throttling first, and explain the limitations of its plan later.

Maybe the CEO of Verizon didn’t know the fire department called, but I’m  sure the customer service person knew it was talking to the fire department. It was  Verizon that put in place the system that didn’t allow the customer service person to lift the restriction based on the matter.

Further, this has little to do with net neautralilty unless Verizon was prioritizing some data over other data than it does. The FCC chairman and ISPs didn’t have any problem lying to have net neutrality rules revoked, so I don’t find it problematic net neutrality supporters use this story to its advantage.

These cases are not similar at all and the assertion that they are shows a lack of understanding concerning anti-trust Law.  


Anti-trust is about protecting the consumer by ensuring fair competition. Europe’s rules and the US rules differ, but the principles are the same.  They tend on focusing on preventing monopolists from abusing their power to enter new markets or squeezing out competition.

In Europe Google has a monopoly when it comes to search and it’s phone operating system. Third party phone makers  have no realistic choice, but to use Android. Google is using this dominance to ensure its other services like email, search, and itsbrowser stay entrenched by forcing hardware manufacturers to bundle these services or else not get a license to use Android.

microsoft did the same thing with Windows. Pc makers would get very unfavorable licensing terms or no license at all  if they didn’t bundle and make Explorer the default. It put the then dominant Netscape out of business. 

Apple got a raw deal with e-books. Apple had no market power to force publishers to do anything. The system Amazon favored allowed it to set the prices of ebooks thereby often selling the ebooks at a loss to publishers. Further, Amazon has the monopoly in online book sales and was using that monopoly to force publishers to give favorable terms for ebooks. The government screwed that one up. That is why Apple felt confident it would win at trial.

with the App Store Apple doesn’t have a monopoly for phone hardware sales. If you don’t like the App Store buy a phone made by somebody else.

nunzy said:

10 years is way too short of a time. If anybody hurts Apple they should be in prison at hard labor for the rest of their lives.

This is a national security issue. Does China really think that they could beat us in a war?

Well you’d get along right well in China.  Life sentence with hard labor no chance of parol. That certainly isn’t the American way.

The only way to win a military war against China is to not fight it. Even if you win you lose.

Further, while I feel bad for the average people this type of theft hurts, I don’t feel bad for Apple the company. Companies like Apple fought hard to get the US government to open trade barriers with a China. They wanted to take advantage of cheap labor and a potential large market to sell to. They were willing to over look the fact China had been stealing trade secrets for years. I still remember the Apple commercial that said the computer was so powerful that the US government wouldn’t let it be exported to china.

The irony is China has for the most part stolen the trade secrets of all the US companies who moved there, created cheaper knock off products, and created obstacles for companies to compete fairly in China.

This type of tactic is old school and probably happens on a large scale.


It it is also said because many skills have been lost to Americans when all the jobs moved over seas.

gatorguy said:

The headline is not entirely accurate.

While in general a warrant will be required for gathering location records held by cellphone companies going forward it is not going to necessarily be ALWAYS:
“We hold only that a warrant is required in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party”...

That's an important takeaway, SCOTUS is not saying a warrant is always required for personal data.

The long running Supreme Court position is a warrant is needed when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. The court has until this ruling interpreted that to mean when the police get your info without a warrant from a third party that was ok because you didn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy. So if your girlfriend or the phone company gave the police your personal information that was ok.

This ruling  essentially says it is not always the case if police get your info from third parties that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

if the police want location data they need a warrant. This is a loosening of the previous view that no info coming from third parties was protected by the 4th amendment.

the 4th amendment has been whittled away to be almost meaningless. Justices would always say they didn’t want to make police’s jobs harder.

this is a welcomed step in the right direction. 

sflocal said:

magman1979 said:

I'm stunned and dismayed that a site like AppleInsider, even in the year 2018, continues to peddle the falsehood that Bill Gates was Apple's saviour! This has been debunked OVER and OVER again, and is a blunt LIE that was peddled by mainstream media in the late 90's whilst Apple was in dire straights.

Please REMOVE the phrase "and one-time savior of Apple" from the opening statement, it's a blunt and proven lie!

Apple and Microsoft were battling due to MS' infringement of Quicktime codec.  Apple was also very close to losing it all.  While "Savior" may be a bit melodramatic, I don't expect anything less from the media (including AI) to fluff pieces and claim "that's what everyone does".  

The reality is that Apple really needed that $150m to prevent going under.  Call it whatever you want, but that money did keep Apple afloat long enough for Steve Jobs to set a clear and profitable course.

 Apple needed the money, but a company like  Apple spends that type of money fairly quickly. More importantly it needed Microsoft’s commitment to Internet explorer and word.   At the time Microsoft was threatening to abandon the Mac, and Apple would have a hard time selling Macs without  those programs. The Mac would’ve died without it. And we would’ve never seen the iPod iPhone and iPad .