Felony
Buying stolen goods is only a misdemeanor below a certain value; $800 IIRC. Gizmodo paid $5000 for the phone, by their own admission, so it becomes a felony.
Posts by Richard Gaywood 1
5 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Apr 2010
Apple, the iPhone 4G, the cops and the click-tart
Wednesday 28th April 2010 14:27 GMT
Californian law
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/PEN/3/1/13/5/s485
"One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft."
It's been established the phone's finder didn't tell the bar staff he had the phone, didn't tell the police, and only called first line Apple tech support. Given that, do you think he made a "reasonable and just effort" to return it? Many people think he didn't and that a reasonable person would either leave his contact details or the phone itself with the bar staff. This is where the theft aspect comes from.
iPhone users suffer summer appointment chaos
Tuesday 20th April 2010 12:37 GMT
Not the first time I've seen this
A colleague of mine was travelling in the US in one timezone. He accepted a meeting request sent from a client in a different US timezone, which was booked into our Exchange server, running on GMT. He was less impressed when his iPhone woke him up for the meeting at 4am the next day! We never did figure out what broken timezone calculation had resulted in that particular time.
I work on flight booking systems for a living; timezones are susprisingly tricky.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
