Thanks, I - PHONE ?

LAPTOP THIEVES BUSTED BY LAPTOP ???

WHITE PLAINS — The thieves were voracious, filching flat-screen televisions and computer games, purloining iPods and DVDs, even making off with a box of liquor and a set of car rims in a burglary two weeks ago at an apartment three young people shared here. Luckily, they also took two laptop computers.
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White Plains Police Department, via Associated Press

One of the laptops was a Macintosh belonging to Kait Duplaga, who works at the Apple store in the Westchester mall and thus knows how to use all its bells and whistles. While the police were coming up dry, Ms. Duplaga exploited the latest software applications installed on her laptop to track down the culprits and even get their photographs.

On Wednesday, the police arrested Edmon Shahikian, 23, of Katonah, and Ian Frias, 20, who lives in the Bronx. Virtually all of the property stolen from the apartment was recovered at the two men’s homes. They face charges of burglary and possession of stolen property; Mr. Shahikian was released on $3,500 bail, while Mr. Frias was at the Westchester County Jail, held in $7,500 bail.

“It doesn’t get much better than their bringing us a picture of the guy actually using the stolen property,” Daniel Jackson, the deputy commissioner of public safety in White Plains, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “It certainly made our job easier. The fact that they knew who these guys were certainly added solvability.”

The high-tech solving of the White Plains burglary, which was reported Friday in The Journal News, is one of several recent cases in which the police and crime victims have turned the keyboards on their adversaries, so to speak, taking advantage of computer software and other high-tech tools.

In March in Modesto, Calif., for example, the police recovered a stolen computer containing vital personal information, including Social Security numbers, belonging to the public school system’s 3,500 employees. Detectives used tracking software on the computer to apprehend a suspect, who had a long criminal record. The police said he had stolen the computer from a data processing firm, perhaps with the intention of committing identity theft.

Here in White Plains, a break in the case came on Tuesday when a friend of Ms. Duplaga’s sent her a congratulatory text message on the return of her stolen computer. “She said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ and her friend said, ‘Well, you popped up as being online,’ ” Mr. Jackson said.

He said that Ms. Duplaga immediately signed on to another Macintosh computer and, using a feature called “Back to My Mac,” was able to gain access to her missing laptop remotely. She could see that that the person who had her computer was shopping for beds, Mr. Jackson said. Then it occurred to her that she could activate a camera on her laptop and watch the thief live.

At first, the photo application revealed only a smoky room and an empty chair, Mr. Jackson said, but then a man sat down. Ms. Duplaga, again using remote technology, typed in the command to snap a photo. “When you take a picture with that computer, it shows a countdown, and when it does, this guy figures out what’s going on,” Mr. Jackson said. “It all clicks for him, and he puts his hand up to cover the lens, but it was too late. She had already taken the picture.”

Had the suspect been a complete stranger, the photographic evidence would have been a “great lead,” but not the decisive clue, Mr. Jackson said. He said that when Ms. Duplaga described the tattooed subject of the picture to one of her roommates, the roommate replied: “Oh, I know exactly who that is — it’s Ian,” referring to Mr. Frias.

Mr. Frias and Mr. Shahikian, it turns out, had been among the guests at a party at the apartment weeks before, and were friends of friends of the victims, as Mr. Jackson put it. Ms. Duplaga was able to retrieve a photograph of Mr. Shahikian from the laptop as well, but Mr. Jackson was not aware of the circumstances. Mr. Jackson said that Mr. Frias and Mr. Shahikian were arrested last year on a felony marijuana possession charge, but are not career criminals. The disposition of their cases was not known.

Mr. Jackson said that Ms. Duplaga did not wish to be interviewed. On Friday, no one answered the door at the beige colonial-style house on Ridgeview Avenue where she rents an apartment diagonally opposite a church. The neighborhood is on the edge of the city’s downtown; in recent years, many of the prewar homes have been renovated.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the case or on the phenomenon of tracking criminals through computer software.

“Back to My Mac” is part of an online service that costs $99 per year and allows users to gain access to their personal computer from any connected Macintosh computer with the operating system Leopard. The software that Ms. Duplaga used to take a picture of the thief, called PhotoBooth, is standard on all newer Apple laptop models, perhaps an unintended new frontier in crime-fighting.

“It’s certainly a great use of what was probably meant as a business product,” Mr. Jackson said. “But if she had taken the picture and didn’t know who he was, we wouldn’t be in the same place as far as the investigation goes.”
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FAMOUS CORPORATE LOGO HISTORY

WHY STEVE JOBS AND APPLE SUCK ?

TAKEN FROM ZD NET
If I was working over at Apple’s PR department, I think I’d call in sick today. In fact, I think I’d fake something really serious like Ebola or bird flu and try to get the week off, because the brown stuff has hit the fan head on over the bricked iPhones and cleaning up this mess is going to be tricky.

Today's gonna be a rough day for Apple's PR departmentAs far as PR goes, Apple’s enjoyed a long lucky streak. When I look at Apple I see just another multi-billion dollar company who’s prime objective is to add more dollars to the pile, something which Apple’s been very good at lately. Sure, Apple comes out with tech that has a high level of sex appeal, which in turn drives gadget lust and that in turn keeps the dollars flowing in, but it’s the dollars that matter. Others see Apple in a very different light. Some don’t see a corporation with billions of dollars, but instead see an underdog fighting against the oppressive regimes imposed on the poor, defenseless users of technology by other companies. To these people, Steve Jobs isn’t a CEO, but instead a freedom fighter, and a few times a year he and his band of guerrillas come out of hiding to take a stand against “the man” before sinking back into the shadows.

But this iPhone bricking issue is likely to change how some people view Apple. Of crucial importance to Apple is how many people change their view of Apple. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with Apple’s decision to brick unlocked iPhone’s (let’s forget about those bricked iPhones that haven’t been tampered with) or not, you can’t escape the fact that it’s a hugely unpopular move. Jon (DVD Jon) Lech Johansen sums it up well:

Did Sony ever brick PSPs over homebrew software? Did Microsoft ever overwrite someone’s BIOS with garbage because they detected an illegitimate Windows installation?

In light of other things Apple has done lately, such as adding an encrypted hash to the iPod database to lock out non-Apple software and disabling TV-out on the iPod unless the 3rd party accessory you’re using has an Apple authentication chip, it’s evident that Apple is well on its way to become one of the most consumer hostile tech companies.

When Steve Jobs claimed the iPhone was 5 years ahead of every other phone, was he talking about the iPhone’s revolutionary handcuffs?

I just wonder how shiny did Apple executive think the company’s halo was and how much did they think they could get away with? No matter how you try to spin the problem, pushing an update that trashes your own product is not a good move. A far better solution would have been to push an update that just wouldn’t install onto unlocked iPhones. That would have been the right thing to do. Bricking them is wrong. Apple could have done this easily. It didn’t and instead chose to stamp on the little guy.

I’m also surprised and dismayed by Apple’s response so far. This quote is by Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock:

If the damage was due to use of an unauthorized software application, voiding their warranty, they should purchase a new iPhone

I guess Apple’s never heard of the old phrase “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice …”

And word of the bricking has spread to folks who’ve never seen an iPhone:

On Saturday I was going to a party at an apartment building. The buzzer wasn’t working, and I took out my shiny new iphone to call and get in. As I was dialing, a few young teenagers were coming out. They wanted to see the iPhone, and so I demo’d it in exchange for entry to the building. (Mmm, security.) As I was heading in, one of them turned back to me to say “Be careful! The updates are bricking those things!”

I found that really interesting–they hadn’t ever touched the phone, but they’d heard about and remembered the risks of patching them and wanted to share.

In the words of the Mastercard ads, that sort of publicity is priceless.

Even the technophiles at Gizmodo have changed their iPhone verdict from a “wait” to “don’t buy” because of the stance that Apple has taken to third party developers:

It’s understandable for Apple to wage a war on unlocking the iPhone, since the company shares revenue from fees with AT&T. But the truth is, if cellphone service was awesome, like it is on iTunes, there wouldn’t be a need to unlock the iPhone. Secondly, bricking these things is totally uncool, and apparently, malicious—according to some early code investigations by the independent iPhone Dev Team, Apple could have avoided this entirely.

…

Screw the unlock for a second. Let’s talk about the those third-party apps. While my 4GB iPhone is a brick, and the 8GB phone, which I kept on a totally legit AT&T contract, is now stripped down. Programs like the faux-GPS, IM clients, Flickr Upload, and NES emulator—what did they ever do but make the iPhone far better than the stock original? They made it far more competitive with open-platform superphones like the Nokia N95, to which I will now be switching.

We also have the obligatory iPhone protest video and calls for a class action lawsuit.

It’s going to be a tough week for the folks at Apple’s PR departmen

THE " I - PHONE " TOO COOL ???

THE FUTURE IS HERE, BE AFRAID BE VERY AFRAID!

NEVER BEEN AN IPOD THAT CAN DO THIS !


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