Sleuth is starting to think that people serving on juries should be barred from using any electronics the second they swear in. VMworld is still in full swing but this deserves to be noted.

Hadley Jons, of Warren just north of Detroit, was on the jury in a case of resisting arrest. On a day off from the case she posted the following message on Facebook:

"Gonna be fun to tell the defendant they're guilty," Associated Press reports.

Leaving aside the obvious breach of ethics, it appears that the prosecution hadn't even finished giving evidence. Jons also seems to have little regard for Facebook privacy settings, since the posting was discovered by defence attorney Saleema Sheikh's son.

"I'm really proud of him," Sheikh said.

Jons has now been removed from the case and may be found in contempt when she returns to the Macomb County circuit court on Thursday.

"I would like to see her get some jail time, nothing major, a few hours or overnight," Sheikh said. "This is the jury system. People need to know how important it is."

Guerilla marketing has always been a part of trade shows, but Microsoft may have shot itself in the foot with its latest effort.

At the official start of VMworld Microsoft took out a full page ad in USA Today, a newspaper seen more outside hotel rooms than news-stands in my experience, warning potential cloud buyers to avoid long term licence agreements.

"VMware is asking many of you to sign three-year license agreements for your virtualisation projects," said Brad Anderson, vice president for Microsoft's server and tools division.

"But with the arrival of cloud computing, signing up for a three-year virtualisation commitment may lock you into a vendor that cannot provide you with the breadth of technology, flexibility or scale that you'll need to build a complete cloud computing environment. If you're evaluating a new licensing agreement with VMware, talk to us first."

However, Paul Maritz, chief executive of VMware said the advert showed Microsoft's weaknesses and accused the company of hypocrisy.

"For Microsoft to talk about locking customers is a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black," he said.

"I think it's a very sincere form of flattery that they feel the need to take out a full page advertisement to address our customer effects. I smiled when I saw that this morning."

RFID tags have a lot of uses, particularly in inventory management. But a school in California has decided to apply the technology to children.

Pre-school students at California's Contra Costa County have reportedly been issued with shirts tagged with individual RFID chips, so that their location can be monitored at all times.

It's not surprising that Silicon Valley has been one of the first areas to try this out. No-one is more paranoid about child danger than the US and the high-tech approach will make sure that no-one goes missing, or at the least will let the authorities know when or where it happened.

But however powerful the "think of the children" argument is there are wider issues at stake. The EFF is rather concerned about the situation.

"If readings are taken often enough, you could create an extraordinarily detailed portrait of a child's school day -- one that's easy to imagine being misused, particularly as the chips substitute for direct adult monitoring and judgement," it blogged.

"If RFID records show a child moving around a lot, could she be tagged as hyper-active? If he doesn't move around a lot, could he get a reputation for laziness? How long will this data and the conclusions rightly or wrongly drawn from it be stored in these children's school records?"

Sleuth is split on this one. While RFID tags on pets seem like an admirable solution there's something that feels wrong about putting them on people. It's unlikely that the tagged shirts would stop an attack, but they might provide some help. We shall see how this fares with parents.

JavaOne's a good show that's small but popular with the right people. Google's been a part of it for many years but not this year, thanks to Oracle.

Google has announced that it's pulling out of the show because of Oracle's law suit over intellectual property used by Android. Joshua Bloch from Google's Open Source Programs Office, a man many regular attendees will be familiar with, explained why.

"Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally," he wrote.

"This is a painful realization for us, as we've participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996."

The move is going to intensify the bad feeling in the open source community about Oracle, indeed Sleuth thinks it's calculated to do exactly that. The open source movement, when properly roused, can be a fearsome force - SCO found that out - and Oracle may be in for a rough ride.
 
After the debacle of this week's OpenSolaris board voting themselves into extinction and Oracle's speedy commercialisation of Sun many in the open source community are now calling Larry Ellison the open source enemy number one.
 
Google's move is adding fuel to the flames, but is it going to be enough to force a change from Larry Ellison? Sleuth has serious doubts.

British Telecom used to have the slogan "It's good to talk", but if Google's latest figures are anything to go by the US loves to even more.

In the first 24 hours since Google launched its click to call computer to phone telephony add-on to Google Voice, it has already exceeded expectations.

"Over 1,000,000 calls placed from Gmail in the first 24 hours!", the firm tweeted.

"Thanks to everyone using this new feature."

However Google gave no hint as to the type of calls made, and Sleuth suspects that the vast majority were used for free local calls. The US has a long tradition of free local calling.

What is going to be crucial is how many people use the international calls that Google hopes will subsidise the service. Google has cut rates to the bone and needs a large volume of calls to make money from the service.

If this strategy is to have long term success then Google needs to win over not only existing internet telephony users from Skype and others, but also to appeal to first time users.

Getting the support of Google's business apps services will also be crucial, but that may be an easier sell. Overseas calling rates are sky high in the US, and a chance for a cheap alternative could be very attractive.

If you live in California, or the eight other Western states, a court ruling today by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has just OKed the police using GPS to track you without a warrant.

The ruling hinged on a 2007 police investigation into Juan Pineda-Moreno, who was suspected of growing cannabis in Oregon. Police attached a device to the suspect's truck which was parked outside his trailer home.  

The court ruled that because the driveway around the home was not completely enclosed the defendant had no expectation of privacy under his Fourth Amendment rights and the police could enter without a warrant. Furthermore the monitoring of the device was also legal.

However Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, a strong conservative appointed by Ronald Reagan, wrote a blistering minority dissension of the verdict.

"I don't think that most people in the United States would agree with the panel that someone who leaves his car parked in his driveway outside the door of his home invites people to crawl under it and attach a device that will track the vehicle's every movement and transmit that information to total strangers," he wrote.

"There is something creepy and un-American about such clandestine and underhanded behaviour. To those of us who have lived under a totalitarian regime, there is an eerie feeling of déjà vu."

The ruling means that any person within the nine Western states can now be tracked by police at will, and any area of their property not explicitly fenced off is considered open ground. Sleuth predicts that right now the EFF is a hive of activity.

This issue isn't settled yet - other cases have yet to be decided and it is certain to end up in the Supreme Court. The highest court is perceived by some to have a right wing bias but Kozinski's attack, from a conservative with such impeccable credentials, may give privacy advocates hope. Sleuth highly recommends you read the whole ruling, it's a classic.

"1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he warns.

"Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

The cash crisis hitting the American government has taken a turn that will have bloggers across the land quaking in their Keens - a tax on blogging.

According to the Philadelphia City Paper the city has been examining last year's tax returns and has identified a new profit source. Bloggers and other online writers who derive a few dollars in advertising revenue from their hobbies are being asked to fork out $300 to purchase a business privilege license from the city.

For example, Marilyn Bess, who blogs about organic gardening, has received a letter instructing her to buy one of the licenses from the city and also requesting a cut of the estimated $50 in revenue the site generated.

"The real kick in the pants is that I don't even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous," Bess said.

The move will send a shock through the Silicon Valley blogging community. California is almost effectively bankrupt and a plan like this could start giving state legislators nasty ideas.

The FBI and federal prosecutors have announced no charges will be brought against officials at Lower Merion School District who used remote control software to spy on students.

The software, which was designed to be activated if the school-issue Apple MacBooks were missing or dues were unpaid, was found to have recorded thousands of images of schoolchildren in their homes.

The case came to light after a fifteen year old pupil was punished for apparently taking drugs at home (they turned out to be candy), using pictures taken from the laptop as evidence. His parents sued and it was disclosed that the software was in widespread use by the school.

"After a thorough review of the evidence in this matter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, the Montgomery County Detectives, and the Lower Merion Police Department, I have concluded that bringing criminal charges is not warranted in this matter," US Attorney Zane Memeger said in a statement.

"For the government to prosecute a criminal case, it must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person charged acted with criminal intent. We have not found evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone involved had criminal intent."

Memeger said that he wanted to make the announcement to clear the air before the start of the school year. The software has now been removed from the laptops.

The case inspired US Democratic senator Arlen Specter to propose a new law that would make such spying illegal, which is currently under consideration. The civil suit against the school district is still pending, and a second pupil has joined the case.

In 1925 science and religion clashed when US courts debated the Scopes case.

Some 85 years later the two sides are once again clashing, though with decisively funnier results. It seems that US electronics retailer Best Buy is pitting itself against a church group in Wisconsin over a rather silly case of patent infringement.

Members of the Holy Family Catholic church decided to fashion a priest's car after those of the Best Buy "Geek Squad" computer repair service. The Volkswagen was given a similar logo and dubbed the "God Squad" in what was either an effort to lure in wayward sinners infected with malware from adult web sites or a promotional effort for a planned sermon titled, "Have you tried closing the Bible and opening it back up again?"

That we're reporting on this story should tell you just how well the idea went over with Best Buy. The retailer launched a cease and desist order forcing the church to get rid of the logo. While the company has since back-pedalled a bit and offered to work with the church on a new logo, you have to think that Best Buy and Geek Squad should know better.

After all, those uniforms do bare a striking resemblance to another religious sect.

Earlier this year HTC released the first 4G phone, partnering with Sprint to launch the Evo 4G handset. Now Samsung is looking to get in on the 4G game.

Like HTC, the company is partnering with Sprint and its budding WiMax network to launch its Epic handset. The device has now been scheduled for a 31 August US release.

The Epic sports a 4-inch AMOLED touchscreen display along with a slide-down QWERTY keyboard. The device is powered by a 1GHz processor and removable storage through a microSD slot.

Samsung said that the device will ship with Android 2.1, though deployment of Android 2.2 is slated for release later this Fall.

Given the lack of Wi-Fi support in the UK, it's no wonder that Samsung hasn't given word on availability there (our request for comment went unanswered,) but those of us in Silicon Valley shouldn't get too smug, as there isn't any Wi-Fi down here either.

In fact, there are currently only a handful of major cities that are actually covered by Sprint's WiMax network. San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston are among the big markets that have yet to get any 4G coverage.