Jon Stewart and the Daily Show are fantastically popular here in the US, and for good reason. It's the left wing's version of the Bill O'Reilly Show, a slanted take on the day's news, although Stewart uses comedy to make his point rather than browbeating.

The audience is largely made up of the young and middle aged, tending to be more affluent and educated than the majority of TV viewers, and as such is Apple's key target market. However, if Apple's PR team were watching last night, I suspect they were choking on their dinners.

In an eight minute segment called 'Appholes' Stewart ripped into the company for its conduct over the iPhone prototype case, the police raid on the editor of Gizmodo and Apple's contact with the person who found the prototype in a bar.

He contrasted Apple's history of appealing to the underdog and said that, while he liked the company's products and had been a faithful customer since the 1980s, the company had gone too far.

"You know I love you guys right?" he said in an impassioned monologue.

"Apple, you guys were the rebels, the underdogs, people believed in you. But now are you becoming the man? It wasn't supposed to be this way, Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one."
 
"But now, while you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto, Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes, what the **** is going on?"

He joked that Apple should be taking up cause against AT&T for making the iPhone unusable as a phone due to its poor network performance.

Apple may also have a legal case on its hands as Gawker, publishers of Gizmodo, has apparently hired Thomas Nolan Jr., veteran criminal defence attorney, and Thomas Burke and First Amendment specialist Thomas Burke, according to Law.com.

Nolan said, "here's a serious question about the propriety of issuing a search warrant for a journalist."

Posted by Iain Thomson on April 30, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nervous fliers can relax a little today after the Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told airlines to create rules limiting the use of non-flight electronic devices by pilots.

The new Sterile Cockpit Rule is designed to stop pilots getting distracted by laptops, telephones or music players during a flight. The case was sparked when it was revealed that last October the pilots of Northwest 188 over-flew their destination by 150 miles because they were using their laptop computers for personal activities and "lost situational awareness."

"There is no room for distraction when your job is to get people safely to their destinations," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

"The travelling public expects professional pilots to focus on flying and on safety at all times."

However, the devil is in the details. The new rule insists that pilots must not be using any kind of personal electronic device during critical junctures, defined as during takeoff and landing. Such a rule wouldn't have stopped the overflight by Northwest's pilots and, while the Sleuth is no expert on flying, it's hard to imagine any pilot whipping out the netbook for a quick round of Minesweeper while coming in to land.

Posted by Iain Thomson on April 28, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in the longstanding case of the computer games industry verses the state of California.

California voted in a law that that by 2006 was supposed to ban the sale of computer games deemed violent or for sexually mature audiences to anyone under the age of 18. Not surprisingly the entertainment industry contested it, with the Entertainment Merchants Association and the Entertainment Software Association both fighting the case.

In two courts now the trade bodies, who count Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts and Take Two (publisher of Grand Theft Auto) among their members, have convinced the court that there is not enough evidence to allow such a ban. California disputes this and now the highest court in the land will give Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Assn., 08-1448 a hearing.

"Courts throughout the country have ruled consistently that content-based regulation of computer and video games is unconstitutional. Research shows that the public agrees, video games should be provided the same protections as books, movies and music," said Michael D. Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association.

"We are hopeful that the Court will reject California's invitation to break from these settled principles by treating depictions of violence, especially those in creative works, as unprotected by the First Amendment."

The decision of the Supreme Court is going to be final in this so all the big guns are going to be pulled out by both sides. While the games industry may have a good case, the case is far from certain, particularly given the more conservative makeup of the judges.

Posted by Iain Thomson on April 26, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seattle police are learning that if you're going to use technical excuses you shouldn't go up against geeks.

The story begins in October 2008, when a drunken group of revellers were playing urban golf, firing large Styrofoam balls down the streets of Seattle with frequent refreshment stops on the way. One ball was misfired and bounced off a passer-by, who promptly called 911.

Four police turned up and started to take names and addresses of the drunken golfers. The man who hit the offending ball (an ID parade's dream wearing as he was English golfing duds, a Tattersall's hat and fake orange sideburns) slipped away but the police started insisting on asking for everyone's ID.

Now a lot of people wouldn't mind doing this but this group was largely made up of computer security specialists who tend to get very touchy about personal information and rights, for obvious reasons. Dan Kaminsky, famous security researcher was one of them.

"Twenty to 30 people are detained over a Styrofoam ball?" he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"This is ridiculous."

Kaminsky was not arrested, but was among those detained for questioning. But one of the group refused to identify himself on principle, researcher Eric Rachner. He was booked for obstruction.

Now despite recent rulings refusal to provide an ID is not a criminal act in this country for citizens and the case was dismissed, but not after a few thousand dollars in legal fees that got Rachner riled up.

All Seattle police have a video camera in their cars and usually wear a microphone as well. Rachner wanted to see the video and hear the arrest. He bombarded the police department with requests to see the footage and eventually was told that the recordings had been deleted.

"They just flat out said they didn't have it," he said.

So Rachner went to work. He sent off for the specifications of the audio/visual system and started going through them in a level of details you doubt the buyers did. What he found was that there were record keeping functions in the software controlling the system that logged every time videos were viewed, moved or deleted.

Rachner got his video, the police have promised to look into the matter and now lawyers are poring over similar cases where abuses may have been made. The message is clear - don't mess with the geeks.

Posted by Iain Thomson on April 23, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Engadget, eager to strike back at arch-rival Gizmodo after the iPhone scoop, is publishing what looks to be leaked pictures of Dell's new smartphone range running Android and Windows 7.

The Windows 7 handset, codenamed Lightning, has a five megapixel camera, 1GB of storage and an 8GB microSD card, as well as an accelerometer, GPS, FM radio and full Flash support. It also has a sliding QWERTY keyboard to be used in portrait mode, like the Palm Pre.

It's going to be pitched at the business market, and Microsoft is also hoping to snag the design enthusiasts with its lines. Lightning will be sold through AT&T and T-Mobile and be integrated with Zune marketplace.

The second handset, 'Thunder', runs Android 2.1 and has software integrating it with Flash 10.1, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Hulu. An eight megapixel video camera is built in and Dell will be aiming it at the consumer and creative markets.

Both handsets run 1GHz QSD8250 Snapdragon processors, have 4.1in multitouch OLED displays and are due to be out at the end of the year, with LTE models out at the end of 2011 via AT&T.

While stuff like this comes with the usual caveats about leaked material the presentation does look genuine and is in a similar style to earlier images of Dell's tablet devices. Looks like the computing number one is serious about getting into the mobile market.

Posted by Iain Thomson on April 22, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hot on the heels of the news that a next generation iPhone had been lost by Apple came the apparent identity of the employee it was entrusted to, a man having possibly the worst day of his working life.

The 27 year old Apple employee has been tentatively identified as Gray Powell, a software engineer who was seen at the Gourmet Haus Staudt, a German beer hall in Redwood Valley. According to the site that broke the news Powell was drinking in the beer hall and field testing the new iPhone on Tuesday March 18.

When another patron of the bar found the phone he hung around to see if someone would claim it and then took it home. The next day the phone had been deactivated and he noticed that something wasn't right about the handset.

He cracked the cover and found inside the prototype iPhone, which has since been doing the rounds. Photos first appeared on Engadget but the actual device ended up with Gizmodo. It is not known if Gizmodo paid any money for the device but this seems highly likely.

The site contacts Powell about the phone, who appeared to confirm its authenticity.

"He sounded tired and broken," the site reports.

"But at least, he's alive. And apparently, still working at Apple."

Posted by Iain Thomson on April 20, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

As if tax season wasn't bad enough as it is, a new report suggests that searching online for help may leave you with a malware infection every bit as bad as an IRS audit.

F-Secure has spotted a rash of new attacks pushing rogue anti-malware; utilities that claim to protect your computer for a small fee, but in fact do nothing of the sort. The malware attacks have been embedded into pages that have been search-engine optimised for commonly-used search queries on tax matters.

In other words, doing a web search for tax help could lead you to a malicious web site offering bogus security software.

Rogue antimalware products aren't anything new, neither is search engine optimisation. In fact, similar attacks have been spotted in the past around both the US and UK tax filing deadlines. When people are stressed, tired and looking for tax help online, they can be tricked into downloading and installing malware.

So, if while looking for last-minute tax advice in the next few days you see a strange warning dialogue or fishy software offer, don't fall for it and if you suspect your system to be infected, stick to trusted and reliable vendors and download sites.

Posted by Shaun Nichols on April 16, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A teenager in Arkansas has filed a criminal complaint for harassment against his mother, after she hacked his Facebook account.

The 16-year-old son of Denise New from Arkadelphia filed the complaint and requested a no contact order after his mother hacked into his Facebook account, changed his password and made slanderous statements about him, according to local station KATV.

"You're within your legal rights to monitor your child and to have a conversation with your child on Facebook whether it's his account, or your account or whoever's account," Denise New told reporters.

"It's crazy to me that we're even having this interview."

She said that she first started tracking his account after a friend mentioned the teenager had been speeding after becoming upset over a girl. She said she would fight the matter in court.

"Oh yeah, I'm going to fight it. If I have to go even higher up, I'm going to. I'm not gonna let this rest. I think this could be a precedent-setting moment for parents."  

New's teenage son lives with his grandmother, who has right of custody, but New said that they had always had a good relationship.

Posted by Iain Thomson on April 7, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Among the Silicon Valley community Easter was less about the death and crucifixion of Jesus, or appropriating pagan mythology into a good excuse to cram down as much chocolate as possible, as it was about the iPad.

As predicted the lines stretched around the block and then some at Apple's main store in San Francisco, which led to some friction between the VIP line and the common plebs. One reason for the queues could have been the presence of iPad designer Jonathon Ive in the store, and Steve Jobs also put in a brief appearance at the main Palo Alto outlet.

Another Apple celebrity feature of the weekend was the now inevitable argument over Woz pushing in line to get his, or not as the case may be. It seems hardly a launch goes ahead at Apple these days without someone accusing Apple's amiable first wizard of ungentlemanly conduct. Given the reverence of most Apple fans I doubt he'd ever have to push in, but still the stories persist.

But the smart people have cottoned onto the fact that delivery services are a much better bet. A friend got her iPad delivered to her door in Palo Alto by a lightly sweating UPS man who had delivered 35 to the same neighbourhood.

All in all Apple looks to have sold over a quarter million of the devices this weekend, not a bad piece of work. The early buzz is mostly good. Despite reported overheating issues the social media pages are positive, with the saddest moment a couple who ordered one 3G and one Wi-Fi, consigning them to a month of arguments over who gets to use the new device.

Posted by Iain Thomson on April 6, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tech companies really love April Fool's Day. It's the one day of the year that they can let their hair down and have a good laugh.

Journalists, however, are less fond of the day. For reporters, navigating the April Fool's news load is a minefield of embarrassing mistakes and gaffes.

The problem is that in covering the tech industry we are so often presented with stories that seem borderline comical. Companies pitch such hilariously bad products and business moves on an almost daily basis that come 1 April it can be hard to tell the jokes apart from the legitimately dumb ideas.

With that being said, let's take a look at some of the more entertaining corporate gags from this year's April Fool's Day:

Google took a spin on a recent proposal from the city of Topeka, Kansas that it would change its name to "Google, Kansas" should the company select it for an experimental broadband trial. On Thursday the search engine returned the favor by christening its search engine "Topeka" for the day.

One has to wonder, however, if Google really wants to associate itself with all of Topeka's residents.

Security specialists in particular had fun with April Fool's Day pranks. Mac security specialist Intego floated a line of edible packaging, while F-Secure vowed to protect users from the scourge of Rickrolling (that one may have actually been a useful product a couple years ago). Sophos also got in on the fun with the introduction of security through distraction.

Analyst firm Gartner got a bit political with their prank, suggesting that the US Government was preparing a takeover of the entire technology business.

Our two favorite pranks, however, are the work of a pair of geek stalwarts. Digital rights champions Electronic Frontier Foundation sent out a binary message of solidarity for robots, while iconic tech comic XKCD replaced its normal page layout with a fully functional command line interface.

Posted by Shaun Nichols on April 1, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)