Wires Crossed #112 – February 19

Brazil Strips Apple Of Trademark

Brazil Strips Apple Of Trademark
This will cause those at Apple to go into meltdown mode. It appears that a Brazilian company – Gradiente Electroinca – already had the rights to the iPhone name a full seven years before Apple’s product was released, so a court in Brazil has given the home-grown company the rights to the name. Apple is free to challenge the decision, which they will no doubt do. We find it interesting that other companies in countries that don’t adhere to the same judiciary standards in Western states haven’t done similar over popular cultural items such as Apple gear.

Teens Tweets Go To Pot
Two 13 year-old girls were arrested recently after they tweeted about going to a young man’s house to smoke marijuana. When the parents found out they contacted police, who pretended to be the girls and arranged for a time to meet the dealer. He was promptly arrested at the meeting place, even though he claimed he thought the girls were 16 and that he was picking them up on behalf of somebody else. When will people learn that tweets are in the public domain, and even if you have privacy settings, if somebody retweets it, everybody gets to see it.

Friends Reunite On Facebook – Then One Kills The Other
One positive about Facebook, Twitter and the myriad of other social networking sites, is that it is an excellent way to catch up with old mates – whether they are from work or school or sports club. However, not all hook-ups can be described as ideal, which is what happened in the case of Lois Smyth. The 40-year-old reconnected with her old high school friend Kenneth Brunetti, who she had a started having  a relationship with before he was convicted of shooting her to death and then stealing her car and bank card. The thing about social networking is this; if you look hard enough into their posts and tweets, it can give you an idea about what type of person you are dealing with, or in this case, what type of person an old acquaintance has become.

Facebook Posts Get Nursing Student Expelled
We all know the dangers of writing posts on our Facebook page, but even this one – if believed –is taking things a tad too far. Nursing student Craig Keefe wrote a few posts on his private Facebook page that certain staff at the Brainerd’s Central Lakes College – where he is training –  didn’t like, and, to cut a long story short, got him kicked off the course. But what is worrying is that they didn’t give him due process. When confronted there was little indication of what he had done, what he was alleged to have said that caused offense and that he wasn’t allowed to appeal the decision. It will be interesting to see what the outcome is because he is suing (it is the USA after all – what do you expect?) not only the college and people in it, but also the chancellor and chief executive of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Steven Rosenstone. What he’ll make of all this is anybody’s guess.