The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a fascinating and provocative ruling on Monday, finding that border-control agents who found child pornography on a traveler’s laptop did not violate the traveler’s Fourth Amendment rights. Here are stories from the Recorder and San Francisco Chronicle. Click here for the opinion.The backstory: In July of 2005, Michael Arnold, who was 43 at the time, was pulled aside for secondary questioning upon arriving at LAX from the Philippines. Customs agents checked out his laptop and, according to the ruling, found “numerous images depicting what they believed to be child pornography.”

Arnold was later charged with possessing and transporting child porn and with traveling to a foreign country with the intention of having sex with children. But lower court Judge Dean Pregerson of Los Angeles suppressed the evidence after finding that customs agents didn’t have reasonable suspicion to search the contents of Arnold’s laptop.

The Ninth Circuit, in an opinion penned by Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, reversed on Monday, holding that “reasonable suspicion is not needed for customs officials to search a laptop or other personal electronic storage devices at the border.”

Los Angeles-based U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien praised the decision in a prepared statement.

Marilyn Bednarski, a partner in Pasadena, Calif.-based Kaye, McLane & Bednarski, said she plans to seek an en banc review of the case. Bednarski said she could see the point in turning on a laptop computer to make sure it’s not a bomb or a container full of illegal substances. But opening files bothered her. “What this decision allows [border agents] to do without limits,” she said, “is keep opening up and keep reading forever.”

Intel made a surprising spring price cut for some of its processors, such as the Q6700 Core 2 Quad or the Intel Xeon X3230. Some price cuts go as high as 50 percent, while other processors have had their price reduced by 30 percent.

The motivation for this initiative remains unknown, but Patrick Ward, spokesman for Intel, said most of the processors were built on the 65 nanometer technology, while Intel is now promoting its 45nm chips, Computer World reports.

“We’re transitioning from 65nm to 45nm,” said Ward. “We’re in the process of refreshing our line. If you see a 65nm [chip], it’s older technology and we’re moving from it.”

The price cuts include the Core 2 Quad Q6700, which dropped from $530 to $266, Intel Xeon X3230 also dropped from $530 to $266. Besides these significant drops, the Core 2 Duo E6850 now costs $183 from $266, while Xeon 3085 is now $188 from $266.

Under 20 percent price cuts include Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, down 16 percent from $266 to $224, Intel Core 2 Duo E4600, down 15 percent from $133 to $113, Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor E2200 down 12 percent from $84 to $74 and the list goes on.

Dan Olds, analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. told the same newspaper: “This really keeps up the pressure on AMD. Intel blankets the market from high end to low end, with multiple choices at almost every price point – each competitive with AMD on either performance or price or both.”

As AMD prepares its new 45nm line, so is Intel, by refreshing the current product line.

“They’re making sure they have a compelling price and/or performance value proposition in every segment where they compete with AMD,” Olds also said. “In short, it isn’t getting any easier to compete with Intel.”

On Thursday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission had its widely anticipated hearing on broadband access and management practices. 

The concerns regarded whether broadband Internet providers were open with customers about the way they are managing their networks and if they deliver on the speeds they promise. 

The FCC Chairman Kevin Martin expressed his opinion on the commission’s task to investigate the management of broadband networks by providers such as Comcast Corp. The FCC is currently looking into some reports sent by different consumer groups, which show that cable operator Comcast Corp has unreasonably blocked or hindered some file-sharing services. Programs such as BitTorrent, used to distribute TV shows and movies were unavailable. 

“Application designers need to understand what will and what will not work on the network, and consumers must be fully informed about the exact nature of the service they are purchasing,” Kevin Martin said according to Reuters. 

He also added: “Particularly as broadband providers are trying to provide tiers of service, it’s critical to make sure that we are understanding that the broadband network operators are able to deliver the speeds and service that they are selling.” 

Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America, testified he was rather disappointed that the main technology at issue is not applied by ISPs to find and identify the people illegally exchanging music and video files.
The hearing had one main direction: to make sure that from now on all companies will be monitored and will be prevented from unfairly discriminating against some of their costumers.

Fring, the company founded by Avi Shechter, the former co–CEO of ICQ and VP at AOL, has announced that it released a test version of its popular application which brings Skype, as well as MSN, Google Talk and AIM to Apple’s iPhone.

“This special pre-release version of fring, developed in conjunction with the Holon Institute of Technology academic research labs is a direct response to iPhone users kicking our behind to get fring for their COOOOOL devices,” the company said on its website.

“Part of the objective here (besides getting you all excited with fring for iPhone) is to get feedback prior to release of the full-feature version and create a truly superb user experience for iPhone users,” Fring says.

The fring application is only available to those who jailbroke their iPhones or iPod Touches. The application is not endorsed by Apple which is against VoIP applications for its gadgets. This is the case because access to free calls could dramatically cut into the profit margins of the carriers licensed to supply the handset, and everything Apple does is about large profit margins (like its Mac desktop computers). Also, application runs in the background, which is forbidden by Apple.

Of course, the iPod Touch does not have a microphone so you need the Touchmods dock connector microphone.

Fring, also co-founded by Boaz Zilberman and Alex Nerst, is headquartered in Israel, and has representation in Italy, UK and Germany. In February, BusinessWeek reported that more than 100,000 new users from 160 countries were downloading, installing, and registering to use fring each month.

Seagate Technology just might have a few patents that make the rest of the storage industry squirm.

Earlier this week, Seagate, the world’s largest hard-drive maker, announced that it was suing STEC, alleging that the company violated four of its patents and other intellectual property.

The patents largely revolve around how a manufacturer would take flash memory and make it into a functioning hard drive. Seagate’s hard drives store data on magnetic platters. There is more to the drive than the platters, however. Getting the data off of the platters and into a processor requires interfaces, controllers, and other hardware. Seagate’s suit essentially states that although STEC might be using flash memory in its drives, the overall construction of its drives infringes on Seagate’s patents.

And this one seems to be the big patent in the bunch: U.S. Patent No. 6,404,647 for a solid-state mass memory storage device. It was filed by Hewlett-Packard in 2000, and the U.S. Patent Office issued it in 2002. Seagate acquired it from HP some years back.

“The present disclosure relates to a solid-state mass memory storage device. More particularly, the disclosure relates to a semiconductor mass memory storage device suitable for disk drive replacement,” the patent states.

The full patent is far longer, but that’s the gist of it. It appears to describe a solid-state drive that could replace a standard hard drive. Seagate isn’t talking a lot about the details of the suit, but CEO Bill Watkins said, “STEC is not the only company we are looking at.”

Can a company really patent the concept of a solid-state drive? Determining the scope of patents like this could take years, said Jim Porter, an analyst at Disk/Trends. (We’ve also only examined it for a while but will do more research and talk to experts. The other patents are Nos. 6,849,480; 6,336,174; and 7,042,664.) Rodine sued a raft of hard-drive makers in the 1990s over its patents for a design for a 3.5-inch drive. The industry eventually went toward 3.25-inch form factors. But the suits were filed, and for a while they sent shivers down the spine of some executives.

If Seagate decides to broadly press its claims and prevails, the patents collectively could be worth millions. They could entitle Seagate to get a few dollars for every solid-state hard drive shipping out the door from manufacturers worldwide. DVD manufacturers pay around $15 to three sets of patent holders for every DVD player they ship. Philips and Sony reaped millions in royalties for inventing the CD. The Blu-ray Disc/HD DVD war centered on royalties. It’s a good business too–you basically wait for the check, once you wade through expensive and hard-fought litigation.

So if the patent is so good why would Seagate go after STEC? To set an example. In the tech world, companies typically don’t like to sign license and royalty agreements. Potential licensees often make the patent holder sue one or more companies first. If the potential licensees prevail, the conflict can fade away.

If the patent holder prevails in court, other potential defendants line up to sign deals.

STEC is a small player. If it wins, other industry players will applaud its pluck. If it loses, other manufacturers of flash drives like Intel, Toshiba, and SanDisk might decide to line up dutifully to pay Seagate royalties. And since there may not be a pre-existing lawsuit, there won’t be as much bad blood.

“They (Seagate) have always been willing to license,” Porter said.

Dell announced its new lineup of Vostro notebooks aimed at small and medium sized businesses. The new models are lighter and better than the previous Vostro Dell laptops. The new 13.3-inch Vostro 1310 starts at $749 and the 15.4-inch Vostro 1510 at $599.

“Customers told us in a recent global laptop study that data protection and pre-installed security software are, by far, the most important security features,” said Frank Muehleman, vice president and general manager, Dell Small and Medium Business. “They also said they wanted thinner and lighter machines, all at a good price,” Muehleman said. “We paid attention,” Muehleman said.

The laptops are available with no bloatware and include free services such as 10GB of Dell DataSafe Online Backup, Network Assistant and PC TuneUp. The machines pack Intel GMAX3100 integrated graphics, at least 1GB of memory. The Vostro 1310 starts with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T5670 and a 160GB hard drive, while the 1510’s minimum configuration offers a 1.86GHz Celeron 540 and a 80GB hard drive.

The new models are available today in Europe, Middle East and Africa, followed by North and South America May 1, and Asia Pacific and Japan May 5, Dell said.