Another Berkeley laptop theft... with video!

Wed Apr 20 2005 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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[from Boing Boing, "Berkeley laptop thief is scared out of his wits by professor"]

Check out this 5 MB movie of UC Berkeley professor Jasper Rine explaining the consequences of the theft of his laptop to his Biology 1A class. Wow.

UPDATE [2005-04-20 17:26:22]: I changed the link to a .torrent of a smaller, much prettier file (how the hell do people get things this small (in MB) and so clean?).

A few of us SIMS PhDs thought that most of what this guy said is bullshit. That is:

Of the three methods of tracking the guy that Prof. Rine mentions, only one of them seems to be effective. Specifically, Microsoft knowing that there are two installs of the same version of Windows won't give you much. Further, knowing that someone has connected to a wireless network with a specific MAC address will only tell you vaguely where this person is. If he did have his laptop fitted with a transponder, this could conceivably do a great job of locating the laptop.
Why would he tell the world about the sensitivity of the data on his laptop? Wouldn't he want to keep quiet about this (especially if he had a reasonable idea about who did it)? We think he was just making a show to get the laptop back right then and there. (I wonder if it worked?)

UPDATE [2005-04-21 13:40:29]: Here's a great cartoon making fun... "MEANWHILE, BACK AT UCB"