Berkeley laptop thief is scared out of his wits by professor

hefty_langer

From: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/20/berkeley_laptop_thie.html

Berkeley laptop thief is scared out of his wits by professor
The last few minutes of this video from a biology class at Berkeley is of professor explaining the terrifying consequences that will soon befall the student that stole his laptop. Hell, I'm 500 miles away from Berkeley and I'm scared after watching this.

Download the mp3 from here: http://homepage.mac.com/sean.graham/.cv/sean.graham/Sites/.Public/To%20Catch%20a%20Thief.mp3-zip.zip

meditraitor

Sh1t man, whoever stole that computer better have a change of underwear.. :eek:

themole

it was me, and i don't

LegacyUser

Sounds to me like the thief is federally fu*ked!!!

Hugh Hefner

When I read this thread title I though some guy had found record of his professor like performing ritual sacrifices or something. Lol.

Vid. was still good though.

Trojan

I was imagining said laptop in use in bio-warfare lab and possibly containing face melting virus strain. How disappointing.

I'm with Bruce on this one: looks like Prof is in the sh!t.

Creature

Wow he sure chose the wrong laptop to steal. Wonder what happened to the thief?

Romo

"But the thief, who thought he was only stealing an exam, is presently - we think - is probably still in possession of three kinds of data, any one of which can send this man, this young boy, actually, to federal prison. Not a good place for a young boy to be."

Actually, if you're going to be incarcerated in America, federal prison is about the best place you can be. State prison and county jail (where you can be sent for relatively minor offences) are incredibly dangerous. Much more so than federal prison.

For Professor Jasper Rine.
http://www.truedorktimes.com/deathsuite/jasperrine.mov

Blisterman

So you'd rather be there, than free?

Romo

Blisterman wrote:

So you'd rather be there, than free?

No, but the underlying and crypto-racist intent of the threat (that men of a different ethnic background were going to rape him) is pretty hollow when it comes to federal prison.


Good song BTW.

Dr. Dre

Yeah, but just listen to some of the ridiculous claims the professor makes.
One i particularly like:
He says the folks at Redmond rang him to ask why his windows XP serial number was showing up in a different location!!

Full to the brim of crap TBH.

quarryman

yeah he's talking b0ll0x alright.

sounds like a worried prof to me.

"I am the only person the planet". When i hear exagerated statements like that i know the speaker is talking sh1t.

Goodshape

Dr. Dre wrote:

He says the folks at Redmond rang him to ask why his windows XP serial number was showing up in a different location!!

Full to the brim of crap TBH.

You have to call Microsoft to activate XP these days. They definitely would have asked why.

Dr. Dre

Yeah, I'm well aware of that - but in this context it's a ridiculous notion IMO

The Real B-man

http://www.boingboing.net/images/Picture%202-11.jpg

cregser

I first listened to the mp3 and it sounded scary untill he said 'transponder'...
If I was the student sitting in that lecture I would have been very scared.
But I would probably have done nothing - wait and see.

Then I watched the mp4. The performance was less convincing.
Folding the arms and pacing to and fro didn't help 'sell' his little story.

Does anyone know, did it work?

Chalk

it all seems highly ridiculous,
im a sceptical mofo at the best of times.

and as soon as he said the guys in redmond i knew we had a chancer on our hands.

few points,
if he could track that guy down as easily as he says,
and if he had all that sensitive info on an unprotected lappy which he is thick enough to lose, and even thicker to have unhidden and unpassworded, so that if it was stolen it could easily be viewes it would be in his interest to keep his goddamm mouth shut and get the thiung back before he announced to the world what he did,

so my opinion, none of that data exists, no transpoder , no ms , jacksh!t.
someone nicked it, booted up in a canteen , wireless came on automatically and logged onto canteen wifi,
they tracked that signal and got a dogy security photo,
now all they need is the guy to hand himself in.

serioulsy, a trnaspnder???, why dont they just walk over to the laptop and take it back, ffs :rolleyes:

Waltons

Yeah, I have to agree with Chalk. If he had all that sensitive information on a laptop that could be stolen that easily, the information taken and talked to an entire class group about it BEING stolen I think he'd be in an awful lot of trouble with the people for whom he was working.

JackKelly

Romo wrote:

No, but the underlying and crypto-racist intent of the threat (that men of a different ethnic background were going to rape him) is pretty hollow when it comes to federal prison.

what?

[InsertHandle]

That lecturers full of crap

... the only reason he wants it back is cause of the compromising pictures of him and someone/something that he saved on his laptop;)

quarryman

yeah. he needs it back by 11.55 because he's gone all day and then he's gone the following week. if its that important he'd make himself very available.

i'd take my notes for that lecture. stroll home. boot it up and have a good look around for what he's really hiding.

but then, i'm a hard man. :cool:

delly

Ye, he's probably full of crap, but he is trying to get back his laptop, so why wouldn't he try a far out way of getting it back?

quarryman

does anyone have the mpeg for this? i can't get the vid. i've heard the mp3 already.
thanks.

seamus

That the information he's talking about is on the laptop is quite likely. That it wouldn't be secure is quite unlikely. If he's using NTFS, the data is fundamentally secure until the Hard Drive is removed from the laptop or a new version of Windows is installed - which removes the "Duplicate version" excuse. If the data is stored with EFS (extremely likely that this would be required legally to ensure that the data has not/could not be copied/stolen) then he's talking out of his arse.

The only other plausible bit is the Wireless card (also very possibly the transponder - but surely a security transponder would work whether the laptop was on or off?).

However, chances are that the guy who stole the laptop doesn't know this.

Kevo

Im pretty sure he ws just making that stuff up....I googled it and loads of pages come up with a different story. http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/03/29/stolen.laptop/

Capt'n Midnight

Anyone remember the name of that software that sits on the hard drive and sends "hereIam" packets back every so often so if your laptop is stolen you can get the IP address and can trace it back though the ISP's ??

seamus wrote:

If he's using NTFS, the data is fundamentally secure until the Hard Drive is removed from the laptop or a new version of Windows is installed

non-encrypted NTFS is not secure, all you need is a Dos boot disk and this www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfsdos.shtml ( 39KB )

Pigman II

Wow! Yet another self important undergrad lecturer, completly full of sh1t! Who'd have thunk it?

vibe666

something along these lines: http://www.pcphonehome.co.uk/

can only assume they do the US as well, but can't be arsed to look.

the windows thing is complete b0ll0cks, as is the transponder.

so he's smart enough to be 'consulting' for all these big companies, but dumb enough to leave something so valuable unattended and just dumb enough not to know he's talking crap.

nice try though jasper, but you can't fool people when you don't know what you're talking about!

seamus

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

non-encrypted NTFS is not secure, all you need is a Dos boot disk and this www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfsdos.shtml ( 39KB )

Well, I did say "fundamentally" . Someone would need to know what they're doing to get their hands on it. A random student just robbing it in the hopes of getting the exam, might not have much more expertise than logging into a computer.

Dr. Dre

Update: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22762

Duh

bounty

laptop is probably on ebay now

Chalk

nothin like bein right to start the week