stolen posts

Filed under: Retail

Thieves steal $10,000 of gear from an Apple Store

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 31st, 2008

Thieves broke into an Apple Store in Palo Alto, California, and within two minutes had nabbed $10,000 worth of gear, including six laptops (gotta be MacBook Pros, right?) and two iPhones. And apparently they trucked right over to Los Gatos, and did the same thing about an hour later. There's no dollar figure from the second robbery, but more laptops and iPhones were stolen.

It's actually surprising this kind of thing doesn't happen more often, though I'm also surprised the thieves were able to duck in and out of the store in two minutes -- I've been to many Apple Stores, and I don't think I could carry out $10,000 worth of stuff and be gone in just two minutes.

But I guess as long as there's something expensive around, someone will try to steal it. Cops have a car description on these guys, and having gotten away with two robberies already, it's probably a good guess they'll try again. Only a matter of time before they're caught.

[via Techmeme]

Tags: apple-store, cops, gear, iphone, los-gatos, macbook-pros, palo-alto, retail, robbery, stolen, thefts, thieves

Filed under: Odds and ends, .Mac

Back to My Mac saves a stolen laptop

by Robert Palmer (RSS feed) on May 9th, 2008

A clever Mac user helped police recover a stolen laptop using Back to My Mac's screen-sharing feature.

After her apartment was burglarized, the victim received a call from a friend while she was at work (conveniently enough, at the Apple Store in Westchester, NY). The friend noticed her stolen computer was online. The victim then quickly used another Mac to connect to the stolen laptop.

The article doesn't mention the technical details, but I reckon she activated screen sharing, and started Photo Booth (or another app that activates the laptop's built-in iSight camera). After a while, the perps showed up, and the victim's roommate recognized one of them as an acquaintance who had attended a party at their apartment some weeks before.

Armed with names and photos of the alleged thieves, police quickly arrested two men, who were in possession of most of the property stolen in the burglary.

If that isn't worth her year's subscription to .Mac, I don't know what is.

(Update: The New York Times has a story with some more details. She used Photo Booth, too. Who called it, baby?)

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Tags: .Mac, b2mm, isight, stolen, tweet-this

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family

Is the iPod responsible for national crime wave?

by Dave Caolo (RSS feed) on Mar 5th, 2008

Website MassLive.com is suggesting that there's a positive correlation between the increase in crime that occurred in the US during 2005 and 2006 and the popularity of the iPod (this isn't the first time we've seen such a suggestion).

Washington's Urban Institute noted that the 1990's saw a reduction in the incidents of violent crime, while 2005 and 2006 saw a spike. At the same time, iPod sales were soaring. In 2005 Apple sold 42 million iPod, and almost 90 million in 2006.

Now, we all know that iPods are stolen frequently. They're easy to grab, users are frequently "in their own world" while absorbed in their music and they sell well. It's not difficult (unless the thieves are idiots) but that doesn't mean that a single factor - iPod popularity - is responsible for the national violent crime rate.

Use common sense when walking around with your iPod. Pay attention to your surroundings, keep it inside your clothing if possible (a jacket pocket) or even in your hand and, most importantly, ditch the tell-tale white ear buds. Or just encase it in machined aluminum.

Thanks, Edsel!

Tags: crime, ipod, stolen, theft

Filed under: Software, Open Source

Questions about BitRocket abound

by Dan Lurie (RSS feed) on Sep 5th, 2006

News is coming in via digg commenters and posts on forum threads linked therein which seems to indicate and give evidence that BitRocket uses code taken from the Transmission.app source without giving any attribution as required by the MIT license under which Transmission is released. These accusations are further supported by the fact that the developer of BitRocket, Julian Ashton, previously developed XFactor, a P2P application, which was proven to take code from the Poisoned project, again without proper attribution.

Update: Scott, our fearless leader, did some digging and found a post on the forum thread linked that I seem to have missed. According to at least one account, BitRocket does properly credit the source it uses.

Tags: bitrocket, bittorrent, code, digg, evil, poisoned, stolen, torrent, transmission, xfactor

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family

Does a Stolen iPod Warrant a Pat Down?

by Fabienne Serriere (RSS feed) on Jan 19th, 2006

Jay Allen at Blogging Baby asks if it's ethical to round up a group of sixth graders after a teacher had an iPod stolen at a middle school in Texas.

Sure, an iPod is worth quite a bit, but Jay Allen posits that patting down middle school students is not the best example to set. Go voice your opinion about whether or not your favorite little white (or black) music player warrants a round-up-and-search.

Tags: iPod, Search, Stolen, Theft

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