Slashdot Mirror
A Pizza Box for Your Laptop
Dark Twonky writes "Human Beans is selling the perfect gift for the geek who has everything. It's the PowerPizza, a pizza box for transporting your precious laptop in. From the web site: Desirable laptops are desirable to thieves too. Disguise your laptop with a PowerPizza and reduce the risk of getting it nicked."
And when the pizza gets thrown in the garbage...
The thief is hungry.
I carry mine in a non-descript back pack rather than an obvious laptop case that has DELL written all over it.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
until some stoned kid walks by your car and decides he wants some pizza ....
he'll take it home and be pissed off he only got a laptop.
"Nicked" is English for "Stolen" for those who only speak "American".....
My Favourite Meme
Goddamn it! There's no pizza in here! What a total rip off! I guess I'll just have to take this laptop.
Boring...
I live on a college campus and this would be more likely to get my laptop stolen. Nice idea though.
now the community of slashdot reading thieves knows what to look for :P
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
1. Steal Pizza Box (because you're really hungry)
2. Put laptop on Ebay.
3. Profit!
Oh wait, I need a ??? in there somewhere...
This
I don't know about everyone else but I wouldn't put my laptop in that. Do you know how hungry jocks are in college... they might not even care that's it's a laptop and eat it regardless.
A psychopath can't tell the difference between right and wrong. A sociopath knows the difference - he just doesn't care.
I normally keep my laptop in a Targus backpack. This way it's easy to transport and not as easily forgotten.
While the pizza box concept is neat to a point I can't imagine putting all the items I need into it and it doesn't seem to be designed for it. Really, who only carries their laptop in their laptop bag?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
If your pizza box has a Domino's logo, there is no chance that anyone would steal it to get the contents, either.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Looks cool, but ...
I don't see any protective padding at the edges where it's needed.
-- Sally
You could just order a pizza and use that box.
...and buy a pizza for that much. Or better yet, buy the pizza and ask for a spare box. Some acoustic foam and velcro, and you're good to go.
"Each PowerPizza laptop disguise is handmade in London using genuine italian-style pizza boxes"
that sounds not too durable to me. i'd rather put mine in a good carrying case and risk it, rather than some flimsy box.
Wouldn't carrying a pizza box everywhere look more suspicious than carrying a bag around?
Look for people walking around with pizza boxes tucked under their arms... That's what'll end up happening after people get tired of carrying their laptop around like it's a pizza.
...because nobody ever nicks a slice of pizza! LOL
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Never try eating your laptop
I know a pizza delivery person, he was robbed at gun point. The thief stole the pizza and not his cash!
If real.
And I can't be asked to do the due diligence to see if it is.
To prevent some finger pointing and laughing it'd be best to carry this "Pizza Case" horizontally - which would be a real pain and kind of limits this carrying case usefulness.
Cute idea, but there's no side padding.
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
I swear I've seen someone with the name 'Anonymous Coward' around here before...
How do you carry a laptop in a bag? Vertically
How do you carry a pizza in a box? Horizontally
There's your disguise spoiler right there.
All the more this guise will work.
This message was done on 100% recycled electrons.
I agree with all of those above who say a pizza box is a bad idea. I know way too may people who would pass a laptop bag up to get that pizza.
However, I could leave my Error Control Coding, LaTeX, or Unix Manual anywhere for days and they would be there when I returned. Books are probably not the right size, but maybe as a laptop sleeve.
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
"Please allow 14 days for delivery." Thats gotta be the slowest pizza ever!!!!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
This reminds me of back in the day when I delivered pizza for college money. To prevent hungry college students from stealing the pizza, I disguised them in "Packard Bell" computer boxes; that way no-one ever bothered me!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Knowing the price of pizza in London this will still be a theft target! Its more likely that someone will just steal it thinking its food and then get a good/bad surprise depending on the quality of your laptop and their hunger. Great joke though, I wonder how many they will actually sell? it was probably some student project..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
How about just not leaving it in your car, or another place where it's easily stolen?
I'd look like a dipshit walking around with a pizza box under my arm, or sitting on a park bench typing into a pizza box.
Besides, after a while, you'd think burglars would catch on to the singular design of the box, especially when it's not an imitation of a popular vendor. I mean, this is a great idea in theory, but I think the execution is a bit narrow at the moment.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
until you come across a hungry thief! I can see it now - they come back and hit you with your laptop box (after fencing the laptop) because they were just looking for a snack.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Can't someone come up with a Snow Crash joke/reference. We're already 40 posts into this story and no one has mentioned it yet. What is slashdot coming to?
I'll stick with my backpack, and never letting it out of my site...
Disguise your laptop with a PowerPizza and reduce the risk of getting it nicked.
and increase the risk of someone throwing it into the trash?
Hint : a guy handling a real pizza usually does not carry it vertically under his arm...
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
No one carries a pizza with them on a daily basis. They could have made a better choice of disguises. As already pointed out, you would have to carry it horizontally or else you would really stand out.
A full-swing marketing campaign was launched, so no one would be ignorant of what those "executive lunchboxes" looked like.
The result was predictable: EVERYONE knew when some white-collar worker was bringing his lunch to the office, thus triggering the same social stigma as if he were carrying a blue-collar lunchbox, as blue-collar workers would laugh with a big "THERE GOES ANOTHER EXECUTIVE LUNCHBOX!!!" whenever they saw one.
The phrase eventually became a Madison Avenue monicker to designate a marketing failure...
just write pineapple on the box. no sane person would eat a pizza with pineapple.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I just bought one of these from Pizza-a-gogo but I paid only £7.50 and got a free meat feast pizza with it!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Soon, I can get an anti-shock ThinkGeek caffeinated mints tin for my hacked Treo 650... and no one would be the wiser!
This message was posted using recycled electrons.
Better be careful with this thing if you take your laptop to a LAN party. "Ummm, who threw out all the pizza boxes? SHIT!!!"
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
-a
dude.. your pizza smells like burnt plastic
Now, as a Geek Gift I think this has real potential - but in that "case" they really should have gotten this out before Christmas.
---
Yeah, I do crazy stuff like that here too ;-)
Mirrordot to the rescue!
This reminds me of a SNL commercial. Its a broken down pile of crap for a car, but the inside is super luxurious. No one wants to steal a beatup car, so you can live the luxurious life without worrying about theft. Yeah, but you look like a retard.
How would you feel bringing a pizza box to the boardroom of a fortune-500 company in an attempt to sell you product to executives. Funny idea, incredibly stupid to go through with it, though.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
A fine soft drink product from Romania. You know those fake cans that you can hide money and uh keys in? Well I think your computer wouldn't be nicked if it were inside a giant version of one.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that I was in the minority of people who actually read the article.
/.'ers from making pizza-box case mods with their laptops and posting links to said mods here.
Something about a link to "Fictional Products" on the top of the page doesn't exactly instill confidence in the product.
Not that it won't stop a thousand
That green slime had it coming.
Many laptops are stolen in airports because they are in clearly visible laptop bags - why not stuff a laptop bag full of "old" pizza just for a laugh? This could guarantee some extra-fun airport security checks!
Think about it. A hungry thief would steal a pizza before a laptop. Then, when he opened it what a suprise that would be!
Of course, once he realized he didn't get no grub, he would kill you.
That's the sound my foghorn just made for that one. :)
a really, really hungry thief?
"Laptop in geeky box stolen by foodcrazed mugger on marihuana"
The belief in a biblical god is an ignorant one
Does no one remember history? The fresh prince of bel-air did this before moving to bel-air...(he & jeff discussed it one day). Unfortunately, he was keeping his schoolbooks in the box, not a laptop. Same principles apply. Someone stole the box, hoping for the pizza itself. I know at my job, the pizza would be considered more valuable than the laptop.
A pizza box is probably more tempting to a wider audience than a laptop would be. I carry mine in one of those zip up binders in an extremely old crappy backpack.
I hate sigs.
- Putting your PowerPizza in a carrier bag will not only increase the level of disguise - it'll keep it dry too.
And how awkward would it be to walk around carrying a pizza box? If you tucked it under your arm, people would know it wasn't a pizza. If you walked around with it held in a proper pizza manner that would suck too.Really, how hard is it to pick up a nice black leather or blastic nylon bag that isn't plastered with "TARGUS" logos and just KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE DAMN LAPTOP?
I've owned many laptops for many years and I've never once come close to having it nicked because I tend to pay attention to my surroundings when I'm carrying it with me.
I saw a guy on the plane the other day who I thought had the right idea: He didn't have a case - just stuck the notebook in the seat-back pocket.
I got a big anti-static bag from one of the lab techs that should be sufficient to protect it from such "weather" as it might encounter, and I figure to keep the power brick in my purse/pocket/whatever...
Laptop cases are an anachronism.
"The Internet is made of cats."
I can think of any number of places I would take my laptop; I can think of very few I'd take my pizza.
Yeah... basically I think I'd just be embarrassed to walk to any place with a pizza box that wasn't my home or the home of a friend. Actually, the walking between homes with the pizza box would be embarrassing too. My natural habit to hold the box sideways might also attract unwanted attention. I don't even want to consider taking the thing into a coffee place or restaurant.
I can just see some bloke at Joe's pizza saying, "hey man, what's with the box?" To which I can easily answer, "oh, it's cool, I brought my own."
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Why not just paint a big apple on the cover of your laptop?
OMG, I'M KIDDING!!! *Takes cover*
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
"But it's my computer, honest!"
Really guys, we know EVERYBODY likes pizza. But to go saying that pizza's are more likely to be stolen than laptops (like 1/2 of the current posters do) is something I highly doubt. In dorms, at the univ, wherever...
And anyway, no-one said you should leave your laptop unattended when it is inside this pizza box. Where I live people don't break into cars to steal pizza boxes, but they _do_ to steal laptops.
Z
This was released several months ago...
/. crowd - another cheap way to "protect" your valuables is to leave two BIbles on the front seat - one where they can plainly see the words Holy Bible - the other with the 8th commandment (Thou Shalt Not Steal) highlighted.
I had done a story on my website about it back in July.
I proposed that people use tampon boxes for their iPods too.
Eventhough mentioning the Bible doesn't go over well with the
Even if they can't read or are not religios they know what a Bible is.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Who put the f*cking pizza in my pizzabox! Do you have any idea what mozzarella does to a harddrive?
I had a machine stolen about three months ago, and notified the local police. It was running the GMail notifier (that checks mail on bootup), so I emailed Google from my gmail account and told them: "The only machine running the GMail notifier keyed to *account name* was recently stolen. From now on, if someone logs into this gmail account, they're doing it from a stolen machine; could you give the IP address to the local police so they can track it down?
GMail wouldn't do it, even though there's no threat to user privacy here: the police are the only ones getting information, and that information was requested by the owner of the account.
That got me thinking: someone (laptop manufacturers) should run a phone-home service, that keeps a log of the IP addresses that send in requests (with an authentication string specific to the user or computer). That way, using that same string and a password, you could get a list of all the IP addresses your machine has connected to the Internet from... which could be turned over to the police if necessary. If you trust the site explicitly, you could even run an applet that will respond to remote instructions (including flashing the BIOS with a "THIS IS STOLEN PROPERTY" message on bootup) when the site's notified that it is stolen. Once laptops start including onboard GPS, this would make recovery a snap.
This won't do anything to deter sophisticated thieves, who will start formatting drives, but it would be cheap to implement and would provide another layer of protection from theft.
If I recall correctly, the #1 way to prevent something from getting stolen is to simply keep it out of sight. That means, if you have your laptop in the backseat of your car (instead of more intelligently in the trunk), throwing a towel over it will work just as effectively as this pizza box. Yet ANOTHER use for your towel from HHGG. 8)
Nah... this thing has gimmick written all over it.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
im pretty sure this has been out for almost a half a year...
There is a link to other fictional products on the site, but you can order the pizza box. Their front page even has links to a French retailer that carries it, www.colette.fr, and a German article about the product.
Owned.
That doesn't look suspicious or anything. I've seen fake pizza boxes in movies that looked more real than that.
No, I don't believe it is. It allows you to order it. If you click the fictional products link at the top of the page, it doesn't list the pizza box. RTFM indeed.
"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote" -- Kosh
Interesting that they put an Apple TiBook, which is the most scratch-sensitive laptop ever. There's even special paint to cover the scratches. Now look at those straps (in the flash movie on their site). Will obviously cause scratches. Straps for laptops = bad, unless you got an ugly DELL with stickers all over it.
A few years back I sold a similar laptop box, but instead of a pizza box, my laptop storage box was in the shape of a pirate's treasure chest and had "Gold Bullion" written on it. Turns out I had the worst performing business model of all the community college that year.
I can get one delivered in about 30 minutes... even comes with a pizza!
What, nobody points out what a bad idea this is? Besides, I can't see the point. In the first place, lugging that thing around can't be comfortable. Also, if by some deviant twist in reality these stupid things become popular, it no longer does anything but describe the owner as someone who pays thirteen pounds for some cardboard and eggshell foam.
Go buy a backpack.
Slashdot: News occasionally. Stuff for sale.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
was, "Someone will think it's a discarded pizza box and throw it away."
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
This is really old news now, I saw it a long time ago and decided to make my own, with a twist. Instead of a pizza box I took a box file (for holding documents), lined it with furniture foam and my 12" iBook, mouse and power brick fit snigly inside. What's more the whole thing can also fit in a rucksack.
Pointless for anti-theft, but looks like it could be usefull for social engineering. Showing up at someone's office building with a laptop and saying "hey, can I plug into your internal network for a few minutes?" isn't likely to have too much success. Your chances are much better if you show up with 1) a tool belt and CWA polo shirt, 2) a pizza box, or 3) a cleaning cart and a complete inability to speak english.
Of course, the real hilarity ensues when you bring your pizza box with a laptop in it with you to the airport...
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
"Don't worry about the problems you have in mathematics, I assure you mine are much greater." - Einstein c.1919
How on earth did this get slashdotted? This is pure Fark fodder and nothing more. Are they letting the dog post?
Until your drunken roomate throws the pizza box away!
Oh.. yeah.... right.. a drunken roomate actually throwing something away!! LOL!.. nevermind...
From the websight
"Spam: from Human Beans. An exhibition of fictional products"
So your right, it's fictional, but also funny.
We are the Borg...
There's no foam on the sides! Drop that box on its edge, and the PowerBook gets it!
Stupid...
Let me get this straight. They want me to pay $25 for a cardboard box, some glued in eggcrate foam, and some red velcro straps. Riiiiight. Is getting ripped off on this scam any better than letting your laptop get stolen?
Police Hat Desirable laptops are desirable to thieves too. Disguise your laptop with a PowerPizza and reduce the risk of getting it nicked.
Be safe & protected
When secured your laptop is prevented from movement and the box can be held at any angle. The PowerPizza box is fully lined with 10mm of protective foam.
New and Impoved design design
Based on our customers feedback we've been working on our recipe. Powerpizza is now lighter, quicker and easier to use.
They'll think you're having pizza for lunch again whilst youll be preparing that last minute presentation for the board.
Accessories too!
Unlike most laptop cases, in a PowerPizza there's room to store the essential accessories too! As well as your laptop a PowerPizza can easily accommodate a mouse, power supply and more...
Quality Construction
Each PowerPizza laptop disguise is handmade in London using genuine italian-style pizza boxes for maximum authenticity.
Waterproof
Need to go out in the rain? Putting your PowerPizza in a carrier bag will not only increase the level of disguise - it'll keep it dry too.
Technical
Corrugated cardboard pizza box Max. laptop size: 37 x 37 x 3.6 cm Min. laptop width: 28 cm Weight: 300 grams Ext. dimensions: 38 x 38 x 4.7 cm Some assembly required
Available Wholesale
Powerpizza is now available wholesale. We are looking for stockists and distributors worldwide.
"Don't worry about the problems you have in mathematics, I assure you mine are much greater." - Einstein c.1919
It's not a real product (just in case people don't get it)
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
Hell, if this is a real concern DONT LEAVE THE LAPTOP WHERE IT WILL GET STOLEN.
This is a case of identifying a legitimate need and developing a solution that meets the need that is just dumb.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Just how durable is a pizza box? Wouldn't it get damaged really quickly?
What about appearances? Wouldn't carrying a pizza box to college or work every morning get undesired attention? What about people you want to impress? Carrying a pizza around would probably lessen their opinion of you.
A pizza box is too likely to attract geeks
Dumbest product, but best idea in the world. I can buy a Little Caesars Pizza for $5 USD. I can probably get enough foam, straps, and hot glue for another $5 USD to do AT LEAST 5 boxes. Shipping will be cheap because all the parts weight so little. We're talking ~$8 USD
Not only do you make profit on every one, you get free food. If someone would hire me to do one of these a day, I'd never have to worry about food again. I imagine the entire "case" takes about 15 minutes to make (excluding pizza eating time), and it will even have grease stains on the outside to give it an authentic feel. Free food for relativly no work = good idea.
But, I'm betting those are bulk-purchased boxes w/o a real brand name (as that might come into legal issues). Assuming they actually sell as many as they bought the profit is going to be very large, even at $12 USD. All this for a non-custom case that is bigger than most laptops and pretty shoddy looking. I guess you get what you pay for.
That I would more likely steal a slice of pizza I may put your laptop somewhere else after being fooled by the damn box.
To yoink someones's pizza than a laptop.
You know, the between felony theft and a crime so small it's likely the cops wouldn't be involved if I was caught.
"Gee, I thought it was garbage, I was going to throw it out before we got mice or ants!"
That's a thought, a maid chucking your 5 billion dollar mega-mac into the dumpster.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And I don't need no steenking $250 London Fog raincoat when a 10 cent Glad bag with a hole popped in the bottom for the head will work just fine!
Won't the sopped-in grease and clumps of excess cheese mess up the laptop, or at least make it unpleasant to use?
Seriously, why would I ask for one by mail? It's not like it's hard to find a box and some foam padding.
I can see it now...
"Dial-a-Laptop" menu:
Whizz-bang laptop.......... $2000
Bang-crash laptop........... $600
Extra toppings................. $150 each
Free delivery on orders over $1000!
...yeah, can you hold the spam and malware?
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
As a former Pizza delivery person (Hello Mamma's in Edinburgh !), I can guarantee that an unsecured pizza box is far more likely to be stolen on a Friday night after the pubs turn out than an unsecured laptop bag.
The thief wants pizza, is fairly confident that the Pizza company is too busy to report the theft and in all likelihood would never dream of stealing a laptop.
-S
How about a suitable looking case with 'Biological Hazard' stickers all over it? That might cause some light fingered types to think twice.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
I have blue masking tape wrapped around the edge of the screen housing.
It looks like that's what's holding it together.
Plus it looks different from all of the other laptops going through security, making it easy for me to keep my eye on it.
If someone's going to lift laptops, they'll move along to one that looks less like a piece of s...junk.
Oh, and I also keep my bag with me everywhere except the security checkpoint.
Why would someone put a computer in a pizza box? They're just begging to get their computer thrown away.
It could be useful for the people who use their laptop on their laps, but without wearing any pants. The box could stop them from cooking their legs and other parts. On the other hand, perhaps removing those people from the gene pool isn't a bad thing? (Okay, in this story the guy claims he was wearing pants. Sure.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Read the article and check the pics. Laptop is bound right in the middle of the box, leaving some room around the edges..
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
best. idea. ever. i've been meaning to get a 1U machine and convert it to look like a pizzabox anyways... now i've got the lappy covered.
Try looking up nTracker. Our company was considering it after we had a laptop stolen. Basically, like you said, it makes the laptop phone home periodically, in this case doing so via Email. As always, a sophisticated thief will get by it, but with proper protections (turning off booting from anything but the harddrive), no one should be able to get in to change anything without a proper password. Sure, they can dyke the harddrive, but that's always a risk with computer thefts. Meh, our company dropped the idea after looking at the costs involved, but it seems a reasonable enough investment for a private individual.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
That reminds me of the fellow afflicted with a Packard Bell 486 DX2-66. He was quite forlorn that he could not upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 1. He so wanted to be inundated by security-hole viruses in the hopes that it would put his machine out of his misery.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If they dont ship it 30 minites after you order is it free?
Laptop or Pizza.
I don't know about this idea. I mean, people come out of the woodwork when a pizza is nearby, scrambling for a free piece of the pie. Then you'd just have to explain that you have a laptop in there anyway, and the thieves would overhear you and steal your pizza box with laptop inside and you'd never get that sorted out with the cops.
YOU: "Well, it's a pizza box, with a laptop inside."
COPS: "Why did you put a laptop in a pizza box?"
YOU: "It's not a pizza box really."
COPS: "I thought you said it was a pizza box?"
YOU: "Well it is, but it isn't. see?"
Plus, you would look pretty silly walking to work with a Pizza box every day.
T.
I guess I would if I drank more. Never tried it though. Here (in the Netherlands) is Heineken most accessible and I occasionally drink one if the day is very warm and the beer is very cold. ... ;-)
The times I drink it, It like it. But I am unsure if Heineken meets your obviously high standards
Now I won't be able to carry a pizza without it being stolen just incase theres a lapton in it
Why take two boxes into the lab? At a computer show a few years ago, I saw a Risc PC with a built in pizza oven...
Picture here: http://www.worldofwibble.com/aboutriscpc.html
Here's a standard looking backpack that's designed to fit your laptop and accessories. Of course it still looks like a shiny new backpack so maybe you want to sandblast it to look a little more worn.
Especially on a college campus?
Proverbs 21:19
You would disguise it as a beat-up accordion file like accountants use. Nobody would give a damn about that. If all else fails, how about a suitcase that looks like a homeless person's shoppoing cart?
"I love his boyish charm, but I hate his childishness" - Leela
Now you'll just have to worry about fat people stealing your pizza box.
It's Entertaining. I recommend it to all my friends.
Worst. Pizza Toppings. Ever.
I'd rather have a Jump to Conclusions mat.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
I have an idea....
I take the $20 or so dollars plus shipping and handling and buy a real pizza. I then eat the pizza and wrap my laptop in the napkins which came with the pizza for cushioning (also, protect from residual grease).
Now, it really looks like a pizza box (it is one), smells like a pizza box, and has made my tummy oh so happy.
...made by the usual bag companies and the computer manufacturer logos on them. If these were popular enough then I could safely carry round my laptop in a laptop bag because thieves would just think "nah! that's just one of those fancy high end pizza boxes".
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
You'll never get my laptop unless you pry it out of my cold, dead hands!
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
You might have to add small holes to the boxes for the cables though... perhaps you could disguise the cables as some errant cheese.
I'm seeing it more becoming the new punting device ... I'd think a laptop is safer in the hands of laptop thieves than in the hands of a bunch of drunkards who jacked your 'pizza'.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
what happens when someone wants to steal a box of pizza? and i'm sure some people are going to want only a slice, opening up to reveal your laptop instead... there goes your cover.
If all you're looking for is a way to keep tabs on a machine's IP#, there's a very simple way of doing it that comes w/ some other benefits as well:
use a dynamic DNS service.
Like http://www.cjb.net/ and http://www.dyndns.com/
You go to their site, create a DNS entry for your machine with your current IP#.
Then you make a small script to connect to those sites and update that IP# and set that script to run at startup.
The result is if your machine is on DHCP or moves around a lot (or gets stolen), you'll know its current IP# (or at least it's most recent IP#).
--Clayto
http://www.kyzo.com/
Click on the pizza box to go to free downloads, then click on it again to see inside a real pc in a pizza box. It's just a demo for the flash based POS terminal.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Pizza/geek joke.
A: Dude, my server went down
B: How'd that happen?
Thank you. Thanks you.A: I tipped REALLY well.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Maybe "Infectious Medical Waste" or "Pauly Shore Movie Collection". People like pizza.
Er... did I just give away what my home actually looks like there?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Man forget the pizza box, Ill stick with the good oh trash bag. I mean come on how many ppl will still a pizza box to a trash bag
Here's an idea, grow some balls for crying out loud.
Thieves, like predator animals, look for the easy mark. What I'm trying to say is that if you look like a victim, you will become one. You also should not try to attract attention to yourself by carrying something suspicious like this.
Confidence and common sense are your best defences against theft. Don't look like you are afraid of getting mugged and don't leave your laptop unattended in plain view (put it in your car trunk instead of the back seat).
I always either use a Targus laptop bag or messenger bag to carry my powerbook around without any fear of getting mugged. I just make sure to not leave my bag unattended.
I also travel without fear with my ipod with white ear buds. Maybe it helps to have the attitude of a bad ass and to look like one too. I've never ever been mugged in my life or had any fear of being mugged.
My advice would be to go to the gym and bulk up and learn some basic self defence to build up your confidence. This also works wonders for attracting the ladies.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
That's what I use. AFAIK one of them is unbreakable or unbreakable to any realistic level of real world efort.
At least the data will be protected. If the machine is not, oh well, that's what insurance is for.
There are a few companies that sell explosive CDs a-la Mission Impossible. I'm sure someone could rig up a program that fires one off in the machine unless a password is entered on a regular interval. If not then the machine immolates itself. Or something like that.
Hmm...I don't know. If it were me, and I was the theif, I think a pizza would be easier to steal than a laptop. Especially if I felt hungry. So I'd steal the pizza, open it up and go, "Holy crap! I could buy like, 200 pizzas with what I could get for this thing! Or sell this, then steal another pizza..."
Julia Cameron
Oich ù agus hiùraibh éile
I guess they've never seen the message, "Dominos drivers only carry $20 in cash."
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I got the impression this sort of protection was intended for storage at home when you aren't carting it around. So if a thief breaks in, he's not likely to consider the contents of what appears to be a pizza box as something worth nicking. Having had my home broken into once, I can tell you that these sorts of people are just looking for either cash or else things that are small and easy to carry and valuable enough to quickly sell.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Did anyone check out this guys site? It's full of "fictional products". It shows the "Power Pizza Box" in a flash with a cellphone/stun gun. Who would actually put their laptop in a pizza box anyway?
Your dogshit box idea reminds me of something my roommate did a few years back. I had just bought a house from the estate of an old man who had died some years back. There were all kinds of personal effects scattered around the attic, garage, etc. As we sorted through these rooms, we hoped to find something exciting like an old pistol or maybe a hidden wad of cash. At one point, my roommate brought down these boxes from the garage attic labelled "Rags." I asked him what he was going to do with them. He said, "If I was going to hide something, I'd put it in a box and write 'rags' on the side." Sure enough. They were full of rags.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
It's basically the same idea as the coke bottle safe that you put in your fridge. At least that's what I'd assume.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It only cost me $9.95, and it came with a free pizza!
I steal pizza for a living! The laptop would be gravy. 'Course, it looks like the laptop in the ad is an Apple Titanium so it would not only be gravy but the whole damn turkey too!!! Yeah, just leave your pizza boxes out there for me I love it love it love it!
What a coincidence. Mac OS X Hints is just this morning running a hint on protecting your Mac by using an Open Firmware password, and setting a banner that pops up a warning and/or ownership message when booting is attempted. There are also interesting comments as to why this might not be a good solution.
I pay for this service and it works well. Everytime your computer connects to a network an email is sent to their server and to any server of your choice with as much tracking/networking information as possible.
http://www.pcphonehome.com/index.php
Don't let the name confuse you, they *DO* have a Mac version, I run it on my powerbook.
Joseph Elwell.
Conversely: Once news of this laptop case leaks out, people transporting pizza are gonna have to carry their pizza's in suitcases to prevent them from being stolen.
~never play leapfrog with unicorns
Now thieves can argue that they were just trying to steal a pizza if they get caught...
BBC
This won't work. Muggers will nick anything these days
if everyone had a laptop, nobody would need to steal one! free laptops for everyone! long live the bolshevik revolution! er... sorry, wrong capitalist state...
... of putting it out on recycling day...
Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s
Unless, of course, the thief is simply hungry and was trying to steal your Pizza...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Mmm...pepperoni/pineapple pizza...
Food of the gods, that.
Pizza Boxes are made of cardboard which is not known for it's conductive property's. Also computer motherboards run on 3.3v to 5v which is not enough to even at 20 amps of current to throw a notable spark anywhere.
There's company, that offers a software that phones home secretly. It is difficult to detect and to remove. check it out http://www.pcphonehome.com/index.php
get stolen too. But I salute them in the spirit of ingenuity anyway.
First: Unless they knew the titles in the bag for a fact, the low probability of being in the same class and needing the books would make random bag-pilfering for textbooks uneconomic risk/reward wise. Reselling the textbooks is difficult when they probably have marks inside identifying the real owner. Someone who just had their textbooks stolen would be a typical customer of a thief who just stole them and would recognise the copy that was stolen.
A thief who would steal textbooks purely for the random knowledge they might contain is hard to imagine.
Inside bags: Wallets, Gizmos/Cds/Laptops/PDAS/Pens/Pencils/theBagItself/ KeysToStuff/Graphing Calculators/Clothes/Prescription Drugs/Illegal Drugs/etc.
Wallets full of Ca$h, Expensive Gizmos, Illegal Drugs and Prescription Drugs that can get you high would most likely top the list of goodies that would most please a thief that stole a bag to find therein. The rest is not that interesting financially.
Why is it wrong to steal? I'm curious.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
The Technics Deck Bag is great for carrying laptops. It's padded, has lots of pockets and comes in camo (listed above) or black. It's meant to hold around 30 LPs and is an interesting alternative to regular laptop cases/backpacks. Of course, it still somewhat screams "steal me" as it says Technics on the outside.
I see this as functioning on the same principal as the club. The club doesn't keep your car safe so much as make it look less desirable to thieves. If a thief wanders by a few cars with cd cases in them and then yours with a pizza box on the back seat, which one do you think he'll break into first?
I really think thats how this thing was born. I think some slob with a trashcan for a car just started stashing his laptop in one of the many discarded pizza boxes strewn about. At least this is more convincing than those incredibly conspicuous plastic rocks that some people try to stash keys in...
firstly, who wants to carry their laptop like a pizza? any student walking around campus or someone walking through the city isn't going to want to hold their laptop out in front of them. and carrying it under your arm sideways is a dead giveaway there isn't really a pizza in there.
...and that's all there is to it.
Just very overpriced
When I was in NYC using the free wi-fi access in Bryant Park (my favourite place in NYC incidentaly), I was extremely concious of sitting in a public place with over $1000 of tablet PC sat on my lap. A pizza box would help disuise the laptop from any casual observer.
But at the end of the day, I would probably buy a pizza and keep the box rather than pay around $20 for a cardbox box.
Dude, You're Gettin' pepperoni
He told me that he had to pick barnacles and dried seaweed out of it before he first turned it on. I think that gives a clue about what it was doing after it was a doorstop but before he got it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Why havent I seen a story on Slashdot yet about Godaddy going down for 1.5 hours yesterday? taking down who knows how many sites with it.
This is a huge story but nobody is talking about it.
This mod system really needs an overhaul.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...for Dominos, with one of the vouchers that they shower on our mailbox like confetti. That works out to USD$4.56 apiece.
Their pizzas are very middle-of-the-road. Nice pizzas, slightly larger, from non-chain pizzerias typically run to about AUD$12-16 apiece.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
... never works.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
what?
If it's not here in 30 mins, I want it FREE!
I have a photo kicking around somewhere of an iMac box full of pizza.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I mail out laptops frequently for service, and I have to say the mailers we use put that pizza box to shame. First off, it has ZERO protection around the edges. If you're going to drop something shaped like that, the odds that it lands dead flat on top or bottom is close to nil - it's going to land on edge, and the laptop is just going to slide right to the edge (strap or no strap) and spiderweb your LCD as the only thing between it and concrete is 3mm of cardboard.
Second issue is the thickness of the box. You'll notice they have a tibook in there in the ads... that's about the THINNEST laptop made. A 1.75" thick pizza box with 1" of padding (estimates, sue me if I'm wrong) leaves 0.75" of space for the laptop, unless you want it to bulge. This case just isn't practical for anything but a mac powerbook. Even the ibook would be pushing it to fit into the case with the lid shut.
That, and sooner or later SOMEONE is going to prank you and hide your laptop, and you're going to open that box up and find...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Would I spend $12 on a fake pizza box that I could build myself for almost nothing (*peers out of office window at Italian restaurant*... yep, John would certainly give me a free Pizza box if I asked nicely. Or bought a pizza to put in it...)? No, that'd be just stupid.
I'd put it in my car boot, where the thief wouldn't be able to see it. Thus, he'd be less likely to break into my car.
Neat idea, silly marketing.
Just like my little iPod case made from a milk jug. Yes, it really works!
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
It *can* draw 20 amps, but with something like 150mOhms of resistance.
American: Drink beery, watery-tasting piss.
Canadian: Drink watery, beery-tasting piss.
Australian: Drink anything with alcohol in it.
Yeah, right.
I don't know - I tried to be real careful with the first one, but that cup of cream and sugar (well, it had some coffee in it) shorted the video leads and fried the motherboard (genuine tears shed, there). Damn thing didn't last a week. I'm all callus and devil-may-care with the biatches, now. They like it when you slap 'em a little bit around once in awhile... *flex* *belch* *big shiteating grin*
"The Internet is made of cats."
Who remembers this?
Computer built into a Batman lunchbox.
uhm, did anyone actually do research on human beans? EVERY product they have is bogus. They're culture jammers
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
...but I've been attacked for a pizza by kids on bikes!
There are methods to prevent laptops, notebooks, PDAs, .. from theft. These methods are especially suited for Linux machines.
Relax.
I think you're taking some off hand, jocular comments a bit too seriously. It's easy, and fun, to rag on Dominoes Pizza, just like it's easy, and fun, to rag on any large corporation.
Taste is subjective, as any TRUE foodie will be able to tell you. All of the comments have been in fun. Ultimately, it's not that different than the fans of two different sports teams ragging on each other.
Now, we could go into long discussions of WHY some / many people think Dominoes Pizza isn't very good, but to tell the truth, that requires more energy and though than most people in this forum are willing to put into the topic.
The only person taking this seriously or foaming at the mouth is you. Everyone else has their tongue too firmly planted in their cheek to be foaming.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
My new business - pizza that looks like a computer.
No liability will be assumed for people who put their computers into the oven.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.