Slashdot Mirror
Serial Burglar Caught on Webcam
Metatron writes "The BBC is reporting about a serial burlgar caught after images recorded by a webcam were automatically emailed to an outside server. The evidence was made available to the police even though the computer itself had been stolen! This is also discussed on the victims own web site and the local newspaper in Cambridge." From the article: "I was relieved it did what I'd intended it to when I was burgled again. It was nice to catch him in the act - but it didn't stop him from stealing my things."
Note that the Slashdot "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along." certainly doesn't apply here ...
P.S. Here's my lighthearted "webcam" pictures of a man who vandelized my christmas lights snowman ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
he did not undress
I was a victim of a Serial burglar once. I didn't have breakfast for four months because of him... /*rimshot*/
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Used to have a journal entry about catching a burglar on their webcam. Wish I could remember who it was though.
It doesn't say a whole lot (and the victim agrees) when a serial burglar who had been imprisoned for burglary before and who was out on bail for yet another attempt only gets 11 months in prison.
:(
At 19 years old with several prior convictions and now this and they think that it will rehabilitate him to stick him in prison for another year?
Glad that this guy was able to quickly solve his case (sad that he had to pay the price once before years ago) and get this guy behind bars but I'm sure it won't stop someone else from being burglarized by this guy again.
Note to self: Next time, wear a mask.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
"I was relieved it did what I'd intended it to when I was burgled again."
/me prepares for onslaught of non-US posters explaining why burgled is technically correct
Tee hee, he said "burgled."
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
could we have some more info about his setup, including the cost, ease of installation... whatever he'd need to have the pics automatically posted to one of these googlemail (at least the GB of storage could be justified) accounts ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Baseball cap, thuggish look, awful clothes. Screams thieving chav. Where's the burberry?
I have mine record movements while out as well as speak "Intruder alert, intruder alert" hoping to scare any would-be burglers away while snapping their photo.
Hopefully it will never be "needed."
A great use for the new Mac Mini too!
The victim, Duncan Grisby, is the developer of the excellent omniORB CORBA ORB.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
"The webcam made our job really easy," added DS Page. "It was a pleasure to show him the pictures and see his expression when we interviewed him."
If only they had a camera...
"but it didn't stop him from stealing my things."
What is the point of a secret weapon if you don't tell everyone about it?!
He might have used ZoneMinder for this. The pictures look like stills from the program. Zoneminder
Perhaps someone should mirror his site, as it is already slowing down.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
That's it, I'm turning off all my RS-232 ports RIGHT NOW!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
So if this kid was wearing a mask, he'd not be in the hole he's in now. This kid was just stupid, thats why he got caught.
Can anyone point me in the direction for setting up a similar system? I've got a Linux box, but that's all I've got. What would you guys recommend for a basic camera system that I can set up in a similar manner as this dude did? Thanks. yodaj007
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
He posted it on cam.misc and it seemed to spread from there...0 239a9bdae854818
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/cam.misc/msg/
Looks like the computer that was stolen was the webserver, because for some reason the website doesn't come up. ;)
So that's the bastard that has been stealing the toys and surprises from my cereal... oh wait... serial? Crap... always get those mixed up.
this has happened to me before... sort of. a few years ago when i was 16 or so, i knew i was going to be bored later in the day at school, so i setup my webcam to record movement with a copy of meloris melcam i downloaded off the internet. I didn't notice anything wrong while I was watching it at school, but when I returned to my room I noticed I was missing about $50. The maids that my mom hired for that day had just come to our house, so I suspected them. I checked the video that my program had saved on my HD and there they were. They went and found my wallet which was in my dresser and removed the $50 I had been saving, right in front of the camera. Apparently they arent the brightest of people as the camera was clearly visible and my computer isnt too much quieter than a jet.
If he just hadn't broken into the other person's home and stolen his possesions, well then I imagine he would also be a free man as well. But, I guess you can look at the stupid part being the lack of a mask. :\
An Apple Store was recently broken in to Pittsburgh PA.
The whole incident was caught on iSight webcams and used as evidence.
I recently helped with a setup of a system using an iSight Camera and a Blue and White G3 to help catch who was stealing laptops and other items out of the fridge at a local university.
Read the story here
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
You're a genius! If we legalize drugs, there will never be another reason to commit crimes. All crimes can be tracked to this single cause! Cop killers - the cops were trying to keep them away from their inalienable right to get loaded. Wife beaters - because drugs are illegal, the perpetrators needed some other way to amuse themselves. We should all sign a petition to make drugs legal immediately!
Sigh. OK, now seriously - is there any evidence behind your first claim or any data to back up your second claim, or is this just a dead horse that you're fond of beating?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Had my webcam(s) going, my alarm went off (with armed response in tow) AND I have the vehicle registration number. All this I gave on a CD (silver platter) to the South African Police, and they still managed to bungle it!
Stories like this only sound cool when someone paid attention...
"...but it didn't stop him from stealing my things."
...
Geez, this guy sounds like he hasn't seen Home Alone
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHom e
I used to do this exact same thing (but after having the house broken into once first)
I think it was around 1998 when I first started using motion, still do. Have set it up in a few office spaces for non-profits.
Not trolling, but this is not new.
He had over 13 previous convictions for theft and this time, caught red handed, he got a whole 11 months. I would say, fast justice is not as good as fair justice. This idiot should be put away for a few years at least.
;)
11 months is practically a slap on the wrist.
Anyway, I want that guy's webcam software.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
SmartWater - a clear liquid containing microscopic particles encoded with a unique forensic signature that, when found coated on stolen property, provides a precise trace back to the owner and, when detected on a suspect, can conclusively implicate a felon. It's big with the UK police. Check out this article on Wired
Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost. Isn't that what makes a man? That and a pair of testicles
What would be more ingenious is wiring valubles to electric shock machines, and laptops and cellphones packed with small explosives that can be detonated remotely (imagine the burglar kept the cellphone in his pants pocket heeheehee).
Lets not forget the classic staircase-to-slippery-slide mechanism (with alligator pit at the bottom and automated trapdoor), an oldie but a goodie!
WIth most creative webcams, you get a piece of software called creative web cam monitor. This can automatically record video or take pictures every X seconds when it detects >X amount of movement in a user defined area of its field of vision. It can upload via FTP or email the resulting files (if you upload via FTP it can generate a html page with activity log + pictures/video), or just send a notification message. It can even play alarm noises! :-) As it only sends pictures/videos with movement on, space is not a big worry.
Them that there varmints with their goin' around burglarizing honest folks houses.... it's making a mockery of the judiciarialary system
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
For people who are looking for a package solution: LinkSys Wireless-G Internet Video Camera a mere $299.99 CDN in a recent FutureShop ad. (Remember to secure your WiFi net.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This man could be in a lot of trouble - the correct legal response to a burglar over here is to give him all your possessions and ask him not so sue you.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
"No madam, I'm a burglar, I burgle people."
I have a similar setup at home. I'm glad to see it works.
I use:
A windows box.
A logitech quickcam pro webcam.
Conquercam webcam software (www.conquercam.com)
An ftp account on a webserver not at home.
All you need to do is setup the software so that when you are not home, it takes motion activated pictures and sends them to your ftp server. Because the ftp server is not at your house, if your computer gets stolen, you can still get the pictures.
ConquerCam software is great and only $10 USD. No affiliation, just a happy customer.
For a serial robber? Eh, he'll be back out and doing this again... next time he'll just wear a mask while doing his work.
Remember, criminals & politicans have many things in common, one of which is they both prefer unarmed victims/phesants.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Are serial burglars faster than the old parallel burglars?
stripShow - Where WordPress meets webcomics
You'd have thought that a hacker would have released the pictures under a Creative Commons licence, but then perhaps he has to pay the glazier.
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
...to spy on girl thieves who steal my heart.
Ok, if I catch you speeding I'll be sure to cut your head off also.
It's just that I find it sad that there is this group of people (of which you do not seem to be a member) that think that most of our society's ills can be fixed by legalizing drugs. Illegal drugs cause more harm than good. Making them legal won't change this. I do agree, however, that trying to actually rehabilitate addicts (e.g., via treatment, education, monitoring) would no doubt be more helpful than merely jailing them.
I also recognize that there are some areas out there that are quite gray - such as providing clean needles to prevent transmission of HIV. I do not believe charities should be punished for this, but I acknowledge that such programs should be carefully analyzed. (I'm all in favor of reducing HIV, but I also wonder if such programs could be expanded to include some sort of education of the needle receivers before receipt. Obviously, there's a possible trade-off - fewer might be willing to get the needles resulting in more HIV, but this is not at all certain. Hence, a reason for analysis.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I have mine record movements while out as well as speak "Intruder alert, intruder alert" hoping to scare any would-be burglers away while snapping their photo.
If you really want to scare the burglars away, have the computer scream, "Silent Alarm Activated! Silent Alarm Activated!" Or, more seriously, have it quietly dial out and page you (or "text" you) while it's emailing pics. That way you could call the cops and they might catch the guy in the act.
Here come da fudge!
I've been using Home Watcher on the Windows side for years doing this. It's kind of a nice program for playing around with webcam surveillance for the not not too serious user. It does allow you to upload the images to a personal website and the pay-for version has even more options.
Yes I have caught intruders with it.
I'm not sure I'd use it in mission-critical settings, but for home use and a little playing around it's kind of fun to mess with.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
i guess USB really will be the end of serial.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
Sounds like a troll but...
You are allowed to use reasonable force and always have been. Recent UK news is about where the limit lies and the answer is and always has been the same - wherever it's reasonable.
Summary for the Tony Martin case:
Shooting an unarmed, fleeing burglar, who ran off before he could even do anything to threaten you or give you time to assess his intentions, in the back, at close range, with a shotgun is not reasonable.
Don't care who you are, what country you're in or why you did it, it's unreasonable. For all you know, the kid could have sneaked in to get his ball back and legged it at the sight of you and you shoot him, intended to wound or kill, in the back when he posed no threat.
I'm all for doing whatever damage is applicable if said burglar goes for you, will not leave, does not back down, reaches for a weapon, etc. but check your case law first, before you go trolling.
Oh, and by the way, banning guns is an idea that you would only understand if you lived in a country which, by and large, never sees the use of them.
and that my friends... is the reason I have 2 webcams and 4 CCTV cams recording the house when needed.
Although, I wonder if it would be incriminating if it caught me putting a 9MM hole into a would be attacker??.... you read about injustices like that all the time...
I wonder how many patents he violated with his setup?
Remember that even if you build things yourself, your are not allowed to violate someone else's patents, and could be sued by the patent holder for patent infringement. This is the danger of patents...
Score one for the nerds vs the chavs in Cambridge, I suppose.
I thought Cambridge would be all nice and genteel when I moved here from London six months ago; all punting and Pimms on the river bank. It doesn't seem that way now. The Co-Op on the corner was ram-raided a few days ago, there always seem to be missing persons posters up, there've been several murders and attempted murders, foreign students get harrassed and mugged and the chavs have seriously taken over the city centre.
I really wouldn't mind setting up something like this in my new house. Perhaps adding one other feature would be nice however. I was thinking I could put a speaker over the doorway to the computer room, and when the computer detects motion it shouts "Don't move or I'll shoot!" I figure the images of the burglar peeing his pants might make me feel less sad about having my house broken into.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The camera is just a generic video camera with a composite output. It's connected to a BT-848 video capture card in a Linux PC. I then use motion to detect motion and capture images. I then have some Python scripts I wrote that upload the captured images to an FTP server.
I'm afraid I had to block access to my server from Slashdot. I don't have enough bandwidth for the onslaught.
Duncan.
I bet his web cam didn't see the mugging his web server just took!
- Kevin
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
The state has never been obligated to provide protection. They are obligated to enforce the law. If they had to provide protection for individuals, they'd need to assign you a 24/7 bodyguard. Oh, and since the bodyguard is a citizen, he'd need a bodyguard ... ad infinitum.
A police force is a reactionary entity. After something bad happens, they show up to apply a corrective force. Sometimes that means confronting the bad guy. Sometimes that means just filling out the appropriate paperwork.
Understanding the value of your material goods is important. Compared to your life, the material stuff is insignificant. However, if someone breaks into my home and gets between me and my wife or kid, the police are going to need to ask the corpse what his intentions were.
I have a webcamera, and I can watch it using MSN messenger's webcam feature, and VNC into my computer at home to have a look at what the camera is pointing at. I'm definately going to set up this more advanced system now, since I have the highspeed internet connection and camera anyway.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Didn't realise that computers were quite *that* exciting to burglers!
Here's the original webcam movie.
;-)
Sorry, had to.
Hmmm... I'd have to disagree with that. Maybe if he were on the floor with his hands on his head squealing "I give up! Stop kicking me!" but in most situations, if someone's attacked you, knocking them to the ground doesn't end the fight; you need to neutralize them, particularly if there might be others. I feel the same way about all these self defense classes which advocate knocking the knife out of the attacker's hand, but don't teach you how to use the knife. Like one of my teachers said, if you don't pick it up, they will.
That said, it's a reasonable force thing that's dependent on the situation. If you've got multiple intruders, the courts should be more lenient about you shooting the fallen attacker in the hip to keep him from sneaking up on you versus where it's a lone burglar who's already surrendered his weapons and already zip-tied his hands for you.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
About three years ago, my brother had a roomie that he suspected was vandalising some of my brother's property. Of course, because they had a dog that was allowed to roam through the entire house, my brother couldn't prove that it had been the roomie and not the dog, becuase all of the destruction was well within the realm of a dog's capabilities. So he set up a webcam on his computer to start recording when there was motion in the room, and then storing the video on his web server. This allowed him to catch his roommate dumping a the bowl of leftover Kraft Dinner that had been left on the desk all over/into my brother's keyboard while my brother was at work.
A lot of people leave their computer(s) running when they're not around, and a lot of people have webcams sitting around that 99% of the time aren't even plugged in. I know that this is the case for me, at any rate. It's really easy to miss yet another piece of computer-related clutter on an already messy surface. Although I have to admit, it doesn't take all that much effort to look around for cameras before perpetrating a crime and "accidentally" knock them so that they're not pointed at the area where the crime will be comitted... Not that this would have helped the burglar any, since all it had to capture was him breaking in to prove at least breaking-and-entering, but when someone has a legit reason to be in the room and foils themself through sheer lack of attention... That's pretty stupid, I have to agree.
Err come on, it's only theft we're talking about. 11 months of jail is certainly not a little vacation you know, it's enough to have a big impact on your life actually.
Except, with as many convictions as this guy has had, can we really say that jail sentences seem to be having an impact on him? Heck, he probably picked up pointers while he was in there...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I re-read my post, and sure enough, I never said that giving out free needles encourages drug injection. I said that needle exchange programs (NEPs) should be analyzed. In fact, of course, they have, but most evidence is currently inconclusive. This includes whether NEPs increase drug use and whether NEPs decrease HIV incidents. The study I cited suggest that they do not increase drug use significantly, but they do decrease HIV incidents, although that study acknowledges that these claims are based on models and not empirical information. I think that claiming that these programs should be analyzed is therefore quite logical. Do you disagree?
I agree that given the current state of knowledge, there are reasons governments should consider getting involved in NEPs. However, there are good reasons for them not getting involved - specifically, their very involvement could jeopardize the NEPs chances of success.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
He's from Cambridge. Speaking as a man of Kent who's lived in Cambridge for 5 years, there are very few true chavs around here.
If i had a point, it would be your's.
Go back to "Richland" you rich white trash.
and US experience has taught us that making it suddenly illegal will probably do more harm than good. I don't see the harm in gradually raising the drinking age, however, until one must be 60 to enjoy a 60-year old Scotch. (And, no, I'm not yet 60, and won't see 60 any time soon.)
I freely acknowledge that the drug problem is complex. That was exactly my point. Legalizing drugs will not fix our problems, any more than legalizing alcohol did.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
A while ago (~1994) I implemented a very similar
:)
system for the SGI Indy, which came with
an "IndyCam". I was a doctoral student at
the University of Cambridge, where that had
recently been a spate of thefts targetting RAM.
The program was called Cyclops and ran under
Irix 5.3. Sadly all I have left is the man page...
if anyone has a pointer to the source, which I
gave away, please post it!
Anyway, the only technically interesting aspect
was the method of deciding whether or not
movement had occurred in the field of view. Here
are a couple of excerpts from the cyclops(1)
man page:
Algorithm 1
The first algorithm gives the difference
between frames as the sum of the magnitudes of
the differences between each corresponding
pixel in each frame. Consequently, movement
is deemed to have occured if sum exceeds
threshold.
Algorithm 2
The second algorithm decides that movement has
occured if the magnitude of the difference
between two corresponding pixels ever exceeds
threshold. This algorithm is faster since the
computation ceases as soon as the first
widely differing pixel-pair is encountered.
Pretty cheesy stuff, but I had to start
somewhere
RMH
Did anyone notice he had a stripy top on? What do you suppose happened to his mask, and bag with 'swag' written on it?
Why are you keeping laptops in the fridge?
Mirrordot has a mirror:
http://mirrordot.org/stories/8a869a8766133c47b3c5No doubt about him being a serial burglar - he's wearing the black and white stripy jumper to prove it, and no doubt the bag over his shoulder has SWAG printed on it in big letters.
If he'd only worn the third part of the burglar's uniform, the black mask over the eyes, he'd probably have got off with it!
I'm working on this for my Sager 4760, which has a built in video camera at the top of the border around the display.
It's a z-star branded chip with a pb0330 sensor, Someone recently wrote a driver which supports it: the spca50x module
So I installed this, installed camorama to test it and mvc-0.8.9 to perform the monitoring. I'm still working on toggling it properly when xscreensaver-command is called and sending the files to another system/ftp site, but it's very promising.
This is the last piece of hardware on this machine in want of a proper linux driver (save the ati radeon chip).
The point is, it's not hard to set this type of thing up, and it's a fun project to work on with an instant gratification factor. If you have time and have to leave your systems in an open environment sometimes, it's a great project.
Nice to see such a thing in action!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Will this or other programs stream video/sound to my Cell Phone? ...and thus allow me the choice to alert the police in a single buttone press, switch cameras, turn on/off lights, talk two way with persons viewed...so I can really mess with the minds of trick-or-treaters at the door on Halloween! >:) (ie talking SmartPumkins)
It happens quite frequently that the web cam that's taking the pictures is itself stolen. That's the main point of including off-site transmission of images from a web cam.
Note that off-site FTP may not be as safe (because the thief may be able to recover the FTP password from the webcam and delete the images), but off-site E-mail should be.
What a totally senseless, trolling thing to say. I could see "If you'd been victimized yourself you'd feel differently." (Personally, I have. It was really jarring, and nobody was ever caught, and I eventually got over it.)
We all know there's difference between a justice system and a revenge system, but you haven't quite gone there. Instead you're talking about potential consequences that need to be prevented.
Do you recommend that we sentence people based on the potential consequences that might result from their crimes -- if they'd happened under different circumstances? That's what you seem to be saying. ("What if the wife [if there was one] of the owner was home at the time -- alone" is particularly rich. Ooh, what if it was the daughter? What if it was a troop of Girl Scouts and he took their cookies??)
You want to be tough on crime. Tell us: what sentence do you recommend? Is this going to turn into one of those "three strikes" laws that take sentencing out of the judge's hands, or what? I want a specific recommendation. It's pretty easy to moan about sentences not being tough enough.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
What I don't like about this article is that the police were lauding this setup as "absolutely brilliant" (or whatever the quote was). I know slashdotters are pretty innovative, but the general population hears about something like this and they are flabbergasted that someone would piece two or three easy-to-purchase-and-set-up pieces of technology together to solve a problem. a while back my roommates, who are somewhat "fratty", were throwing a keg party at my house. I was certainly not interested in attending, but what i was more interested in was not having drunken fratboys entering my room and doing god-knows-what in there. I had actually planned on setting up a webcam that would snag pictures, and another program that would check the light intensity of those pictures. if the light intensity changed drastically between any two snags, i would have the program send an email to my phone telling me someone went into my room. then i'd call my roommates from my girlfriends place and say "hey get the fuck out of my room" i didn't go through with it because it would only validate my paranoia, but whatever. little tiny cameras can be used all over the place. I know that "hardware hacking for geeks" has a camera antenna for a car that can be remote controlled. i always thought cars should come standard with 8 cameras positioned around the rim of the roof, so that in case of a collision, all 8 cameras could snap a picture on impact to discern exactly what went down in the surrounding areas of the accident. insurance companies would probably eat that up. ------ dude, where's my sig?
"when the sun sets on the ghetto, all the broken stuff gets cold"
Serial Burglar Cought on "Linux video capture". Good Show!
Now that you have proven your software in a verified field test with positive results, something most commercial security software can't claim.
Would you consider working on spam?
OK its a bit self serving but its still neat to see a robbery from the inside. BrightNoise Inc. Bank Robbery Just click on the Bank Robber in the cneter image!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
so you can catch your roomies drinking right out of the milk carton and other things. Second thought, maybe you don't want one. Some things are better off left unknown.
Now if only they could catch the Parallel burglar, that'd REALLY be progress...
Now I'm missing all of my legacy ports and can't attach my old 28.8 modem or my palmV without one of them griffin USB adapters.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Instead you validated your wimpiness.
You should have boobytrapped the room with stinkbombs. Live rabid coons in a pet carrier with a spring-released door would also work. (I didn't invent that idea, but I can't say where I heard it from because the statute of limitations is still running.)
Never be afraid to go past social boundaries. In the end, people will respect and fear you, like Cramer on that show about jewish neurotic people.
Having studied Brazilian criminal law for a while -- and having worked in a DA's office for two years -- and furthermore begin married to a DA...
I think our sentencing guidelines are somewhat sensible, even if our prision system sucks.
B&E+theft (like the guy in the article) = 2 to 8 years hard-jail + fine.
No one can do more than 30 years time in a row (you can go out, make something wrong, and go back in, but if you are sentenced to, eg, 200 years, you will do only 30). This is because our Constitution forbids explicitally "life inprisonment" (obviously, it forbids death sentences too).
Primary felons with less than 4 years jail to serve can exchange for community services.
We have "hard-jail" and "sleep-in-jail" distinctions between crimes and misdemeanors.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Does anybody else find it really funny that the guy is wearing black & white stripes?
You are receiving this message because your browser supports Slashdot Sigs and you have Slashdot Sigs enabled.
Just wisely disallowed Slashdot as a referrer.
[Click here] for the homepage, and follow the link to the burgler page.
Your not who that would be aimed at; I'm assuming you woudln't do the buglary in the first place; it's well known that criminals don't expect to be caught, thats why harsher punishments don't make too much difference to crime figures (witness americas prison population)... The only real solution is rehabilitation of some kind...
Questions:
i) why not centralise this and feed directly to the police?
ii) should the police now say - sorry sir, you didn't have a wecam active when your property was stolen - that's like leaving you door open, just asking for trouble
iii) insurance companies - ditto?
Just askin'
Shotgun, it appears.
For all those NRA nut jobs who would love to taste the blood of an intruder, it's nice to note that a peaceful solution was used to catch this guy. A computer with a camera got him rather than an armed confrontation. The wonderful thing is that this gives the burgler a chance to repent, and change his ways. While it's true that the offender is a repeat offender, the peaceful solution allowed him to repent, and throw himself on the mercy of the Lord, rather than be condemed to Hell by a pistol packing NRA nut.
"You've got Jail!"
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
It'll be funny if he sues and wins. ... not U.S...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
.....mmmmmm serial*.
(*Yes, I know how it's supposed to be spelled, get over it).
Give me my computer back, you bastard!
I can't believe you're out on bail allready...
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
One night one of the cleaning guys decided to "clean up" the loose change in all of or desks. A coworker had a web cam setup in his cube. The cleaning guy was arrested the next day.
Whoa there! Better dress up as a native american first so they get the blame. And dude, is this stuff decaffineated? I don't want to end up wrestling a seriously wired lobster.
He probably knew the machine was a potential witness to his crime. Perhaps he wouldn't have had to take the computer had it been sleeping quietly in the corner rather than snaping pics and spinning its hard disks.
THIS JUST IN: The computer was heard pleading to the thief as he left the scene, "I swear I won't tell, just leave me here so I can finish downloading latest.hollywood.dvdscreener for my law abiding owner."
The burglar should have "PWNED!!!" tattooed on his forehead. Backwards, so he sees it in the mirror Every Day.
Started using Zoneminder just a week or so ago.
Took a while to setup, but once it was finished, I had 4 netcams monitoring the property.
Capable or interfacing with an x10 system as well.
www.zoneminder.com
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
A few years back I was supporting a dot com startup that was writing an app to do this, and they were going to market it to companies so they could review their security cams easily.
Halfway through the project, someone broke into their office and stole a lot of their stuff. They did NOT get the burglars on video.
My house was burgled a few years ago. The police knew who it was (or were at least 99.9% certain), although no arrest was ever made (of course), and I found out who it was - in fact I was offered some of my own belongings by the guy. He's also a known car thief and peddles just about anything. Or at least he did.
I organised a bunch of my friends, we broke into the guys house in balaclavas and beat the hell out of him in front of his girlfriend. He now walks the the aid of a stick, and certainly won't be comitting any burglaries. As far as I'm aware his girlfriend left that night and he hasn't had another. He's also partially deaf due to a nice punch in the side of the head.
All in all, I think I'm ahead. My insurance paid out, I lost nothing that couldn't be replaced and have a good job. He's presumably now claiming disability and is basically fucked up for the rest of his life. Makes me smile whenever I talk or write about it!
... news:cam.misc, where this news broke some time ago, like within hours of the burglary.
He wore my shirt!
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Judging from the chart on that site, it would appear that murder statistics are an excellent predictor of drug and alcohol policy. Specifically, prior to prohibition, murder was rising, and prior to the "war on drugs", murder was rising. This suggests that perhaps a rise in murder rates causes a change in drug and alcohol policy (although we all know that correlation != causation). It is very, very difficult from this chart to infer that making alcohol or drugs had an impact on murder rates. One could suggest that discontinuing prohibition reduced murder rates, but that would be confusing a one point sample with any kind of evidence.
The rest of the facts seem somewhat poorly strung together, so I'm not sure exactly what the points are. I guess that most people arrested for drug crimes are users and not dealers, which I don't dispute. I also agree that we should treat addicts as someone with a disease, and not as evil people. I'm not sure if there was another point here.
It's entirely possible that you were just sharing general information and this was not intended as any kind of rebuttal, in which case you can ignore my comments. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
SecuritySpy.com -- this one's for Macs. Is really nice.
"it didn't stop him from stealing my things"
Set up your system to flood the room with pepper spray when an intrusion is detected...
Oh, wait...better make sure it emails you that the room is full of pepper spray...
Hope you check your email frequently...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Tony Martin shot and killed a burglar who was running away! His life was not in danger.
I hear that Oregon law recognizes that a burglar, while fleeing a confrontation with a homeowner, may be reasonably believed to be on his way to his car (or home) to pick up a weapon sutiable for eliminating the witness (either immedately therafter or some time later from ambush).
(Especially if he's shouting things like "I'll get you, Bitch! You're dead!" on his way down the sidewalk.)
Thus a person shooting them while fleeing may still be reasonably in fear for their life - either immediately (after he gets the hypothetical shotgun out of the car) or later (when he returns some morning at 4:00 AM).
However this is what I HEAR - from someone from Oregon. IANAL and even if I were IANALPIO (... Practicing In Oregon).
So don't count on this if you're living in Oregon and some day find yourself in a position to bless a fleeing burglar with a new navel in his lower back to balance the old one in front.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yes I have caught intruders with it.
Names? Court docket numbers perhaps? Successful prosecution and imprisonment?
Here, as previously reported on slashdot by Jeffrey Baker, is the "The ironic shot of the guy about to steal the webcam out of jwz's club.
I'll have to do a full writeup, but I'm partway through setting up a 4-camera system myself which sends images to my remote webserver via ssh (haven't got the camera switching set up, so on any particular day it records whichever camera I happen to have plugged in; usually the mailbox one)
:)
http://zcat.wired.net.nz/gallery/album09
Photos of the cameras and warning sign are on the last page
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
[o]_O
What are the names of some Windows programs which do this (motion capture from webcam and upload to remote server)?
Maybe you should have told him you were going to do it ahead of time, like "Shock and Awe."
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
That said, my experience of prison is entirely from the outside, so if I'm speaking misguidedly, please correct me. *wry grin* And it woiuld be preferable if you did that by way of actually posting an explanation of the error of my ways rather than trying to mod me into oblivion... I learn more that way.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Your worse pound-me-on-the-arse jail is a five-star hotel compared to our eleven-inmates-in-a-room-without-flowing-water ones.
... when he got out he was half-crazed, and not in condition to do anyone any harm... Funny as it seems, he was robbed and murdered less than two months after he got out.
There is one case that I can remember of a serial killer/rapist called the "Red Light Bandit" (the idiot used a flashlight covered in red celophane to spook his vics), that attacked in the 60's, served his 30 years and got out,
In our jails, it's forbidden to kill anyone. The other inmates will kill you if you kill somebody. Our official law may be lax, but our "prision law" is tougher. You can be killed in prision for bragging about your intimate visits, or for staring too hard at someone's sister, daughter, or girlfriend. The inmates stage trials with "attorneys", "prosecutors" and "judges" and they'll execute you in accord to the "prision law".
As I said, we have a great criminal law -- but a lousy (in practice) prision system.
The "monsters", as you call serial killers/rapists, are far less common down here than in the USofA. Rapists have a short life in prision here, too, altough it's common practice for them to be segregated inside the penitentiaries. Pedophiles die normally in less than one year in prision. They are an aberration.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I actually did have a substantial part or my CD collection (including my printer CD - jeez) stolen, but they left the computer. Since I'm a hardware nut, my computer always looks like it just exploded all of the room, so it must have scared the burglar away. Good excuse for a messy system?
____________
Huh?
You lack imagination.
A gun makes a VERY effective cudgel. Also, you can (with practice) shoot to lame instead of shoot to kill. And stay off my neighbour's lawn, too.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Every single one of them?e ?
Cigarretes?
Cigars?
Tequila?
Beer?
Win
Wine-cooler drinks?
Coffee?
Cola?
Chocolate?
Viagra?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048