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Free Geek Robbed
Ellen Wilson writes, "Portland, Oregon, non-profit Free Geek, which turns old PCs into Linux boxen, has been robbed of about $4500 worth of hardware. Portlanders are asked to keep an eye out for suspicious sales of Ubuntu laptops." This blog post has some details of labeling that could help to spot the stolen laptops. BoingBoing picked up the story and added that another local outfit, the Independent Publishing Resource Center, which supports Portland's zine scene, had been hit on the previous night.
I was playing in a band and we went on tour. We stopped in Birmingham, Alabama. After we played we were waiting for the follow up bands to finish and someone broke into our van and stole my laptop and someone else's laptop. They stole 2 of our cell phones too. I figured wtf, I'll call one of them. The robbers actually answered the phone and after about 30 minutes we convinced them to bring us the laptops back. We met in a dark alley and walked slowly with our hands in the air while on the phones to each other. I held up a couple 20's with some 1's and we did the swap. When I booted my laptop, it went into recovery mode as though someone turned it on, saw the linux boot up screen and thought, "wtf is this crap?! Jeez... I can't sell this... Hmm... the phone is ringing." and decided to try to get money for the crazy system from the owner.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
An old Kaypro. One of those luggables with two full-height 5.25" floppy drives. This is probably the most useful thing you could do with such a system other than breaking it down into raw materials.
The only question would be to aim for the knees or the solar plexus.
I also think that giving computers away to needy people is admirable.
But don't you think the folks at FreeGeek doing sort of a disservice to those they give computers to? Linux is not the easiest to learn, and once it is learned the skills are only applicable to less than 5 percent of all computers.
If I were a poor person scraping to get by, one of these computers may just convince me that computers are not for me at all.
I'm in Portland, and when I'm not at work I could easily be mistaken for a criminal (I look like a skater). I'm going to call up some of my more unscrupulous friends (I went to an inner city high school) and see if anyone knows where to find a 'cheap' laptop.
I think checking CraigsList and eBay can be helpful, although I've never had much luck with eBay. A friend of mine found his laptop on CraigsList and contacted the seller to buy it. Once he had met the individual, he was able to 'persuade' the individual into to giving it back.
I can't stand thieves in the first place, but from FreeGeek? That's low.
You'd be surprised. I'm a staffer at FreeGeek Chicago, and when we first started up about a year ago, we had a guy from the neighborhood come around and demand that we sell him some busted up P1 laptops from our store of equipment. His plan was to load them up with pirated copies of Win98 and sell them on the street for, in his words, "twice what I'm payin' you guys", and we were supposed to go along with this as he saw us as cutting in on his business. We explained to him that those machines were below even our paltry baseline spec and our plan was just to insure that they get recycled properly...when he realized we were giving out stuff better than absolute crap free-of-charge in exchange for volunteer labor, he said we were crazy, and we wouldn't believe how much we could be getting if we sold our stuff at his "rates"; his take was that people who don't know much about computers are naive enough to think that all laptops perform like champs, are status symbols, and that $100 for one is a steal, regardless how outdated it may actually be.
Since then, we've also become privvy to what an allegedly similar recycling/refurbishing organization in the Chicago area charges for machines that match our baseline spec. Given the business they seem to get, I'd say our street salesman friend may not have been too far off the mark...it's more than twice what we charge in the rare event we're selling a machine (again, we usually just ask for 20 hours of volunteer time as opposed to money).
..... Slashdot readers picking up the slack by donating PC's or donating money? I'm guessing that this organization could use the help.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Commoner: What is the Ubumtoo?
Great Intellect...
Well, now I know who to make a hardware donation to.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Some friends and I might be interested in starting up that sort of thing here (which may not work as well, I live in an extremely rural area of the country). Do the other FreeGeek groups have any interest in helping out new groups?
Yes...though you've got to remember, everybody centrally involved at each location is busy handling real-live FreeGeek activities and maybe a separate day gig if they're not a paid staffer (here in Chicago, we're *all volunteers* at present and are still working on getting our 501(c)3 status!). Your best bet is to get on the FreeGeek Startup list at http://lists.freegeek.org/mailman/listinfo/startup and introduce yourself and state what you aim to do. Folks from most (if not all) of the FreeGeeks across the U.S. are on there and are generally of great help.