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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've been to there a dozen times looking for old hardware and the place is just awesome. It bites that someone robs them and i hope whoever it is caught. They deserve the book, the largest, to be thrown at them.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
If this doesn't make it on CNN, I am so firing off an email.
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.
"suspicious sales of Ubuntu laptops"
So, ANY sales of Ubuntu laptops?
Please stop using this boxen word. There is no such thing is boxen. The plural of box is boxes.
This madness must stop. Anytime somebody says boxen in real life to me gets a punch in the face.
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.
Burglarized, not robbed.
These guys must have been so eager to use Ubuntu that they couldn't wait long enough to download and burn their own copy or order one in the mail. While I admire their enthusiasm over Linux, I can't condone stealing stealing a copy.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Sony batteries, after all.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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.
It's sort of like a paper blog.....
Where were you when the voynix came?
Hi there,
I do volunteer work at FreeGeek. I teach the command line class once a week.
Freegeek does more than just hand out boxes. They teach people how to make the boxes. They teach people how to use the boxes. They empower people to fix their own stuff.
They're not always successful mind you. It's still a wonderful endeavor.
Right here I'd insert a "Teach a man to fish" line... but you get the idea.
-Tony
Some guys actually try to create open source hardware.- Graphics
A graphics card:
http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Open
Various Open Source processors:
http://www.opencores.org/
Of course their efforts are somewhat hampered by the fact that chip manufacturing equipment is awfully expensive. If you could buy a Star Trek style replicator for the price of a PC, I guess we would see a lot more free hardware.
C - the footgun of programming languages
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 $100 for one is a steal, regardless how outdated it may actually be.
Since then, we've also become privvy to what an allegedly similar recycling/refurbishing organization in the Chicago area charges for machines that match our baseline spec. Given the business they seem to get, I'd say our street salesman friend may not have been too far off the mark...it's more than twice what we charge in the rare event we're selling a machine (again, we usually just ask for 20 hours of volunteer time as opposed to money).
Of relevance, many zinesters are proponents of the F/OSS movement. At this year's Portland Zine Symposium, a workshop was dedicated to using OSS tools for the creation of zines.
At http://www.qzap.org/(which I am a co-founder of), we're very vocal about using F/OSS software on our servers and some desktops. We recognize that it's not 1992... because of this, we actively hope that people will use what we do and roll their own projects.
..... Slashdot readers picking up the slack by donating PC's or donating money? I'm guessing that this organization could use the help.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Nine out of ten thieves agree, Linux is not ready for prime time.
Loose lips lose spit.
Time for you tell them firefox boys to get a real dictionary then.
/bok'sn/ (By analogy with {VAXen}) A fanciful plural of {box}
/bok'sn/, pl.n.
>$ dict boxen
3 definitions found
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Boxen \Box"en\ (b[o^]ks"'n), a.
Made of boxwood; pertaining to, or resembling, the box
({Buxus}). [R.]
[1913 Webster]
The faded hue of sapless boxen leaves. --Dryden.
[1913 Webster]
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 Sep 2003) [foldoc]:
boxen
often encountered in the phrase "Unix boxen", used to describe
commodity {Unix} hardware. The connotation is that any two
Unix boxen are interchangeable.
[{Jargon File}]
(1994-11-29)
From Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) [jargon]:
boxen
[very common; by analogy with {VAXen}] Fanciful plural of {box} often
encountered in the phrase `Unix boxen', used to describe commodity
{Unix} hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are
interchangeable.
(END)
It should be noted that Free Geek does have pretty tight security, to an extant that most people, even most people who spend lots of time there, don't know about.
Two points: first, in five years, large scale breaches of security have not been common.
Second, as much as there was stuff taken, there was a lot more valuable stuff not taken, due to security measures that you will have to guess at.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I love Kaypros, you insensitive clod! Why, I just ran across someone selling one for $20 on craigslist last night.
I was seriously considering buying it. That was one fine luggable CPM Computer !
kaypro for sale
I still insist that a Kaypro and an Epson MX-80 is enough computer for any person.
I even had a text only version of Lode Runner on that baby.
music lover since 1969
Yo geeky ladies around the world
Got a wired box to show you
To telnet the boys and girls
Shell your brother, your sister and your momma too
Windows is going down
And you know what just to do
Wave your RAM in the air like you don't care
Run Glide with your games as hackers stop and stare
DVD and DVD and DVD then boot
Come on Linux tell me what's the word
Word op! Everybody say
When you hear the system call your drive will be getting underway.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
This is not true, but unfortunately it's a fairly common line of thinking. Although the parent comment was quickly modded "Troll" here on Slashdot, it would probably be taken quite seriously at a local PTA meeting. (Actually, come to think of it, pretty much everything that gets said in local town meetings ought to qualify for '-1 Flamebait'...but I digress.)
A whole lot -- practically all -- basic computer skills are platform-independent and interchangeable. If you're trying to teach someone who's never used a computer much before, and you're teaching skills that are very specific to one OS, you're doing something wrong. The basic concepts of computers today are widespread: the "desktop metaphor" with folders/documents arranged in hierarchies, use of the mouse to open/close/arrange windows, use of a browser to access the WWW, basic email concepts -- all of those things are the same, whether you're using a Mac, or Windows, or KDE, or Gnome (or even something more exotic). Heck, most mainstream OSes these days even have more similarities: a program-launcher bar at the bottom of the screen (in some form or another) is pretty common, as are the File and Edit menus, and Cut/Copy/Paste.
There really isn't much diversity anymore in computer operating systems, at least not in the major Linux GUIs, plus Mac and Windows. The differences are mostly either technical or trivial (mounted disks on desktop vs. in "My Computer," icons on left of screen or right, etc.). A person with a good set of basic skills, ought to be able to accomplish basic tasks on an already set-up system running either OS.
Teaching someone mindless procedural 'recipes' that allow them to do a task, without any conceptual understanding of what they're doing along the way, is really doing them a disservice. Telling someone "this is how you check email," and making them memorize some steps, which will stop working and leave them stranded with the next OS upgrade or interface change, is truly disempowering.
IMO, all basic computer classes, particularly those aimed at children, should be taught using computers that have a non-standard GUI and OS (which would follow conventionally accepted metaphors and design principles, but not be carbon copies of systems they might have already seen), to encourage critical thinking rather than mere procedural memorization and repetition.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
... a warehouse in Portland was found to be storing a large Beowulf cluster pieced together from old hardware for the purpose of sending out advertisements for "V1agra/C1alis".
I just wonder how many people are willing to do 20 hours for something that would only require half that number of hours to buy outright in an average-wage job. Do you get a lot of takers?
You're making the mistake of assuming that earned income = disposable income. Many of our volunteers are there because that $50 they *could* spend to get one of our computer systems has to go towards putting food on the table, paying rent, and so on instead; saving up such an amount of money could take weeks, and it still means parting with hard-earned cash.
The volunteer labor isn't of the unpleasant "scrub the toilets, sawdust pools of vomit" variety at all. We teach our volunteers the basics of how computers work, starting with identifying each component and explaining how it all works together. Then we put them in tear down, where they remove most components from to-spec machines (or strip under-spec machines to bare metal), sort components into bins for subsequent testing, and put scrap plastic and metal aside for recycling. This process is supervised by a staff member, and everybody seems to enjoy it: taking imposing devices apart seems pretty cathartic to most of the folks who partake in the workflow, and they seem to like asking questions about why various components look different and function differently. After this, they get moved into testing, where they plug components into known working hardware and use our pre-determined testing procedures and separate the good from the bad (which, of course, also get recycled). Phase three is where they plug known working components together in a case and then proceed to install the operating system, with our help. We also teach them how to use the machine and offer free walk-in support if they encounter any problems. Nobody is stuck in a given process for any particular number of hours: rather, we let people do what they like doing most, but of course encourage them to do everything and learn as much as possible.
If you think all that's not worth 20 hours, that's your business. There are plenty of people who believe otherwise, and we welcome their presence, questions, and curiosity.
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
. . . don't take it personally. I don't actually have a grudge against the machines. In fact, I was going to write "Osbourne" but somehow "Kaypro" seemed funnier.
Also, Osbournes had rounded edges. The Kaypro luggables I remember hard square edges. That would hurt a lot more.
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.
on a plane.
sent from my slashdot browser.
A lot of commenters have suggested this is an unimportant story, robberies happen all the time, bigger robberies occur often that aren't covered, etc. But other robberies don't hit as close to home for the Slashdot community as a robbery of a nonprofit that cleans up used computers, installs Linux on them, and donates them. The function that FreeGeek performs is unique and uniquely relevant to Slashdot. It is both a charity that makes computers and the Internet more accessible to those who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it by recycling discarded computers, AND it broadens the Linux user base.
I cannot imagine a charitable cause more worthy of the support of the Slashdot community than this one. Before you post another comment suggesting this isn't an important story, please read the Free Geek mission page