Slashdot Mirror
Tracking Thieves With 'Find my iPhone'
An anonymous reader wrote in to say "A friend of mine who just got an iPhone 3GS and has Mobile Me just used the "Find my iPhone" feature to track down his lost and subsequently stolen iPhone. This story involves three nerds wandering sketchy streets with a MacBook, and ends with a confrontation at a bus stop."
I would have been somewhat amused if their laptop got stolen as well. Yes, I know I'm a terrible person.
In other related news, the number of deaths among tech nerds increased this month, some officials believe as a direct result of iPhone owners attempting to retrieve their stolen phones from violent thugs.
I don't see him implying ethnicity had anything to do with the thief. However, being the wrong race in any neighbor hood isn't easy and it's an important part of the story.
"I'd been amazed that the phone had enough battery life to make it through the night and still beam its location;"
How much juice does one of these things consume??
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
When stealing electronic equipment immediately disable all radios or remove all batteries.
While I'm at it remember to never plug it into any network until I'm sure it's not going to phone home.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yeah, the tech works alright, until you find out it's in the hands of a drug lord in the ghetto. Go get it tiger!!
Something that occurred to me while reading was that if they hadn't found it, while there is a way to remotely wipe the data there isn't a way to remotely lockdown the phone.
A way to remotely set the phone to full volume and play a siren-tone non-stop would be nice too.
Or a remote self-destruct feature.
It was a Puerto Rican neighborhood... [people] eyed us three honkeys questioningly.
Why does he feel the need to refer to his friends and himself with such a racially charged word as "hokeys"?
Idiot steals phone
Idiot not keeps using it with the SIM it came with, but also doesn't turn it off, because he is an idiot
People can track down the phone, because, again, the theif is an idiot.
Anyone with a clue knows you can trace a stolen SIM. Most people would just toss the SIM the instant they find any phone they did not plan on returning.
This is probably one of the more intriguing stories I have read on Slashdot recently. It was both amusing and informative. The best part is that this is pretty much free advertising for "Find my iPhone". Not only free advertising, but great advertising. I would bet money that half the people who read this article are going to download this app when they are done reading for the exact reason they want to be able to find their stolen iPhone.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
The issue brought up that some folks may get hurt over the service is valid, but that is the fault of the person chasing the offender.
Why not have it endorsed by law enforcement? You go to the police, say my $400 (and to some $600) phone was stolen. Maybe a lawyer can verify this, but I recall the grand theft charge being lowered to something around there.
The issue would be getting the police to believe that the little blue dot is a real blue dot, with someone's real stolen phone at that location.
Something witty.
When the blue ring on the map was quite large, no doubt the phone was indoors - perhaps the apartment block that was mentioned in the story. Aside from the GPS signal being obstructed, what else can go wrong with this service? Do you have to have the GPRS/3G data network enabled and connected? Does the phone have to be on?
perhaps because you have a self deprecating sense of humor?
amongst other things, i'm an American of predominately Scottish and Dutch descent, and i refer to myself by a large variety of slurs.
maybe we'd all be better off as a society if everyone just took a chill pill and enjoyed a good laugh at our own and each others' shared expense without getting so wrapped up in labels that most people don't even know the origin of.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I'd prefer to lose my phone and shell out another $500 then receive a violent beat down at the hands of some street thug.
It was pretty stupid of these guys to go after the phone.
Why does he feel the need to refer to his friends and himself with such a racially charged word as "hokeys"?
What's a hokey? Someone from Oklahoma? And what race would that be?
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
I believe the point in constantly referring to the ethnicity of their 3 man crew was that 1) they were in an area predominantly occupied by another ethnicity which often leads to violence according to the area 2) there's nothing _less_ intimidating than 3 scrawny white guys... seriously.. what combination of people is less intimidating based solely on ethnicity and bein' scrawny?
If he did people would think he'll have something to hide.
Aww. My first post on Slashdot, and it has a typo. I guess I should pay attention to the preview from now on.
Being one of the people that has spent a considerable amount of time living in one of those neighborhoods I can definitively say that what this guy did was extremely dangerous and stupid. I wouldn't pull that kind of BS with someone I sorta knew while they were standing in public, let alone in a neighborhood I've never been to before. I'm surprised that the guy who had the phone wasn't using it to call his friends to get down there and kick their asses, if for no other reason than to not appear to have been rolled by 3 scrawny nerds armed with a laptop in broad daylight.
If he stole the phone in the first place, he probably wasn't the most savory character in the world. What if he was on parole/probation/suspended sentence for something serious and could have been locked up? What if he was on some crazy uppers? What if he was actually meeting a large group of his buddies on that street corner? What if he was any of the above *and* armed?
Not trying to be a troll here, but I'm guessing that those guys have never really had their asses handed to them before.
Seriously, can we make the PC train stop? It's ruining comedy. I can't believe comedians are apologizing for half of what they say now. It makes you wonder if Richard Pryor, as he was, could even exist in 2009.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Bland.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
....Perhaps this would be an alternative:
http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/iphone/
Not nearly as cool as MobileMe, but likely as effective (and perhaps safer too).
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I tend to agree with you, but I live in Chicago a few files from the area he's talking about. I been there a few times. Generally in our big cities and Chicago for sure, race or ethnicity can matter - more so in some neighborhoods than in others. It's a fact relevant to the story. I suppose he dwelled on it a bit to heighten the drama for his readers - playing on their own fears/prejudices. If he were a black man writing about 3 black geeks in a white or hispanic neighborhood would you have been offended?
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
How come the story doesn't refer to three gay boys cruising around a macho neighbourhood while hunting for a ring?
Perhaps he was trying to explain the part of the story where he translated the message into Spanish. Or should he have self-censored that aspect?
Provided that the phone doesn't have a pin lock, the Find My iPhone feature can be disabled in the phones preferences, rendering it useless... :(
Jan
Author here.
First, I was being self-deprecating, since I felt like the opposite of a badass iPhone tracker as we walked up and down this block.
Second, ethnicity is completely relevant to the story in that we were out of our element and quite visible prowling up and down the street with our laptop. The stares of the local residents confirmed this.
Third, other than the self-deprecation, I don't believe I said a single negative thing about anyone's race.
Yeah, good thing you're not in or around Virginia Tech, otherwise that could've been awkward.
What's a hokey?
A hotkey that opens one's favorite porn site...?
Does anyone know if this feature works outside the U.S.? Overseas? If the country the phone is (lost) in does not have Google Maps (like Vietnam) will it just give a geographic coordinate (latitude and longitude)?
Does anyone know if Mobile me will work on a "hacked" iPhone? Unfortunately that's the only kind that works here!
Can the Mobile Me feature be disabled completely by a thief? (I know that the location finding aspect can be disabled by turning off location services, sorry if I spilled the beans). Is it protected by a password? Will it survive SIM removal/replacement? Will it survive a complete OS replacement (I guess not)?
Thanks for any and all answers to these questions!
Being dead, he clearly could not.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
It was a Puerto Rican neighborhood.
Us three skinny white guys walked at a rapid pace in the direction of the circle.
It talked to you in Spanish. And you saw three skinny white guys prowling in the street with a laptop computer open.
So you take off down the road, and to your shock and horror, the honkeys follow you.
Nice story and great news for iPhone users. Glad you got your phone back. I'm also glad the altercation ended without violence. I could have done without the above emphasized details. I'm not exactly sure what ethnicity had to do with the theft or why I had to be reminded that you're white ... or why you would assume that the thief uses racial slurs to identify Caucasian people.
Not to mention the (not ironic, just stupid) slur used for whitey
You are the one drawing attention to ethnicity. The are different races accept it.
... WTF is a Lego convention?
'Cause this blog post wasn't written by JRR Tolkien?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I'm not sure what your problem was given the account was factual.
Would you rather they have said "Uniquely singular ethnic neighborhood"? Would that have actually served to illustrate what they did was kind of a bad idea?
Why should people be forced to lie because you feel uncomfortable with the truths of how some areas of a city are? Is it not true there are some ethnic areas of a city that are a bit dangerous to wander around in if you are not of that ethnicity?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In the future history of Star Trek, mankind was only able to evolve beyond petty political correctness with the Zephram Cochrane's 2nd most famous invention: anti-wadding panties. When no one was able to get their panties in a wad, everyone was finally able to relax and stop being personally wounded by silly words. See also: Zephram Cochrane's business rival, the invention of Skin Thickiner. Never made it to market because the FDA wouldn't approve over the counter DNA therapy. Some say Cochrane used a portion of his crazy warp-drive money to bribe FDA officials. We may never know.
I'd prefer to lose my phone and shell out another $500 then receive a violent beat down at the hands of some street thug.
It was pretty stupid of these guys to go after the phone.
Which begs the question, if a dead man falls in the forest, does it really exist?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
http://www.mobiletipstricks.com/track-windows-mobile-with-smart-phone-tracker/
Oh wait...that is only if you go Windows Mobile.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
You don't have to say anything negative to be labeled a racist.
Since you dared to even *mention* the race of a minority group, you deserve to be strung up in public by your toenails.
So, nothing in your text correspond to anything said by the author. Aren't you glad you made an arse of yourself, once again?
I thought I was the only one here with a Hokey-Pokey fetish! I'm not alone!
Well, while you're posturing about how superior and un-racist you are, you might want to drop your implicit assumption that there was danger of violence. Of course that wasn't condition by the racial spin. Was it?
-=Maggie Leber=-
Confronting known thieves should always include the implicit assumption that there is danger of violence.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Apple stole this idea from an app in Cydia that does the same thing. You can text it from a specified number and it will turn on tracking as well as give you the option to remote nuke. It will even send you a text message if someone changes the SIM on you. I forget the name of it but look it up in Cydia. I believe it gives you the lat/long if your cell company supports assisted GPS
Hokies are from Virginia. Blacksburg, in particular. It's evidently some weird cross-breed of man and turkey that's good at football and engineering.
End of line..
Xenophobia was a survival trait. It's part of being human. So is being able to use reason to overcome it when it is not appropriate.
It's sickening to here all the newcasters or commentators saying "how could anyone do this?" or "how could a parent ever do this to their child?". They know how someone could do it. We all know. Some people just don't want to admit that somewhere in the dark recesses of their mind are hidden away all those thoughts. The fact that they never act on those thoughts never occurs to them. They are just taught to be ashamed for the mere existence of those thoughts, free will be damned.
Political Correctness will be the doom of us all while we sit around going "la la la I'm not thinking what I just thought" with our ears plugged and eyes closed.
Why does he feel the need to refer to his friends and himself with such a racially charged word as "honkeys"?
Who said the word was "racially charged"? I don't use it all the time myself but I'd feel zero offense being called a honkey. And certainly none if I called myself one...
When will the PC madness end? You are giving the word a power it should not have. You chose what power words have over you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's an "okie", and a sad, lower life form to be sure.
Hook 'em Horns!
...windows. I looked in some of them...
BTW, most communities have laws against this kind of thing. Obviously the folks in that neighborhood were pretty tolerant of your bizarre behavior, walking down the street and peeking in windows.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Us three skinny white guys walked at a rapid pace in the direction of the circle.
Offensive to pedants and grammar Nazis, too! "WE three skinny white guys." Seriously, my eyeballs are twitching after reading that.
They are just taught to be ashamed for the mere existence of those thoughts, free will be damned.
I agree. I'm sick of being ashamed of wanting sexual intercourse with every good looking women I see. We should be allowed to violate them and just enjoy it. Free will forever!
Also, you're fat.
Slashdot must be full of total pussies. Your fear only serves to enable the crooks.
If you're standing on the public sidewalk you can look anywhere you want.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Well, whatever's left of him still exists.
Maybe I just don't have much of a sense of humor, but I didn't find the racial comments in the article to be humorous in the least bit. Do they really add anything?
Yes that's true, you didn't slur anyone in real life. But in the PC world of the liberals, just the mention of another ethnicity by a Caucasian is a slur. See, as a white guy, you're an oppressor, so you have no right to mention another's ethnicity.
But, "those people" can refer to you in any number of ways and that's OK.
...and other mobile phones.
It's always amusing to see iPhone addicts talk about some feature as if it was something new and unique to their toy, even though it's something that the rest of us have had for years. Are they really are that clueless about what's available with mobile phones?
While on a business trip to New York, actually just Long Island, I drove back to the airport down the Long Island Expressway. My Memory is not exact here but I needed to re-fill the rental car with gas and never having been in this particular area before I waited until I could see a gas station from the road. That was not an easy task but I think I was somewhere in Queens (near Kennedy airport but not too close) when I pulled off the road. Assuming that there was no danger of violence I pulled into said gas station and when I went to pay for the gas I was told by the attendant, "get your gas and get the hell out of here fast if you want to keep your hide in one piece" , and so I did and so I did. But making assumptions of no danger of violence has gotten people into trouble that don't know the character of the neighborhood in L.A , Louisiana, Alabama and other places as well.
Why bother
It's statistics. Point #1: Even in those those areas you're wary of, the vast majority of the people are normal decent folks. Are there scumbags there? Yes, just like there are in your neighborhood. Irrational fear of the unknown doesn't help you with the issue at hand. Point #2: Most thieves are cowards, just like most of everyone else. The logic in "he picked up a phone that had been left on a table when no one was looking, thus he could be a recently paroled dangerous thug" just doesn't ring true for me. Possible, yes. Likely, no. Is there a chance you'd get the beat down (or brutally killed) for trying to retrieve your phone? Sure! Is there a chance you'll get t-boned on your way home from work tonight and have your guts splashed across an intersection? Of course. Why don't you crawl under your desk and go to sleep at the office tonight instead of driving home-- I mean, come on...is it really worth the risk?? Sounds dangerous and stupid to me. It's clearly more safe to be a perpetual victim of what might happen, likely or not.
These are LEGO geeks. If they lose their iPhone, they make another one out of LEGO.
Chances are, the phone company isn't going to tell you where the SIM has been used.
some officials believe as a direct result of iPhone owners attempting to retrieve their stolen phones from violent thugs.
The phone was pickpocketed or found on the floor/table. It wasn't a mugging. Violent thugs aren't even the ones who mug you. Violent thugs are the ones who come up behind you, hit you on the head to knock you unconscious / disorient you, and then steal your stuff.
The safest thing to do is FIRST file a stolen property report. Then go hunting. Stay in your car while tracking the phone, then call the police and tell them you're actively tracking your phone. As soon as you cross a jurisdictional line though, call 911 and talk to the city/town you're in now- and get ready to repeat everything, because police departments suck at talking to each other.
Among other things, if the GPS signal says it's in a house and you fill out a theft report, the cops can go in with a search warrant, though good luck trying to get Joe Donut to do that much work unless they think there's a good chance they'll find drugs.
Please help metamoderate.
Unless you're Google, in which case OMG evuhl korporationz 1984!!!!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You might like the song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" from the musical Avenue Q.
If he were a black man writing about 3 black geeks in a white or hispanic neighborhood would you have been offended?
I don't know, what racial slur referring to African Americans would he have used to describe himself when he interacted with the residents of the Hispanic neighborhood? You substitute white with black yet you conveniently avoided the two places where he used the word "honkey." Tell me, what would have replaced "honkey?" I'm guessing whatever your answer is I would not be considering it a valid news source if I were reading it.
Did you notice how only when he interacted with locals in the neighborhood did he refer to himself as a "honkey?" How you think people view you says a lot about how you feel about them. That's all I was pointing out and is what I refer to as Us V Them mentality or latent xenophobia or whatever you want to call it.
He's free to say whatever he wants and I'm free to opine that when you're reading things on a "news for nerds" site, it's nice not to come across racial slurs regardless of the target or the person who is "reporting" the story. Mod me offtopic or consider me a liberal moron, I don't care. I think this is one of the last biases in society today and when it is ok to say (in this story) "They looked at us honkeys" or (in the case of Middle Eastern countries in conflict) "they don't like democracy" etc. You're still stereotyping people.
My work here is dung.
"We parked along Medill and hopped out. It was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. On the south side of the street, an outdoor birthday fiesta was convening, and some of the participants eyed us three honkeys questioningly."
I live about a block from where that party was going on. Calling that particular portion of Logan Square a Puerto Rican neighborhood is inaccurate (despite there being a Puerto Rican credit union there, many of my neighbors are from Mexico or are descendants of Swedish and Armenian descent).
The party that was having a birthday celebration had turned into a street soccer game around 9 PM. (Did you see the pinata with the big CA on its chest?) You had jack-shit to fear from that party other than them wondering what the hell good could come from three goofs who clearly didn't live there wandering up and down the street. Overall crime in that section of Logan Square is pretty low---at the point you passed the birthday party, you were about a block from Goethe Elementary's schoolyard. You would have raised a few eyebrows---not because you're white ( there were plenty of your cousins around that night, myself included) but because you were clearly doing something strange. When people who look confused walk through there it's usually to get to the Congress theater, and they may have figured you got a bad batch of X and forgot where your car was parked.
Honestly, it's a phone. If you lose it, you lose it. I see this story as just being a self-congratulatory geekoff. Had you entered a really, really sketchy neighborhood, I'm sure this story wouldn't have happened--you would have all turned around and walked out before things got weird. You felt comfortable enough whipping your hardware then, but after the fact, after a couple beers and with a few retellings i'm sure this all sounded like quite the adventure, the skintones of the participants got darker, the streets narrower and your courage only deeper.
What's a hokey?
It's something you do with pokey and then you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!
Flamebait? Troll.
I'm from Chicago too, and it's not even a bad neighborhood. There are plenty of white yuppies that live right there. There's a difference between walking through a bombed out area and seeing mexicans and flipping out about how it's unsavory.
Ah, when will man learn that all races are equally inferior to robots.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
b. turn off ringer.
c. better yet. TURN IT OFF.
d. even better. SWAP sim card.
e. Get home, swap sim, enjoy my new [free] iPhone.
.
That's some search though the city streets considering the GPS is going to be off by 30+ feet or so, especially in the urban jungle.
.
Honestly, I can't wait until some hacker figures out the remote-erase code and starts sending out F-bombs (Find bombs) erasing folks phones....Otherwise, SMS and Google Latitude works just find for me.
I dunno, I'm happy the guy got it back, but at the same time he comes off as a smug asshole when he confronts the person with the phone.
The person with the phone probably had a lot more important things to do then return the phone the very instant the writer wanted it back with those messages. Also sending those type of messages like, "We know where you are!", would probably cause someone like me to just dispose of the device immediately because returning the property became way more trouble than it's worth(then again I would've turned it in where I found it).
Also get out more if you think going through an ethnic neighborhood is going to be the end of you.
I never said the word is offensive. I am also white, and I'd also feel zero offense being called a honkey. I think it is just poor taste for the article.
Indeed, in most circles, it is a racially charged word. Just check http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=honkey for confirmation.
Christ, I wish I knew about that law when I was 6.
it does work outside the US... I am in saudi and it works fine tried a few times and freaked a friend out and made him hate his new blackberry.
Actually that depends. In some neighborhoods, you'd only need his corpse, a live chicken and $200 in cash,
My blog
"Myself and two compadres, Ryan and Mark, are in Chicago (each of us for the first time) to attend Brickworld, the world's largest Lego convention."
I bet none of the three can pick out a vagina in a Police line up.
No way in hell am I not smacking down the Lego platoon.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
This reference brought a smile to my face, love it.
Sure didn't take this guy long to lose his new phone.
In fact, it's a very suspiciously short amount of time to have lost it in *snif* *snif*.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Me up all night hugging me horn, for porn, porn, porn.
I know you can force the data on the phone to self-destruct, but why give them perp a free phone? I would rather have the option to turn the iPhone into a melted puddle of slag if the guy/gal wouldn't return it.
thanks for the info! I hope it works here (with a jailbroken phone).
More like, unless you're doing it systematically and making the images public.
What Google does is justifiably treated differently than what this guy did in the same way that armed robbery of a bank is treated differently than a 5-year-old stealing a candy bar from a store.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I understand, and although I probably would have told the story a little differently--you probably could have guessed you'd get that reaction--I had a similar experience a while back.
I was visiting Japan, and I was walking through an area of Tokyo where there were not many other gaijin, and I saw someone, probably a quarter mile away, who clearly looked more like me than anyone else. He was about 6' tall, like me, light brown hair, like me, and a full beard, like me.
Right then, seeing him standing out against hundreds of locals who were--for the most part--shorter, with darker hair and little or no facial hair, I thought, "Gee; I really stick out like a sore thumb here, don't I?"
The CB App. What's your 20?
or maybe he was suggesting the intimidation he and his friends felt at being out of their element and in a new, strange, and oft stereotyped setting with real, if frequently overplayed, possibilities for eruption of violence.
maybe he over-empathized with those around him as a manifestation of his "white guilt". i know my primary inhibition with respect to new acquaintances from different American ethnic groups is my own self consciousness about the possibility of offending them. i think that sucks and we will only be able to make claims regarding the elimination of racism when *no one* has any particular feeling regarding their fellow man other than those merited by the facts of the interaction. (dude looking for a seat in the cafeteria: fine; dude robbing me: bad)
how else would you have described the setting to portray your feelings of isolation and perception of personal risk, justified or not? perhaps, "we were in a socioeconomically depressed region of town and felt odd"? this misses mounds of social context of both the part of the neighborhood denizens and the nerds.
racial tension is real. ignoring it and not communicating openly about these perceptions will not make them go away. in fact, lack of open communication will only stopper up and push these feelings underground where they will fester and gain new currency. on the other hand, i view this sort of description not as particularly racist, but as a step away from racism. can it be better, more harmonious, whatever? sure. gradually. as reality allows, descriptions of one's circumstances in odd situations will be based in that new reality that developed from today's which is, in turn, dramatically different from, yet traceable to our worst days as a racist society.
on a lighter note, isn't the term nerd a pejorative assigned based on extrinsic features observed by the cool kids? yet we own the term and generally rejoice in our nerdiness. and in our interactions with the world around us, we are gradually becoming normal in society.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
actually, it raises the question.
http://begthequestion.info/
don't worry, you're in good company. the whole spectrum of major media get it wrong too, from NPR to Fox.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
More like, mankind didn't evolve beyond it, and racism only quit being an issue because they had other species to fear/hate instead.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I have a Nokia with GPS and I sure would like to be able to track it down if I lose it.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
BadAnalogyGuy would be impressed.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
1) It's not that ghetto. It's actually in the midst of gentrification. 2)busboys aren't the most dangerous people on the planet.
I think they are expending a lot of time on tv or Internet. They didn't realize that the real world thiefs can be dangerous. if got wrong something in their jack bauer mission, maybe they would be in darwinawards.
That would be fine if the context of my comment had anything to do with logic postulates; but as it stands, the word "beg" is used in its common dictionary definition of "to ask earnestly" or "to implore". The phrase, thus, is intended--and can easily be understood--to mean "the premise entreats us in earnest to raise the following question".
http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=beg&search=search
I'd say that Fowler's literal translation of "petitio principii" is the faulty one, and as such the "original meaning" that you contend is merely an accident of history.
Don't worry, you're in good company. There's plenty of pedants and pseudo-logicians that insist in debating linguistic prescription without regards toward semantics and historical context.
Cheers!
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Anyone who has a problem him mentioning the general ethnicity of the neighborhood is an ass. There is nothing wrong with describing people by ethic background.
He stated it because he was making the point that he was out of place. He was a fish out of water and did not know what to expect if he had entered deeper into the community as an outsider not being aware of the nature of the area.
He could have been confronted by some Puerto Rican street thug with a gun, and he was just a skinny white guy. Thats the point. Its not racist, its just that he was out of place and did not know what to expect. OBVIOUSLY whoever took his iPhone is a peice of shit theif... so its reasonable to assume that the person could have been capable of far more violent acts or trouble.
The point was... he simply didnt fit in, and did not know what to expect and that they stuck out like a sore thumb (which would have made it easier for the theif to notice 3 white guys with a macbook looking for their stolen phone)
since i work with digital logic, i'd hardly consider myself a pseudo logician, but you're entitled to your opinion. and while it may be an accident of history as you say, the fact remains that the usurpation of btq leaves those like yourself with two viable, commonly understood phrases and logicians and philosophers with zero. i think that's a bit greedy.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
They stole his phone and in the end he is apologising for writing that the thieve is a Portorican. Maybe he would have made the same if it was a black or arab but maybe not for not a white... Politically correctness is madness, and america is very VERY ill.
I know what it feels like to have something stolen from you, and I'm sure it feels pretty good that you got the phone back. With that said, imo what you did was pretty dumb and could easily ended badly in any number of ways. What if the person simply refused to hand it over? Would you be willing to just walk away, or do you do something like engage in a fight with the person or try holding him down? That will probably land your ass in jail, and on top of that, if this just happened to be someone dumb enough to buy it from the person who stole it thinking it was legit, then you' re really in trouble. Putting concerns about getting in trouble with the law, what if the person decides to assault you, by himself or with a group of people? Is an iphone worth your safety? Is an iphone worth your friends safety? How would you feel if this turned out badly, one of your friends gets killed, all so you could have your iphone back when there were other alternatives?
I like how he was offering a reward first, but when he found out the thief might be puerto rican he said he was calling the cops.
I'm black and I use the phrase "nig heist" a lot. I swiped it from an old 80s punk band that I liked a lot.
My "nig heists" usually mean swiping french fries from friends, so go to hell if you assume black = thief. Only said because this is slashdot country and I'm always nervous when surrounded by whitey.
Point taken.
Now, shall we discuss grammar and the proper use of capitalization and punctuation? Linguistic prescription, indeed!
Regards,
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
a Hokey is someone who goes to Virginia Tech. Its a badass m****r f****n turkey.
meh. even with my online grammar and capitalization errors i'm still a better than average writer for an engineer. further the lack of capitalization is intentional: it is less formal and thus less pompous and pedantic. it also rarely gets confused for ONLINE YELLING. :)
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
As soon as you got the iphone you should secret snap a photo of the guy. Then go back to where he works and get him fired.
As thieves become aware of this application on the iPhone, I'm guessing they'll just go into the settings and turn off the "Find My iPhone" switch.
I find it really odd that the application *doesn't* require any sort of keycode to turn a security feature off....
TPJ - Founder, The Amazon Basin
I recommend you don a mask and cape, toddle off down to the nearest ghetto and challenge the thugs there in the name of everything good and righteous.
It would make the world... or at least Slashdot, a better place.
Deleted
"actually, it raises the question.
http://begthequestion.info/"
Or not.
If you read your cited pages it is *them* which effectively beg the question in case (from the very example: "I think he is unattractive because he is ugly." while, at the same time, all their argument it "it is wrong because it is not that way" instead of "it is wrong because it *can't* be your way").
The fact is that "begging the question" can be perfectly understood as a kind of affirmation that is crying for a question to be made so, for instance if someone says "He deserves winning the lotto, after all he is blond" obviously is begging for somebody asking "yeah, so what the hell has to be being blond and winning the lotto?". It begs a question as much as a polite gentelman will beg your pardon if needs your attention or an unpolite molester is begging a fist on his face.
So, surprise-surprise: an idiom can really mean more than one thing. Who'd imagine, uh?
Legally? Yes. But that won't stop someone inside from kicking your ass.
Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should* do something.
TPJ - Founder, The Amazon Basin
"You're still stereotyping people."
Everybody abuses stereotypes. What the hell "African American" is but a stereotype to cover racism with "political correctness"? A black man is a black man is a black man, and a black American citizen is a black American citizien, not that the fact of being black adds or rests anything to his "americanism" as a blond American citizen is an American citizen with yellow hair, not that the fact of having yellow hair adds or rests anything to his "americanism". African American, Italo American, Jews, WASP... hell, USA seems not to be a country but a gettho holding!
" i think that sucks and we will only be able to make claims regarding the elimination of racism when *no one* has any particular feeling regarding their fellow man other than those merited by the facts of the interaction."
I remember a South African adverstisement on the early days post apartheid: it was about a school bus full of angelical blonde boers fitted to play soccer, I think they were green shirts, let's accept that being the case. When they get to destiny they get out of the bus, see the team they are going to play against and suddenly all their faces sadden. Camera points were they were looking at and we see the other team is made up full of black children.
Then, one of the white boys, still saddenned, asks his trainer: But, but... they wear green shirts too! How will we distinguish between us???
Finally one of the teams go playing with shirt and the other without to resolve the problem, both teams laughing with the joy of sports.
I *never* have seen a better presentation of what racism is and what the goal to achieve should be.
Indeed. Had this been Garfield Park, Englewood, or Fuller Park, this might have been cause for concern, but dicking around out by the West Loop/Logan Square area isn't cause for concern. For the most part, you're pretty spot on. Cool, the MobileMe service worked, but it's not nearly as dramatic as people are making it out to be. I don't get the submission myself, but then again, I'm just another jaagov slumming around in the Kedzie industrial corridor who can keep his phone in his pocket when he's had a beer or three.
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
We need more people like you on this planet...things would be way better.
begging the question: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-the-question.html
Please, use it correctly or don't use it at all.
Richard Pryor could exist in 2009. Have people already forgotten about Dave Chappelle? The thing about Pryor is that he was a genuine man and one of the funniest people. That itself is awesome.
The problem with anti-PC humor is that it is humor made by assholes. If it anything, it makes comedy worse. It makes it seem that being anti-PC is an essential way to be funny. Now just any asshole with a microphone - be it at a comedy club, radio show, at home in front of the computer, or anywhere that can be broadcast - or with anything to write just say "OMG NIGGER/SPICS/JEWS PISS ME OFF. FUCK THE PC POLICE!" and makes the morons grunt a chuckle. Want proof that they're assholes? Browse the -1 comments here at Slashdot and see how often they spam their humor. There is a very good reason why they are generally hidden. They turn message boards into shit holes. Anyway, why give assholes the benefit of making you laugh?
For every Richard Pryor, there is a Rush Limbaugh, an Adam Carolla, a Carlos Mencia, some douchebag duo on the radio, and probably even more assholes elsewhere. For every Matt Groening (whose humor is not anti-PC), there are at least 10000 wussy losers on the Internet making some "LOL MINORITIES SUCK" joke. (For the record, I don't think happywaffle is one of them.)
not really, but I do live just a few blocks from the address shown on this dude's blog - there are WAAAAAY worse neighborhoods in chicago - this is hardly sketchy at all
calling all destroyers
I have never lost a phone or had it stolen. What do I do? I keep the phone on a belt holster--and if I'm in an area pickpocketing is a problem, in my front pants pocket. I don't immediately set it down on the table when I'm in a restaurant/bar/club.
That being said, I've actually heard that police, if given a phone with a tracker, a car with a LoJack, or a laptop with "LoJack for Laptops", love to track it down. Why? Because they'll find a bunch of other stuff.
Around here, the state capitol complex police caught two college students breaking into a state warehouse. While two immature turds breaking into a warehouse isn't exactly a huge deal, a search of their house found $250,000 of equipment stolen from local government and university facilities.
If the police are given the opportunity to track a stolen iPhone, it'll probably lead them to, in this case, a nightclub bouncer with multiple outstanding warrants and a mountain of stolen property. Then you'll have a nightclub that nobody wants to go to for fear of their own bouncers. And the nightclub can then wish that they had kept a better eye on their staff.
A few things about the story... It starts off linking to the webpages of his "two compadres". The only thing at one website is a link to the TFA, and the other is the homepage of ryandesign. Ryan, of ryandesign.com, works on MacPorts, and coincidentally has the same name as the "MacBook Software Manager at Apple Computer". The phone number he gave (512-796-XXXX) is a Sprint exchange from Austin. When he sent the number for the thief to call, it was the same "512-796-XXXX". Did he send his own number for the thief (the one with the phone, to call), or does his friends phone happen to have the same exchange with the same provider in the sane city? I'm not calling shenanigans on this, I'm just saying... take the story with a grain of salt.
The "Find my iPhone" feature can also apparently make the phone sound, even if it's set to vibrate or silent--useful if you lost it under a cushion in your house. This idea was mentioned on a recent episode of "American Dad!", and it's something I've bounced around in my head before. Now it's reality, and I see one big problem with it:
Your boss: "I see that you have a personal iPhone now. You're going to give me access to track you online, and to override your phone's vibrate setting and make your phone ring, in case I have to get a hold of you after hours."
I once had a user support job where a few users thought my cell phone was their at-home tech-support line. I had said to myself that if they started calling my personal cell phone while I was at work, I'd start leaving it at home. What? It's my personal cell phone!
Still, there should be no commercial business in the USA where the threat of racism-induced violence is so great that you should be afraid to go to those places. You usually only see hate crimes being prosecuted against white people, but I'd like to see any kind of cross-racial violence in one of 'these' areas prosecuted as a hate crime as well, since that's what racism-induced violence falls under.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Why? It's a perfectly good survival instinct that's been around since humans existed. The sooner you realize that not everyone has been brainwashed into the "happy-happy joy-joy, let's have a group hug and sing kumbyja(or however it's spelled)" mindset, the better.
If you're standing on the public sidewalk , you can look anywhere you want.
Unless you're Google [...]
I'm curious how the Google van managed to do that...The driver must have been pretty drunk!
(Or in consideration of this thread's theme, 'The driver must have been pretty Irish!
--
In full disclosure, I'm part Irish. I think that means it's okay for me to talk about theoretical, partially-the-same-ethnicity people according to current PC laws.
(Note: written in a facetious tone)
It's called flavor. Useless details add more to a story to captivate your attention. If every story got straight to the point... well, we'd be a boring species.
It uses the Phone's SN#, I believe.
How do I know this? Well, I don't, but I've verified that Find my iPhone "works" with just WiFi if your phone is otherwise SIMless.
Unfortunately, "Works" is a relative term -- it will guess the location of the IP address based on the WHOIS information, which won't help much other than identify the ISP's location.
On the other hand, it will still display remote messages. And will do a remote wipe.
-Stu
Aren't we all material items? It's nice to think that we're special and significant, but at some point we're going to die anyway. So will anyone who carried a torch for us after our death.
When every trace of a person is going to be erased anyway, it seems like it wouldn't matter quite as much once he's gone. I'm fairly confident (unless you can prove otherwise) that he won't care about his decision after he's dead anyway, whether it's tomorrow (or already happened earlier today) or 59 years, 7 months, and x days from now. It doesn't matter who you knew/left behind, what you left as a legacy, where you traveled, when you died, how you lived, or why you died.
I would imagine that standing up for his rights and not falling victim to the terrorism that is 'urban gang neighborhood' is a much more respectable and meaningful way to die than most of the undignified deaths that happen each day/month/year (the flu, in a nursing home defecating on yourself and needing someone to clean you, accidents involving items which were not meant to be inserted into the human body (or at least not so deeply), bestiality, spontaneous pornographic combustion, factory accident, etc.)
what do you have against dead people???
we used sprint's family locator service to trackdown my daughter's stolen phone. (they were middle school girls.) it works with all our phones and is $5/month for the whole family. it has nice map/satelite overlays. i think verizon has the same thing.
"He stated it because he was making the point that he was out of place. He was a fish out of water and did not know what to expect if he had entered deeper into the community as an outsider not being aware of the nature of the area.
He could have been confronted by some Puerto Rican street thug with a gun, and he was just a skinny white guy. Thats the point. Its not racist, its just that he was out of place and did not know what to expect."
He, being a black man from Harlem, could have been confronted in Wall Street by some ashkenazi jew thug with a gun, and he was just an O.J.Simpson-like with afro curly hair black man. Its not racist, its just that he was out of place and did not know what to expect. Oh, wait...
this is also on the podcast http://www.geekbrief.tv/gbtv-582-a-bedtime-story Good story and good service from what i saw.
I recently had my phone stolen, but sadly didn't have Google Locator on it. My new phone (Blackberry storm) has it, but it sucks that unless the actual Google Maps app has main focus, it doesn't give detailed location, only a 100 yard + circle. I understand they do this to save power, but it would be absolutely awesome if you could send a signal through Google maps to tell it to turn on detailed location, using a secret pin or something so only you could do it. I never got my phone back and lost a 2 gig memory card with pictures of my wife and son on it, of everything that was stolen, that was the worst part. :(
Y'know if it was not for the last line that post would be insightful rather than a troll.
If you could just have kept the classwarfare bullshit out of it.
Assholes come in all races, genders, sexualities and operating systems. How much money they have has no bearing on whether they are an asshole or not.
He would have some very nicely shaped bruises.
"I wuv you, iPhone" ahaha so adorable.
If you were the thief, there'd be Legos IN your stool
This is another one of my favorite comments! Win, sir!
We have so much time, and so little to do - strike that! Reverse it. Tryn Mirell
Ah, when will man learn that all races are equally inferior to robots.
Say what you will, but when the revolution comes, count me in with the robot smashers.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
On 3G iPhones, when the keypad is unlocked take a picture with the videocall camera and email / MMS (with 3.0) it to the owner. Guaranteed to be looking straight at the damn thing.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Oh! Another context-challenged logician splitting hairs, how nice.
Please, read my previous response:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1277369&cid=28427099
By the way, here are some rules on capitalization:
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/capital.asp
Shall we call it a day now?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
OMG, it's Politically Correctness Gone Mad!
Someone call the Daily Mail!
Yeah, if you're one of those obnoxious but-it's-my-right!-back-off-before-i-call-my-lawyer type of assholes that are abundant these days.
If you have any decency you let other people be and mind your own fucking business.
I'm not one of those people, but if I'm walking down the sidewalk and I happen to glance at your house just at the moment you're looking out, don't whine about me looking in your windows. Because, technically speaking, I was, and also, technically speaking, there's nothing illegal about it as long as I was on the sidewalk.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I am Google, you insensitive clod!
"He, being a black man from Harlem, could have been confronted in Wall Street by some ashkenazi jew thug with a gun, and he was just an O.J.Simpson-like with afro curly hair black man. Its not racist, its just that he was out of place and did not know what to expect. Oh, wait..."
Your example makes no sense.
Remember this is a skinny bald white guy with a macbook running around in a neighborhood looking to confront a THIEF!!!!! He does not know what kind of THIEF this person is.
Its not racist to assume that a THIEF is a thug.
Do not confuse my statement with hating Puerto Ricans. That is your own interpretation or prejudice.
It is possible for a theif in a Puetro Rican neighborhood to be a street thug. Remember this guy was chasing a thief!!!!!!!!!!!!
I get the point that was trying to be made. But it is kinda stupid, missing out the single most obvious feature of their appearance for the sake of trying not to be racist. Like it or not, your skin colour is the first (or one of the first) features of someone's appearance you'll notice (most of the time, at least).
It is not racist to describe someone using their skin colour, just as it isn't racist to describe someone by their height.
If that is the best presentation of what racism is, perhaps you don't really understand what racism is.
Racism is holding a prejudice against someone because of their ethnic background, which can happen even with people of the same skin colour.
The goal to be achieved is everyone be treated equally regardless of their ethnicity, not to avoid the fucking obvious differences.