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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.
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.
It's this mentality of urban fear that shows how screwed up US cities really are.
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
Anyone with a clue knows you can trace a stolen SIM.
Generally people with clues don't steal phones.
Yeah, that's kind of what I think with every "You're glad you didn't get shot!" comment. It wasn't that bad a neighborhood. There was a kid's birthday party going on on the corner, for God's sake. And the number of thieves who are packing heat and ready to use it is relatively small. Not saying I wasn't acting a *mite* imprudently - we were just acting in the moment - but I still don't feel particularly foolish in retrospect.
Problem:
Police don't give a fuck about you or your phone.
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.
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.
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
Unless you're Google, in which case OMG evuhl korporationz 1984!!!!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"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.
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