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Google Nexus 4 Prototype Lost In a Bar
theodp writes "A little over a year ago, an iPhone 4s prototype walked into a San Francisco bar, prompting a controversial manhunt by a now-deceased Apple investigator and the SFPD. Now, Wired reports that a Nexus 4 prototype walked into a San Francisco bar last month, prompting Google to sic its security team on 'Sudsy,' a San Francisco bartender who notified Google that he'd found their phone, which was slated to make its debut at a since-cancelled Android event on Oct. 29. When the 'Google Police' showed up at the bar, Sudsy's co-worker sent the 'desperate' Google investigator on a wild goose chase which landed him in an under-siege SFPD Station, from which he and Sudsy's lawyer had to be escorted out of under the watch of police in full riot gear with automatic weapons so the pair could arrange a 1 a.m. pickup of the phone."
Nice to see Google walking around with private investigators and lawyers just because one of their workers "forgot" his phone in a bar. Do no evil, amirite?
This is difficult to take seriously.
nope.. don't believe it!!
Nothing here... So... SHOOO!!!
why wouldn't you just return the fucking property?
why play hide and seek? why play games at all? just give them their property, FFS.
It does not parse right in any of the 6 natural and about 12 computer languages I know well. Can someone translate?
A lawyer, a priest, a rabbi, and a Nexus 4 prototype walked into a San Francisco bar ....
--
BMO
With a character named Sudsy and a police station 'under siege', this would make a better script for a story where Dick Tracy misplaces his wrist radio.
under the watch of police in full riot gear with automatic weapons
This had nothing to do with the lost phone. Some punk got shot and people went nuts.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
What about the now-deceased investigator, does it have anything to do with the lost phone?
Absolutely. If the news is about the iphone lost a year ago, and not really a news article but more of a special episode of "where are they now".
TFS failed to mention that the CEO of the company that lost the iPhone is dead too. Coincidence?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I am hoping some photoshop guru will give us an insight in to just what "Google Police" wear for every day uniforms.
Several employees of Apple have been reported dead.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Those are deliberate "leaks". Nothing more!
Wanna do a press release, do a press release. Stop these faked prototype-lost-in-bar cloak-and-dagger stories. It's not like anyone believes this stuff.
I don't really get this either. The guy gets shot while he is in the act of brandishing a weapon against a police officer. Weapon turns out to be loaded and ready to fire. The guy doesn't even suffer any shots that would be otherwise lethal. Yet a riot forms and they spray paint killers on the walls of the police station?
Weird city. I wonder if they'd prefer having no cops at all. I remember there was some group around Berkley demanding that the city get rid of its police officers, maybe these are them?
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Wait, you need riot police, armed with guns... to recover a lost phone prototype...?
Crazy.
The article makes it sound like a plain clothed officer was chasing the guy. I don't know about you, but if some random guy started harassing me on the street and following me when I'm trying to get away from him I'd be concerned. You don't know if a plain clothed officer really is a police officer or just a crazy nut out to mess with people.
Are you sure it was Google? I thought it would have been Samsung...
I kid! I kid!
Google’s Andy Rubin: ’I’d Be Happy’ If Someone Left Prototype Android Phone In A Bar ‘And Someone Wrote About It’
http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-andy-rubin-id-be-happy-if-someone-left-prototype-android-phone-in-a-bar-and-someone-wrote-about-it-2010-4#ixzz2ASEIo0n1
Watch those corners
That doesn't make any sense at all, even by theo's standards.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Including a former CEO.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
An Apple spokesperson immediately commented on the incident.
"I have to inform Google that we will sue for a billion dollars. We have already patented the marketing trick of "losing" phones. We got prior art, dammit!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Can't they find new ways to create hype? The should have seen through this and just smashed it and put it in the bin.
And that is quite a mark for /.
The police station was "under-siege" (in reality just some protesters and vandals in front of it) for something totally unrelated to the phone (if it is not related to the news, why post it?). And why in the world is relevant that the Apple investigator is now dead? Maybe are they suggesting that Steve Jobs killed him to cover something?
Future posts I suggest to the /. editors
Where is the "Delete my account" button?
Why can't
The real question is how long it will take Apple to sue Samsung for having one of their prototypes stolen in the same manner as one of Apple's.
. . . but after making a few dozen phone calls realized no one gave a shit, much less was willing to pay money for access to a Google prototype. To compensate for his disappointment, he dicked around with the Google employee.
What is is about telephone prototypes that drives people to drink?
Somebody needs to get a proof read things before they're published.
I dare you to understand the story based on that summary -- its like random words strung together.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What's really funny about this is that it's a transparent publicity stunt -- but almost no one in the mainstream press even noticed.
Even if you're Google, you can't create much buzz about the release of yet another Android phone into an already overcrowded marketplace. It's about as exciting as a new inkjet printer.
Outside of the nerdosphere, there really isn't a lot of call for a phone that is almost the size of a small tablet . It dwarfs the iPhone 5 shown next to it, and bigger isn't always better in something that is supposed to be portable. Well-heeled consumers can afford both a smartphone and a tablet. They don't need a phone so large that it requires its owner to only buy clothes with massive pockets.
A client (we'll call him Tim C. for anonymity) is said to have thanked the barman for having prevented a bad guy from stealing his new iPhone prototype.
Unless it brings you free press. It was staged, just like the apple incidents were.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article makes it sound like a plain clothed officer was chasing the guy. I don't know about you, but if some random guy started harassing me on the street and following me when I'm trying to get away from him I'd be concerned. You don't know if a plain clothed officer really is a police officer or just a crazy nut out to mess with people.
Yeah, as a gang member on parole I'd certainly pull a gun. What else am I expected to do, ask for ID?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
The summary was written by a whale imitating a human moron telling a joke about a phone going into a bar.
Are these the same Google employees that have the master passwords to read half of the world's e-mail? Just curious...
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Lol. Classic /. quote:
Somebody needs to get a proof read things before they're published.
Also: "it's."
The underlying issue is that the police have lost the trust of people.
A TEC-9? Seriously, the guy pulls out a loaded TEC-9 and points it, (at anyone?)? I think that is *two* lucky people who both still alive; especially the police officer who had to square off against that thing! Wikipedia it like I did; I'm not going to cite the link for it. Cheers for the cop who seems to have handled the situation well!
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Does Google need to do everything Apple does?
This wasn't an accident, why would any major corporation pass up on a free PR opportunity.
http://theworkaround.com/
This story is a bunch of bullshit. The fact that we are talking about it says that bullshit sometimes works.
Google TOSWhen you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps).
Sorry, I was laughing too hard.
And my comment at least made sense.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
So when you take the drama out of the ridiculous article, here's what you get:
Dude finds phone. Some drama round giving the phone back,
Dude finds a phone. Talks to a friend. Friend contacts google. Google wants to get the phone right now, bartender wants to do it next day. Google security dude goes out ot the bar to pick it up. Bartender is out playing a gig somewhere else. Bartender's coworker for some reason tells security dude that bartender is at the police station.
Security dude goes to police station in the middle of a riot. Calls a random lawyer who gets involved for some reason - or at least makes a statement to Wired.
Then they meet up and after the security dude proves his ID, bartender returns the phone to him.
WTF?
Why was this made to sound like the bar was stormed by Google Secret Service or some such crap?
Why does every situation involving missing prototype phones turn into such a clustastrophuck? Is WWIII gonna be started over the iPhone 7 or something?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
After all the Google fan comments about Apple's lost phones, we now have the reverse situation and all the apologists can't fall over themselves fast enough. This is no different than the apple incident. Before you say anything, remember there's two sides to any story.
This was probably a PR stunt just like the apple incidents. However, I don't think it worked as well simply because most people are not familiar enough with different android devices to know something is a prototype. There are too many android devices to tell the difference between them!
I think it's fair for every apple fanboy to rail into google fans on this one just because of the BS comments we've seen in the past on slashdot. You guys are just as bad. I'm sure most of this story is not true, but I don't believe the apple stories 100% either. If google pulls this one more time, everything will be even. :)
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
The police in the bay area have become increasingly heavy-handed and more than a bit trigger-happy over the last few years. And the public has been responding by an increasing withdrawal of their trust and goodwill.
Johannes Mehserle, and the pittance of a slap on the wrist "punishment" for his murder of Oscar Grant*, for example, probably set relations between the police and the black community back by a good decade or so alone. Then, for an encore, they went about gunning down a mentally ill homeless man on a different BART platform, shooting an Iraq war veteran in the head with a tear gas canister during the occupy protests, and switching off telephone and internet service... something that you expect in North Korea or middle-eastern theocracies and dictatorships, not the United States... to suppress speech and communication during another protest (of the aforementioned killing of the mentally-ill homeless man). These sorts of things are not exactly going to engender trust or goodwill, especially amongst minorities or otherwise marginalized communities.
(* Yes, I know, Oscar Grant was kind of a scumbag. That's not relevant though. This is the United States. We're just not supposed to *DO* summary executions here... at all And being a scumbag doesn't change the fact that Grant was unarmed, unresisting, and lying prone and motionless when Mehserle decided to shoot him in the back.)
Imagine all the people...
Imagine if you went into a bar and left your car there and then 2 hours later you realized you had left your car there but the barman did not want to give you back your car and you were in Canada so you couldn't shoot the bastard. This is what these jokers want from us. If we stop here we'll have no freedom left. Imagine if your phone was a car and every time you used it the government wanted you to vote for them and then the goverments just get bigger until there's notthing but government around here. This is what these jokers want from us.
See, this is exactly the problem when people blow a gasket when they see an "assault weapon", You take a look at a picture of a TEC-9 and say "Oohh. that is a nasty-looking weapon". It's not, it just looks that way. It looks like a military style machine gun, but isn't. It's a semi-automatic pistol that shoots the exact same 9mm rounds in the same way that the police handguns do. In fact most police use 40cal rounds that are actually larger and more deadly nowadays. So-called "assault weapons" are simply pistols with slightly larger magazines. The reason they were made and got popular is they are inexpensive to manufacture, before all the bans, restrictions, and hoopla they cost about half of what a regular handgun cost because they are made of stamped steel rather than precision machined parts. They hold about 25 rounds, while the police guns hold 18, so for the fact that it holds 7-10 more bullets than a normal looking pistol, these weapons have been vilified and unjustly singled out. This is complete nonsense. This is also why after the initial knee-jerk reaction by the anti-gun nuts to ban them, most of the bans are not being renewed or allowed to sunset. People are starting to realize these legal, semi-automatic weapons aren't really any different than conventional pistols, save a few physical features.
That said, the guy is a moron for carrying ANY gun when on probation, and he's damn lucky the cop was a good shot and quick-thinking so they are both still alive to tell the tale.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
"The bartender did not own the phone. 'Finders-keepers' is NOT the law. The opposite in fact."
IANAL, although I daydream a lot of the time that I know the law....
Another reason it doesn't belong to the bartender. If property is lost or left unclaimed on private property, and the owner can't be found, the new owner is not the employee bartender, but the business owner or the property owner.
Maybe the bartender's boss should the guy for trying to 'steal' his, the bar owner's found cell phone.
Regarding "the owner can't be found," if you find anything over a certain value you are supposed to turn it over the local police. If they can't find the owner in a certain time, then it's yours. The details vary in different jurisdictions.
At least with Apple, we knew who the ass abusing power was. Who at Google demanded the crackdown on Sudsy?
Yup. I own a shooting range. Some kid brought a tec-9 to shoot, he bought it because it looked good on TV. Not a very scary gun as these things go. The kid was a decent shot with other guns, but with this one? At 10 paces he had trouble hitting a 30 gal water heater tank once between jams. My results weren't much better, and I'm an often-winning competitive shooter. I'd never own such a piece of crap myself.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Why didn't Google design an app/tool that renders the prototype unusable if it is reported stolen/lost?
Google is clearly copycatting Apple's iPhone PR strategy verbatim.
"An iPhone and a Nexus 4 walk into a bar..."
So what's the punchline?
You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
So this is the same louse at Apple who 'lost' two iPhone prototypes before Apple showed him the door.
Looks like Google needs to show him the door, and quick.
Somebody needs to get a proof read things before they're published.
Maybe someday /. will become big enough to hire some editors.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
To be fair the officer should actually be required to the shooting range. Lethal force was required and the officer wasn't effective in that one.
I dunno about you, but if my company assigns me a top secret prototype I would not bring it to a bar, or a pub, or a nightclub, or a karaoke lounge, or any place near where people are drinking alcohol and getting drunk.
It's known as common sense.
It's also about responsibility - that I'm responsible for my action.
This "lost prototype phone in bar" scene had happened twice to Apple and once to Google.
I hope, from now on, tech companies will learn from this and institute a STRICT RULE prohibiting employees to bring valuable company assets to bars or pubs - and if violation continues, said company could be fired, and then sued, for breach of trust.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm having a hard time believing that the cops are the instigators. I've heard what goes on in San Jose for example, when a local sports team wins a game. Bonfires in the middle of the street and destruction of private property aren't uncommon.
I can't think of any sane reason that the general populace would be this way, except maybe one. I keep hearing this fear mongering about people owning assault rifles and politicians wanting to ban them, yet statistics have always shown that the more you restrict the ownership of firearms, the higher the rate of weapons violations. DC saw a 25% decrease in firearms offenses after SCOTUS ruled their restrictions were unconstitutional. Chicago has some of the tightest firearms laws in the US, yet their crime rate per capita is more than double that of Phoenix, which has some of the most lax weapons laws in the US (anybody can conceal carry - no permit required, although they are available if desired.)
California has a ton of firearm restrictions (though not quite as bad as Chicago.) Are we seeing a pattern yet? Harvard Law does:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
Also note that everywhere in the world where firearm ownership is reduced, murder rates AND suicides go up. US vs Europe is an anomaly, because its murder rates were very high, high even before Europe started restricting the ownership of firearms, as noted by Harvard. When people say guns are the reason America has more murders, that isn't accurate at all. Look at Canada for example, whose laws are very similar to ours, yet their murder rates are similar to Europe. Also note that in England, police don't investigate burglary and minor assaults unless they catch the perp in the act, and even then they often let them go with a warning and no prosecution. So you get crime rates reported lower than they actually are.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
They lost it just weeks before release date, not some 3-5 year in the future prototype.
This is just a PR stunt, it's OK, all will be well.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Taken completely out of context.
These phones are meant to iron out any issues that may arise during normal usage. Such as well, "holding it wrong", lol. How would you like to get your brand new phone only to realize that it shatters if you place it down on a laquer coated table top, like a bar typically has, or that reception inside most buildings is terrible because they decided to never take it outside of the lab?
I hope, from now on, tech companies will learn from this and institute a STRICT RULE demanding employees to bring prototypes with them on their everyday activities to ensure when they are released they work as advertised.
Wasn't there a story not long ago about an iPhone proto lost in a bar? What is it with bars and smartphone prototypes? :p
That's it, I'm done here. I re-read that summary three times. As 'cool' as Slashdot is, I think I'm never coming back after this one.
I'm wondering how much they had to pay the bar in Google shares for this obvious publicity stunt?