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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."
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.
Would you prefer they'd sent a blade runner instead?
They should go straight to Taffy's bar.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I highly suggest you read the article since the summary is highly edited to make Google look bad. Example: Google didn't send a private investigator. It sent a single Google employee who was jerked around by the bartender and his friend because they wanted to cling to their powertrip. The only lawyer was just guy the bartender knew. Google even offered to give the bartender guy a free phone if he promised to be quiet about the leak until the phone was announced at the Android event.
Bad Luck Google: Sends a guy to pick up a lost phone. Gets screwed around by the people who found it. Still offers a free phone to the guy. Gets called evil by the Internet.
What evil? Someone lost his phone, the company that owns it sends a guy over to collect it. Given the fact that it was an important prototype, it's understandable that the guy was a bit anxious to get it back.
Then again, Google might have staged the whole thing. I think they are a little jealous of Apple, with their millions of fans going ohh and ahh over fuzzy pictures of a frickin' new docking connector of all things...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Brand new /. account posts pretestuos anti-Google comment the same minute the story is published.
Shill anyone?
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.
Several employees of Apple have been reported dead.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
It's been up for a while.
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
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
Including a former CEO.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Wait, you need riot police, armed with guns... to recover a lost phone prototype...?
Crazy.
Tenuous Link from the article.
"Shortly after an officer-involved shooting in which a plainclothes officer shot a suspect who pulled a gun on the officer Thursday night, dozens of rioters surrounded San Francisco’s Mission District Police Station while one person vandalized the police station, according to San Francisco police."
14 people were killed in a cafe suicide bominbg in Somalia too, not sure why Google is not being blamed for than too.
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.
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.
Not that it's my kind of place, but apparently he's on the level if you want a drink.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
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
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.
You must have somehow missed these lines:
Kind of paints a different picture to yours, oui / non?
I highly suggest you read the article since the summary is highly edited to make Google look bad. Example: Google didn't send a private investigator. It sent a single Google employee who was jerked around by the bartender and his friend because they wanted to cling to their powertrip.
Bad Luck Google: Sends a guy to pick up a lost phone. Gets screwed around by the people who found it. Still offers a free phone to the guy. Gets called evil by the Internet.
Not quite how I read it. The guy that came to pick up the phone sent a flood of calls to bartender's teck-savvy friend (who'd contacted Google on his behalf). Bartender felt "harassed" so didn't stick around work for what he seemed to think would be a confrontational meeting.
Indeed, Google rep was described as pushy and seemed to threaten the other employee and maybe even the bar with some kind of charges, although the bartender was not resisting the return of the phone. Colleague that dealt with the rep didn't like being threatened and sent rep on "wild goose chase" to police station.
Seemed to me that Google's security team could've done a bit better job on the recovery had they used a bit less bluster and a bit more appreciation (aka people skills).
Now, I'm not sure how it worked out that the bartender, although offered a free phone to keep quiet, still seems to have provided photos to accompany the story. Should've taken the free phone and shut up about it. I believe the story contained a disclaimer about paying for the photos.
Shitty bar. Guy loses something, it instantly becomes bartender's property? No lost and found box? No turning over to the police, or trying to find the owner? It's a bar after all, so, I expect people losing/forgetting stuff is a frequent occurence.
No wonder the guy didn't want the publicity and tried to spin it. As a bartender he's done.
Disclosure not disclaimer. Wired actually admits paying the phone finder: "(Disclosure: Wired agreed to pay Barton a freelance fee for the photos published with this article.)"
But yes, Google wasn't exactly being nice here. Maybe that was part of the comedy act? That "little but really pushy" Google agent going up against the bartender's "well-inked" associate with a "don't-fuck-with-me" attitude.
What's with all the cloak-and-dagger over some cellphone that resembles every other cellphone made within the past two years? If I were the head of research at one of these mobile companies, I'll order any employee taking out a phone for testing to have the phone chained to his or her wrist.
> The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
Did you notice this one? Same clause is in every major online services' EULAs, you might check Microsoft's, for example.
What was your point, except showing that you might have deliberately made the submitted summary misrepresent what exactly happened to show your hate towards Google?
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?
Being a little pushy isn't a shocking crime. And as they intentionally started fucking with him I would expect security to warn them that they could get in trouble.
Where was the phone? Did the bartender take it with him? I'm pretty sure bartenders don't get to take lost phones home with them, if I were in security I'd be warning them about that too! The bartender or manager on duty at the bar should have had access to the phone and returned it.
What's this "meet me at noon tomorrow" garbage? The bar is open, a representative of the phone's owner is there to claim it. He says most people come back in 15 minutes, do all of them have to return the next day at noon?
In the end, it all worked out fine and I don't think hurt feelings on behalf of a bartender who went out of his way to screw with the Google guy is a big deal.
I was wondering about this last night. Why are the nerds at Google naming a product after a model of skin job? Are they running some kind of Voigt Kampff test on their clientele?
Bartender felt "harassed" so didn't stick around work for what he seemed to think would be a confrontational meeting.
Seriously? If it were your normal phone with photos of your family, and the person who found it took off -- with your phone, that you owned, would that be considered reasonable?
Forget everything about it being "unreleased". That is moot as hell. There's no provision of ethics that an object being "really really cool" gives you a different standard when it comes to returning lost property.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
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...
Here's the thing...
The bartender did not own the phone. 'Finders-keepers' is NOT the law. The opposite in fact.
Yeah, it's not a federal manhunt type case but the guy knowingly in possession of property not belonging to him (the lost vs. stolen line gets blurred quickly) could definitely have criminal charges filed against him. How far they'd get, who knows.
Of course they insisted on meeting right away. They want to protect their secrecy - and getting the phone back is far easier on everyone than the guy possibly getting arrested. You can't expect a company to just let this type of thing go.
What I really want to know is why these people are bringing top secret phones to bars in the first place? I understand "testing" and all but is it secret or is it something you're bringing out in public?
Hell, get one of those bluetooth leashes. Problem solved.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
I highly suggest you read the article since the summary is highly edited to make Google look bad. Example: Google didn't send a private investigator. It sent a c who was jerked around by the bartender and his friend because they wanted to cling to their powertrip. The only lawyer was just guy the bartender knew. Google even offered to give the bartender guy a free phone if he promised to be quiet about the leak until the phone was announced at the Android event.
Bad Luck Google: Sends a guy to pick up a lost phone. Gets screwed around by the people who found it. Still offers a free phone to the guy. Gets called evil by the Internet.
Amazing how you skillfully avoided to mention every single bit of the article that could make Google look bad.
Like the obvious intimidation of the guy who called Google. "Google had him pretty worked up. They told him he could be an accessory or something.”
Then (unsuccessfully) insisting that the bartender who found the phone stay at the bar to meet him ASAP - after his working hours, when he had a planned gig.
Continued with the "single Google employee" being "pushy" and threatening another bartender and the whole bar with legal action "He was little but really pushy, like military. He said he wanted to keep me out of trouble — like I was in any kind of trouble — keep the bar out of trouble. They could file criminal charges, he said.”
Is there a special Google filter you can run on articles that whitewashes Google?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Three Questions.
How can you loose a phone while showing it off to all your friends in a bar?
Its already been knocked off in China so whats the big deal?
Can I have one?
And how can you not ask at the bar you were in if they found your phone for over 24 hours? Unless you wanted somebody to "find" it.
And WTF is a guy with a commercially secret document/plad/prototype on his person doing hanging around in a drinking establishment? It should have been Office -> car -> home -> car -> office
Yep, Apple employees lost a prototype phone in a bar twice and now Google does it. Wouldn't be surprised if Apple had a business method patent on something like a "controlled method of leaking information to increase hype".
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!
These phones need to be tested in real world environments.