Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Do You Label Your Tech Gear, and If So, How?
At last month's CES, I mislaid a microphone that I'd just bought: too many items in little black pouches, and that one disappeared on a patch of dark carpet when I got something else out of my bag. A few minutes later, when I realized this, I walked back to find (no shocker) that it had walked away, and the lost mic somehow never made it to the Lost & Found office. Dumb as I felt for having let it get away, the real sting is knowing that I didn't so much as have my name on it, which I like to think might have nudged a morally ambivalent finder into returning it. My question is this: How do you personalize, label, or mark your expensive tech goodies, so it's harder for them to be innocently or less-innocently taken away? Even at a LAN party, it's easy for items to get swapped around and confused. I've sometimes put my name or initials (in permanent ink) on any flat surface I can find that will fit it, but even the "permanent" ink of Sharpies seems to fade on many surfaces. Stickers degrade with heat, time, and bag jostling, but they certainly help. Is engraving the best permanent option? Have you used one of the physical tag services, like Boomerang, and has that ever actually come in handy for you? There's theft-deterrent (or at least post-theft tracking) software, as we've mentioned a few times on Slashdot, but many things aren't suited to it, like my lost mic. What do you do to keep your stuff yours?
I'm a musician as well as a hacker. I adopted the rock climber's trick of two bands of coloured electrical tape wrapped beside each other on the cable like a little flag, done at both ends of the cable. Works like a charm for speedy tear downs without losing gear.
- you can tell your cable at either end, greatly speeding up tear down
- unlikely anyone else has your flag because you are say "yellow red yellow"
- hard to peel off in a hurry (for theives)
- easy to see in the dark if you use bright colours
HTH
Did you know there are two kinds of Sharpie markers? Did you ever get the impression that Sharpie markers don't work as well as they used to?
The real ones are now called Sharpie Industrial and they still work.
...Finders keepers and all that.
Ah yes, "finders keepers" the law of the elementary school playground...
Here in the grown-up world, there are other laws. If you were a grown-up, living in the Silicon Valley, instead of "finders keepers" you would be charged with something called "Possession of stolen property" penal code section 496. Depending on the value (@ $400) it would either be a misdemeanor or a felony; with penalties of one year in county jail, or three years in state prison, respectively.
Although "possession" means that you have the stuff on you, you can also be charged with "constructive possession of stolen property" which means that they find the stuff in your house or room or car.
If you are in possession of something that isn't yours, you have a duty to notify the police or the owners.
Possession of stolen property requires that the property was stolen in the first place.
To steal something requires (among other elements) an intent to deprive the rightful owner of enjoyment of the property.
If you take something for the purpose of turning it in, that intent is not present and thus the property is not considered stolen.