I hope you’ve heard of the Darwin Awards. This would be my nomination for the Avert Labs Darwin Award (if we had such an award). Evidently, a company called WorkSpace had a batch of their Apple computers stolen…

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This is a great story about the internet, technology and the quick flow of information. Not long ago a story was reported in many places on the internet about stolen Apple Mac computers.  Apparently the computers had a Flickr program on them that would post a photo automatically to the companies’ Flickr account or something like that. And, of course one of the stolen computers ends up posting a photo to Flickr of it’s user and alleged thief.

So, blog posts abound about this guy, the photo and comments are made and fun is had by all, but the story does not end there…and that is the “rub” of the internet. There is no guaranteed connectivity and fluidity of events, nor is there a guarantee that something is even timely or accurate. It is like a giant Planet Earth-sized game of whisper in the ear of the person on your left and by the time it gets back to you, your original message is unrecognizeable.

The Rest of the Story

Well, as Paul Harvey would say, here is the rest of the story of stolen Mac’s and automatically uploaded Flickr photos. The lawyer of the “tattooed man” in the famous photo recognized his client and at 4PM on Tuesday September 25th he and his lawyer turned him in to the police. The man was already known to the police, hence the attorney who recognized his client! And claims he bought it from a friend who bought it from a friend and nobody knew it was stolen. The original robbery took place on September 19th, so a lot happened in a short time frame and all thanks to alleged thieves stupidity and the World Wide Web with assists from Flickr and a cam loaded picture taking Mac laptop.

Ain’t life just grand sometimes?

Michael Rowles

CopiaTECH