The below-linked video is a great find from BoingBoing. Apparently, a student in a UC Berkeley biology class stole the professor's laptop (in order to gain access to the exam, allegedly... quite a clever method). In addition to scaring the crap out of the entire class (and now, the entire blogosphere), there are a few fun tidbits that I thought the bIPlog readers would appreciate.

The professor says that the guilty student is in deep, deep trouble because he is "presently, uh, we think, probably still in posession of three different kinds of data" that could send him to federal prison (which is "not a good place for a young boy to be"). These kinds of data are listed below, along with the various entities which really, probably are going to come after this "young boy" at any minute:

(1) The FBI will get him for the "data" from a $100,000,000 trial "sponsored by" the NIH and "one of the largest companies on the planet"
(2) The FTC AND the Federal Marshalls will be on his track for trade secrets from a Fortune 1000 biotech company, "the largest one in the country"
(3) The SEC will hunt him down for proprietary data from a pre-public company planning an IPO

It's actually also quite fascinating to note the way the professor claims to be able to track the guy... "through wireless access points on campus. Can AirBears really track me this way? Also he may have had some help from "the people in Redmond, Washington" who are very interested to know why 2 computers are running the same version of Windows (the professor went home and installed his copy of Windows on another computer, although, wouldn't that presumably label him as the pirate?).

Although it stinks that a professor can't even trust his own students with his laptop, maybe we should all think twice about keeping sensitive data on our portable devices. After all, UC Berkeley has already learned its lesson about storing important data on laptops. As laptops get more powerful, more people are starting to use them for their regular computers, storing all their data on them. My cohort Brian Carver points out the real lesson we should be learning:

...the value of encrypted filesystems and password-protected files generally. Although, ultimately anyone with physical access and a little know-how can circumvent those too, unless one encrypts every sensitive file with a strong PGP key and keeps the secret key off that computer, on a CD-Rom or USB key, for instance. Few people are consistently that careful because the tools to make working like that practical for the non-guru don't really exist yet.

Original BoingBoing post here.
Link to mp3 of the most interesting bit here.

Tonight's episode of CSI: Miami ("Killer Date") must have been filmed before the "toothing is a hoax" story broke. The show's plot featured toothing, the now possibly-debunked cultural and sexual phenomenon toothing, wherein persons used Bluetooth-enabled cell phones to engage in random sexual encounters.

On the show, a CSI's badge went missing, and he had to explain to his co-workers and internal affairs that he was unable call the girl he was with the previous night (who might know something about the missing badge) because he met her through "toothing." "Toothing?" another CSI responded (I'm paraphrasing here), "you mean random anonymous sex?"

He knew her only by her screenname--"up4anything"--through which they try to track her using some ridiculous mis-representation of the real technology. Using a soldering iron and several small screwdrivers, and accompanied by some exciting techno-rock, a nerd in a lab coat attached a "2.4 gigahertz antenna" to his phone, "increasing the range to one mile" and he engaged in some wardriving (or, er, toothdriving?) around the streets of Miami to find the girl again.

Amazingly, the show concluded without resorting to reference to the other obvious tidbit of current events involving mobile phones... although it did end with the toothing-CSI entering a shrink's office... I guess all that engaging in a fictitious activity finally got to him?

Today at Boalt in Room 105, students were treated to a civilized fight between Boalt's own Prof. Peter Menell and the EFF's Fred von Lohmann. The topic was the Grokster case (or whatever you call it, as Scalia said :) ) and I'll let you guess who took what side. It was a spirited debate, with smart points on both sides, but I think Fred made the most important point when he themed out the following refrain:

Innovate First, Regulate Later.

This policy refrain was accepted by all, including Prof. Menell, as ultimately the better rule (as opposed to "Ask Permission First, Innovate Later"). I found Fred's rule compelling, but not necessarily original. Computer scientists have a similar maxim: "Premature Optimization is the root of all evil." When you are coding a solution to a problem, you should pick the most straightforward and simple solution. Then if the algorithm runs into special case problems, you can optimize the code as needed. The point is that your code shouldn't do anything you don't need to do - handle exceptions as they arise. So, in the case of Grokster, you shouldn't kill P2P with a broad Supreme Court holding, but rather fix any exceptions P2P is causing through narrow legislation. Not surprisingly, the EFF has offered a compelling solution to this exception.

Google has added a satellite imagery feature to their map service. Now we know why Google bought that satellite imagery company last year.

Anyway, I was just checking it out, looking up the house I grew up in and the house I currently live in. In both cases, the little "pin" on the satellite image was about 2 houses off when I zoomed in all the way, and I thought it was something to do with the images not quite being placed correctly. But I switched back to the map view, and it turns out that the satellite image is actually laid over the street map quite accurately, but that the map just doesn't "know" exactly where each street address is.

So I got to thinking... wouldn't it be cool if Google Maps operated like a Wiki?? When you looked up an address, there could be a little link inviting you to "Adjust/Correct This Mapped Location." This could work with the straight map, but would be especially be especially easy with the satellite images--I can identify exactly which roof is my parents' (and can even identify that the satellite image was taken a while ago, before our neighbors cut down the big tree in their front yard). This GooWiki might even be smart enough to take into account several similar user corrections in close proximity, and adjust all locations in that area accordingly.

One drawback, though, is that it wouldn't quite have the same balance or control mechanisms as, say, Wikipedia, because while Wikipedia relies on a large readership to correct errors and rogue dirty-word-insertions, there is a very limited number of people that know that my parents' house is the one at the bottom of the cul-de-sac on the right hand side.