Laptop Theft results in Webcast of a Pissed off Professor 

If you were in Biology 1A on Friday, April 15th, you saw Professor Jasper Rine make a scary speech about the theft of his laptop by a student, marking another episode of computer theft at Berkeley. The class is webcast so you can watch the speech (scroll to about 48:50) even if you're not in the class (or at Berkeley for that mattter).

The video is making it's rounds in parts of the blogosphere starting with UCB Livejournal and working it's way to Boing Boing, to which the editor says "Hell, I'm 500 miles away from Berkeley and I'm scared after watching this." Digital Detritus poses some interesting questions about the aftermath:

* Since it is now public knowledge that the laptop was stolen what will this do to the professors reputation?
* Now that some information about the professors research is public what will that do to the research and those involved?
* Why was this only copy of the data? And what will that being public do to the pre-IPO company that he mentions?

Meanwhile, we're also left wondering about the outcome of the student involved. Did he return the laptop? What will be the consequences of this for him? Finally, did he honestly think he could steal a test from a laptop and not get in serious trouble?

Update: Boing Boing has it now on Quicktime (via Bittorent) and an MP3 (with only the speech).

Another Update: Fark.com posted a link to the video as well. In their forums, one of the GSIs replies with some details on the incident.

Just a couple quick points:
-he [the professor] didn't really leave his computer out- he turned around to erase the chalkboard, and that's when it was taken.

-there's a few eye witnessed from the class that came in afterwards

-they have some video footage (albeit poor) that was cut-out of the webcast the day it was taken (since it wasn't part of the lecture).

-the test wasn't even on the computer (they would have re-written it if it was).

And just a few thoughts from me.
-He's not lying about the possibilites, but how much he's exagerating is definately in question.

-if a student has to steal a computer to try to get a test for an introductory biology test, he's probably not going very far in life anyway.Email This Post!