500 EURO reward for finding car by finding laptop

Komawi writes "Greetings, On the night of march 11th my car was stolen (Mercedes Benz, I'm realy fond of that car!), but also my laptop with in it a wireless networkcard with the following MAC address: 00:30:BD:9C:BD:B2 Also a mobile phone was stolen, with IMEI number 351083531088913. If anyone has a way to locate these goods and by this I get back my car, a reward of 500 euros will be given! The goods were taken from Alkmaar, The Netherlands somewhere between 2004-03-11 23:00 and 2004-03-12 07:30. May the force be with you!"

What?

[lga]

This makes the Slashdot front page? In what possible way is this news for nerds? "Man offers reward"

So what?

Re:What?

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

I'm usually the first to bemoan non-news postings, but the fact is that slashdot is also a community (see "Ask Slashdot"). While posting every single theft report doesn't make sense, you have to admit that it would be cool, in this case, if the slashdot community came up with a way to track this auto down using technology, yes?

Re:2004-03-11? He's going to need lots of luck.

[Anonymous Coward]

ISO 8601 learn it. live it. love it.

Re:2004-03-11? He's going to need lots of luck.

[jdonnis]

No, civilized countries write dates either as DDMMYYYY or YYYYMMDD, you don't just juggle the digits around.

Nobody would write time like HH:SS:MM ? Of course not, it would be just as ridiculous as writing a date like YYYYDDMM it doesn't make any sense.

Or you could write dates like most airlines do 01APR04 or in this case 11MAR04..

Foolerisms

[meta-monkey]

I think this is a bit of a twist on the April Foolery. Notice the department for this article: "real-submissions-unedited dept." I'm sure people submit inane "stories" like this all the time, and they're usually promptly deleted. I think somebody actually did submit this story in all sincerity, and the joke is that /. actually published it...

Re:What?

[lga]

> I can't believe all the people that don't catch april fools.

OK, if it's an April fools joke, whats funny about it?

Don't mind me, I'm just pissed off that they didn't accept my story about using chickens in nuclear weapons [bbc.co.uk].

Re:Today is April 1st !

[jaxdahl]

Let's look up the MAC and the IMEI numbers: MAC: 00:30:BD -- Belkin Components IMEI # [numberingplans.com] Handset was approved in Finland? This makes it more likely it is an April Fool's joke.

Re:2004-03-11? He's going to need lots of luck.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't speak dates like this: "Meet me 17 April 2004." It's not natural.

Speak for yourself, ignorant american.

Re:2004-03-11? He's going to need lots of luck.

[mishac]

You realise that not everyone in europe speaks english? 17 April 2004 makes sense in many languages, including french.

Re:2004-03-11? He's going to need lots of luck.

[softwave]

You don't speak dates like this: "Meet me 17 April 2004." It's not natural.
Not in English it isn't, but in most European languages it is:
French, Dutch, Spanish, German, ... (those are just the ones I know.. surely there are more)

Ambiguity

[uberdave]

To devil with sorting ease. Clarity is what is important. A four digit year, and a text month (01-APR-2004) is completely unambiguous.

Re:Ambiguity

[Spolster]

To devil with sorting ease. Clarity is what is important. A four digit year, and a text month (01-APR-2004) is completely unambiguous.

Until you start worrying about languages other than English.

Re:2004-03-11? He's going to need lots of luck.

[Singletoned]

In Europe (and probably other places, I don't know) we switch the date and month in our numberic dates. Ie in the UK today's 01/04/2004 whereas in the US it's 04/01/2004.

No. In _America_ they switch the date and month in their numberic dates. We go the sensible route and put the elements in order.

Is this a joke?

[/ASCII]

I dont want to sound like a jackass, but I really dont understand if this is supposed to be an Aprils fool joke or not.

A guy tells us he lost his laptop, cellphone and car and asks if the slashdot community has seen any of them. But he desn't leave any contact information. And he doesnt tell us the model of the laptop, the phone OR of the car. What does he expect, that everyone on slashdot update their firewall rules to log the IP and MAC adress of every computer that connects to us, and try to locate his computer for him? And it's filed under "Your rights online". What does this have to do with DeCSS?

But if this is a joke, I really dont get it. It's just not funny.

What?

[Lord Kano]

This cheapskate! 500 Euros for finding his Mercedes AND his laptop? I'd expect at least 4 times that.

Maybe I'm just too much of a cynic, but that seems like an awfully low reward. I'd be more inclined to just keep the laptop.

LK

Why?

[hummassa]

Porque senao as pessoas podem comecar a nao se preocupar se quem somente entende ingles vai compreender o que elas estao tentando comunicar.

Re:2004-03-11? He's going to need lots of luck.

[Half-pint HAL]

Be careful there... round here you get modded down for not talking as if you're from the USA.

(In a recent example, a case about French musicians going after Apple for iPod royalties: someone started going on about the DMCA. I pointed out the poster was being US-centric and that the DMCA didn't apply in this case. That poster was not modded Offtopic, but I was modded Flamebait. Atrocious.)

Re:Oh crap!

[Shanep]

Finally, someone else has to realize that Austrailia really is fucked up!

What would you know about Australia? You can't even spell it.