[ale] Laptop Security Trick

[Mike Harrison]

> That might work where you and Bill Bennett live, but here in Colorado
> most thieves are white. Of course this might help the case where an
> Indian has his laptop stolen by a visiting cracker.

Although in this case the picture helped a lot.. 
I was not trying to make skin-color racist comments
and did not mention her skin color, just that I was 
not likely to be her brother. The same might work for
two 'white' or other color people.. some people look related
some don't. 

Having your name, address and phone numbers displayed there
as well will still help a lot... 

It's just too easy to scrape or wipe such things off the
outside of a machine, it requires at least -some- skills
to change the boot screen, or wipe the drive. 

I've also found, just having it not run M$-Windows makes
it less of a target for common theives, my sig-other's
son took a 700mhz Compaq laptop running Fedora to 
college in Lake Charles LA. He's a jock (not geek), but it surfed, 
e-mailed and printed out papers just fine. It got "borrowed" 
and returned several times because to his "friends" it was
worthless: would not install games. 

But you can still only help keep honest people honest.

and now: back to using very very small magnets to edit inodes by hand
because vi is just WAY to easy. Of course, spinning the platters
manually is the most fun part of doing it this way.