I am officially 733t - my computer got seized today!
 

thats right, I came in to college this morning to find a nice dust free square where the beige box that used to be my computer used to be. And a shitload of CD's containing software missing too. From what I gather, my supervisor "confiscated" my PC, no doubt due to the 30Gb of music that it contains, sucked down over the college network. I'm guessing that computer services were monitoring the IP, and contacted him about it. At least he has it, and not computer services - at least there's a chance that I might get it back this way....

/me off to e-mail supervisor now...

Fucking fascists

If it's your own box, they don't have the right to confiscate it, as far as I'm aware.

If it's not, no clue...

Could be time to start practicing steganography...

the box belongs to the college, but the hard drive is mine, as is the cd burner, video card, sound card, CD-ROM - basically everything except the box, primary drive and motherboard. Regardless fo the 30Gb or so of music on it, my thesis is on it too, as is the software that I wrote for it - so if it's wiped then I'm screwed... fuckers...

You are officially teet?

I did a memory dump for a fallin homey

I don't think they have the right to wipe a drive. Also, if it belongs to you, they don't have the right to confiscate it. If they refuse to give you the box, ask for all the parts inside it that are yours. If they don't give you that, go to the police.

That's bad, they should at least give you your parts back.

BASTARDS!


Let us know what happens, ethan_h!:(

That sucks they stole your computer. Hope you get it back.

My gut instinct tells me this is the case - after all, whats to say that I didn't bring the drive in from home to create a backup? What I'm hoping at the moment is that my supervisor cot contacted by computer services, and took my computer as an arse-covering exercise more than anything else.

E-mail seems to have failed - looks like I'm gonna have to meet him face to face... Only thing is, if they get me for illegal downloads I'm gonna make sure that half the college comes with me....

I don't know what your regs are like, but here they might try to get you on the technicality of "non-academic" use of the network. Be careful...

Down with the system ethan!

Maybe someone else stole it from you and it wasn't confiscated.

He lost his pr0n:cry:

Did you have it passworded? I keep mine passworded in the event of the same scenario you just went through. Granted there are programs that'll hack it, the perpetrators would have to work quite diligently for it. With several & multiple, various characters, it won't be a simple password to hack.

let them delete the music and get your stuff back.

Shiiiiiiiit. All I can say good luck, keeping my fingers crossed for ya.

dude always make backups. Put all ur music and important on CDs. Be paranoid about where you keep your important files. Good luck with that.

aFfLiCtEd posts a good point. Password protect the crap out of things, and then go one step further an encrypt everything. This system isn't very user friendly, but is funny to watch someone go nuts when they try and get past it.

oh man! fucking idiots :hang:

The admins usually have the master password for college pcs so password protecting may not do much good.

Wish I was a 'fucking idiot'.. Would be better than a 'never getting laid idiot'

:P

</lame joke>

And if it's a Windows box, all you need to do to see the contents is turn it on and boot it with Knoppix for a Live Linux distro and voila, all your system contents displayed.

Hope everything works out ethan. :/

they can't get you for just having or downloading music. did you upload music? and they can't get your stuff that has nothing to do with that like cards. if they did you should be able to get it back immediately. and they certainly can't erase all your data. they have no evidence that that was you on that computer but they took all your stuff.

Hmm, while they might not have the right to wipe my computer, it seems that they have the right to kick me out of the building...

Fair enough - I was supposed to be finished my masters months ago, and be out of the building. But unless there is a demand for the space there, it's usually not an issue. But apparently now it seems that I have fallen from grace, and as a result I'm no longer welcome there. Fucking asshole - departmental issue my ass. Power trip more like, because he got an e-mail from computer services. Now I have to look into getting a decent internet connection at home to finish my work - more bills that I don't need...

What a lame bunch of bastards :mad:

Real men never backup.
Real men cry a lot.

Real men read before posting.

assuming you are rollin with xp pro you should remove lsa compatibility (i think thats what needs removin) from the registry and password encrypt your drive. fatty password. 13+ chars with funky symbols numbers and alternating cases.

Why is everyone suggesting that he password it now? It's already been taken.

Good Luck Ethan :)

thanks idiot :)

And why is everyone assuming that I didn't have it passworded? Either way, any idiot can get into a windows box with the appropriate NTAdmin tools, or view the drives with a bootable copy of knoppix or linux (assuming of course, the CD-ROM boots by default and the BIOS isn't passworded and can't be reset by yanking the battery out of the motherboard, before anyone brings that up too...).

As I said, Computer Services probably made enquiries from him, and he took the typically irish approack of "fixing" the problem by pulling the network cable out of the wall and carting the computer away to a dark corner somewhere, where it won't download bad things and make baby Jesus cry.

Lol @ the Irish approach.

I hope it all works out man. You should bitch about the need for the net access so they may let you stay.

Hope it works out and you get your stuff back.

I've been talking to the IT helpdesk of one of our customers in Ireland this morning and I was having to explain how to save an attachment and open a zip file :rolleyes: Sure they aren't all like that, just the people at this company, but I probably have to go over to Dublin to get things sorted out.

:confused:
Uh-oh! ethan_h's gone all Bono on us!
Don't worry you'll survive the bills(pain in the ass that it is) you're tougher than this shit!:up:

And he still hasn't found what he's looking for.

>>>>>>>>>>>>hgnis>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>*SMACK* :D

It's like the computer fascists at work - I'm now on my final warning because apparently I've been emailing inappropriate material.

The offending emails consist of

-a mileage calculation program (naughty executable program!), and I admit it is very bad of me to email my own software around that actually might help some of my colleagues fill out the horrendously complicated claim form)
-badgers flash animation from weebl's stuff
-a euro04 fixtures and results spreadsheet.

Okay, so I'll freely admit that the last two aren't work related, but I do take offence to the letter written to my manager which made it seem more like I was email porn to everyone - inappropriate material indeed! :D

Fugg it!
Let's got to the pub, ethan!:D

They teach, coz they can't do. You gotta get your hard ware back, they can't not let you have it. It'd be theft, surely.

Or if they really wanted to be pricks about it, just keep the case, mobo and proc they own and return to you the extra parts, lol. Still though you should raise a stink about what they've done, and at the very least get them to let you have access to the net connection until you finish your masters or whatever.