laptop robberies

An article from the San Francisco Chronicle about a new wave of laptop thefts that are becoming more aggressive and in one case, violent. Reading this I had two thoughts: 1) How many more laptop users will be utilizing public spaces once Google starts providing the entire City with wi-fi,* and 2) maybe I shouldn't feel so bad that we couldn't afford to replace our dead laptop with another one. Obviously I don't live in the City, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen here. After all, we get robbers who travel up and down the I-80 corridor to rob places in the 'burbs. Our bank, which is 1-1/2 blocks from our house, was hit by Bay Area robbers about six months ago.

* There are major privacy concerns about Google's plan, since they plan to use technology that pinpoints a user's geographic location when they log on, enabling them to direct neighborhood ads to the user.