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From: plutchak@pilsner.geo.brown.edu (Joel Plutchak)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Possibly nefarious users
Message-ID: <78681@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jun 91 18:08:08 GMT
References: <1991Jun7.184025.25010@eng.umd.edu> <1991Jun14.005425.25048@cs.umn.edu> <1991Jun14.160002.295@eng.umd.edu>
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Organization: Brown University Planetary Geology
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In article <1991Jun14.160002.295@eng.umd.edu> russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) writes:
|In article <1991Jun14.005425.25048@cs.umn.edu> thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley) writes:
||In article <1991Jun7.184025.25010@eng.umd.edu> russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) writes:
|||Oh, and if you made a habit of leaving your car unlocked with the keys in the
|||ignition, and people came by and took it for a spin now and then, I suspect
|||the cops would just laugh at you for being such an idiot if you tried to 
|||prosecute them.
||Actually, they probably would laugh at you for an idiot, but they'd also
||be of some assistance.  They would accept the report and let you know if
||your car turned up.  Your insurance company will be equally sympathetic
||and a lot less helpful.
|The analogy was with joyriding, with the car always returned, not with theft.

   Joyriding uses non-recoverable resources (gasoline, to name the most
obvious), and thus has theft as a component.  Even were the perpetrators
to fill up my tank for me before returning the auto, it would still be
illegal and still be their crime, not mine (and still piss me off).

--
Joel Plutchak, Research Programmer/Analyst
Brown University Planetary Geology
Unix: plutchak@porter.geo.brown.edu
VMS:  plutchak@pggipl.geo.brown.edu -or- PGGIPL::PLUTCHAK (VMS: Just say NO!)