So going through the comments on various sites about the recent escapade makes me both amused, sad, bewildered, and a variety of other emotions/feelings.

One of my favorites is the following:

I down want to tarnish your enthusiasm for the story, but it has all the signs of an intended viral, paid up by Apple marketing. Do not forget all the stunts they pulled. I would say, 10% this is a genuine story.

Mainly because when has Apple ever done any viral marketing? Seriously?

The other one that made me slightly bewildered:

A few things about the story… It starts off linking to the webpages of his “two compadres”. The only thing at one website is a link to the TFA, and the other is the homepage of ryandesign. Ryan, of ryandesign.com, works on MacPorts, and coincidentally has the same name as the “MacBook Software Manager at Apple Computer” [linkedin.com]. The phone number he gave (512-796-XXXX) is a Sprint exchange from Austin. When he sent the number for the thief to call, it was the same “512-796-XXXX”. Did he send his own number for the thief (the one with the phone, to call), or does his friends phone happen to have the same exchange with the same provider in the sane city? I’m not calling shenanigans on this, I’m just saying… take the story with a grain of salt.

I’m not quite sure I understand the point of this. Was he confused that his friend, from Austin, also had a number, from Austin? Did he think this was a conspiracy theory? Applauds for him for being able to look up NPA-NXX records, however that has mostly become irrelevant with number portability. If you have a number, say mine in the 512-796 NPA-NXX records, and use Number Port to another carrier (say AT&T for me, when switching to the iPhone years ago, from Sprint), the NPA-NXX record for that block is still owned by Sprint. Sprint has to maintain on their records that the routing for a particular number that has been ported is handled by a different exchange carrier.

And there are several other commenters, claiming that we are racist, that we should have been beat up because the guy found the iPhone, therefore “Finders, Keepers!”, et cetera. I’m mainly amused by the conspiracy theories, myself. Especially when I’ve been on Slashdot before, for the UTexas Tunnels and FBI Escapade. Idiotic commenters are nothing new to me, but they still sometimes amuse.