ABSTRACT
Several months later, a person-likely innocent-told
the police that he had purchased the laptop at a flea market
for a few hundred dollars. Neither the lock still secured to
the laptop nor the power-on BIOS password succeeded in
stopping the purchaser from making a rational decision to
pass on the purchase. When the purchaser called the com-
puter manufacturer for some tips on how to remove the
BIOS password and provided the computer serial number
to the technician, the police were notified. When I left the
firm several years later, the laptop was still in police
custody as evidence.
