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Psychologist Consoles Data Loss Victims
(ok.whatever) writes "A former suicide prevention counselor is employed full-time by a data recovery firm to console its callers. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: 'When the company receives a call from someone who's clearly lost it -- which can happen several times an hour -- Chessin comes on the line to help the caller rediscover their happy place.' Good grief!"
I can just see a whole new line of new age books in the self-help section of the local bookstore...
From RAID to Radiant - How a broken striped array needn't end your life"LMAO
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
somebody like this, cause obviously my advice to "suck it up" ain't workin'
Lack of creativity is no excuse for not having a
Time to replace "I'm Okay, You're Okay" with "Backup often and we'll all be Okay."
is a "phsychologist console" ?
"No I can't backup from this ledge. I'm going to JMP!"
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
...people whose servers get slashdotted? Does she counsel those people too?
Also, I keep trying to read the headline as "Psychologist CONsoles..." instead of "Psychologist conSOLES..." Like she turns them into Gamecubes or something.
I'll shut up now.
My porn! I lost all my porn!
How do they define "someone who's clearly lost it"?
Hey, some freak's on the phone saying he's just switched from (insert favorite open source os) to Win2k server!! Here you take him!
Instant Karma's gonna get you Gonna look you right in the face -- John Lennon
From the article (which is pretty good, btw):
Only twice as long? For some reason I find that remarkable (obviously; I'm remarking on it). I would have thought that potential suicides would need much more help than that in the short-/immediate-term.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I guess people data can sometimes become their entire livelyhood. Or.. i really dont know what I'm talking about, but this is the closest ive come to the fist post before, so here i am
CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!!
Bear in mind these are potential suicides who chose to call the hotline.
--- "TANSTAAFL" --Robert Heinlein (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)
Abuse can be dished out to lines like that very easily, and it's definitely a good idea to have a councellor there in case. It can be important data as well, maybe losing their job for it can make them fall into depression
Also people who have "lost it" generally look to someone to talk to, and maybe a tech support guy can help?
On the whole I can't see any bad coming from it!
Just a year ago, i transferred all of my important data to a new IBM HD. I was pressed for space at the time so i deleted my old copies in the older. Within 2 months that hard drive died and took all of my precious data with it.
5 years of my life, all GONE! It was quite depressing really. Since then i have vowed to never buy a IBM hd or any IBM products ever again (not because they'll fail again, but just because they killed my data!!!)
Hmmm... Pie...
luckily dvd writers are coming down in price
That sinking feeling when you relize you just lost a drive, it sucks. Backup your stuff!
She's hot :)
When they see the bill for being on the line of tech support getting councilled for an hour after "clearly losing it", they'd definitely crack!
I know I could have used them a few times myself.
Replying to the 14th post? Boy, you need to get out less.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
During a recent upgrade, the backup software only copied 50% of the data, backing up the D: drive but not the C: drive even though it copied the whole C: directory structure.
Then to add insult to injury, the RAID controller went haywire , destroying my only remaining copy.
I lost some irreplaceable stuff. I could have used a counselor. I was depressed for days!
Ok, so say someone rm's your box or something, and you lose all your files. Unless they were *wiped*, you better get yourself over to http://dreamscape.org/toolkit/ and figure out how to use stat_inodes, parse_directory_inode, and finally the recovery tool 'e2extract' once you have compiled a map.
I lost 8 years of work and brought it back from the abyss.
Relax, everything is going to be OK.
Or one can avoid the problem. A whole new industry is developing on data recovery because IBM (and others) can't make a decent quality Hard Drive. Granted, I couldn't make one either, but I don't have a billion+ in the bank!
- i fart in your general direction -
I lost quite a few when accidentely deleting the partition they were on :P
Oh my god, giving a free service and moderating it is absolutely horrible! Donating hours upon hours of free time for the general community!
Get a life you f*cking stupid arsehole!
To Slash-Editors - I'll just assume you'll excuse my french.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
In this particular case, the signature should say:
You can apply a sociological solution (suicide counseling) to a technical problem (hard drive crash). ;-)
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Pfff...They could have just used Eliza and saved themselves some dough:r otoys/el iza.php3
http://manifestation.com.h.sabren.com/neu
> Hello, I am Eliza.
* hi. i lost all of my data
> How are you today.. What would you like to discuss?
* i lost all of my data
> That is quite interesting.
* no shit
> Why not?
* you make little sense
> You're not really talking about me, are you?
* I would imagine. Your company screwed me over. I lost all of my pr0n
> Why are you concerned about my company screwed you over. you lost all of your pr0n?
* yes. it is all gone. i might as well jump into a sewer
> I see.
* you are no help at all
> Does it please you to believe I am no help at all?
* i am going to sue you
> Do you enjoy being going to sue me?
* yes. goodbye.
It's a shame the same can't be said for tech support.
AOL's Merlin Server Compromised? Hmm.... coincidence?
True, true. But you have to realize that probably 75-80% of the /. crowd consider anything with a vagina hot. And she, from what we can tell, is a woman (you never know, she's in SF, could be a tranny).
This woman is just plain fugly.
I told you, I deal with the goddamned customers! I have people skills, damnit. I'm good with people. What the hell is WRONG with you people?
-theGreater Mike.
Yes, your grief is good. You've made an important step here, a key realisation to taking that grief and harnessing it on the road to recovery.
I'd like to step up our sessions and tackle that guilt over dupe postings you mentioned last week.
I can see that we're making real progress here.
Liza E. Pooter
Everyone knows the old rule of backup, but sometimes you lose that data. Through too many hard drive switches, unexpected upgrades or whatever.
... a way to remember his mother.
A friend of mine was storing a PBX generated WAV file his mother's voice. It was one of the last times she called his office before she died. During an upgrade the file was lost. The guy just fell to pieces. That WAV file was an emotional security blanket for him
There are jokes about losing porn or MP3s files on this topic, but think about it. How much of your life is in the bits and bytes on your server(s). Maybe it's the pics of your graduation. Maybe it's the thesis you struggled to complete. Maybe it's the love note from your future spouse after you first met.
You're keeping the data for an emotional reason. It makes sense that when you lose that data you're going to be affected.
Maybe people who get suicidal over losing a few mp3s or pictures shouldn't be coaxed away from the ledge. In fact, maybe they should be pushed off.
Tech support needs a cuddle after this.
I know I've cried a few tears after restoring and finding the backup was incomplete. The stress of the situatuion can be quite unbearable.
I remember reading a story of an Australian guy who spent the night doing his company accounts and then somehow deleting them. He threw the computer out of the window and it fatally struck a passer by. I wish I could find a reference to it right now, it could well be an urban myth.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
BOFH Episode 6
.cshrc and .login"h !"
It's friday, so I get into work early, before lunch even. The phone rings. Shit!
I turn the page on the excuse sheet. "SOLAR FLARES" stares out at me. I'd better read up on that. Two minutes later I'm ready to answer the phone.
"Hello?" I say.
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, I'VE BEEN TRYING TO GET YOU ALL MORNING?!"
I hate it when they shout at me early in the morning. It always puts me in a bad mood. You know what I mean.
"Ah, yes. Well, there's been some solar activity this morning, it always disrupts electronics..." I say, sweet as a sugar pie.
"Huh? But I could get through to my friends?!"
"Yes, that's entirely possible, solar activity is very unpredictable in it's effects. Why last week, we had some files just dissappear from a guys account while he was working on it!"
"Really?"
"Straight Up! Hey, do you want me to check your account?"
"Yes please, I've got some important stuff in there!"
"Ok, what's your username..."
He tells me. Honestly, it's like shooting a fish in a barrel. Twice. With an Elephant Gun. At point blank range. In the head.
(Do I really need to tell you the clicky clicky bit?.. I think not)
"How many files are in your account?" I ask
"Um, well there should be about 20 in my thesis writeup, 10 or so with the data for it, and another 20 or so in a book that I'm writing"
"Hmmm. Well, I think we caught it just in time. You've still got 2 files left...
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaggggggggghhh
He sobs into the receiver a bit - it really turns my stomach.
"What can I do?" he sniffs
"Ok, do you have any of your stuff backed up on floppy?"
"Some, but it's weeks old!"
I fire up the bulk eraser.
"Ok" I say "How about I come out and load all that data onto your account pronto so you can get some work done?"
"That'd be great, but it's all at home" he wimpers. "I spose I'll just load it all in myself tonight"
"Sure. But remember what I said, solar flares are bad for disks and machines. Protect your disks from solar activity to prevent them losing their data"
"How do I do that? Wrap them in tin-foil?"
"NO! TIN FOIL'S THE WORST THING! YOU KNOW WHAT TIN FOIL DOES IN A MICROWAVE DON'T YOU?!"
"Yes.."
"Then don't use it. There's only one thing that protects disks from solar activity.."
"What's that?"
"MAGNETS! Wrap your disks up in a pillow case with lots of magnets - Solar Flares hate that"
"Wow! Thanks"
"No worries at all..."
Shit I'm good!
I got pity sex for data loss once. I think that was more comforting.
If you've ever seen someone lose a term paper, multiply that intensity by several times and you can understand how suddenly a tech support person needs to switch to being a counselor, and since many can't do both jobs, it's really good to have someone else on hand. A suicide counselor may be a bit of overkill, but having someone trained at handling very upset and stressed individuals is a really good idea. This is the wave of the future.....
There is a fair amount of writing on this subject on the net, which you can find if you google about a bit. Suicidal intent is a crisis, and crises pass quickly (one way or another). As someone who once stood on the wrong side of the safety railing I can say anecdotally that half an hour is just enough time to change your mind (and in my case, keep it that way).
The study of suicide really marks the beginning of empirical sociology and even psychology (Durkheim). Check it out, it's pretty cool.
FYI: They're paid to run the site. It's their job.
Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network
In the course of a recent Microsoft Access programming project, we had three difficult technical problems where we decided to call a support hotline for advice. This article compares the two support numbers we tried: Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As a resultof this research, we have come to the following conclusions: 1 ) that Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network are about equal in their ability to provide technical assistance for Microsoft products over the phone ; 2 ) that the Psychic Friends Net work has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the areas of courtesy, response time, and cost of support; but 3) that Microsoft has a generally better refund policy if they fail to solve your problem.
In the paragraphs that follow, we will detail the support calls we made and the responses we received from each pport provider. We will follow this with a discussion of the features provided by each support provider so that readers can do their own rankings of the two services.
Our research began when we called Microsoft regarding a bug that we had detected when executing queries which pulled data from a Sybase Server into Microsoft Access. If we used the same Access database to query two databases on the same server, we found that all of the queries aimed at the second database that we queried were sent to the first database that we had queried. This problem existed no matter which database we queried first. Dan called Microsoft's Technical Solutions Line, gave them $55, and was connected with an official Microsoft Access technical support person. As Dan began to explain the problem, the support person interrupted him, and told him that since it was clear that it was not just a problem with Access but with the two programs together, Microsoft would not try to help us. They did,however, have a consultant referral service with which he would be glad to connect us. Dan then asked if we could have our $55 refunded, since Microsoft was not going to try to answer to our question. The tech support person responded by forwarding Dan to the person in charge of giving refunds. The person officially in charge of giving refunds took Dan's credit card info again, after which Dan asked about the referral service. It was too late, however - the refund folks could not reconnect Dan with the tech support guy he'd been talking with, nor could he put Dan in touch with the referral service hotline. End of Call One.
Our second call came when Dan was creating some line graphs in Microsoft Access. Microsoft Access actually uses a program called Microsoft Graph to create its graphs, and this program has a "feature" that makes the automatic axis scale always start the scale at zero. If all of your data are between 9,800 and 10,000 and you get a scale of 0 to 10,000, your data will appear as a flat line at the top of your graph-not a very interesting chart. Since Dan was writing Visual Basic code to create the graphs, he wanted to be able to use Visual Basic code to change the graph scaling, but he could not find anything in the help files that would tell him how to do this. After working with Microsoft Graph for a while, Dan concluded that it probably didn't have the capability that he needed, but he decided to call Microsoft just to make sure. Dan described his problem to the technical support person, whom we'll call Microsoft Bob. Microsoft Bob said he'd never gotten a call about Microsoft Graph before. He then left Dan on hold while he went to ask another support person how to use Microsoft Graph. Microsoft Bob came back with the suggestion that Dan use the online help. Dan, however, had already used the online help, and didn't feel that this was an appropriate answer for a $55 support call. Microsoft Bob didn't give up, though. He consulted the help files and learned to change the graph scale by hand and then began looking for a way to do this via code. After Microsoft Bob had spent about an hour on the phone with Dan learning how to use Microsoft Graph, Dan asked for a refund since he had no more time to spend on the problem. Microsoft Bob refused the refund, however. He said he wouldn't give up, and told Dan that he would call back the next week.
Microsoft Bob did call back the following week to admit failure. He could not help us. However, he couldn't give us a refund either. Microsoft Bob's supervisor confirmed Microsoft Bob's position. While Microsoft Technical Support hadn't solved our problem, they felt that a refund was inappropriate since Microsoft Technical Support had spent a lot of time not solving our problem. Dan persisted, however, explaining that if Microsoft Bob actually knew the program, he would have been able to give Dan a response much sooner. The supervisor made no guarantees, but he instructed Dan to check his credit card bill at the end of the month. The supervisor explained that if Dan saw that the charge was still there at the end of the month,then he would know that he hadn't gotten a refund. End of Call Two.
Our third call to Microsoft involved using the standard file save dialog from within Microsoft Access to get a file name and directory string from a user in order to save an exported file. The documentation didn't make it clear how to do this using Visual Basic code within Microsoft Access, and Dan decided to call Microsoft to ask if and how a programmer could do this. The technical support person he reached told him he was asking about a pretty heavy programming task. He cheerily informed Dan that he'd called the wrong number and advised Dan to call help for Visual Basic, not Access ($195 instead of $55 ). This technical support person was extraordinarily helpful in getting Dan his refund. End of Call Three.
Stymied by our responses from Microsoft, we decided to try another service provider, the Psychic Friends Network. There are several noticeable differences between Microsoft and the Psychic Friends Network. Microsoft charges a flat rate per "solution," which is a single problem and can be handled in multiple phone calls. As described above, Microsoft may or may not issue a refund of their fee if they fail to provide a solution for your problem. The Psychic Friends Network charges a per minute fee. They do not offer a refund if they cannot solve your problem. However, unlike Microsoft, they will not charge you extra if they provide more than one solution per call.
We decided to test the Psychic Friends Network by asking them the same questions that we had asked Microsoft Technical Support. We called them and were quickly connected with Ray, who was very courteous and helpful. Like Microsoft Bob, Ray quickly informed us that he wasn't fully up to date on the programs that we were working with, but he was willing to help us anyway. We started off with our first problem : making a connection from Microsoft Access to two different Sybase Servers. Ray worked hard on this problem for us. He sensed that there was a problem with something connecting, that something wasn't being fulfilled either in a sexual, spiritual or emotional way. Ray also identified that there was some sort of physical failure going on that was causing the problem." Do you mean that there's some sort of bug?" we asked. Ray denied that he knew about any sort of bug in the software. "Are you sure there's not a bug?" we asked. Ray insisted that he did not know of any bug in the software, although he left open the possibility that there could be some bug in the software that he did not know about. All in all, Ray did not do much to distinguish himself from Microsoft Technical Support. He wasn't able to solve our problem for us, and he wasn't able to confirm or deny that a bug in Microsoft Access was causing the problem. We then asked Ray our question about using Visual Basic to set the axes of a chart. Ray thought hard about this one. Once again he had the sense that something just wasn't connecting, that there was some sort of physical failure that was causing our problem. "Could it be that it's your computer that's the problem?" he asked. "Is this something that happens just on your computer, or have you had the same problem when you've tried to do the same thing on other computers?" We assured Ray that we had the same problem on other computers, then asked again, "This physical failure that you're talking about, do you mean that there's some sort of bug?" Once again he assured us that there wasn't a bug, but that he didn't know how to solve our problem. "I sense there's some sort of sickness here, and you're just going to have to sweat it out. If you'd like, you can call back tomorrow. We have a couple of guys here, Steve and Paul, and they 're much better with computer stuff than I am." To conclude our research, we asked Ray about our problem with the standard file dialog box." It's the same thing as the last one," he told us. "There's some sort of sickness here, and you're just going to have to sweat it out. There is a solution,though,and you're just going to have to work at it until you get it."
ConclusionsIn terms of technical expertise, we found that a Microsoft technician using Knowledge Base was about as helpful as a Psychic Friends reader using Tarot Cards. All in all, however, the Psychic Friends Net work proved to be a much friendlier organization than Microsoft Technical Support. While neither group was actually able to answer any of our technical questions, the Psychic Friends Network was much faster than Microsoft and much more courteous. Which organization is more affordable is open to question. If Microsoft does refund all three "solutions" fees, then they will be the far more affordable solution provider, having charged us no money for having given us no assistance. However, if Microsoft does not refund the fees for our call regarding Microsoft Graph, then they will have charged us more than 120% of what the Psychic Friends charged, but without providing the same fast and courteous service that Psychic Friends provided.
Microsoft Tech Support (800) 939-5700
The Psychic Friends Network (900)-407-6611
My favorite tech support call was a woman who had gone overseas for a year and a half to research her novel. Prior to this she had backed up the part she had already written (she claimed it was several hundred pages created over the past year) to floppy disks. When she came home it was discovered that the data on the floppies was corrupted. But what about the original on the hard drive? She deleted it on purpose because after all, it was backed up! Argh!!!
I'm so fucking bored. Slashdot sucks.
Well excuse us, for not making more of an effort to entertain you. Go back to jerking off into the gaping mouth of your dead mother under your bed. Also you are such a lame troll, it's obvious to all of us here that you are a virgin with a B.O problem.
Last year, bought a Seagate drive (yes I know....), copied all my stuff to the new drive, and reclaimed the old one for other stuff. And indeed, 3 month after having it, my brand new Seagate died on me. Of course I had no backup (yes I know...). I was shattered.
Tried contacting data recovery services. However, not only were they rather expensive, but also they did not guarantee confidentiality (in their customer agreement, they reserved themselves the right to make "good" use of the data if they stumbled across sth interesing...). Well, there were some pretty personal data on the disk (in 12 years, you do accumulate stuff), so this did make me somewhat uneasy.
Finally, a friend of mine told me that just letting the drive rest for a couple of week may bring it back. So, I just put it away, waited 4 weeks, reconnected it, and presto! everything was back! Sometimes lady luck is your friend! Of course, first thing I did was copy everything over to my new brand new raid array of Maxtors: You never know when it will fail again.
Say no to software patents.
when do they start handing out anti-depression pills with the purchase of a pre built computer?? instead of emailing the manufacturer's tech support, just forward the request to a local pharmacy for a refill.
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"
I recently lost(forgot) my pgp key. I had a lot of stuff encrypted of personal value. No it wasn't childporn.
:-)
I finally got gpg hacked so I could brute my password. If anybody want in just mail me
I just need to make some kind of phone-home ability. So each instance will tell "mother" which segment of the key-space it has searched.
That's one way of dealing with it...
Ironically I had backup's of both the data and my secret key. But not my password.
-- Make software not war
she's a dog. I know, because I'm a dog and I know one when I see her.
Make the money from using the tools, rather than from the tools themselves.
Hey, sensible comment, thanks :-)
The problem is that we're a small company and we're based in New Zealand, which in turn is a small market. There's certainly some consultancy work that can be done (and we do), but most of the large projects are off-shore and literally half a world away.
There's no independent benchmarks yet (although we've got some beta testers doing their own performance testing at the moment).The benchmark application and source code is available in the (free!) download though.
As with all applications, your mileage may vary, that's why we've got a version up there for download for people to try out. No point in paying for it if it won't make any difference to your software, right ? If your application is not heap intensive, then probably you'll see minimal improvement. On the other hand, if for example you've got a server app that dynamically creates/destroys lots of objects in response to client requests or database accesses, it can make quite a difference. An application server I worked on for Unisys had a 50% throughput improvement. But that's not an independent benchmark of course.
Anyways, now I really *am* in danger of spamming /. ! LOL
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
to the White House. He is urgently needed there.
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
No! Don't do it! don't "kill -9 $PID"
Seriously, I think people new to computers look at the computer as an entity that can think and is laughing at them when something goes wrong. In general making life hard for them. Probably because they believe most things in life are against them.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
[Customer] Hello, I lost all my data, what should I do?
[Helpline] Well, let's see if your data really is lost...
[Customer] How would I know?
[Helpline]Use another PC! Go to our website and download ReKovver.exe. You need to run this from a diskette on your PC.
[Customer] Would you guide me through?
[Helpline] Sure.
(Half an hour later...)
[Customer] It just says "No Results". Are my data lost then?
[Helpline] I am affraid that is the fact, Ma'am.
[Customer] So what do I do now to get on?
[Helpline] Do you have any close friends or relatives who would support you from here?
[Customer] I am not sure...
[Helpline] Then I must insist that you don't hang up before we agree that it is fine to do so!
[Customer] Please help me...
[Helpline] You must first think of something really wonderful that is non-cyber.
[Customer] Pardon?
[Helpline] You lost some valuables in the computer, so to get over the devastating expirience you must think of valuables you can't loose in this manner.
[Customer] My wristwatch?
[Helpline] I don't know how valuable your wristwatch is, but I would go for something along the line of your kids, your parents or going barbercue in the mountains.
(Half an hour later...)
[Customer] I think that I can manage now...
[Helpline] If you get desparate, then please call back. My name is Joe Counsel, and it has been a pleasure to help
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
She's kinda cute and she kinda understands computers... and she's got a job that kinda makes sense.
Kinda. I mean if you need that data off the laptop at the bottom of the Amazon river enough to fish it out, send it to SF and have these guys try and get the data... you just might be kinda nuts.
Kinda nuts for not having backups of data that would be that valuable... and kinda nuts for then having toted it around the Amazon. I can imagine reasons for this nuttiness... kinda... but nothing too realistic.
[signature]
I lost the data from an old UNIX system when the hard drive died, even though I had regularly backed up the system to multiple backup sets on 8" floppy disks, with write verification enabled. After I installed a new hard drive and attempted to restore the data, I discovered that the backup sets were hopelessly corrupt. It turned out that there were some stuck bits in the floppy controller's track select logic. This resulted in data being written to a semi-random subset of tracks on the floppy disks. The write verification didn't catch the problem, since each track was written and verified before the next track was selected.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
But it's definately healthier to suck it up according to this New York Times piece.
So if you're pouting about losing data, you're probably going to be worse off soon :)
I was trying to hurry. Eat a dick, prick.
CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!!
Do they console you for the money they charge to restore your data too?
I have a friend whose hard drive just went crazy on him. Dell gave him a replacement drive, but doesn't offer to get the data off the old one. So we've been looking for a good program to try to recover the data from two (apparently slightly corrupt) NTFS partitions. We found a variety of programs, but the best deal we could find was one that would let you recover 1 MB for free and you have to pay for the rest. It seemed to recover the data fine, but it wants him to pay over $100 to get the data back. So maybe they should console users on the cost of recovering data if they can get the data back...
By the way, if you know of any free (or cheap) way to recover the data off of slightly corrupt NTFS partitions on an IDE drive, please let me know.
If PRO- is the opposite of CON-, What's the opposite of Progress?
Lets say you have a 20GB server that gets updated every minute by people who go on. There's a backup that is connected to the main server (because it has to be if it's going to be backed up whenever it's updated) and lets say you backed up the whole thing a month ago?
So you're not an idiot right?
So what if a "cool" linux script that some hacker wanting to make someone's life just a little bit worse comes in and exploits a hole in the server that deletes the whole thing? If the computer doesn't recognise it straight away the first backup will be deleted as well in time, and you've lost a months data!
Whoever said that he tries to change their mind -- he's a psychologist, and that would imply a value judgement! He just makes them happy with their decision.
Thus, there is no need for long term help; likewise, with the data loss victims, there is no need for long term help.
But sadly, it does take him about twice as long with the potential suicides.
We might suppose that this is because data loss victims are about twice as likely to jump from the getgo...
nobody is interested in backups. What everyone wants are restores. There is a fine but crucial distinction between both terms. If you don't see it, continue backing up your data on the same DAT tape you've been using for years ;-). I think the counselor can tell a lot about people who did frequent backups and now had to do their first restore.
Yours, Martin
Personally, I prefer to find my happy place after a drive crash in a backup mirror drive in a mobile rack which doesn't get plugged in until I find that the rest of the computer is OK. Though the counselor actually is hot.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Also bear in mind that, according to the article, the "candidates" usually don't call back, for one reason or another. Which means that the counseling hotline doesn't actually know whether they were successful or not...
Say no to software patents.
It's a joke about data loss. It isn't offtopic: it's funny.
If you get the cheap version, for only half the price you can get a former humorist to counsel you. Hi. I lost my data. > Hee hee No. You don't understand. My life is ruined. > Haah hah .. . hoo ... this is really good.
I think I'm going to call the other counselor
> "Over to you, Stange!"
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
"a laptop crushed beneath the wheel of a MacWorld shuttle bus or a PowerBook that spent two days at the bottom of the Amazon River"
Perhaps its that Mac users are just more sensitive.
What do you say to someone who kept all of the 25 slide powerpoint presentation, that they've been working on for a month and is due to tommow, on a floppy disk that goes bad? It sucks. You want to say:
"You're an idiot. Why the hell didn't you back it up?
But what really comes out:
"I'm very sorry, floppys are so horrible. If you look at them funny they stop woring. Make sure to email files to yourself. Again, I'm sorry".
I work tech support at a state school and I can't even count the number of students who have started crying. Its gone down in recent years because our admins finally decided to backup/autosave all Microsoft Word (which is one ofthe problems to begin with) documents on every public computer at the school (which is quite a lot) on a file server. That way if the student is in a lab for a few hours and gets a "Word has experienced a problem, your file will be lost" message they can come to the help desk and we can recover whatever was saved. Its really a life saver sometimes (students tend to do stupid stuff when they lose their big paper).
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
From the article.
Another key difference: People who call a suicide hot line usually don't call back.
How would she know if she was successfull in saving a life other than the fact that people who call suicide hot-lines tend to be looking for someone to talk them out of it?
>
A friend of mine worked at a directory enquiry service as a student. All kinds of lonely pensioners and horny nutters would call just to talk. This could be a business opp for a "teleshrink" service with premium cost calls. Just form partnerships with the main culprits and get them to forward the calls: M$, Compaq, all major Linux distros... :P
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I'm obsessive-compulsive about backups, precisely because data can be important (records, financial stuff, pics of the wife and kids, etc) and data is so ephemeral... just a dusting of magnetic molecules.
Plus, how often do you rebuild your machines? Linux boxen are no problem, but I am constantly retooling some box or other, and if it's a windows box, you'd better just start with a format and clean install. Taking an existing windows installation and swapping motherboards and peripherals around is like playing football with your wife's Waterford crystal... nothing good can come of it.
I also keep redundant backups... ever had your first backup fail? Or have you ever found that your CD-RW drive was making coasters instead of backups? I've had both... multiple redundant backups are the path to inner peace... you'd hate to lose those things that really mean something.
Losing the pics of your child? I can see a little crisis counseling being useful for that.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I have been using a barra 4 20GB for 1.5 years now, and a 5400 80GB seagate with no problems... I thought they were among the better drives...
Well excuse us, for not making more of an effort to entertain you. Go back to jerking off into the gaping mouth of your dead mother under your bed. Also you are such a lame troll, it's obvious to all of us here that you are a virgin with a B.O problem.
Wow, I think you've got that special sensitive touch when dealing with people. You'd make an excellent addition to Kelly and the team down at DriveSavers.
Either that or writing children's novels.Best wishes,
Mike.
..I caught myself wondering where he was putting the CONSOLE cable in his victims.
Back in '98 I was working at a company that did tech support for Red Hat installations. We got a call once from a very distraught employee who had decided to implement an OS change (from Windows to Linux) on the day before a big meeting with some clients. He was irate that he couldn't get it to work and couldn't load his Powerpoint presentations. After spending more than a couple of hours talking him through a complete installation, he became to agitated and threatened to bomb our building, telling the poor tech support guy "I know where you guys work". The next day we had the police and bomb squad all over the place, but apparently he was all talk.
Today we could have just called him a terrorist and had his ass on a platter. Oh well. Anyway, a specialist like this would have really been nice.
I think this is a very good thing for tech support in general. I remember working tech-support for dell when I was 16. My second day I had a lady call in who's HDD had crashed and she lost basically her life's work. It should have been a simple diagnosis, her system was still warrantied, she'd get a new HDD the next day.
She was freaking out though, crying so loud between words I couldn't hardly make out anything she said. She was having spasmatic asthma attacks from crying so hard. She was crying out to God to please help her and not let this happen. This was truly a woman at the depths of despair.
And I a novice 16 year old geek on the other end, completely unprepared to handle anything like this. I was trying so hard to console her I couldn't even do a proper diagnosis. I ran to get my boss, who talked to her for a minute before he went to get a lady who used to be a school counselor.
She talked her down enough to get some sensible information from her, and we were able to diagnose her problem instantly.
She had left a non-bootable disk in the floppy drive.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
I'm sorry DAVE I can't do that!
There are none as blind as those who will not see.. (unknown)
I remember a brilliant comic about this in a Dilbert comic book called 'Shave the Whales'.
It went like this: Panel 1:
Dilbert thinks: 'I've got to make the engineering newletter more interesting.'
Panel 2:
Still thinking: 'It needs pathos and human drama.'
Panel 3:
Dilbert reading his engineering letter to Dogbert: "How to cope with the loss of loved data..."
Dogbert: 'Wait...I better get some tissues.'
In 1994 a friend of mine killed himself after losing his PhD thesis in a drive crash.
Admittedly he'd had a rough few years (divorce, drugs), but we all though he was past it. The drive failure tipped him over the edge.
You've obviously never lost it all.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This occured at a customer of mine. I had told people to make sure they saved their data to the network drive instead of the default "My Documents" Well one girl didn't and a few months later her HD crashed. She went home crying that day and almost quit.
Nowadays, I simply redirect the "My Documents" folder to a user folder to eliminate user forgetfulness. The fact remains though that all the rest of the staff managed to save files to the P drive instead...
We used to get lots of people who lost papers, short assignments and occasionally a term paper or article. We even recovered a few theses. However, we never encountered someone that lost a dissertation. I always figured that those that did, just jumped of a roof or something.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I read "Good Grief!" and instantly added "...Charlie Brown". From there it was a small mental leap to Lucy and "The Doctor is IN"; now I'm wondering whether a call to this service will put me onto a delusional dog who's fighting the Red Baron, a bird who can't fly, a manic depressive kid with a big head and a striped shirt, a child prodigy pianist or a kid who's too scared to let go of his blanket.
Yep, that's the guys I'll want to talk to when my system's dead.
What the hell's IN this beer anyway...?
"Consoles Data Loss Victims"
See, mod chips to make backup CDs are necessary for fair use. Sony and Microsoft claim the disks last forever, but here we have a story that says otherwise.
Tech person to boss: Hey, you don't know what happened today. It's so nice.
Boss: What ?
Tech person: We lost all our company 4 years of data. It would be a sad event, however I am so consolate, I'm so happy, life is so beautiful.
Boss: And you're fired.
&leq
There there. There there.
Hah-Ha!
I was karma whoring on Slashdot and it was like beep beep beep beep beep... And then my Karma was all gone. It devoured my Karma. It was really excellent Karma. Then I had to think of a new way to karma whore and it wasn't as good. It was kinda, a bummer.
I'm $$$$$exyGal and I'm a karma whore.
You can apply a sociological solution (suicide counseling) to a technical problem (hard drive crash).
Well actually, yes! I'm sure a lot of here have noticed, that when we get people over their fear of technology, their fear of being stupid or breaking it, it is much easier to train/teach them. I have always said, for all I do in tech, that what I do best is hold hands. Let's think about it - if you are in any type of help/admin/trouble/design - when someone calls you they are already in distress. They may have spent who knows how long, so afraid of looking stupid, trying to fix it themselves, making things worse. I have watched grown men pull their hair out, and have had women hug me and cry on my shoulder (real tears!), because they had worked hard all week and lost it all. Before I can do anything for them, I need to calm them down. Sometimes I make them take a break, not to worry, I'll do the best I can - I sound like a doctor half the time. When I train others, I always pass this on - which to me is a most important step. I make a lot friends too, and good word always makes it to the top.
I know others who take a different, very condensending approach, and they really piss me off. But they become hated by those that dared ask for help. And as arrogant as they are, as they look down at the 'fools who broke something' they don't even realize that they make themselves look bad, like they are the ones who really don't know what they are doing.
Hallmark and American Greetings are missing a market for these data loss victims by not having a line of sympathy cards. Someone who loses all of their data would be comforted to receive cards from friends and loved ones saying, "Sorry for your loss" and some nice poem inside.
Your data is gone,
but it'll be okay.
Just live to see
another day.
I know your heart
feels sad and floppy,
so next time I hope
you keep a safe copy.
Sorry for your loss,
Love, Enigmia Man
Ok, whatever. I had a Seagate die on me after a mere three months. Fortunately, the end of their sentence is better advice:
Death Stars, indeed. At LLL we had a whole shipment of these die on us. Fortunately, in that case, however, we lost no critical data (only a couple of sectors went bad, rather than the whole disks). Got warranty replacements too! (... but then, getting 10 Gig drives at a time when 60 Gig was the norm is kinda pointless...)
Say no to software patents.
Tell me about your Motherboard...
should have backed up their data on something else besides a harddrive, it is worth a few bucks to invest in a CDRW and burn your data to a CD-R or CD-RW because even new harddrives' file systems can become corrupt and then recovering data is either impossible or such a pain in the rear to do that it is easier to just fdisk the whole mess and rebuild the filesystem and this is with ALL file systems, FAT FAT32. NTFS, ext2. ext3,resierfs, HPFS, etc...etc... (all of em)
It won't happen to linux users because they already are used to trashed discs, lost time, and lost wages (paid is not in the vocabulary of a tux-loving nerd). And it's Texan, not Texon.
The government should be responsible for taking backups, we could pay them to do it. What do you mean that already happens?
(at least one person got it, eh?)
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
...about a year ago.
;)
Ofcourse, if there IS NO BACKUP there's not much the guy can do
I don't think the majority of posters here realize how stressful a major data loss can be, especially if the person calling is responsible in some way for the data.
/'... or oops, I forgot that I left my coffee on top of the EMC)
Lets say that you admin a set of servers for a site of 1000 people and you have a major data catastrophe. If you are calling a data storage/recovery firm like Iron Mountain/Arcus to get a copy of your latest off-site duplicate backups.
If the failure has gotten to this point, it means that your on-site backups have failed or have been destroyed and that you may have several Terabytes of data to recover, since you can afford the services of a company like this.
Think about this:
- You are the one being paid to keep the systems up and available and this isn't happening.
- There are around 1000 people that will not be able to work until the data is restored and brought on-line. This can be days or even weeks depending on the size of the failure.
So now, not only are you possibly going to lose your job, but there is a possibility of many more people losing thier only source of income. Its frightening. The failure may have been something you could have prevented. It may have even precipitated from some your actions. (oops, I didn't mean 'rm -rf
Gary
Honestly, some companies (and universities and...) are too stupid to be allowed to use computers.
Escape geekism!
-number of plates
...
-density
-rotation speed
-average bits lost after 10E90 read/writes
-average jobs lost after 10E90 read/writes
-average lifes lost per 10E90 read/writes
Now *that* is funny.
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
Well, yes, but I did always think they were singing "fucking in the shack"
Yeah, but three months is really pushing it... And we didn't even have an earthquake during that period, so we can't blame it on vibrations either. The Maxtors which I got as replacement are now in their 7th month (during which there were 2 earthquakes, heavy construction work nearby, and a number of bass-laden parties of the neighbours downstairs followed by me stomping on the floor violently...), and they still work like a charm! So I guess manufacturer does make a difference! (... and the disk that I had before the Seagate lasted sth like 6 years (IIRC), and the only reason why I replaced it was because it was too small, not because it broke).
Moreover, with the other disk failures that I saw (including the IBM death stars...) failure was never complete and catastrophic, but only involved a small number of sectors, while the rest of the disk stayed perfectly accessible. Not so the Seagate: the drive was no longer even recognized while it was broken (well the good thing was that it eventually came back, but still).
Say no to software patents.
....I've lossed my p0rn...waah.
next week, shrinks help those who cannot remember their high scores on tetris.
-Cnik
It suddenly occurs to me that suicide hotlines are the example I will use when I next have to explain to someone the sheer asinine stupidity of judging tech support staff based on call length metrics.
"Hello, Dogbert's suicide hotline."
"I don't think I can go on... I want to end--"
"Shut up and kill yourself already."
*click*
No callback, 20 second call time... I'm gonna be getting a bonus!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
So you admit that you don't bother with backups?
Gonna keep on not bothering with backups, even after your experience?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
...you're a statistical anomaly. Seagate drives hardly ever fail suddenly and completely. Granted, in recent years they may have cut their quality somewhat, but so has everyone else.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
this guy.
Listen to the whole thing...it goes critical at 20.3 seconds.
Evil is the money of root.
Being a person that has been suicidal many times, this does not seem suprising to me that a caller can end their suicide call in 1/2 an hour. You have to take into account that some kind of "getting better" has already happened by not comitting suicide and calling someone. Most of the time I'm suicidal, I'm not really wanting to kill myself, I just don't want to be alive. So the people not calling back, does not mean that they are dead. Hell, I have bipolar disorder (aka manic depression), which means that I'm 3x more likely to be sucessful in comiting suicide, and here I am.
One sad thought about suicide in the USA. Its in the top 10 reasons for death in all age groups. The only common cause of death that spans all age groups.
A self employed friend of mine cut his wrists in total despair when he lost a book that had all his notes related to his job contacts. He's alive because he called his mother to say goodbye before he walked into the woods to do the deed and his mother called 911.
I have seen a alot of people on here ranting about how no data is that important.
I have two kids (3 and 1), and about once a month I write a letter to them. This is stored on my computer. There are about 50 letters currently have been written and when each child turns 18, maybe 21 and will give the letters to them.
I have them stored on my computer, and if I ever lost them I would be crushed.
Granted, I try to keep 4 back-ups at all times, but it easy to forget to send a copy to work, yahoo, and disk. Plus, my data might be 100k total, it would be even more trouble if it was 100M.
I feel very bad when anyone loses data that's important to them, and IMHO it can be a HUGE deal. Not something to be laughed off.
I had a friend copy all of his data over to a new 40gig a year or so ago, mp3's pr0n, you know the works... Anyways, the drive dies, he goes into a rage, throwing the drive accross the room, stomping, slamming it against walls, etc. He repeats this for a couple days, tossing it around still mad that his data is gone. Then, just on a whim we decide to hook up the drive and see what would happen, what kind of noises it would make. So we plug it in, power up the computer, drive....boots...flawlessly. Needless to say I use western digital now :)
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
Another reason to this is that calls are made anonymously. You don't know who is at the other end of the line and thus have no possibility to call him/her back.
The rdist program is hella cool. It works by only copying the differences of each file it's backing up. Of course, the FIRST backup takes the regular amount of time, but the ones after that take much more time. Slap that puppy in a cron job and you have something that can be a great network-wide backup solution. ..then.. if you can spare the $$$ , backup your rdist server with tape.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Well, it was not that sudden. During some 10 minutes, the drive made strange noises (lots of clicks), but still went on reading and writing... (yes, I should have shut down the computer immediately upon noticing this, but I was halfway through a large copy operation from one partition to another, so I let it continue...a severe error, as it turned out in hindsight...). However, once it was dead, the failure was indeed complete.
Say no to software patents.
http://linuxadvocate.net/data_loss/
I would have thought that potential suicides would need much more help than that in the short-/immediate-term.
And you would be correct in that assumption. The problem is you're confusing a temporary reprieve with a more permanent solution. It's one thing to talk someone out of an attempt at suicide at a given point in time and quite another to get to the root causes and change the thinking patterns that lead to those thoughts of suicide.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
user manual for this.
0. read entire manual
1. Take gun.
2. shoot.
3. aim at foot.
4. Confirm you did point 3 before activating point 2.
Spooky. Same hard drive (the IBM Deathstar, right?), same age of information, same circumstances surrounding deleting the old information (and asking myself why in hell I did that), same devastation. Losing a hard drive without proper backup (or finding out that your backup tapes didn't work, etc) is roughly equivalent to having your house burn down in this day and age. I lost all my (albeit crappy) papers from high school, a good percentage of my college coursework, every hard-to-find mp3 file I'd collected since 1996.
A similar thing happened to my friend's wife, a Psych. PhD at UW. The hard drive inside her Dell laptop died suddenly. But unlike my story, she'd been backing her stuff up nightly on the school's fileservers. Her hard drive failure meant a two-week inconvenience, whereas mine has resulted in six months of wondering what that phone number was again, how that great song went, and just what did happen in episode 37 of Hikaru no Go.
So the CS major (me) forgot to backup and got burned, while the doctor of psychology backed up and lost nothing. If only they taught us common sense in those CSE courses...
Having done a lot of data recovery work for friends and family, I have to say this is a good idea. After being successful a few times in data recovery from mangled HDD, and then gently preaching the benefits of backups and such, and then the next time preaching the benefits of 'save early, save often', and then the next time preaching the benefits of using an OS which doesn't blue screen in the middle of your work... and then the next time, saying 'there is absolutely nothing I can do' and watch them fall apart.
Then, naturally, the cycle starts all over again.
C'mon people. Your laptop comes with a CD burner. It doesn't get ANY easier than that. Drag the 'My Documents' folder onto your CD icon. For Pete's sake. Please do it, do it now. Do it every week.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I think that the main reason we see so much "grief counseling" these days is that people are not being encouraged to face their grief, accept it, and move on. Rather, they are encouraged to wallow in it like pigs in a mud hole - going over and over the problem, obsessing over it: "Oh, you still cannot face losing your favorite wallpaper image? Take another week off work - it'll be OK one day..." In a sick way, grieving makes the person empowered.
Yes, people feel grief. But there SHOULD be levels of grief - you might feel bad if your car dies, you should feel worse if your pet dies, and you should feel REALLY BAD if your mother dies.
But if you grieve for days because your car died, you need a counselor who will help you realize your grief is inappropriate.
Getting all bent out of shape over losing your data is just WRONG.
www.eFax.com are spammers
He who says "Good grief" and put this in Humor, appearently has never lost data.
/me breaks down and sobs.
And that's all I'm going to say about that.
You give them your firstborn child, they get your data back from a nuclear hit, that's the way it works. The counselor's bill will pale in comparison.
We recently paid them $3200 (IIRC) to retrieve about 10 GB of data from an executive's laptop, which he wouldn't leave networked for a backup. The drive had crashed, leaving a contrail of magnetic platter coating behind it. The cost of losing the data was more than that, so the calculus was easy.
Oh, and, yes, we got here by getting a good 'deal' on a $999 laptop. Learn from our mistake.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Once they have the failed drive, you actually get a callback from the engineer working on your data! The way DriveSavers constantly reassures you as a customer is damn impressive. After dealing with them, it _almost_ makes me want to go back into doing tech support... (OK, maybe not!)
Now if I could only convince the right person in my company to purchase CD-R drives for everyone's laptops... <sigh>
Nothing is cooler than seeing the 'fiction' taken out of science fiction.
Try telling someone who lost their saved game after spending days trying to finish the Water Temple in Zelda OOT to find their "happy place".
I can't wait to see what happens.
Oh, crap. Did I just make a Zelda reference?! Great, now I really need counseling.
Madness takes its toll.
Please have exact change.
If only I had it so easy. Most of my charges have no problem looking stupid. :)
Method of processing duck feet
>
> 'My hard disk is fragged.'
> 'And this matters to me how?'
>
> Either that or writing children's novels.
Worked for Edward Gorey, didn't it?
The BOFHlycrumb Tinies:
A is for Apple, who's goin' out of biz, .VBS risk,
B is for Bytes, gone up in a fizz,
C is your Call to a tech support hack,
D is your Data, it ain't comin' back.
E is for Email, Outleak's
F is for Fsck, what you do to a disk,
G is for Gorey, more fun than goatse.cx,
H is for Hacker, what will he code next?
I is for iMac, that fruit-colored beast,
J is for Jackoff, when fscking does cease.
K is for Kazaa and the file-sharing wars,
L is for Linux, that's GNU/Lin of course,
M is for Magnets that kill your pr0n dead,
N is for Nutella, it goes on your bread.
O is for Owned, use a zero, you n00b!
P is for Pr0n, with zeroes and b00bs.
Q is for Quicktime, a video hack,
R is for RAM, add more or go slack.
S is for Slashdot, with its hot grits and more,
T is for Troll, which still beats Karma Whore.
U is for USB storage device,
V is for Virtual sex with your mice.
W is for Warez, piled high on the shelf,
X is for X Window System, none else,
Y is for YOU WILL BACK UP FROM NOW ON,
Z is for Zapped, 'cuz your data's still gone.
I bet not. :)
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Was I the only one that was unable to parse this sentence until a few re-reads?
"Ok Mrs. Smith, if you would just connect the serial line I can grep your brain logs to see when you first paniced"
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Talking out of my ass here, but we also dont have the same support strcutures you had 50-100 years ago. Most of my friends live away from family, so when somehting emotional happens, theyre left without much of a support structure.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Fair enough. I don't use Windows myself, but I know a couple of people who do write for it. I'll point them in your direction.
Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better at using the computer. They had been really going at the bickering.
Finally, God said, "Cool it!! I am going to set up a test which will take two hours and it will judge who does the better job."
So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.
They moused.
They did spreadsheets.
They wrote reports.
They sent faxes.
They sent e-mail.
They sent out e-mail with attachments.
They downloaded.
They made cards.
They did every known job.
Suddenly... without warning...ten minutes before the time was up, lightning flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, the rain poured, and of course, the electricity went off.
Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.
Jesus just sighed. The electricity finally flickered back on, and each of them restarted their computers.
Satan started searching frantically screaming, "It's gone! It's all gone! I lost everything when the power went out!"
Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all his files from the past two hours.
Satan observed this and became even more irate. "Wait! This isn't fair, Jesus cheated! How did he do it??!!"
God shrugged and said, "Jesus Saves."
Just remember that it's better to have stored and lost than to have never have stored at all.
Damiano
A Psychologist should be talking to this poor bastard!
Yikes, I feel for support guy who took that call. 8^)
It's man's wisdom that leads many people to feel lost to begin with; had they known God through his only begotten Son, they wouldn't be lost! But Jesus is not "psychologically accetable" in the couseling comunity.
18. Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. 19. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. 20. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.
This looks more like a publicity stunt than a viable business model.
/. is my happy place...
you are assuming it is successful consoling.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So how does Chessin unwind after a long day of talking computer users down from the ledge? She climbs into her 1994 Toyota pickup and sticks to quiet back roads for the long drive home to St. Helena.
"This is a really important time for me," she said. "My CD collection has really grown."
In other words, she's found her happy place.
In other news, Psychologist Kelly Chessin has committed suicide after the RIAA abruptly raided her Toyota truck and smashed all of her legal CD copies of music she already bought. Apparently the grief of data-loss consumed her life too much.
All of a sudden there's a power outage -- Nothing serious, but when the power comes back.... your superblock is trashed. You ask your (part time) sysadmin how old the latest backup is and he reminds you that he's been bugging you for a new tape drive for the last two months (right! you were waiting for the billings to come back to pay for the new drive!).
Sitting on your desk is a $200 hard drive with $2M worth of billings -- all inaccessable. The result of a year's worth of hard work trashed.
How do you react?
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Who is going to be there to help me when my posts get modded up and down like a yoyo only to finally hit rock bottom at -1 Flamebait, never to rise again.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
I allways need a good counciling after i loose 110gb os porn. Specialy those rare ones like Bill cliton and monica lewinsky, even the justice deparment couldn't get that one ;)
No I'm not. What part of short-/immediate-term implies serious counseling and changing thinking patterns? Of course the long-term issues will take more time and more work.
What surprised me was that the short-term crisis could pass so quickly.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Our general liability policy excludes damage to data.
So if the air conditioner falls through the roof onto the server, destroys it, you get a new roof, air conditioner and server. No data.
There is actually an exclusion that says if the data is paper type records, the paper will be replaced.
Ack. More suicides.
Derek ( this is new this year )
When I say "sudden", I mean "in less than weeks". With Seagate drives, when I've noticed weird noises or bad sectors I've always had plenty of time to migrate off the data.
Now, Micropolis...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Backups? I don't need no stinkin' backups!
I hate my job and I couldn't give a damn if every stinking file I ever had the misfortune to save got wiped off the face of this earth...
I'm just hoping that one day it all disappears on me. And yeah, I use Microsoft.
Just call me a masochist.
you never use a proprietary format
What backup tape physical format[1] invented over 20 years ago[2] still meets the demands of today's data loads?
[1] .tar.gz is not a physical format.
[2] It has to be non-proprietary, so the patent has to have expired.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just call it something juicy, put it on kazaa... instant distributed backup!
Yeah, but retrival can be a bitch!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I've got an old 1.6g Western Digital that despite all my care not to joggle stuff, apparently suffered a head crash when I moved, and developed the creeping crud. I kept locking out bad sectors as they occurred (fortunately pretty much in a clump near the end of the drive, and VMarkBad marks 'em bad for ONE retry, as the gods intended) and it kept chugging along. Three years later (now over 5 years old, running 24/7), it finally reached the point where it had root directory troubles, and at last I declared it Dead. Well, no one can claim I didn't get sufficient warning :)
BTW, since you've worked in data recovery -- last week I had a client stupidly apply a FAT16 fixit tool to a FAT32 drive, which mangled the partition table but good (turned it into FAT16, tho file structure was still FAT32). In my efforts to get at some data files that weren't backed up, I found that FDISK and PMagic could see it, but wouldn't touch it; DiskEdit and NDD refused to even read the drive. (When I gave up and repartitioned it -- much as I hate admitting defeat! -- I found that WD's current tools wouldn't touch it either; I had to use an old version of EZDrive.)
Anyway, are there any other commonly-available tools I might have tried? either to fix the partition table or to extract raw data? Too late for this one, but would sure be nice to know for future reference. Thanks!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
For the most part it's write-once read-often. The files don't change, only the directories. I was actually thinking of a fun backup project to make a machine that could etch the bits in a aluminum sheets with a machine that could read them back in. Something like industrial strength punchcards. Possibly with each sheet 5ft x 5ft in size. Trying to decide the proper size for the bits. I'd like them large enough to be hard to destroy by accident or time but small enough that it doesn't take thousands of dollars worth of metal to store a single file. Was thinking of drilling the bits into the metal and using a laser on a mechanical arm to read them. I'd like to copy Google's Usenet db and copies of old game roms etc onto such a medium to preserve our lil bit of history for future generations.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Appreciated, thanks.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
What part of short-/immediate-term implies serious counseling and changing thinking patterns?
It wasn't 'short-/immediate-term' that I was keying on, but rather the statement as a whole:
I would have thought that potential suicides would need much more help than that in the short-/immediate-term.
'Much more help' isn't something that you can give in the short-term and so I assumed that you were confusing a temporary change of mind with a long-term solution. Sorry.
What surprised me was that the short-term crisis could pass so quickly.
Someone who calls for help wants to be talked out of it, so you have a cooperative subject to begin with. Without that one factor the amount of time would likely soar.
One of the overriding thoughts of a person contemplating suicide is often the idea that nobody cares. Even if they can't think of someone in their own life who cares, the fact that someone would volunteer their time to help them is an indicator that there are people who care. One factor in the development of the idea that nobody cares is a sense that people don't listen to them. Again, the person on the other end of the phone needn't listen for hours (as a rule), but taking the time to hear what the caller has to say will often dispel that idea (for the time being).
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Commonly-available? Not that I know of. Typically data recovery shops have their own in-house tools.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Oh well :( Thanks anyway!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
...one of your fans. Shame on you!
Well jeez, then I could handle a suicide call in under a minute by those guidelines.
caller: "I've lost 20 TB of irreplacable files, including the redundant backups, and I've got a gun pointed to my head!"
Me:"is it loaded?"
Caller:"I'm not sure..."
me:"well the quickest way to check would be to pull the trigger *BANG*"
One more suicide call taken care of...
You know, that's so evil, they have a place in hell for people like you. It's called the help desk.
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
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