10 Computer Mishaps

Ant writes "ZDNet UK posted Ontrack Data Recovery's 2004 list of the 10 strangest and funniest computer mishaps... Some of them are funny!" My best mishap was installing the alpha video driver on an NT 3.51 box thinking that it was just an alpha driver. Of course since this Alpha meant DEC and this was an x86 box, the server barfed pretty hard. Also the time I spilled an 8oz glass of water on my laptop and lost all my email from 1994 to 1999 and my backup was corrupted. That I liked too.

Comments

#1 Works!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, freezing a broken hard disk works, really, just don't do it like this.

Re:#1 Works!

[Ingolfke]

once it warmed up it just vanished from the system...

Yeah, this has to do with the MTC (mean temperature control) settings in the drive. The MTC monitors the average temperature of the drive and adjusts the speed of the drive as the temperature increases or decreases. The point is that at certain high temperature the drive components can actually expand (ever so slightly) and cause friction and physical damage to the drive. When the MTC begins to malfunction it detects the temperature incorrectly and stops the drive at temperatures that will not cause damage. So, the freezer's low temperature, for some reason, can cause the MTC to reset and thereby cause the drive to continue working. This effect may be temporary or relatively permanent. Although once this has occoured you're highly encouraged to purchase a new drive. The MTC is not user serviceable.

Re:My ones

[Aardpig]

On a server I needed to remotely manually replace libc with an older version file from another machine. Ofcause you have to remember to do everything in a single command otherwise if you delete the old version you cannot run anything else. (I am sure there must be a simpler solution to that than take the disk out and do it on another machine).

That's exactly what sln is for. It is like ln, but statically linked, so you can change the libc symlink without the system barfing.

Re:My best...

[cdrudge]

It really just depends on the scale. If it was a billion dollar bankruptcy, a $50,000 check to someone is a rounding error as someone above said. But if it was a $100,000 small business bankruptcy, then that is very different. While my knowledge pertains to personal bankruptcy and not businesses, the trustee will inquire as to if there were any large purchases made within the past X number of months. They are looking for hiding of assets or preferential treatment.

I would say in the case of the $50,000, it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow if it was a larger airline. The trustee isn't concerned with nickles and dimes.

For instance, say I have $10,000 and filing Chapter 7 for $25,000. I understandably want to keep my $10,000, but my creditors want the 40% of their money that they could recover. In an attempt to hide that $10,000, I purchase $EXPENSIVE_OBJECT that would fall under the homestead exemption, thus "saving" the money. I could then turn around and liquidate the $EXPENSIVE_OBJECT, hopefully getting the majority of the money back. The trustee wants to know about the purchase of $EXPENSIVE_OBJECT as they can force it to be liquidated or the transaction to be reversed if need be to recover the money.

All payments/purchases though aren't automatically questioned. A mortgage payment or car payment, particularly if the item is being reaffirmed, is generally excluded. Also emergency expendatures, if documented and clearly needed, also can pass. For example, your furnace dies and it's the middle of winter. However, if you spend $5000 on a new furnace and the old one was fine, it will raise suspicion.