Slashdot Mirror
So You've Lost a $38 Billion File
smooth wombat writes "Imagine you're reformatting a hard drive so you can do a clean install but then realize that you have also reformatted the back up hard drive. No problem. You reach for your back up tapes only to find out that the information on the tapes is unreadable. Now imagine the information that is lost was worth $38 billion. This scenario is apparently what happened in July to the Alaska Department of Revenue. From the article: 'Nine months worth of information concerning the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier, the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence.' Using the 300 cardboard boxes containing all the information, staff worked overtime for several months to rescan everything at an additional cost of $200,000."
Seppuku?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Senator Ted Stevens remarked that they should have sent it in an Internet, apparently tubes are much more reliable than tape.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
So the information is still available in 300 boxes and it would cost about $200,000 to scan and recreate the $38 billion file again?
I'll do it for $1 billion.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
As their IT consultant I stand by my use of Maxtor drives.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
The method for arriving at that figure was also tragically lost. A team of monkeys recreated the figure in 3 minutes with a number pad at a cost of $45.
stuff |
Hmm...this should translate to:
Just curious...do most people still think differently then I do? Because I do something one way, so should everyone else. Did I mention I am also unable to empathize?
--AC
http://static.flickr.com/2/3704348_8ceda601f9.jpg
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
And it's not in the recycle bin? Ok, let's not panic. Click start, go to find, choose files and folders...
Come on guys, it took only 200,000$ to create the data. It probably had records of payments totalling 38 billion dollars. But what they lost was 200,000$ not 38 billion dollars.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Please report to your nearest Microsoft customer reeducation camp.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
1) Write "200 000 000 000 USD" on the paper. .txt file /. how big financial disaster you've made, and how you've saved your ass
2) Type what's on the paper into a
3) Save the file
4) Delete the file
5) Empty the recycle bin
6) Recreate file by retyping data from the paper
7) Post the story on the
No sig today.
Right, because:
Nobody has ever thrown away papers that were actually needed...
Paper is an inexpensive and compact way to store terabytes of information...
Paper is trivially easy to instantly duplicate on a large scale...
Paper is trivially easy to haul off-site and store...
People constantly generate diffs between the most recently archived paper copy, and all work they have done every day since. They don't just make undocumented changes, willy-nilly, requiring just as much effort to backup daily changes as it is to backup full copies of everything...
No question, paper is superior. The data retention problems we always hear about are in every way caused by digital storage methods, and have nothing to do with the policies and people running the organizations...
(No I will not pay for any damaged caused by this post overloading your sarcasm meter.)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No kidding...if "Mary" from Dell "canna fiss eet, you drag to reee-cyc bin yesss? reboot? all gone, have nice day now" then who are we mortals to argue?
Are NOT restore systems. Restoration is a totally different operation, and not one that the backup solutions people invest a lot of effort in. You doubt me? Try to restore an Exchange Server from tapes (Backupexec) after losing and re-building the server.
They may of been trying to do a clean install of vista and it some how took out the back up disk and the same time as the main disk. And they where using dell systems.
You've got that wrong. Disaster Recovery is recovery from system failure, whether it be caused by natural disaster, malicious acts, or hardware failure. "Store my important files somewhere else so I can get them in case of a system fail^H^H^H^H I do something stupid and lose them because of my own mistake" is Idiot Recovery.
No, I will not call back a tape from two weeks ago because you made a mistake and saved over your Excel spreadsheet the wrong way, or because you managed to delete something because you're sloppy with a mouse.
You, user, are in control of your own data. You are responsible for its appropriate handling and content. I am responsible for only its appropriate storage, and not its content.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
He may of been you sing a speech to text program you in sensitive clod
$38 billion is a lot of money. To put that in perspective, for $38 billion, Alaska could build over fifty bridges to nowhere.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Dear deeply respected and trusted Sir,
I trust by the grace of almighty god you are in good health this fine and beautiful day. I was a data entry clerk for the Alaska Department of Revenue, Prior to being fired, I secured access to a hidden fund worth $38,000,000,000 (THIRTY-EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS).
If I ever tried to utilise this fund in my name, the funds would risk being confiscated by the government, so I would like you assistance to find a trustworth foreign assistant who can invest these funds.
This proposal is 100% risk free, and I can offer you a 10% fee for your help.....