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Repairman Steals Hard Drive And Charges To Reinstall It
Phase 1: Break into a realty office, and steal a computer hard drive.
Phase 2: Ask if they will pay you $50 to fix the computer.
Phase 3: Get charged with theft and receiving stolen property!
Phase 2: Ask if they will pay you $50 to fix the computer.
Phase 3: Get charged with theft and receiving stolen property!
"So, uh, I heard your computer wouldn't start because it's missing a hard drive. This is very common in our neighborhood. You're lucky though, I happen to be fully bonded and certified at returning computers without hard drives to their normal working states ... "
Michael Scott could see through that.
My work here is dung.
He charged $50 an hour. For 40 hours of "work".
My sig can beat up your sig.
... they tell you that they can retrieve the files that you had on the hard-drive that was just stolen from your office.
/facepalm
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Phase 5: Profit!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
How often does a story on the Morning Call get posted to slashdot?
This would be like reading about the construction on Route 309 in the Wall Street Journal, or something...
(I'm from the Lehigh Valley, in case that wasn't clear).
Bethlehem PA brotha.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Here's what I'm curious about: how did he get charged with theft and receiving stolen property?
Was it just that he had possession of the stolen property, so they knew that one would stick, so it was a lesser included offense, just in case they couldn't prove the theft?
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Lame
Bethlehem PA brotha.
Oh? How far away from that is Bird-In-Hand, PA?
If it weren't for those meddling kids!!!!
From TFA, he wanted to charge $50 per hour for 40 hours.
Phase 4 is: Review your math skills and realize that $50/hr x 40hrs = $2,000 not $50.
... they tell you that they can retrieve the files that you had on the hard-drive that was just stolen from your office.
/facepalm
P.S. I'll sell you your hard drive, er, I mean a hard drive similar to yours with all your files on it...uh.. well how much will you pay me for your hard drive? :)
He replaced good hard drive with
a bad hard drive when he stole it.
And without an idle logo?
Just curious.
He should have replaced the hard drive with a blank formatted hard drive. Then when the realty office tried to start the system and it wouldn't boot, take the computer back to his office or shop and retrieve the "lost" data.
A Sunday School teacher asks a boy where Jesus was born. The boy answers "Allentown." The teacher corrects him, "No, it was Bethlehem." The boy replies, "Well, I knew it was some place along Rt. 22"
I think the comments are good too. "yeah, he did the same thing at another company, we just didnt report him. he will be reported now." and the link to his meetup page, "am looking for a new way to improve my business"
You couldn't make stuff up this good.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
...wouldn't incompetent jurors favor a criminal career path?
If jurors are competent, innocent people would remain free and guilty people would go to prison.
If jurors are not competent, sometimes innocent people will go to prison and sometimes guilty people will go free.
so, the more incompetent jurors are, the lower the penalty for criminal behavior.
paintball
Reminds me of the (somewhat) local story I read this morning. A man shop lifted a bunch of clothes from a department store, on is way out he stopped at the front desk to fill out a job application. Sure enough he listed his real information. When the cops showed up he was busy putting away all the stuff he had just walked out with.
He beeped on his way through the door but still was allowed to leave (those things beep so often most employees probably ignore them now). If he didn't give them his personal information, he probably would've gotten away with it.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Look at the moron, I doubt he is smart enough to know how they caught up with them. The bad thing is others said he did the same to them...but was not reported. http://www.meetup.com/referralweb/members/7717367/photos/
Wow, so Slashdot is trying to be snarky like Fark these days. It's kind of like that one kids dad who picks him up at school wearing baggy pants and a hoodie. It not only doesn't work, it's embarrassing for those who have to see it.
He had the right idea, but got the scale wrong.
Had he stolen 1 MILLION hard drives and then demanded $2000 each to put them back, he would be "too big to fail" and then he would just have to give everyone a $1 off coupon on their next HD install.
He could have done worse though. Had he hacked in and disabled the drive remotely, he would be up for a MUCH longer sentence.
my computer repair business isn't making enough money to pay me minimum wage!
Well... check the current state of your genitals and orifices: that will certaintly provide some clues.
NO SIG
no Phase 5: getting butt-raped in jail by tito
Approximately 80 miles Bethlehem to Bird-In-Hand
Dear AskSlashdot:
I am planning on stealing Hordware/software/company secrets/customers from my company/boss/girlfriend(mother)/government, but I don't want to get caught because that's bad. What's my best course of action and is there anything I should look out for?
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
And without coming up with some technobabble that the data was still present in the interface buffer and you just need to subject the system to your multiphasic polydynamic transducer to get it to flush the buffer to the new drive to recover all the files.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
...on Youtube.
Why go to Bird-In-Hand when you can go through Intercourse to get to Paradise? Too close to Blue Ball?
Your brain is not a computer.
wtf? He was fairly badass fighting the Nazis, but I'm fairly sure he is dead, and not in a US prison.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
When I hear stories like this, (and they are legion) I have to wonder if the tech was really that stupid, or did he believe that a lack of computer expertise in his customers meant they were that stupid. Speaking as a geek, I've noticed a tendency among a (fortunately small) subset of geeks to believe that having a deep expertise in one area makes them generally more competent in everything, including areas completely out of their expertise, like, say, crime.
When I was in college, two roommates apparently had such a misunderstanding, which led to a "foolproof plan" to pay off their student loans and retire in geek luxury. Their criminal career lasted a mere 24 hours. I still have the front page showing them spread-eagled against a cop car.
Sometimes I wonder if extreme geeks -- meaning not the truly hyper-intelligent, but the self-sequestered wannabes -- lacking normal social interaction, have less of an understanding of basic morals than the rest of us.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Because only a geek would be stupid enough to think he could get away with it.
The real equation
Normal person == stupid
Geek == normal person cognitive issues
I hope he likes anal
This case sounds a bit like the Florida Elections Commission charging for recounts.
I'm ruined...
Don't forget to modify the deflector dish.
Hey does that mean that Geordi was actually working with the Borg? Seems like a bit of routine. The Borg attack. He modifies the deflector dish to do something clever. The Borg leave. I bet he deliberately caused all those problems with the holodeck too.
It's amazing how many people that know something better than me--say, fixing a car or being a web developer--assume that they know everything better than me and everyone else in the world. Those people are the most dangerous stupid and if they don't have morals will often land in jail.
Nazareth?
Well the problem is that the people probably turned on the "appliance" and it didn't work. So they called their repair guy who said he could recover the data for them. He was able to scam them because they didn't know how the computer worked.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Phase 4: ???
Phase 5: PROFIT!
I bet he is a+ certified
He tried to charge them $50/hr for 40 hours. That's $2000, not $50.
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
come on now, this was a very intelligent computer owner, he called the computer manufacturer and asked if data could be recovered from a missing drive and they said no.
The "repair man" probably did this to a few hundred other computer users before getting caught.
Let me tell you a story. Some friends had a laptop which the husband said was running slow and that was a problem. I told him it was most like Windows XP and it just needed to be reinstalled because that's pretty common. He did nothing and about 2 weeks later I was back over there and booted the laptop with a Knoppix CD and it was nice a snappy. I even showed him Firefox loading pages. About a month or so later, he tells me his computer guru neighbor fixed his computer because it had a bad hard disk and now everything is nice a fast again. I ask if he reinstalled Windows and he looked at me blank faced. I then asked if the desktop background was different or if the browser bookmarks or homepage was different and he said yes. I told him that Windows was reinstalled and they probably didn't need a new hard disk. Most computer users are bumbling idiots and only know who to do what they do by trial and error without any understanding of the most basic concepts. That is what I see here in the USA.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
He should have just unplugged the sata cable. The computer still doesn't start, but he's not left with hauling evidence in his car.
I worked for a company that shall remain nameless. Old computer components were disposed of in the dumpster. Whenever this occurred, one individual would "dive" for some of the components later that night. He gave the parts to a buddy of his who ran a computer company that already had a relationship with the company that disposed of the hardware. That individual would then resell the same components back to the same company as "new". Absolutely true. Probably happened a lot back then when components were pricey.
There are three kinds of computer repair people out there.
There are the scam artists, who take a 'broken' computer, reformat the drive, spend five minutes starting a non-legal Windows install, and charge $500. And possibly with some imaginary added hardware costs tacked on too. Person gets a computer they're going to get spyware on six months and it will be messed again. Usually they don't resort to deliberately breaking computers, but who knows.
And then there are the legit repair centers, who tend to take the easy way out, but at least they are honest. Most of the time the easy way is 'replace the computer' so people lose their data, though.
Then there are the good guys, who sit down, don't reformat the drive, work for two hours installing AVG and Ad-Aware, give an hour of instruction during that, and think it's worth maybe $20 and a Coke from their fridge.
All you good guys out there, start charging more. Honestly. You are not charging for work, you are charging for knowledge.
Or think of it this way: The alternative to what you're doing is requires $200 of (legit) repairs or a $300 new computer. You can, indeed, change them $100 for that.
Your time is not worth what you think it's worth. For you, half of it is a game, and the other half is satisfaction at a job well done, but you don't set the value for your time.
Your time is worth what they think it's worth, and I assure you, you're a hell of a lot cheaper than the alternatives. (And provide better value, considering that half the time you're sitting fixing stuff you're providing a computer class in how to not have this happen again.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
From his Skillwho page:
Education:
Degree in computer science, mcse, ccna, microsoft oem system builder, microsoft partner, cisco partner.
He sounds like a Democrat politician.
Very very true... and you'll get high praise, recommendations to others, and repeat business. Many people would be surprised at how taking the time to explain how to prevent a problem, or how something happened (in terms a customer can understand) goes a long way when combined with honest, good service.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Well, now we finally know what "???" stands for. But it seems that the profit the guy hoped for didn't materialize.
Karma's a bitch.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
profit?
Then there are the good guys, who sit down, don't reformat the drive, work for two hours installing AVG and Ad-Aware, give an hour of instruction during that, and think it's worth maybe $20 and a Coke from their fridge.
All you good guys out there, start charging more. Honestly. You are not charging for work, you are charging for knowledge.
I do. And they pay it happily once I explain that they're not losing any data. Although I haven't used Ad-Aware in a while, it got too bloated for me to want to use. Plus, their installer was all sorts of messed up the last few times I tried to install it.
he tells me his computer guru neighbor fixed his computer because it had a bad hard disk and now everything is nice a fast again.
Did you test the hard drive? Your friend may well have had a good drive, and only needed a windows reinstall. The neighbor may have tested the drive, or came across bad sectors in the process of cloning the drive. Drives are so inexpensive compared to the labor required to reinstall a second time, that it's silly not to replace them if there's any sign of trouble.
This is categorically untrue. One does in fact set the value of one's time.
You think you're worth $100/hour, you don't take $50. this is an iron law in service work from hairdressers to auto mechanics to software consultants.
the client doesn't set your rates, or you'll work for free. YOU set your rates.
whether or not you have accurately valued your skills, your market and your costs determines how much work you have.
this is why so many, many, many geeks fail at businesses, esp. small businesses. You have no idea how stuff like this works and you end up working for free or or blowing your earnings out of the water with costs.
And they wonder why geeks never get laid.
With social skills like that I'm amazed even your hand comes anywhere near you.
This reminds me of neighbour tech support. They had a computer that wasn't working, they'd called MS and had hung up when they wanted £50. I went around and (eventually) worked out that a capacitor had blown on the graphics card, something an MS helpline could never have worked out. I told them which graphics card to get as a replacement and went home without charging a penny. Was pleasantly surprised to get a voucher for £20 through the letterbox.
In retrospect that's underpayment, but they're good friends so I don't care.
It made me very angry for the tech support line to try and charge them when they couldn't hope to fix the problem. It was obvious from the error message that the problem was with nVidia anyway.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Well, it's a market. So you and your clients come to a mutually acceptable value on your time. The issue at hand, though badly expressed, is still true; geeks have a habit of severely undervaluing our time and knowledge.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
In other words, us "good guys" are making you look like the greedy scum-sucking pig that you are....
Although I agree with you very much, I'll mention that you can format the hard drive as a good guy, too. It's not something necessary in all cases, but there are some where it is.
Consider a computer so flooded in Bad Stuff that all anti-virus software sites are blocked, and visiting any web site other than a popular search engine takes you to a spammer's web site made to look like a legitimate web site. (Example: You go to Yahoo, put in a search for hsn.com, then click the first link, for HSN's web site, and you instead end up at a car sales web site which isn't really a legit car cales web site, but it -looks- legit. Note that the user of this computer is an older user, and has very little computer knowledge, although there's been a lot of self-taught progress over time.)
Now you get to this computer, and you can't download any anti-virus software, or AdAware, Spybot, etc. No problem, they're either on a thumb drive you always carry around, or you can download them via your laptop. Only, when you go to install them, they're being blocked from installing by something.
At this point, I see two options: 1) Spend more time than it's worth trying to clean the computer, or 2) Move all the user's files to an external hard drive, format the hard drive, reinstall Windows (which is easy when there's a Windows XP recovery partition on the hard drive), then re-create the users and return their files to where they should be.
While "repairing" computer software issues isn't "what I do" commonly, it's something I do from time to time. I definitely undervalue what I do, but I let it be known what it would cost to take the computer in to a repair shop, etc., and that typically makes the computer's owner realize that they're saving a -lot- of money with my services, so they're willing to pay more than they might have otherwise. (And it's legit, as they -are- saving a lot.) I like to give them a price range, such as "$50 to $150, depending on what it's worth to you to be able to do such-and-such with your computer again", so they realize right away that $10 isn't going to cut it.
That said about undervaluing my work, even though it's infrequent that I do this, I've learned quickly that my time is worth too much to spend it trying to clean a really infected system. It's less time and effort for me to to relocate the files and give the system a fresh install. Sure, some settings are lost in the process, and programs need to be reinstalled, but that's less painful than cleaning the infection, and the computer'll run better for a while (which seems to be true of any fresh install, be it Windows XP, a freshly installed new version of Ubuntu, or even wiping out ~/.kde/ [sans important files]).
If I were doing this sort of thing more often, I'd carry with me 1) an external hard drive to copy files to, 2) an external DVD drive (some people have $199 computers with -slow- drives), 3) a Linux LiveDVD (easiest way to copy files over), and 4) I'd write a script to automate copying files to the external hard drive, then back to the computer's hard drive after re-installing Windows.
You apparently didn't read my post, where I said exactly what you said, except you said it in a stupider way.
People who are actually skilled at computers undervalue their time and knowledge in repairing them.
You, for some reason, acknowledged this, but then said that they should set the value of their time, in some hypothetical universe where they think they're worth more than they're actually asking for.
Which, of course, not the actual situation...all people, great or small, ask for what they think their time is worth. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing the job in the first place. (Barring exceptions like desperation jobs, which is not what we're talking about, we're talking about people who repair computers in their spare time.)
Thus suggesting that they should 'charge what they think they are worth' that is somewhat idiotic.
The actual problem in the real universe is they think they're worth less than what they're asking for. Computer repair amateurs underestimate their value, because they don't understand how valuable their knowledge and skills are.
And, incidentally, both the clients and service people set the rate. That is, in fact, how the free market works. Two people agree on a set amount of money in exchange for goods or services.
What I was actually suggesting is that people judge their rates by the opportunity cost of the client, to ask themselves 'If I did not exist, how much would this cost them'. Once repairmen have that in their head as a reasonable cost of 'the problem', they'd can knock off $100 or so and still feel comfortable with themselves. I.e, don't charge based on how much work it is to you, charge based on how much cost it would be if you weren't there and they had to go to a real repairman.
Which, as you're apparently failing to grasp, actually means charging more, not less, because this advice is for people who underestimate their value because 'they didn't do much'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Dude, I'm don't do computer repairs at all. I've never done them professionally.
Although I have done a few amateur ones, years back, and I always undercharged because I, like everyone else, knew it 'wasn't a lot of work'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Mod parent up! Don't be charging $20, or a drink, or whatever, for fixing peoples fucked Windows boxes.
You're a dying breed if you are a) good with computers *AND* b) still deal with Windows. The top computer types I know all abandoned Windows years ago, I think I know 1 person who could clean a windows box; the remaining Windows users would not have the knowledge and would do a reinstall (if they could figure out the problem at all), and the remaining top computer types all ditched Windows in favor of better OSes years ago.
Personally I WAS doing computer cleanups for $50.. but quit. I had 4 big factors:
1) My "magic bullet" AVG+Ad-aware live cd, the updates were going to run out soon; the newer versions of AVG + Ad-Aware would not run form a LiveCD.
2) I haven't PERSONALLY used Windows in *years* (I had a virtual machine I used ONLY for making this LiveCD), so my knowledge of what ELSE goes wrong with Windows is increasingly falling behind. This ties in with #1 a bit too, I didn't use Windows enough to want to dig up some *other* virus scanner + spyware scanner that'd work off a CD.
3) Vista. I worked on one Vista box (no not due to viruses) and it was PAINFUL. Slow, UAC pissed me off, it was a real piece of shit. I'd quit rather than work with Vista, so I did. This ties in with #2, I'd NEVER find out about Vista-specific problems since I don't use Windows at all.
4) Pride in work. It sure isn't my fault, but I felt at least a twinge realizing I was cleaning people's systems, telling them "use firefox instead of IE, here's the icon for it, and definitely don't go to these sites again", just to know they definitely WILL run IE and WILL go to those sites again, and get reinfected within a week. If anyone now asks me for advice I advise to ditch windows for Ubuntu or a Mac, that Windows is a lost cause. If they run some specialized (Windows-only) software, then I recommend keeping the Windows machine non-internet-connected (which of course they never do), and keep the hell away from Vista (which, surprisingly, everyone knows.. I've had people who tell me they're running "Windows 99" or some crap (i.e. can't even tell what version they are running) tell me they've heard how crappy Vista is.)
this is true; its just that to a business person, this is the wrong end of the snake to grab. the right end is "how much money do you want to make?" and then you derive the answer from that point by weighing your skills, what the market is willing to pay, etc., and arrive at a) a target market segment or b) the realiztion you need to make some changes to reach your goal.
see? this is an ontological difference here, and it's why business people succeed despite have little or no actually useful or interesting skills and contributing nothing to mankind, and why geeks fail, despite being bright and competent and doing interesting and valuable things.
we're not in disagreement over the issue, we're is disagreement over how to give advice on it. My advice is, learn fundamental business practices to a high level of competency and follow them, just like you do in app dev. Don't muddle through it by experimenting; learn the rules and apply some rigor to your process when you set up a business.
Good coders don't fumble around trying different shit until it just kind of works, they know how to organize, explain, attack and solve the problem in a structured way. same thing in the money world.