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Appeal For Stolen Research Laptop Brings It Back
from the appealing-to-best-interests dept
Interesting story from South Africa where a visiting professor was mugged at knife-point by a bunch of kids. They took his laptop, which apparently included all sorts of data about AIDS that he apparently hadn't backed up anywhere. He told a reporter who wrote a story about it, and within hours was contacted by two "businessmen" who returned the laptop. They said they had "located" the laptop, and were very nervous about handing it over, because they were afraid they might be accused. Eventually, they returned the laptop anonymously to the reporter, who gave it to the professor. Of course, I'm still wondering, who travels internationally with a laptop that has such important data and doesn't have some sort of backup? What if the laptop had simply been bounced around on the flight, and its hard drive destroyed?
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first post for techdot.org
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who travels internationally with a laptop that has such important data and doesn't have some sort of backup
A complete idiot? If the guy's that careless, how effective a researcher can he really be?
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I'm guessing that its either that, or he really wanted the laptop back and so..."exagerated" the value of the data that wasn't backed up.
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Or:
He was on day ten of a data-gathering trip. It's difficult to pack all the extra gear to make field backups of the collected data, and it's difficult to connect to the home office to make remote backups.
Film photographers have two choices: take the film home or mail the film home. There are no backups until the film is developed. Digital photographers are in much the same boat unless they have the budget for a satellite data phone to CNN, or a fragile CD-R device.
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Sounds like most corporate VPs I have met.
Most of these idiots refuse to let IT or anyone
else backup or otherwise touch their laptops
because of all the "sensitive" information on
them. Turns out most of the sensitive info is
really porn, personal emails, or games.
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