Posted on 04/26/2013 10:05:30 PM PDT by grundle
That's the price Jingming Zhang, 28, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, N.J., is offering for the data on his laptop, which was stolen on April 19.
Zhang was so distraught that he posted a flyer on the wall of the Wright-Rieman building, from where his computer was taken sometime between 10 a.m. and 5:15 p.m.
"If you stole my laptop and now you are reading this letter, I would like to say that you can keep the computer and I would like to pay you money for my data under D drive," he wrote. "The data is my FIVE-YEAR work."
Zhang's laptop had been in an unlocked room in Wright-Rieman, which houses laboratories.
Moral of the story: Lock your door. And always back up your data.
(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...
This guy has a bright future ahead of himself in the Federal government.
This individual is too stupid to deserve "phd" after his name.
Or perhaps that is an extreme demonstration of the current state of scholarship in the U.S.
I can't imagine even jr. high schoolers failing the "backup regularly" common sense test.
This story just boggles the brain...
He could have bought 900 2Gb memory sticks with that $1000. And 8 seconds each time he saved the document.
How do these people function? How is it possible, with all the changes, revisions, etc., that he would have made to his research over 5 years, did he not save a copy?
I’m taking a break right now while I’m writing a paper (I’m a professor & PhD). Even when I’m taking little breaks like this, I backup to two locations. How could he have functioned in school without backing up his stuff?
I’m in a semi-technical field and know a bunch of Chinese PhDs - I can’t picture any of them doing something so foolish. I feel bad for the guy.
Hey! I just thought - if he’s really set to defend, his chair must have a copy of the dissertation (or at least an email with the diss attached) because the committee had to read it before allowing him to set a date for the defense! Maybe he’ll be alright.
Read the same story at the University of Iowa 15 years ago, and read the same story before that at CU Boulder 20 years ago.
My instinct - someone’s got a critical academic deadline to meet, and they haven't done the work.
Computer disappears, then, they get an automatic extension.
Like the old biker says: “If you got a ten dollar head, wear a ten dollar helmet.”
And backups of really valuable information should be kept in a minimal of two locations, just in case his apartment goes up in flames and takes his computer and original backups.
No kidding! Has he never heard of a flash drive?
Everyone I know who has done a thesis in the last 5 years, immediately transfers it, for this exact reason.
Five years of work, I feel for the kid.
I wouldn’t call,him stupid. He simply trusted too much in that nothing would happen.
>>And backups of really valuable information should be kept in a minimal of two locations, just in case his apartment goes up in flames and takes his computer and original backups.
Sure, in the situation where you have lots of data that has to be backed up to hardware. I used to take a second copy of backup tapes home when I was an I.T. manager.
But what makes this such a no-brainer, is this guy likely just had document files and maybe some Powerpoint stuff or something that could probably fit in the 5 GB he could get free with Google Drive many times over. Just copy and paste for cripes sake. I have zero sympathy for him.
That is exactly what I was going to post. Happens often in FreepLand.
I made so many back-ups on CDs, flash drives and paper that I sometimes became confused as to what was the latest version. I carried the flashdrive with me!
I learned to do all that because of a story a professor told me years earlier: When he was a graduate student his car (with his dissertation inside) was stolen. He never saw either item again. Thankfully he had sent his father a photocopy of his work for safe keeping!
That is one of the things I love about Windows 8.....you get 5 GB free Skydrive space. More if you buy Office 2013.
Your Skydrive is in your folder, like a local drive.
You can access your files from any computer, even if it does not have Office on it.
Mr too. Either this is an internet myth or a scam to get more time to do the work.
How does this differ from DropBox, which has been around for several years, enables private storage, sharing peer to peer with prior user approval and provides notification of modification to all users, or entirely public files?
DropBox is available for free to anyone, no need for Windows 8. Works just fine on XP, icon right on the desktop if you want.
Lenovo Thinkpad T420S? I’m surprised it last 5yrs and didn’t crash long before that, losing all his data.
Back-up yer stuff.
You can also synch your Skydrive folder among multiple computers. MS has had the service for years now in several versions (livesynch, livemesh, etc) and it’s always been free.
Even a novice can see the problem with putting your backup “in the cloud”. As long as it is nothing you care anything about, you are OK.
A server somewhere in India or China may not be the safest place to store your data, even if “encrypted”.
DropBox is awesome; automatic backups to the cloud, auto sync to multiple devices, and automatic versioning of every document saved. This has saved me numerous times where I revised a document, didn’t like the result, and simply recovered an earlier version from a prior day.
Jingming means Bass in Chinese. Zhang means Dumb in Chinese. The Chinese have the last name first so we would call this guy who never made a backup of his work Dumb Bass.
An oldie but a goodie.
Tech support call from someone experiencing an ID Ten T (Id10t) error.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TSWnR1LdnA
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