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From: tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu.BERKELEY.EDU (Tom Tedrick)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <12121@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sun, 2-Mar-86 00:04:32 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.12121
Posted: Sun Mar  2 00:04:32 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 19:21:10 EST
References: <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Tom Tedrick)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP> follmer@hplabsb.UUCP (Stephen Follmer) writes:
>
>I was wondering if anyone out there has some horror stories about the
>computer industry; crashed systems or lost backups.  For example, I heard
>a story once about a guy who lost a month's worth of code due to some 
>backup problem.  This was about 6 in the morning, and apparantly, the
>guy caught the next plane to Nepal and joined a monastery.  This is the
>best it could be pieced together since he hasn't been heard from since.
>He just drove to SFO international, put the ticket on his Master Card,
>and disappeared.  Case closed.  The guy was pretty upset, but on his way
>out the door, according to the guard, had a wild grin of calm and happiness,
>as though he'd won the last round with the machine through some Deux
>ex machina.
>
>Have you heard any similar stories?

I threw out 2 years worth of my work that had taken hundreds
of hours of cpu time due to hassles from rude administrators.
When they spotted how much time I had been using, they would
send me these threatening and hostile messages. I would explain
what I was doing, they would apologize and leave me alone. Then
after awhile some new guy would go through the same routine. We
have all these subsidized research machines that are supposed
to be used for research, but when you actually do something (I
got much better results for some problems in cs theory than
anything that had been published) you become the target for
all the negativity of the administrators who suspect someone
is taking advantage. I got completely fed up with having to
deal with personal abuse and do all my research in my head
now. I think I am a damn good researcher, and that bureaucrats
have been a serious problem in slowing down the use of computers
in cs theory research.