Comment On Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life for Lee

"The tech deleted whatever files he could that looked illegal and moved on."

Ok, so sure Lee was potentially breaking the law, blah blah blah. But dude, if I ever accidentally got a co-workers laptop, and I deleted files without knowing EXACTLY what they were, I'd be in pretty deep doo-doo too.

The details might be strange, but the WTF on this one is why it's a WTF. The tech deleted material from an employees working environment that he was not sure of without backing it up first. That does deserve a reprimand.

Please forward the real name of Lee and his company to us or get sued!

Signed,

The RIAA

PS. Or just send money

He should have asked before deleting the files. You can never assume anything ,no matter how reasonable it may be. A lesson learned.

This comment was posted from a pirated Firefox running on my corporate laptop.

Steve:

He should have asked before deleting the files. You can never assume anything ,no matter how reasonable it may be. A lesson learned.

Actually, when your laptop is collected by your company to have its contents reviewed, you can't assume they won't format the entire drive and reinstall only the necessary software.

Couldn't remember where I'd heard 'Autobahn' before. Then 'Nagelbett' reminded me it was The Big Lebowski.

I confess I have no idea what Steve's problem is. He's "in disbelief" because his coworker was disciplined for deleting files wholesale? WTF? The "pirate" business is a complete red herring. You don't just delete files from someone's computer without knowing what you're doing -- whether you suspect Autobahn is not getting the full income from their songs is irrelevant.

Memorize these lyrics and everything will be okay.

-You Are A Pirate, by Lazy Town-

Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!

Yar - har - fiddle-dee-dee, being a pirate is all right to be!
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!

You are a pirate! (Yay!)

We got us a map (a map!) to lead us to a hidden box,
Thats all locked up with locks (with locks!) and buried deep away.
We'll dig up the box (the box!), we know it's full of precious booty
Burst open the locks, and then we'll say 'HOORAY!'

Yar - har - fiddle-dee-dee,
If you love to sail the sea, you are a pirate!

WEIGH ANCHOR!

Yah - har - fiddle-dee-dee, being a pirate is all right to be!
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!
Arr - yarr - ahoy and avast, dig in the dirt and you dig in it fast!
Hang the black flag at the end of the mast! You are a pirate!

HA HA HA (Yay!)

We're sailing away (set sail!), adventure waits on every shore!
We set sail and explore (ya-har!) and run and jump all day (Yay!)
We float on our boat (our boat!) until its time to drop the anchor,
Then hang up our coats (aye-aye!) until we sail again!

Yar - har - fiddle-dee-dee,
If you love to sail the sea you are a pirate!

LAND HO!

Yar - har - fiddle-dee-dee, being a pirate is alright with me!
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!
Yar har wind at your back lads, wherever you go!
Blue sky above and blue ocean below, you are a pirate!

HA HA HA!
You are a pirate!

Unbeknownst to Steve, a fellow technician had received Lee's laptop. During the analysis, he was shocked to find that the hard drive had less than 1GB of space available, and that the hard drive was full of pirated DVD rips, MP3s, and the like. The tech deleted whatever files he could that looked illegal and moved on.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Can anyone tell me what problem this fellow technician is solving here?

Red Green:

Unbeknownst to Steve, a fellow technician had received Lee's laptop. During the analysis, he was shocked to find that the hard drive had less than 1GB of space available, and that the hard drive was full of pirated DVD rips, MP3s, and the like. The tech deleted whatever files he could that looked illegal and moved on.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Can anyone tell me what problem this fellow technician is solving here?

Uh, under a gig of free space is the problem.

Ok, this is definitely from the sidebar (http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/t/9843.aspx), but it's rewritten to be more exciting and put up as a feature article. Shouldn't it be in the Best of the Sidebar section verbatim? I thought the rewriting was supposed to be for anonymization, which this didn't need.

Red Green:

Unbeknownst to Steve, a fellow technician had received Lee's laptop. During the analysis, he was shocked to find that the hard drive had less than 1GB of space available, and that the hard drive was full of pirated DVD rips, MP3s, and the like. The tech deleted whatever files he could that looked illegal and moved on.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Can anyone tell me what problem this fellow technician is solving here?

Does the legal problem not count?

This article is trolling.

BobB:

Memorize these lyrics and everything will be okay.

-You Are A Pirate, by Lazy Town-

*SNIP*

Those lyrics are copyrighted content. Please delete the referenced post and just in case, any posts surrounding it. After all, we only have 1 gig of free space.

So, why is it illegal to have MP3s on a laptop? I'd surely rather rip all my cd's to mp3 instead of carrying hundreds of cd's to my office (and probably back everyday, if I want to listen to them at home also).

Does anyone else think Jake needs to retake English 101? This article was a bit hard to read and piece together. As such, I don't really know what TRWTF(tm) is.

One cannot pirate firefox. It's free and therefore unpiratable.

Just like one cannot pirate Linux

N00b

Mike:

This comment was posted from a pirated Firefox running on my corporate laptop.

Really? Yours too? My little fox logo has an eye patch and a hook for a paw YAR!

Portable firefox rocks.

zip:

Red Green:

Unbeknownst to Steve, a fellow technician had received Lee's laptop. During the analysis, he was shocked to find that the hard drive had less than 1GB of space available, and that the hard drive was full of pirated DVD rips, MP3s, and the like. The tech deleted whatever files he could that looked illegal and moved on.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Can anyone tell me what problem this fellow technician is solving here?

Uh, under a gig of free space is the problem.

Only if you need to download all videos made by the Autobahn.

Red Green:

Can anyone tell me what problem this fellow technician is solving here?

Besides scanning for viruses/spyware, what else could "had their contents reviewed" mean?

LBD:

One cannot pirate firefox. It's free and therefore unpiratable.

Just like one cannot pirate Linux

N00b

Did you know the word sarcasm isn't in the dictionary?

LBD:

Mike:

This comment was posted from a pirated Firefox running on my corporate laptop.

One cannot pirate firefox. It's free and therefore unpiratable.

Just like one cannot pirate Linux

N00b

The fail is strong with this one.

LBD:

One cannot pirate firefox. It's free and therefore unpiratable.

Just like one cannot pirate Linux

N00b

That was the joke, "N00b". Get your humor center fixed.

Edit: 3 posts in 5 minutes, in a row, about the same thing. Lovely.

zip:

Red Green:

Can anyone tell me what problem this fellow technician is solving here?

Uh, under a gig of free space is the problem.

Then the obvious solution is to back-up material to another medium (company folders, CD, DVD, etc.) and then remove it from the laptop.

What's that, you say? It's easier to just arbitrarily delete files that I suspect might be illegal? Well, you'd better know for sure, because if you wipe out legitimate work, you'll be getting a (deserved) reprimand.

This really is one of the least WTF I've ever seen posted here.

MrTweek:

So, why is it illegal to have MP3s on a laptop? I'd surely rather rip all my cd's to mp3 instead of carrying hundreds of cd's to my office (and probably back everyday, if I want to listen to them at home also).

Well, Lee has already admitted to Steve that the Autobahn is leaked, pirated music. So that's illegal.

gabba:

The "pirate" business is a complete red herring. You don't just delete files from someone's computer without knowing what you're doing -- whether you suspect Autobahn is not getting the full income from their songs is irrelevant.

No, the pirate business is not a complete red herring. If the files are stored on equipment that is legally owned by the company, and the company reviews the content of its equipment, then leaving the potentially pirated material on there would make the company complicit in the piracy.

Johnny Canuck:

But dude, if I ever accidentally got a co-workers laptop, and I deleted files without knowing EXACTLY what they were, I'd be in pretty deep doo-doo too.

In case you didn't read it, the laptop was collected for review. This wasn't an accident, it was a deliberate review of laptop content. Presumably the whole point was to ensure that no unsuitable content was being kept on work laptops, and I'd call 40GB of potentially illegal copies unsuitable. Frankly, more than a few GB of personal data would be unsuitable - you can only listen to 8 hours of music on any given workday anyway.

Johnny Canuck:

The tech deleted material from an employees working environment that he was not sure of without backing it up first.

This may be more to the point - that the files were deleted without backup and without reference to the owner to check what they were and what they were used for. So, that's the first WTF.

Article:

Steve explained it to the manager, who closed his eyes as if he was in intense thought, exhaling loudly through his nostrils. "Well, we mentioned the laptop in Lee's employment contract."

This is the second: Lee's contract mentioned a laptop without specifying how it was to be used. Any contract stating the the company will provide a laptop should have clearly stated usage terms detailing whether / how much personal use is allowed. Over 90% of the hard drive taken up with personal files? IMNSHA, not acceptable usage...

Andrew:

LBD:

One cannot pirate firefox. It's free and therefore unpiratable.

Just like one cannot pirate Linux

N00b

Did you know the word sarcasm isn't in the dictionary?

They removed gullible, too.

Andrew:

LBD:

One cannot pirate firefox. It's free and therefore unpiratable.

Just like one cannot pirate Linux

N00b

Did you know the word sarcasm isn't in the dictionary?

You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think.

At my last company the dev server was running out of space.
Everyone was to remove old projects. Most projects were ASP with a few images so less than 10mb.
After the request was made three times in a month, the server did not seem to be gaining any significant space.
A quick search filtered to files over 500mb, showed two results, one a legitimate 540mb PSD with loads of layers and a 44gb ZIP file called backup.zip that was in the Images folder of a copy of an old project that had been renamed to PROJECT_OLD.
Took a while to decompress but the whole things was mp3s.

LBD:

One cannot pirate firefox. It's free and therefore unpiratable.

Just like one cannot pirate Linux

N00b

Of course one can, it's just a matter of breaking the GPL or Mozilla License. Then the copyright laws come in to rip you off your freedoms. Just because you can do more stuff doesn't mean you can't pirate. For something to be unpiratable it has to be in the public domain.

Mike:

This comment was posted from a pirated Firefox running on my corporate laptop.

You should switch to iceweasel, in order to avoid that issue :-).

It is messed up that the company would be ok with all the pirated data, however in my experience its not enough to be right you've got to be profitable. Just because something might be illegal doesn't mean management will over look loosing time and money over it.

"Just like one cannot pirate Linux"

Sure you can.

SCO did. The rejected the licence that allowed them to distribute Linux (the GPL) and then distributed Linux without permission from Linux' owners.

That's "piracy", surely.

The real WTF is when this is posted on Reddit in 10 months as though it is a new story.

Inconceivable!

Nicolas Verhaeghe:

I was asked to look at his laptop because it was running very slow.

I found out that the laptop was full of enema porn (yes, there is such a thing and yes, it is gross).

He had gigabytes of enema and scat movies of all sorts, tons of images downloaded and he was part of dozens of Yahoo groups related to the topic.

This was a manager who was very bossy and borderline abusive with everybody and me in particular.

I deleted all these files, gave it a good defrag and installed a RAM module (it had been ordered for him) and when I handed the laptop back to him I said:

"It's ok, now, I gave the hard drive a good ENEMA".

He never was bossy with me anymore and avoided looking at me.

So you deleted the guys porn just for fun? Last I heard storing media on a HD doesn't account for computer slowness. The extra RAM was probably what fixed it. You're a big jerk :-(.

LBD:

One cannot pirate firefox. It's free and therefore unpiratable.

Not true. You can:
1. Download the Firefox source code
2. Optionally alter it in some way
3. Compile it
4. Redistribute it, while still calling it "Firefox" (and not something else, like "Iceweasel")
5. ???
6. Profit!

The Firefox license says you cannot distribute any firefox binaries that are officially branded as Firefox and have not been compiled by the Mozilla Project. Distributing these binaries like that is technically a copyright violation, or "software piracy".

Tell me, is Steve the six-fingered man? I have a little bone to pick with him.

CAPTCHA: gravis - still made the best damn sound card of the early 90's

The real WTF is you think MP3 and other digital media are automatically illegal.

What's wrong with klismaphilia? You hurt my feelings :(

Jake Vinson:

Steve's boss half-yelled a cheerful "Lee! This is Steve, new in IT!" No response. "Lee!" Still nothing. The boss sighed, turned to Steve, and said "Sometimes Lee likes to listen to music loud on his headphones."

That's why we use Google Talk at our IT department. It doesn't matter you're in the same room if your addressee can't hear you. Plus, I'd rather paste a URL instead of reading it out loud.

Sexy coder:

Nicolas Verhaeghe:

I was asked to look at his laptop because it was running very slow.

So you deleted the guys porn just for fun? Last I heard storing media on a HD doesn't account for computer slowness. The extra RAM was probably what fixed it. You're a big jerk :-(.

Fill your HD past about the 90% mark (in any flavour of Windows at least), and every % above 90 drops your performance by about a quarter of the performance you had at the % before it (e.g at 91 you get 75% performance, 92 you get 57%).

Lots of reasons for this: the swap file has to be written in smaller chunks over a larger part of the HD, file saves are less efficient, and reads can go from very linear on the HD platter to something resembling the moves printed on the back of a 'Breakdance' LP.

TMYK :)

IByte:

Jake Vinson:

Steve's boss half-yelled a cheerful "Lee! This is Steve, new in IT!" No response. "Lee!" Still nothing. The boss sighed, turned to Steve, and said "Sometimes Lee likes to listen to music loud on his headphones."

That's why we use Google Talk at our IT department. It doesn't matter you're in the same room if your addressee can't hear you. Plus, I'd rather paste a URL instead of reading it out loud.

Weird, I can hear just fine people on the same room as me, but I have exceptional hearing.

Uh no, his hard drive was running out of space and the entire hard drive, as well as the pagefile was badly fragmented.

When you run out of space on your hard drive, it truly slows things down.

And it was also against company policy and yes, he had pissed me off enough that I wanted him to shut his clapper.

mauhiz:

What's wrong with klismaphilia? You hurt my feelings :(

I have seen it all and I don't care whatever fetish you have.

In his case, he was a big jerk and I wanted him to shut up.

Also it was against company policies, which he was also pretending to be promoting.

caffeinatedbacon:

Sexy coder:

Nicolas Verhaeghe:

I was asked to look at his laptop because it was running very slow.

So you deleted the guys porn just for fun? Last I heard storing media on a HD doesn't account for computer slowness. The extra RAM was probably what fixed it. You're a big jerk :-(.

Fill your HD past about the 90% mark (in any flavour of Windows at least), and every % above 90 drops your performance by about a quarter of the performance you had at the % before it (e.g at 91 you get 75% performance, 92 you get 57%).

Lots of reasons for this: the swap file has to be written in smaller chunks over a larger part of the HD, file saves are less efficient, and reads can go from very linear on the HD platter to something resembling the moves printed on the back of a 'Breakdance' LP.

TMYK :)

That makes no sense at all. First, if you are intensively using swap, then your computer will be slow no matter what. Second, I know windows swaps to a file, but doesn't it have fixed size? I'm pretty sure you can at least set it like that and it would be very dumb if a swap file with fixed size would be scattered all over the HD (unless it's impossible to do otherwise), so I'm confident windows would work things out. Which leads to my next point, he can make the free space more contiguos by defraging the HD, after that, you create your fixed-size swap file.

What is he indexing the web or something? Because usually having a fragmented hard disk doesn't account for that much slowness, unless it's very fragmented. But then again, using a lot of disk doesn't automatically mean heavy fragmentation. I've used for a long time a computer with the disk nearly full all the time, the file access time was nothing out of the ordinary. I wasn't using windows, but I hear ntfs is very good, so I don't think it was a system-specific feature I was experimenting.

Finally, worst case scenario, he deletes a few files, not the whole thing.

Nicolas Verhaegeh:

Uh no, his hard drive was running out of space and the entire hard drive, as well as the pagefile was badly fragmented.

When you run out of space on your hard drive, it truly slows things down.

And it was also against company policy and yes, he had pissed me off enough that I wanted him to shut his clapper.

If there's no space left and that's a problem you should just report him "hey, you gotta delete something", then he goes on and deletes whatever he pleases. Of course, you might as well have the legally right or even the obligation (if you value your job) of doing so. If you already don't like the guy, you won't be willing to take the risk at all, I agree. If that was the case I'd probably regreatfully delete the files, because I find that sort of policy ridiculous. As long as you're happy with the guy's work you should keep on paying him to do so, I see no reason not to.

Uh, under a gig of free space is the problem.

Didn't seem to be bothering the laptop's user... why would that bother the technician?

You don't just delete files from someone's computer without knowing what you're doing

Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing. Getting rid of nonsense.

The "training CD's were deleted" was a complete pile of crap. Just like those weren't "backup copies" of his CD's.

If Lee's laptop was that important to be written into a contract, then someone needed to tell the IT department. But then management would need to take responsibility for dropping the ball, so they dumped it all on Steve's coworker.