• (cs)

    methinks the manager is one of the leeches of Lee's autobahn collection.

  • Short change (unregistered)

    How is this a WTF? The tech overstepped his bounds. If he needed to delete files on the laptop he should have at least called Lee to confirm if it was okay.

    If the tech suspected there was content that was against corporate policy, then he should have immediately brought it to the attention of his supervisor.

    His supervisor would then notify Lee's supervisor and/or the HR department and they would determine if any action would be taken against Lee.

    If Lee was terminated over this, then the laptop would be locked up to become evidence in the very likely upcoming lawsuit. Deleting or otherwise tampering with the files would destroy this evidence.

  • deposition #66 (unregistered) in reply to jspenguin

    This article is relevant because I have a pirated version of The Big Lebowski.

    Hi, I'm from Big Media, and I'm here to help you....

  • (cs)

    At least here... suckers!!!

  • (cs) in reply to Sexy coder
    Sexy coder:
    That makes no sense at all. First, if you are intensively using swap, then your computer will be slow no matter what.
    Intensively or not, swap writes to disk. The swap file in Windows grows and shrinks based on usage. Where it grows to is available space on disk. As HD's write from the outer tracks to the inner tracks, as the free space becomes restricted to the inner tracks, write operations slow down (fewer sectors can be accessed at the same RPM as the track circumference reduces). Add that to a drive where as it nears capacity is almost certainly fragmented, free space becomes peppered throughout the drive, all disk operations become slower.
    Sexy coder:
    Second, I know windows swaps to a file, but doesn't it have fixed size?
    It has a fixed *maximum* size (which in practice, usually becomes pretty fixed, but the size can and will vary)
    Sexy coder:
    he can make the free space more contiguos by defraging the HD
    True. But have you ever tried to defrag a HD that was near or at capacity? The process goes from slow to glacial. Much faster to delete enema pr0n ;)
    Sexy coder:
    Finally, worst case scenario, he deletes a few files, not the whole thing.
    Company PC = Delete anything that ain't needed by the company. When I was a PC tech, deleting porn and movies to free up space was always an easy choice. Take the low-hanging fruit that no one can argue about when you do. :D

    FYI, for your disk-space reading pleasure, see: http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/getstarted/speed.mspx http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/swpfile1.html http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/246317-32-platters-capacity-speed-drop

    Enjoy!

  • Just Some Guy (unregistered) in reply to JimM
    JimM:
    Well, Lee has already admitted to Steve that the Autobahn is leaked, pirated music. So that's illegal.

    No, it's not. Copying a file without the right to do so is illegal, but possession of the results isn't. Furthermore, you and I don't know that Lee's not president of the Autobahn fan club and listening to a copy that the band leaked to him.

    These are fine distinctions, but very important ones.

  • Jeff Rife (unregistered) in reply to Lesson learned: Lee
    Lesson learned: Lee:
    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.
    MP3 files and CD images aren't "software"...they are data.

    So, even if they drive is wiped and only the authorized system image is installed, any data should be backed up first. It doesn't need to be restored, but it needs to be available.

  • Just Some Guy (unregistered) in reply to caffeinatedbacon
    caffeinatedbacon:
    As HD's write from the outer tracks to the inner tracks, as the free space becomes restricted to the inner tracks, write operations slow down (fewer sectors can be accessed at the same RPM as the track circumference reduces).

    I'm unaware of any modern OS that starts at the outside edge and directly works its way in, especially since it's hard (and probably impossible) to tell exactly where a sector lies.

  • Jerf (unregistered)

    The writing quality was subpar on this article. One of the reasons I read this is because usually the article is written like a true article, not a random post on a forum.

  • (cs)
    If Lee was terminated over this, then the laptop would be locked up to become evidence in the very likely upcoming lawsuit.
    Because pirates are a protected class!

    Arrrh!

  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to Just Some Guy
    Just Some Guy:
    caffeinatedbacon:
    As HD's write from the outer tracks to the inner tracks, as the free space becomes restricted to the inner tracks, write operations slow down (fewer sectors can be accessed at the same RPM as the track circumference reduces).

    I'm unaware of any modern OS that starts at the outside edge and directly works its way in, especially since it's hard (and probably impossible) to tell exactly where a sector lies.

    Uh, pretty much all hard drives work like this. It's not "where the operating system starts", it's "where the partition starts". Partitions have a logical number of contiguous blocks starting at block 1. Block 1 is at the outside edge of the disk. It makes perfect sense, because the angular velocity of the disk at the outter edge is at it greatest, and therefore you get the greatest throughput for the data towards the beginning of the disk (which is where most data is going to be anyway). You're always going to have data at the beginning of the disk, but seldom at the end, so why not make throughput better at the beginning.

    There are many benchmarks to prove that this is correct, btw.

  • Fernando (unregistered) in reply to LBD
    LBD:
    Just like one cannot pirate Linux
    Actually, you can. Build an embedded system with Linux as its OS, sell it, and refuse requests for the source code. Have a lawyer on standby.
  • Orbstart (unregistered)

    Is making me squint YAARRRR

    Not that I'm defending the act, but piracy is not in fact piracy, it is copyright violation. Piracy implies theft, theft suggests that you deprive the victim of the article being stolen. Ok, I'm nicking[1] these words from other people who have uttered them before but I think it's important to make the distinction, otherwise we all become victims of the RIAA et al. propaganda mechanisms.

    [1] violating their copyright.

  • (cs) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    Just Some Guy:
    caffeinatedbacon:
    As HD's write from the outer tracks to the inner tracks, as the free space becomes restricted to the inner tracks, write operations slow down (fewer sectors can be accessed at the same RPM as the track circumference reduces).

    I'm unaware of any modern OS that starts at the outside edge and directly works its way in, especially since it's hard (and probably impossible) to tell exactly where a sector lies.

    Uh, pretty much all hard drives work like this. It's not "where the operating system starts", it's "where the partition starts". Partitions have a logical number of contiguous blocks starting at block 1. Block 1 is at the outside edge of the disk. It makes perfect sense, because the angular velocity of the disk at the outter edge is at it greatest, and therefore you get the greatest throughput for the data towards the beginning of the disk (which is where most data is going to be anyway). You're always going to have data at the beginning of the disk, but seldom at the end, so why not make throughput better at the beginning.

    There are many benchmarks to prove that this is correct, btw.

    Only it's uninteresting for swap because swap (especially swapping in) accesses the blocks randomly (whatever code/data the programs need) and the sequential read performance is secondary. The time for a sector to appear under the head is the same on any track. Swapout can be linear, until the swap space is fragmented due to 'random' page life times. The sad truth is that swap is not only slow, because hard disks are slower than RAM in general, but it is worst case for the HD.

  • Jeltz (unregistered) in reply to caffeinatedbacon
    caffeinatedbacon:
    Sexy coder:
    That makes no sense at all. First, if you are intensively using swap, then your computer will be slow no matter what.
    Intensively or not, swap writes to disk. The swap file in Windows grows and shrinks based on usage. Where it grows to is available space on disk. As HD's write from the outer tracks to the inner tracks, as the free space becomes restricted to the inner tracks, write operations slow down (fewer sectors can be accessed at the same RPM as the track circumference reduces). Add that to a drive where as it nears capacity is almost certainly fragmented, free space becomes peppered throughout the drive, all disk operations become slower.

    Madness, if this still is the truth in XP and Vista (I am pretty sure it was in 95/98). Having a swap file which cna become fragmented is horrible. I have seen no UNIX clone with a variable size swap file. Either fixed size swap files or more commonly swap partitions.

  • Marcel (unregistered) in reply to Chris

    ...the angular velocity of the disk at the outter edge is at it greatest...

    The angular velocity is the same everywhere on the disk. The linear velocity is higher at the outer edge.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to caffeinatedbacon
    caffeinatedbacon:
    It has a fixed *maximum* size (which in practice, usually becomes pretty fixed, but the size can and will vary)

    No, you can specify a minimum AND maximum size for the swap file in any windows version from the last decade. Set them to the same value and you have a fixed size swap file that won’t fragment. I think it will increase the maximum size if utterly necessary (ie: it’s run out of swap and ram for programs) but that is rare and generally is a sign you should increase the minimum (or get more ram rather).

  • Eli (unregistered)

    Uh, I don't think you should delete any files off someone's laptop without asking first.

    If there's something on the laptop that really shouldn't be there, bring it to the boss or HR.

  • (cs) in reply to Orbstart
    Orbstart:
    Piracy implies theft, theft suggests that you deprive the victim of the article being stolen.

    No it doesn't. You idiot.

    Go read up about non-rivalrous goods.

  • anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to Jeltz
    Jeltz:
    I have seen no UNIX clone with a variable size swap file.
    Mac OS 10.5 will create and use additional swap files as needed.
  • vlad (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that Lee didn't just stream the music from a machine at home.

  • (cs)

    Haven't we seen this article before?

  • Grig Larson (unregistered)

    I once was doing QA for an image cataloging system. We had been doing some initial bug screening for the Windows version and we had been scouting for a free Mac, but the Mac desktops were in short supply, and each one had multiple uses.

    Finally, a fresh one appeared when an employee was let go during a layoff. It was an older model, but ran System 7.5.3 well, which was the current OS for Apple at the time (1997-ish). So we installed the cataloging software, ran it, and it froze. Hard. Huh. We rebooted, ran it again, and it completely choked. We turned on virtual memory to the maximum, and watched the wheel chug away. Finally, we figured that we had a showstopper bug to submit, so we went to go find someone, got sidetracked, and long story short, didn't get back to the mahine for about an hour.

    When we came back, we found out why it had choked: there was over 500mb of porn on it. This was back when a 1gb hard drive was still pretty big. And the porn that came up was combination of:

    • Young scantily clad boys (not underaged, though... we think)
    • Fishnet stockings
    • Young boys in fishnet stockings
    • Young boys in high heels
    • Various feet, bare and in stockings or shoes, crushing baked beans

    You heard it right, baked beans. As in Hormel's Brown sugar baked beans from a can.

    The imaging cataloging had picked up one of his "hidden" images folder and was choking on generating thousands of thumbnails.

  • Kasper (unregistered) in reply to Fernando
    Fernando:
    LBD:
    Just like one cannot pirate Linux
    Actually, you can. Build an embedded system with Linux as its OS, sell it, and refuse requests for the source code. Have a lawyer on standby.
    I think a lot of router vendors have done it without having lawyers on standby. But when threatened with a lawsuit they all decided to comply.
  • SeaDrive (unregistered)

    You can not have "Training CDs" on your hard drive. A CD is a plastic disk, and you can only store digital data on your hard drive. The WTF is that "Training CDs" were evidently ripped off somehow, and no one had the original media.

    I did read where an IT manager said that if you give a computer guy a tape and tell him to erase it, he will do so, but only after copying it.

  • OhDear (unregistered)

    I generally have found in every IT organization there is usually only one, and only one, twat who is morally opposed to piracy. I doubt that most IT users' iPods are blessed with legitimacy. I have also found that that one oddball is usually the least efficient worker. Usually very good at inventing paperwork though.

  • (cs) in reply to Lesson learned: Lee
    Lesson learned: Lee:
    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.

    To phrase this to more closely match what is going on in the original story:

    When the company's laptop is collected by the company's IT department to have its contents reviewed, you should assume the company's techs will delete anything non-company related.

    B

  • (cs) in reply to Grig Larson
    Grig Larson:
    - Various feet, bare and in stockings or shoes, crushing baked beans

    crushedbakedbeans.com is available for you entrepeneurs out there.

  • iToad (unregistered)

    Well... let's see.

    1. Posession of a privately owned computer on the company premeses.
    2. Attachment of a privately owned computer to the company network.
    3. Downloading pirated music, video, or software using company computers (and/or the company IP address).
    4. Posession of pirated music, video, or software files on company computers.

    Around here, Lee would be so fired...

  • Steve (a different one than the first or subsequent ones, if any) (unregistered)

    Wow, I'm sure glad I don't work in a corporate environment.

  • (cs) in reply to notme
    notme:
    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".

    Are you sure? I've checked, and there a few relevant licenses:

    An EULA for the Mozilla binaries specifically, source is irrelevant.

    The MPL might say what you claim. However, the Mozilla project uses a 'disjunctive tri-license' so you can just modify the code under the GPL or LGPL instead, which have no such term.

    Rather, the restrictions on the use of the Firefox branding come from TRADEMARK law. Firefox is a registered trademark of the Mozilla Foundation, giving them the sole discretion to decide who may or may not use it.

  • angry (unregistered)

    Actally the worst article in the site. Get lost, you Bigot.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Johnny Canuck
    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.
    But dude, if I ever had valuable files on my hard drive that wern't backed up then, well, er, it would be pretty much just another day, but I should be in a bit of doo-doo for being an idiot.

    And if I can't keep my personal files separate from my work files, then I'ld also be pretty dumb.

  • (cs) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    He should have asked before deleting the files. You can never assume anything ,no matter how reasonable it may be. A lesson learned.
    You'd think so, wouldn't you? However, one day, when you actually work for a real company, you'll find that backups are your own responsibility, kid. That is, unless the company provides an automated backup scheme. Usually they'll have a filter of some kind applied, but it's still your responsibility to check that certain files requiring automated backups are not filtered out.

    Maybe it's different in kindergarten...

  • Duke of New York (unregistered)

    A "real" company is going to have people working for a "real" manager ready to put the fear of god into anyone who messes with a system they're not supposed to...

    "kid."

  • (cs) in reply to RTFA
    RTFA:
    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?

    There's all sorts of software floating out there in a company that could be incompatible with other software. Reviewing machines to inventory it their software, version, etc is a good start to building a centralized, managed environment. It also prevents a flood of stop-work issues at the time of integration. The fact that these were portable machines makes them more difficult to scan remotely.

  • Sexy coder (unregistered) in reply to rfsmit
    rfsmit:
    Steve:
    He should have asked before deleting the files. You can never assume anything ,no matter how reasonable it may be. A lesson learned.
    You'd think so, wouldn't you? However, one day, when you actually work for a real company, you'll find that backups are your own responsibility, kid. That is, unless the company provides an automated backup scheme. Usually they'll have a filter of some kind applied, but it's still your responsibility to check that certain files requiring automated backups are not filtered out.

    Maybe it's different in kindergarten...

    My company is so real that not only you have to keep a backup, but you have to memorize the most sensible data as there are hired hackers that will try to hack into your data backup all day long. The hackers are infiltrated and disguised as common employees so they use their social connections within the company in order to hack into your stuff. If you get hacked your month's payment is dicounted, if you're hacked three times, you're fired. Only the very careful hardcore employees make it. That, my friend, is a REAL company. Maybe on your high school company you make things different...

  • Just Some Guy (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    Just Some Guy:
    I'm unaware of any modern OS that starts at the outside edge and directly works its way in, especially since it's hard (and probably impossible) to tell exactly where a sector lies.

    Uh, pretty much all hard drives work like this. It's not "where the operating system starts", it's "where the partition starts". Partitions have a logical number of contiguous blocks starting at block 1. Block 1 is at the outside edge of the disk. It makes perfect sense, because the angular velocity of the disk at the outter edge is at it greatest, and therefore you get the greatest throughput for the data towards the beginning of the disk (which is where most data is going to be anyway). You're always going to have data at the beginning of the disk, but seldom at the end, so why not make throughput better at the beginning.

    There are many benchmarks to prove that this is correct, btw.

    Again, modern OSes don't work like that. For instance, FreeBSD spreads data across cylinder groups within a partition to minimize fragmentation. See Wikipedia's "Unix File System" (UFS) entry.

    Also, modern drives are designed to lie about block layout, aka remapping. Whenever you request block N, there's no guarantee or reasonable expectation that it'll be physically adjacent to blocks N+-1.

    I know perfectly well how hard drives work, and quite a bit about filesystems. In summary, you're making assumptions about how files are physically laid out that aren't justified.

  • Alan (unregistered)

    bah, I feel bad now. I can see the resemblance of Lee and me.

    As I type this I'm at work with headphones on listening to loud techno music... my boss does the same thing, has to tap me on the shoulder when he wants my attention. I've even done the entire 'mistakenly pulled out headphones from computer when spinning around', to have my music suddenly loudly go through the speakers... at which point my coworkers look at me and go "... you where listening... to that?"

    I'm a good 10 years younger then my coworkers, so they put it under the category of "damn kids these days".

    Well, I don't care, I like my music :P

  • HK47 (unregistered) in reply to Alan
    Alan:
    bah, I feel bad now. I can see the resemblance of Lee and me.

    As I type this I'm at work with headphones on listening to loud techno music... my boss does the same thing, has to tap me on the shoulder when he wants my attention. I've even done the entire 'mistakenly pulled out headphones from computer when spinning around', to have my music suddenly loudly go through the speakers... at which point my coworkers look at me and go "... you where listening... to that?"

    I'm a good 10 years younger then my coworkers, so they put it under the category of "damn kids these days".

    Well, I don't care, I like my music :P

    Congratulations on going deaf.

  • acid (unregistered) in reply to Nicolas Verhaeghe
    Nicolas Verhaeghe:
    I found out that the laptop was full of enema porn (yes, there is such a thing and yes, it is gross).

    Now maybe I've just lived a far more sheltered life than I thought but personally, I think that's the REAL WTF right there...

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to Technical Thug
    Technical Thug:
    Orbstart:
    Piracy implies theft, theft suggests that you deprive the victim of the article being stolen.

    No it doesn't. You idiot.

    Go read up about non-rivalrous goods.

    Theft is larceny, if someone is not deprived of the good after it is "stolen", then it is not larceny, it is something else, eg copyright infringement.
  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    Well... let's see.
    1. Posession of a privately owned computer on the company premeses.

    [snip]

    Around here, Lee would be so fired...

    You aren't allowed personal cell phones or PDA's on company property?
  • Internet Roadkill on Information Superhighway (unregistered)

    Just remember the teachings of the original Bastard Operator From Hell (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/19/bofh_2008_episode_31/):

    "Look," I sigh. "It's a Friday afternoon and I can see where this is going, so why don't we just cut to the chase? We get calls from concerned users like yourself upon occasion and I'll tell you what I tell them: When it comes to an administrator's interest in your affairs you're competing against the rich tapestry of the internet - and losing. The only thing that can possibly be done to engage our interest in you is for you to complain about your lack of privacy - because then we start wondering what the hell it is you have that you don't want us to see. And before you know it the administrator concerned has passed you on to someone such as myself whose sole purpose is to keep you talking long enough to fire off a backup of the contents of your hard drive."

  • fred (unregistered) in reply to JimM
    JimM:
    Over 90% of the hard drive taken up with personal files? IMNSHA, not acceptable usage...

    What "personal files"? It's music that he listens to at work.

    I have a bunch of music on my laptop (for, you guessed it, listening to while I work), if space becomes a problem, I can delete some to make room - I don't need some dipshit tech doing it for me.

  • Trevor D'Arcy-Evans (unregistered) in reply to Nicolas Verhaeghe

    The sysadmin at my old job had to look at one of the sales guys laptops. Out of curiosity, he had at look at his IE cache. After that, we referred to him as 'Mr Bestial'.

  • (cs) in reply to strcmp
    strcmp:
    Only it's uninteresting for swap because swap (especially swapping in) accesses the blocks randomly (whatever code/data the programs need) and the sequential read performance is secondary. The time for a sector to appear under the head is the same on any track. Swapout can be linear, until the swap space is fragmented due to 'random' page life times. The sad truth is that swap is not only slow, because hard disks are slower than RAM in general, but it is worst case for the HD.
    Not just that, but the chances are reasonably high that the drive will have to move the read head between reading each block of swap. Which isn't fast and (probably) won't use the drive's built-in cache.

    With sequential reads, there's a fair chance that you'll get a whole track off the drive in one go, even with remapping. And the drive's firmware will probably predict it correctly too and so have the stuff in cache even if you break up the sequential read over many read() calls. Random access stuff (e.g. swap) doesn't benefit like that. As you said, a worst case.

  • You call this working? (unregistered) in reply to fred
    fred:
    JimM:
    Over 90% of the hard drive taken up with personal files? IMNSHA, not acceptable usage...

    What "personal files"? It's music that he listens to at work.

    I have a bunch of music on my laptop (for, you guessed it, listening to while I work), if space becomes a problem, I can delete some to make room - I don't need some dipshit tech doing it for me.

    A company laptop is for company business, and work is not the place to indulge in entertainment, be that listening to music, reading newspapers, talking to friends on the phone etc. It's work, so you should be working.

  • (cs) in reply to zip
    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.

    Hence Lee couldn't download anymore. Stupid enough that he didn't see that and backed up what was his.

  • RiF (unregistered) in reply to Grig Larson
    Grig Larson:
    As in Hormel's Brown sugar baked beans from a can.

    WTF?

    Beanz. Meanz. Heinz.

    n00b.

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