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Unfortunately Mr. Cascio's story is all too familiar to me...Those
readers interested in seeing a similar story on a much larger scale
might be interested in reading the enclosed paper, which I gave at the
Society of Amercian Archivists 1995 Annual Meeting. Concerns a data
recovery attempt for records generated by the criminal trials re:
Charles Keating and the Lincoln Savings and Loan collapse. Lincoln's
parent copany was the American Continental Corporation...I'd appreciate
it if you would not distribute this further as I do hope to have this in
print very soon (long overdue)...The enclosure should appear as a
Wordperfect or a Notepad file if the listserver and your local system
handle attachments...There are some stage notes in the text so please
excuse - not quite ready for prime time!
Rob Spindler, Head
Dept. of Archives and Manuscripts
Arizona State University Libraries, Box 871006 Tempe, AZ 85287
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stewart Brand [SMTP:]
> Sent: Friday, April 17, 1998 11:31 AM
> To: timeandbits
> Subject: the problem is worse than you think
>
> The legacy-system-from-hell may already be here. --Stewart
>
> >
> >Mime-Version: 1.0
> >Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 10:24:07 -0700
> >To:
> >From: Jamais Cascio
> >Subject: the problem is worse than you think
> >
> >regarding data integrity, from RISKS:
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 10:14:17 -0700 (PDT)
> >From: Fred Cohen
> >Subject: HP200 data integrity woes
> >
> >I just had an amazing conversation with Hewlett Packard's support
> services.
> >
> >My HP200 lost it's mind this morning and corrupted the content of
> it's RAM
> >disk. I was able to reboot the computer and get a copy of the data
> onto a
> >PCMCIA memory card and put it onto other computers at my site. The
> next step
> >was to try to recover the content, so naturally, I called HP's
> support line.
> >
> >They told me that the palmtop computers they were selling only a few
> months
> >ago used formats for their calendar and quicken databases that they
> did not
> >know how to read. They claimed that they went directly to their own
> >engineers who had designed the products and that these folks did not
> know
> >what the data formats were - even for their own proprietary file
> formats!
> >
> >I guess it's the end of an era when a company with a long reputation
> for
> >high quality and reliability doesn't even know how their own products
> work.
> >
> >I guess I'll just have to hack their software to get my data back.
> >
> > [Added later:]
> >
> >So I tried to call Intuit to get technical support for data recovery
> from
> >corrupt pocket quicken data files, and wouldn't you know...
> >
> >The Intuit Web page refers you to HP for support of the HP-based
> quicken
> >products, but as we already know, HP doesn't know the format
> information
> >required for file recovery. So next I tried the number for Intuit's
> corporate
> >headquarters as posted on their Web page - 1-800-446-8848
> >
> >But lo and behold, the area code for the area I live in recently
> changed
> >from 510 to 925, so apparently the phone switch at quicken decided I
> was
> >calling from Canada. Instead of technical support, I got a new
> telephone
> >number to call that was toll-free from Canada - but of course it
> doesn't
> >work from the United States.
> >
> >Next I tried the operator (not the quicken operator - no such option
> on
> >their answering machine and buttins like 0 don't work) and got a
> number in
> >Mountain View for the real Quicken headquarters - which I called.
> Naturally,
> >I finally did get an operator - and I found out that there is a
> number for
> >quicken technical people - it's 520-618-7292 - but the operator told
> me that
> >it wouldn't help to have the number today (Thursday) since all the
> employees
> >were having a party today to celebrate that 15th anniversary of the
> founding
> >of the company. I tried anyway and got a fast busy signal.
> >
> >So my denial of service was caused by:
> >
> > A human design failure in my willingness to trust a computer with
> my
> > upcoming appointments.
> >
> > A hardware failure in a palmtop computer.
> >
> > A software failure in the inability to read the hardware-corrupted
> files.
> >
> > A business failure by HP not having the necessary information on
> > their own products.
> >
> > An information failure in the Intuit Web page not leading you to
> > technical support that knows the answer to your questions.
> >
> > An infrastructure failure in the telephone system deciding I am
> from
> > Canada.
> >
> > A business model failure in my expectation that during normal
> > business hours a company that is supposed to be a major player in a
> > financial industry would be available to support their products.
> >AND
> > A support failure in that they were not available to support their
> product.
> >
> >The probability of all of this set of events must be astronomically
> small by
> >the calculations of any competent risk analysis system, but that just
> goes
> >to show you - tightly coupled systems with interdependencies... yada
> yada
> >yada
> >
> >As a postscript, by now I have recovered most of my data -- using an
> old
> >fashioned text editor and the normal tools available from Unix. Under
> DOS
> >or Windows there was no hope.
> >
> >Fred Cohen & Associates: http://all.net
-
>
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
>