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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 10 2019, @05:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-a-big-easter-egg dept.

From Asahi Shimbun

A man who won an Internet auction for used hard disks soon discovered that he was in the possession of confidential and sensitive government information that he had no business reading.

At first, the man, who owns an information technology company, was puzzled when he found repeated mention in the file names of Kanagawa Prefecture.

But he was in for a greater shock when he used recovery software and found that the files on the hard disks contained mountains of data compiled by the Kanagawa prefectural government.

The data included everything from individuals who were behind on their taxes and the amount; documents considering the seizure of assets; documents related to contract bid amounts; rosters of employees at public schools; and even design blueprints for electric power plants and water supply works.


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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 10 2019, @06:37PM (11 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday December 10 2019, @06:37PM (#930689)

    > Please find the floppy disk stapled to this letter.

    And what's wrong with that? So long as you only staple the corner, which is what most people do most of the time, the disk itself will be fine. Heck, even the edges are probably okay (for a while) so long as the disk isn't full. Which probably led to some people being really confused when every once in a while the data was corrupted because they poked a hole through a data-bearing bit of disk.

    My favorite was the lady who couldn't figure out why her data kept getting corrupted when keeping her disks safely secured to a filing cabinet with magnets...

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:17PM (10 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:17PM (#930712) Journal

    I was making regular backup copies of the floppy disk, but right now our photocopier is broken.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:34PM (5 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:34PM (#930720)

      I must say, I've never before seen someone manage to break their New Years Resolution before New Years even arrives. That's got to be some kind of record.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:18PM (4 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:18PM (#930783) Journal

        The idea is that maybe 2020 could finally be the first year that I don't break it. I'm trying so hard.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:39PM (3 children)

          by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:39PM (#931050)

          Well... I suppose if you squint just right making a self-breaking resolution is kind of like not breaking it yourself?

          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 11 2019, @03:52PM (2 children)

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 11 2019, @03:52PM (#931084) Journal

            Self breaking resolutions are better than resolutions that require manual effort to break. Easier to deploy. More complex to construct.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 11 2019, @04:06PM (1 child)

              by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday December 11 2019, @04:06PM (#931096)

              I suppose at the master level you construct resolutions that preemptively break next year's resolution? Or perhaps retroactively break last years?

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @10:22PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @10:22PM (#931240)

                This sentence is a non-self-breaking non-resolution of itself.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday December 10 2019, @08:10PM (3 children)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday December 10 2019, @08:10PM (#930744) Journal

      I've once read somewhere on the internet of an incident where support asked for a copy of the installation disk of a program to find out why it didn't work. The customer sent a photocopy. And yet, support could help them: They found out from the label that it was the wrong version.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:37PM (1 child)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:37PM (#930794) Journal

        I had been making backups, as you said, but then I read: DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY! So I quit making backups believing that to be the right thing to do.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday December 11 2019, @09:30AM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday December 11 2019, @09:30AM (#930991) Journal

          “No, I didn't obtain an illegal copy of the floppy. I'm just keeping a backup floppy for a friend. You know, it is important to store backups off-site. Why I installed the program on my computer? Well, it is important to test backups to ensure they actually work.”

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 1) by notrandom on Wednesday December 11 2019, @07:04AM

        by notrandom (5820) on Wednesday December 11 2019, @07:04AM (#930985)

        Welp, i'm a webmaster/sysadmin and also a client of the hosting industry. I had to deal with many more idiotic sysadmins and support personnel than with stupid clients... =/