Would you make a backup of it, if you had the cure to cancer?

Not these two peeps…

Sook Shin and Ralf Jankecht are cancer researchers at the Oklahoma University. Sadly for cancer patients everywhere (both present and future), the laptop they hadn’t backed up, and that contained the only copy of a possible cure for prostate cancer, was stolen when someone snatched a laptop out of their car.

Their second mistake was not backing up the data on an external media. As any IT professional will tell you, NEVER keep important data on a laptop, especially if it’s precious data you don’t want other people to see, but double especially if said data is NOT BACKED UP.

Important data goes on mainframe servers, the redundant kind, the kind that backs all the data up daily on remote tape drives that are kept in a separate building, just in case the main building decided to morph into another Universe as depicted in Fringe.

It was a comedy of stupid errors by Shin and Jankecht – I mean seriously, a possible cure for cancer not backed up, on a laptop hard drive in the backseat of a car… that’s pretty dumb – but the real villain is the guy who stole the laptop. I wouldn’t wish cancer on anyone, but if you stole a laptop containing a cure for a type of cancer that affects men the world over, you would kinda have it coming to you… from a karmic perspective at least.

There is a no questions asked $1000 reward up for whoever returns the laptop safely – that is more than anyone is every going to get for a secondhand MacBook – so if you are the soulless individual who took their computer, please do the right thing… or at least take their money.

[Daily Mail]