Re: Assault on Edward Hall
J. Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
Mon, 3 Apr 95 11:38:00 -0500
CL> I reprint, with the permission of its editor, Susan Skomal, this
CL> "letter to the editor", which appeared on page 2 of the *Anthro-
CL> pology Newsletter* (of the American Anthropology Association) for
CL> March 1995.
CL> ===================================================================
[extremely sad tale about robbery of computer-bound work deleted]
CL> Edward T. Hall
CL> ========================================================================
CL> I don't know what the sci.anthropology and ANTHRO-L readership can do
CL> for Professor Hall, apart from his suggestion to "keep an eye and an ear
CL> out"; I do know that he deserves better than this.
CL> Thanks to DS, the correspondent who brought this to my attention, and
CL> suggested we circulate it through sci.anthropology.
CL> --
CL> Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
Yet another reason to back up work;-(. On a related-though-non-anthro
note, I remember hearing the author _______ Haley ("Wheels" and other
books) on a talk show where he described his abject fear of losing his
work in progress. He takes about 5 years to do a book, and during that
time, at the end of each day, he backs up his work twice, and both he
and his secretary take home a copy. Remember that not only theft
(whether deliberately "targeted" or not), but fire can destroy a whole
lotta work, and nothing is less fun than redoing stuff you've already
done once (Haley said he'd probably drop a half-finished book rather
than try to duplicate it).
On a related solution note (and I don't sell the item I'm mentioning),
Iomega, a manufacturer of removeable hard disks, has a new drive coming
out, the Zip Drive, which is a cheaper, smaller, lighter removeable
drive than their current (and excellent) Bernoulli drives (I've got one
of those and it's great). With such a drive you can quickly and easily
back up each day's work (100 mega-bytes would take a minute or two to
back up, uncompressed) and take it with you (and after hearing Hall's
story you'll probably put it under your pillow when you sleep). The
drive is available in either IDE or SCSI, and is expected to retail for
US$200, with 100 MB disks costing US$20. (I would imagine they're
pretty tough as well: the current Bernoulli disks can be dropped 6 feet
or more without damage. In fact Iomega has done a test throwing one out
the window of a car at 60 mph and it still works.)
A couple hundred bucks is cheap insurance when you're talking about
research and writing that could take weeks, months, or even years to
duplicate. If you're a student going for your degree and have to pinch
pennies, ask yourself how much your degree is worth. (I've heard of
students at some schools with unfortunate "grade on the curve" policies
destroying other students' work to improve their relative status.)
Jim Moore (j#d#.moore@canrem.com)
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