Monday, February 23, 2009

Undead Articles

It's bizarre. Someone slapped together an article on "low-tech fixes for high-tech problems" and quoted a very old article of mine, among others. I don't know where the article originated, but the piece ran in the Personal Tech section of the NY Times last week, and once it appeared there, it was picked up all over.

Here was the strangest pickup of that item so far:

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Google News Alert for: "Fred Langa"

Mẹo rẻ tiền cho các rắc rối hi-tech
Thông tin công nghệ - Vietnam
"Mẹo này đã được chứng minh và được coi là biện pháp cứu vãn cuối cùng", Fred Langa chia sẻ trên trang Windows Secrets. "Nhiều trường hợp đĩa cứng hỏng là ...
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It's always vaguely disconcerting to see old material dug up and presented as new, especially in the fast-moving tech world. Advice that might be perfectly correct for a given time and place may be wildly inappropriate years later, with different tech.

That's not quite the case here: The writer Mixmastered several ideas from my article into one, but what emerged wasn't hideously wrong.

But it's still weird when an old article rises from the grave, slaps on a hockey mask, starts its chain saw, and begins visiting cottages by the lake again.

Once stuff is on the web, it cannot be killed!


3 comments:

  1. You know I read some of what you're referring to on CNET and in the New York Times and I thought this sounds familiar. I know I've read this before...and of course it was you!

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  2. The "pickup" may have been strange, but Google's translation is more so!

    Hard drive for damage to refrigerators

    When your hard drive and beating, do not read the data again, do not take mattresses, call again carefully and then to the fridge for a night. Dang you also think it is broken should try this last month.

    "Tips have been proven and is considered as a measure of termination," Fred Langa share on the Windows Secrets. "Many of the hard disk is damaged by the solid is in the button, not the right sort of position it should not read the data. Lower temperature for the hard drive will help the metal and plastic have a bit, can gãy the position initially. Then, put the hard disk normal environment to try again. "

    Physical principles of "matter has at low temperature, it at high temperature" may help recover the hard disk sufficient to get you the data needed, though it will not "life" is long.

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  3. All my first drafts read that way.

    8-)

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