Computer Crashed New Orleans Real Estate Market 234
sustik writes "For a month now the New Orleans real estate market has been crippled by a computer crash that caused the loss of online data from the late 1980s that should be researched prior to the closing of any real estate transactions. 'The clerk of Orleans Parish Civil District Court said Tuesday that her office continues to make progress in resolving the computer problems that have been holding up real estate transactions in New Orleans for the past month, but there still was no indication of how soon the crisis might end.'"
Fire in the courthouse = seller pays title ins. (Score:2, Insightful)
In some county in Florida the courthouse burned down about 50-60 years ago.
Since then sellers have paid for title insurance instead of the buyer.
Perhaps the Parish should foot the bill for title insurance. Just saying.
Re:No backups? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately just because the volume of data increases doesn't mean that the systems used to back it up are so easily scaled, the increased need doesn't guarantee extra funding either.
Or it could be an incompetent admin. Wouldn't be the first, however it's more likely that the problem is higher up in the chain.
Re:Are some people stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, no matter how long you hold its head under water.
I find the use of phrases like "educate the higher-ups" charmingly naive. They're higher-ups. They don't need anything from you but compliance and endless status reports. And GOD FORBID if you somehow get the idea that you know something they don't.
In other words, your statistical sample of exactly one is not useful. The singular of "data" is not "anecdote". Dilbert is non-fiction.
Objectivists are idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
You still guys live in the wealthiest country on earth, enjoying the highest standard of living that any human being who has ever lived has had. The crime rate is the lowest it has ever been, and is getting lower every single year. The tax rate is lower now than it has been since the early 1900's and for the pittance you pay you get a social system that is actually run extremely well. Still, you imbecile objectivists ignore any evidence that disproves your dumbass ideology and trump up any news story that can be twisted to support it. You are no less than modern mirror-image Bolsheviks, looking to fundamentally destroy the system in order to build a bullshit utopian fantasy world that could never work.
Re:Are some people stupid? (Score:4, Insightful)
IT is a lot like that as well, just because there's a pressing need doesn't mean that there's somebody to convince that cares about anything more than the bottom line. A job like that is going to fill, somebody is always that desperate, but suggesting that the admin has any responsibility for that is pretty ignorant. You can't convince somebody that isn't listening.
Re:What is still running fine in this country? (Score:3, Insightful)
Great, then a meltdown of the financial system can never happen because banks and insurance companies are all private and extremely competitive. What about the oil industry? You can't go any more hardcore capitalist than that. That's why they never ever fuck up.
I feel so much safer now.
Re:What is still running fine in this country? (Score:4, Insightful)
Things that are running fine don't make the news.
In general, if you want to find things that are good and not horriblescarryrazyonfiredyouregonnadie, pay less attention to the news.
Too damn funny! (Score:2, Insightful)
A computer glitch can shut down your entire economic system, and some spilt talcum powder can shut down the airlines... You people are paralyzed... The drama is priceless
Re:Are some people stupid? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So how do you verify backups? (Score:1, Insightful)
I work for an IT company and one of the things we do is managed backups. I agree with you 100%. We test managed backups monthly (DR Planning) and have alerts each time it does so much as take longer than usual. If i365 doesn't then they should be sued out of existence.
Re:Old techie proverb (sort-of) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No backups? (Score:5, Insightful)
+1
Backups are one of the most misunderstood and neglected concepts of computing as we know it. Between laziness and vendors selling their appliances and gadgets, there are a lot of misconceptions about proper backups.
Horror story #1: The guy with the term paper on the laptop which gets backed up to a USB flash drive. Roommate gets kicked out of the university, and grabs laptop + drive as a consolation prize. Result: Retaking a course. Moral: Backups to another drive are good, but don't address the problem.
Horror story #2: Business had two machine which rsynced with each other for offsites. One of the sysadmins was disgruntled, rm -rf-ed the files on one end, rsynced that, then rsynced some large blobs so the deleted files would be overwritten.
Backups are easily forgotten about... until they are needed. I have seen a lot of deer-in-the-headlights looks from people who thought they had working backup systems, but in reality, they backed up the wrong data, overwrote the wrong items, had great encryption and no recovery keys, or the tapes were safe at Iron Mountain... but nobody had an account to access there.
Like security, PHBs consider backups pointless because they have no obvious ROI. Of course, this comes to kill businesses if something does fail. Here in Austin, there was a textbook seller for the University of Texas called Texas Textbooks. They were on top of the market. Then they had HDD problems and lost all their data with no ability to recover. End result, a few months later, their doors were shuttered.
Backups are not rocket science. You have a way to copy data to an onsite repository, then a second way to copy it offsite (be it to a cloud, to tapes or other media that you move offsite) This applies to everyone from a SOHO business to the big guys. You then validate that the data is readable, and every link in the chain is present, from having the license keys for the backup software, to having the software somewhere, to the right hardware for reading the media, etc.
Re:Objectivists are idiots. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So how do you verify backups? (Score:2, Insightful)
From my perspective, if it is located in the same building as the source data, it is a copy, not a backup. If it is offsite, but has never had a test restore, it is a paperweight, not a backup. I doubt few non-techies think about test restores, but I do them monthly and have to document them as it is the first thing my boss asks about when it is review time. Of course he already knows the answer as he has had our other engineer test restore stuff independent of me. We all sleep better that way.
As for the 3 week delay, either someone doesn't know or doesn't care. Perfect example of why people DON'T outsource IT, so when this happens you can at least fire, rather than sue, someone. At least in an at-will state like US-KY.
And lastly, how dumb does the provider have to be to let this drag on and hit all the news outlets? Imagine what great pub it would be to get it back up and running quickly, rather than have your customers talking about potential litigation to any reporter that will listen.
Re:Objectivists are idiots. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know about that objectivism stuff but the western lifestyle is predicated upon the suffering of others, and they will only suffer so much.
Re:Are some people stupid? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm, the only way to make sure everyone knows that a backup process is a) necessary and b) actually functional is to schedule a "business continuity" exercise and perform a simulated disk failure.
Get approval and buy-in from those higher-ups first, if you want to keep your job, though :-P It probably also helps if you keep a stack of dead drives on your desk with a skull and crossbones on top of them to drive home the fact that those things do indeed have an MTBF.
Re:Just make the data visible to Google (Score:1, Insightful)
You solution will not work, it will not work because:
[x] it will allow the proletariat access to the information they are entitled to.
Re:old machinery (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish New Orleans could catch a break, just one time.
It is difficult to catch a break when most of your problems are self inflicted. Even with Katrina, the problem was the hurricane as much as the levys. Oh, and the whole "Yes, the city is sinking, and yes this land is already below sea level, but it is still a great place to build houses!". Then, I don't feel all that sorry for people who bought houses with and 3 years later the APR jumped up to 15%, while the values dropped. At some point, people have to take a *little* personal responsibility for their actions. And stupidity.