Monday, July 7, 2014

Hard Drive Crash?

Comodore Amiga500 system 1
The IRS scandal is one massive cover up after another. Lie upon lie has been told about what the IRS was doing where targeting conservative groups is concerned.

First they were not targeting conservative groups at all. Then they were targeting conservative groups and the president was enraged about it. Then they were targeting conservative groups, but targeting just as many liberal groups. Then they were not really targeting as many liberal groups. Then, just when they were needed the most, Lois Learner's emails were lost when her hard drive crashed.

What?

I write and receive emails every day. Not as many as Lois Learner, I am certain, but quite a number for a run of the mill American. I have had a hard drive crash and not one single email was lost. I simply logged onto my email account at another computer, and there they were.

"But Joe, you stupid conservative. Don't you know that the IRS stores its computers on a server, and it was the server's hard drive that served those particular emails that crashed?"

I know that's what they said...after they said it was Lois Learner's hard drive that crashed.

Emails don't reside on a local server, they reside on major company servers in a place called cyberspace...the cloud...up in the computersphere.

I keep my emails neatly organized by topic in my Juno folders. Now, Juno is one of the most ancient, simplistic email accounts ever invented (and it's free). Nevertheless, my emails are kept in those folders I created, not on my hard drive, but on Juno servers in a town somewhere either in the US or elsewhere. When I got my new computer, complete with Windows 8.1, I simply typed "Juno.com" in the address bar, logged on to my Juno account with my user name and password and there they were, folders and all.

At work we use Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Outlook is a combination of the most versatile and most unintuitive email systems in existence.  Yet I can log on to my inter-office account from any computer in our company and I can log on to it from home.

Not only that, but on both my archaic Juno account and my Outlook account my sent email are kept for a period of time determined by me so that I can simply click on "sent emails," and my computer reaches out into the computersphere and there they are.

So, maybe the IRS, for some alien reason, keeps their emails on a local server. They don't go anywhere without first entering cyberspace...the cloud...the computersphere. If they didn't first enter cyberspace, the intended recipient would never get the email.

Now, I'm not the most sophisticated computer whiz who ever lived, but I know more than the majority of 72 year old geezers. I have been using computers since early 1977, when you had to know a computer language called "BASIC" (Commodore BASIC, to be exact).  I trained on Windows 3.1, that cumbersome but wonderful Microsoft development that forced you to compute via Microsoft software and products made exclusively for Microsoft. I have built my own computer (yes...the one whose hard drive crashed after 7 years). I even know how to communicate to others about how to operate computers in real honest-to-goodness common English, instead of technichicese. Still, there are more who know more than I about computers than there are who know less.

Nevertheless, I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that Lois Learner's emails are not lost. They may well be misplaced or hidden somewhere in the computersphere, but they are not lost. They are imminently recoverable and anyone who says otherwise is trying to hide something.

Furthermore, unless she is not as smart as I am (which all liberals know is impossible), she makes regular backups of her data, either on her alleged servers or in the cloud (can you say "Carbonite?").

I don't know whether members of Congress are just too stupid to know any better or whether they are in some sort of warped collusion with the IRS that they don't want us to know about. But if they are brighter than a lightning bug, they need to get with it and assist the IRS with finding those unlost missing emails.

2 comments:

Glenn E. Chatfield said...

With iMac, you can hook up an external hard-drive to be used with their "Time Machine" application. A couple weeks ago, due to several issues, my hard drive was reset to factory specs, which means everything was wiped clean.

I had to reinstall everything. Guess what; I would use the "Time Machine" to get emails all the way back to Sep 2011! (and everything else).

I installed it in 2009 when I bought the iMac, so I guess it has a limit as to how far back it keeps the data, but if I can get emails from 2011, I'm sure the IRS can!

Joe said...

GEC: Yeah, I have a Maxtor external hard drive to back up my computer, which I do weekly (even though I should probably do it more often.