I’m just saying, could you cite where you’re getting this from in the future?

Ok.

Source: seagate.com

If you have purchased a Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 product since August 2007 the product may be infected with a virus. Kaspersky Labs, a maker of anti-virus software, has alerted Seagate to the existence of a virus found on at least one Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 product. Seagate has traced this issue to a small number of units produced by a Maxtor sub-contract manufacturer located in China. Seagate quickly put a stop ship to units leaving the facility as soon as the company learned of the probable infection. All units now leaving the facility in question have been cleared of the virus and units in inventory are being reworked before being released for sale. However, some affected units may have been sold to the public before the problem was detected. Seagate apologizes for the inconvenience that has been caused as a result of this incident.

To determine if the Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drive you have may be infected, or if you have any questions about this virus, please call Seagate customer support. Please have the serial number of your Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drive ready when you call. See link at the bottom of this page for a list of Seagate customer support phone numbers.

Found it. I’m just saying, could you cite where you’re getting this from in the future?

There is no information to corroborate with the statements made in this story. Let me break it down to you:

1. “On Saturday, Seagate Technology LLC, the manufacturer of the Maxtor portable hard drive, said on its Web site (www.seagate.com) that Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 hard drives sold after August could be infected with the virus.”
a. Why didn’t you link to the statement? You seem to have just linked to the site. Someone honestly trying to pass along information usually just makes a direct citation to the site.
b. To answer my own question, I’ll tell you why: The statement doesn’t exist. This piece was published on the 12th of Nov. – the “statement” happened “this Saturday” (what tech company makes statements on a Saturday. seriously, man. you think they’d do that at an expo?). “Saturday” makes this Nov. 10.
i. Let’s take a look at the site together. ( http://seagate.com/www/en-us/about/news_room/press_releases/ )
ii. Oh, there doesn’t appear to have been a press release on the 10th. Reading through the ones around the date, nay; In the Entire Month Of November – provides no evidence to support this, either.
c. Nice effort, though.

2. “Anti-virus software manufacturer Kaspersky Labs also issued a similar warning. The hard drive has been temporarily pulled off the shelves and is no longer available for purchase…”
a. Way to provide a link to that “similar warning”. I’ve got an idea, let’s search Kaspersky’s site.
i. Oh hey. Not a single thing.

3. Maybe it can be supported somewhere else (or, “Hello, Lin Ching-lin.”)
a. Hey. I wonder if we can pull up any other information about this problem. Let’s look at Google. Hey, look’it. All the blog posts in reference to it link back to Lin Ching-lin. It appears that only he is aware of this problem.
b. Care to provide a little more proficient skill in citing your sources Lin Ching-lin?
c. Put his name into Google News. Hey, it’s all the stories picked up. Check out the blog trackers. You’ll see that this is a pretty strained story… all linking back to one poorly cited story that, when the sources were checked for the content – were bereft.

4. This took all of 2 minutes to check. Maybe it’s the mouse gestures, maybe it’s middle-click-for-new-tab – but something that may have an effect on your data should be important enough to check out. Especially with implications this epic.
a. Would some upstanding technical outfit please hire a well-worded culture fiend that researches like that? Yes, there is such a thing as that level of depravity.

5. With apologies to Lin Ching-lin.