[nixpulvis]

This is exactly how I got out of a final project in middle school. Wiped my HDD with a Neodymium magnet right before the deadline and claimed my computer was "broken"... Of course this wasn't done for highly paranoid reasons where I needed to ensure the data was really all gone, but funny story nonetheless. People are more sympathetic when they think a computer "randomly" stopped working.

[keithpeter]

Alas, such a strategy will not work at universities local to me (UK). They specifically exclude computer malfunction as grounds for extenuating circumstances.

[nixpulvis]

This was back in like 2005 or something too...

[moonbug22]

Quite right, too.