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At the University of Toronto, a program called MOSS (Measure of Software Similarity), which was designed by the UC Berkeley Computer Science department, is used to compare programs submitted by computer science students. Here's an article that was posted at the UofT website some time ago:

http://www.newsandevents.utoronto.ca/bin/000228g.a sp

Personally, I was in an Introduction to Computer Science class last semester (CSC108H), and it was quite obvious that certain students were plagiarizing work. Luckily for those students, that specific assignment was not MOSSed. We were warned from the first day that we should not copy, even to the extent that if we were discussing a certain assignment with a friend, that we not take notes and go and watch television or something afterwards so that the slightest hint of code would not creep into a students assignment. From what I understand, however, some students were caught when some other assignment was MOSSed. Even all the assignments are submitted by FTP and date stamped so that the late submissions would be identified.

It is quite funny though, those students that didn't seem to know much got a nice welcomed surprise on the midterm (which was quite easy if you knew what you were doing). But, even the MOSS program has its weaknesses. Basically, the trick to avoid its search schemes is to change the runtime of your code. Change certain loops around (eg: a for loop to a while loop), and move certain portions of code from one place to another. Heck, even throw in some extra "useless" methods that accomplish the same thing. Though, if a student were to take time doing that, they might as well write their own code. It's really funny how some students do amazingly well on their assignments, but have a "bad day" and barely pass the midterm and final exam. Unfortunately, there were quite a number of those in my class.

A friend of mine once told me, "the system forces you to cheat". That may be true sometimes...though I'm quite content doing my own work I got a 4.0 in CSC108H by the way :)

IANAQP, but you've glossed over an important point: the hidden-variables theory and the spooky-action-at-a-distance theory are statistically distinguishable, and not just a point of philosophy. Here's a link to an introduction to Bell's Inequality, which is widely accepted as proof of spooky-action-at-a-distance theory.

I live in a college dorm room and last Christmas while away for a few weeks I was concerned about management entering my room and possibily turning off my computer or causing other "damage". Details aside, and not having a web cam, I decided to plug a microphone into my computer and just have it record all sound in my vacant room. I whipped up some code to monitor and track the level of ambiant background noise, and to record any sound above background, convert it to mp3 format, and ssh it to a machine at school I knew I'd have access to. If someone did enter my room and turn off my computer (or even if they didn't turn off the computer), I could retrieve the mp3's of the event from where I was and find out what happened.

If anyone is interested in this code, you can get it from here. Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to package it up nicely or answer questions about it so just take it for what it's worth.

Student work is generally the property of the student, and work produced in group projects is the joint property of the group members. The professor would therefore need to get your approval for any subsequent publication.

Note that this is not the case if students do not own their own work. Seeing as you are not an employee, however, the university could not claim ownership of your work without your consent, so I do not see how student work would not be the property of the student.

Note also that declaring his intent to appropriate student work at the beginning of the semester does not constitute a formal contract, even if he explicitly stated that continuing with the course constituted acceptance of his right. Moreover, your university likely has policies regarding the appropriateness of such a request in the first place. In any case, any attempt to get you to sign such a contract before your grades have been reported would likely constitute duress; such an attempt would probably also violate stated university policy. Both the university and any potential publisher would likely want to know this before publication, and as a concerned party with partial ownership rights, it would not be inappropriate for you to bring it to their attention.

Intellectual property rights are actually quite neat and specific in academia; it is their application that can get messy. But not in this case.

Whats wrong with this then?:

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Here's a direct link to lecture 1 I mentioned - sorry forgot to put it in there. In addition to stuff I said before, it also covers a bit about the kernel, the reasons why unix is so popular, permissions, the history of Unix-like systems, redirection, pipes, filename completion and information about processes and the question "What is an operating system?". Very packed, but the lecture itself fits within your timeframe - in about 60 minutes.

Take a look at some lectures my old prof's got on his web site. Get them now (because he deletes them at the end of the term). U of T runs a Sun cluster, but I've found that his reference matches everything I've tried with Linux and BSD as well. In particular, Lecture 1 will give you the juicy bits about the Unix "way", with regards to small utilities that can be piped together to produce complex results. How they work, why they're useful, plus examples.

It also covers some history, the filesystem and a description of some of the various shells. It's an excellent resource, and provides a great intro to Unix - a second-year course at U of Toronto. This was the intro I had, and I will never forget how great a prof he is.

Have a look at this link for a good introduction to a number of mnemonic memory systems. I did one years ago (which I paid a few clams for) and I've never regretted it.

When up to speed you can remember things like:

• phone numbers and appointments
• people's names and faces
• technical manuals in word for word detail
• articles
• entire books
• shuffled decks of cards

Interestingly, memory seems to suffer from bit-rot much like software does - use it or lose it.

I agree that it isn't all that good if you can't pay for college. In Canada, I didn't have enough money, so I took out student loans.

While post secondary education might not be possible in the U.S., there is still nothing to prevent a person from scrounging the components of a P.C. They're quite cheap these days. When I was in highschool I built a 286 system for under $200 (CDN). The comperable power today would be a low end Pentium... a much more useful system. I still use a 486 for Linux and as a firewall at home.

If you're so financially strapped that as a student your guardians rely on your part time income to pay for your home.... that's really terrible. I have no idea what to do for those kids.

On that note, for a while there was a great group in Toronto called CLUE, the Centre for Linux Excellence. They would take donations of old hardware from companies (486's) and build systems from it. They would then drop a standard build of Debian onto the machines, teach kids how to use them, then give them to the kids... recommended donation of $25. They eventually buckled under... I think they had problems with rent.

http://centre.linux.ca/

IMHO widespread work like that would be far more helpful than the schools.

There is also a "Free University" movement in Toronto.

http://www.utoronto.ca/acc/freeu/

In a society, lots of things happen that you disagree with. That difference of opinion does not give you the right to legislate my freedoms. Moreover, when did the purpose of libraries become solely "research and education"?

One small example of how well censorware works: at a public computer the other day, it blocked the course listings website of the University of Toronto's Department of Religion. I am not sure why--perhaps the page had mentions of sexuality. Check it out, and tell me if this is valid "research and education".

Of course, censorware also blocks Slashdot discussions frequently, as well.

heinzkeinz

My favorite game was VTTrek, which was a first-person 3D space fighting game played on a VT-100 terminal. No, there were no bitmap graphics. It used the wonky 8-bit ANSI character graphics combined with ANSI escape sequences for bold, flashing, etc. to make it more animated. And you had to play on a 9600 baud terminal connection, or else you would lag and be blown away by those high-baud bastards.

DECWAR was another favorite. It was only 2-D, but was realtime [not turn based] and you could play it on either a CRT terminal [i.e. a monitor] or, you could also play using a line printer terminal [paper]. You could enter lots of cryptic command lines and dump your view every so often if you needed it. Wow, that was fun. Sort of like keyboarders versus mousers in Quake. [Update: that DECWAR page linked to above has a link to a version running on a BSD box. Oh yes...]

sitwar was another fun realtime wargame [maybe it was spelled 'citwar'?]. But I think it required a monitor, so we didn't play it as much [monitors -- or "CRTs" as they were called then -- were in low supply and high demand].

When it came to instant messaging, we used something called "FORUM", which I think was written by my friend Yoram at UofT. Actually, it was closer to IRC, except that there you could see a history of the last N lines. It was great -- you could log in at noon, do a "/lastlog" and the previous 20 lines of conversation, complete with timestamps, would be printed out for you. Good for leaving messages.

My favorite game was VTTrek, which was a first-person 3D space fighting game played on a VT-100 terminal. No, there were no bitmap graphics. It used the wonky 8-bit ANSI character graphics combined with ANSI escape sequences for bold, flashing, etc. to make it more animated. And you had to play on a 9600 baud terminal connection, or else you would lag and be blown away by those high-baud bastards.

DECWAR was another favorite. It was only 2-D, but was realtime [not turn based] and you could play it on either a CRT terminal [i.e. a monitor] or, you could also play using a line printer terminal [paper]. You could enter lots of cryptic command lines and dump your view every so often if you needed it. Wow, that was fun. Sort of like keyboarders versus mousers in Quake. [Update: that DECWAR page linked to above has a link to a version running on a BSD box. Oh yes...]

sitwar was another fun realtime wargame [maybe it was spelled 'citwar'?]. But I think it required a monitor, so we didn't play it as much [monitors -- or "CRTs" as they were called then -- were in low supply and high demand].

When it came to instant messaging, we used something called "FORUM", which I think was written by my friend Yoram at UofT. Actually, it was closer to IRC, except that there you could see a history of the last N lines. It was great -- you could log in at noon, do a "/lastlog" and the previous 20 lines of conversation, complete with timestamps, would be printed out for you. Good for leaving messages.

What I meant was:
those damn c z e c h s!

What I meant was:
those damn c z e c h s!

What I meant was:
those damn c z e c h s!

What I meant was:
those damn c z e c h s!

What I meant was:
those damn c z e c h s!

What I meant was:
those damn c z e c h s!

those damn c z e c h s!

those damn c z e c h s!

those damn c z e c h s!

those damn c z e c h s!

those damn c z e c h s!

those damn c z e c h s!

I've set up at least a dozen qmail servers: small ones, big ones, red ones, blue ones...

Sendmail's a whore, and that's really the only other Linux MTA I've used. I've heard good things about Postfix but seriously I haven't found a single thing wrong with qmail:

• It's small and fast
• infinitely configurable
• handles aliases and virtual domains easily
• antispam features
  • RBL and ORBS patches
  • tarpitting patches
• Works with AOL DNS hacks
• bigserver patches
• simple to add "defang" and virus scans
• POP3 and IMAP capable
  • With optional APOP and selective relaying
• Maildir mailbox format better than anything else
• web-adminnable
• Plugin for mailing lists
  • automatic archiving and web indexing
• Third party support available

Jesus I have a lot more respect to the link crazy posts out there. :-)

At any rate -- I've run it for years now and never had a problem. The servers just work. We've used an alias system and serialmail to allow branch offices to pick up mail for their local users without requiring a permanent net connection. The ability to run any program on receipt of a message or delivery to a specific address is very handy, as is the ability for individual users to tailor their own mail deliveries and create their own mailing lists and aliases. Very powerful and very cool.

And, despite what some others have said about the brain damage involved in adding features to the source code: it's not that bad. I do wish, however, that there were at least some comments... The total lack of comments and useful variable names are a hindrance.

Go get it. Install it. Love it.

He has worked on simulation programs that model this exact situation - the most interesting is the example showing the collision of our poor galaxy with Andromeda! (It's actually going to happen - don't worry though, it won't be for a long time...)

http://etclab.mie.utoronto.ca/

Researchers here have been dealing with the lag and discontinuity involved in remote operation and immersion. They're applying technology to realworld situations that require visual data augmentation (hybrid, overlay displays) plus virtual control of robotics.

Calum

<aol>Yes, SRL fucking rocks.</aol>

I have yet to actually make it to one of their performances, but I've been interested in them for years. Imagine battlebots, only with real projectile and weapons and flamethrowers and all the danger that comes with it. Great stuff :)

There's a good review of their shows here.
--
Turn on, log in, burn out...

If you want to see what it does, click on the link 'program' in my parent post. Allthough it will probably not make that much sense to someone outside of the field at least it is out there to see. Basically it helps us find ways to model the evolution of early galaxies.

If you're very interested in this kind of stuff, head to our main site to check out all the work that the other astrophysicists are doing.

From what I have been hearing on /. lately it seems that most people don't really think advances like this are that interesting. While we're at it we might as well tear down all our particle accelerators and stop doing space missions as well since they don't really have any immediate use...

my employer is moving me from application develpoment to project management.
now i'm reponsible for a tech team of 6. i guess what made the decision easier was the fact
that i'm now much much higher up in the company, responsible for technical direction as well.

my advice is to go pick up your PMP certificate, i'm doing mine at university of toronto eh.
hardest thing for me was having to divorce the tech side of my job, which is essentially nonexistent
now, from the managing side. the upside of that is the fact that i develop much more at home now.

best of luck

links:
U of T program

What was that Macallum quote,"The medium is the message."?

Close! It was Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian, who said that. He was a proponent of the Global Village, etc. Had some neat ideas...

--8<--

Calum

Calum

Yes, this is slightly offtopic, but still a lot of fun.

Calum

Check out our webpage. http://peach.mie.ut oronto.ca/events/lego/lego-091600-rules.html

Calum

Hey... a few guys in my engineering program actually did this last year for their project! In the competition I saw the robot squirt a water gun to put out a candle somewhere on a flat area.

I found the link for one of the groups who did this,
and the assignment page here.

Hey... a few guys in my engineering program actually did this last year for their project! In the competition I saw the robot squirt a water gun to put out a candle somewhere on a flat area.

I found the link for one of the groups who did this,
and the assignment page here.

There is a small, but growing, collection of historians of science and technology exploring the history of computing/computer technology (I'm just halfway through my master's program here: The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. There's only a couple of us doing computers, but it's a start :)

You might want to start at the library reading the Annals of the History of Computing. Off the top of my head, Michael Mahoney (who started in the History of Mathematics) has done a lot.

Historians of computing have looked at Babbage, Turing, and Wozniak, but you can start just about anywhere. The field has barely been touched - there are plenty of unexplored areas. And the great thing about the history of technology is that everybody can help: from engineers to economists.

Myself, as a recent University of Waterloo CompSci grad, I thought I'd return to my roots, and write my MA thesis about the early computer science program there. In particular, I'm thinking about looking at the birth of WatFor and the related successes achieved in undergraduate education. Hint: if you have a story to tell about Watfor, email me!

There is a small, but growing, collection of historians of science and technology exploring the history of computing/computer technology (I'm just halfway through my master's program here: The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. There's only a couple of us doing computers, but it's a start :)

You might want to start at the library reading the Annals of the History of Computing. Off the top of my head, Michael Mahoney (who started in the History of Mathematics) has done a lot.

Historians of computing have looked at Babbage, Turing, and Wozniak, but you can start just about anywhere. The field has barely been touched - there are plenty of unexplored areas. And the great thing about the history of technology is that everybody can help: from engineers to economists.

Myself, as a recent University of Waterloo CompSci grad, I thought I'd return to my roots, and write my MA thesis about the early computer science program there. In particular, I'm thinking about looking at the birth of WatFor and the related successes achieved in undergraduate education. Hint: if you have a story to tell about Watfor, email me!

Interestingly enough the Japanese constitution, drawn up after its surrender at the end of WWII by the Allies (i.e. the United States) prohibit the Japanese government any form of wiretapping.

Article 21 of the Japanese Constitution does seem on its face to prohibit wiretapping, at least by the government. However, NTT is arguably not part of the Japanese gov't and not subject to contitutional restrictions.

Remember that most large-scale Japanese corporations operate in the keiretsu system, where affiliated companies pass information, arrange financing, and generally cut deals with each other.

Also remember that we're speculating about NTT's actions in the USA, outside the real of Japanese constitutional protections. It's well known that the USA taps everyone it can outside its borders, thought this would be illegal at home.

-Isaac

Yet Another example:

The University of Toronto
www.toronto.edu and www.utoronto.ca.

So please, get your facts straight before you post.

At the venerable University of Toronto, where she used to irritate the hell out of me by asking ignorant and offtopic questions in my Shakespeare class and wrote/edited for the school paper, The Varsity, which was only a little less liberal than Pravda.

How the hell she got a publishing deal is beyond me. It hardly seems like an original topic, this one's been hashed around for years.

I will go back to gnashing my teeth now.....

Yes, I use all of the above languages.
When I took csc324 at UofT course site we had to do so much, it seemed I was only doing that course (me and my partner) we didn't have time for anything else. ML, Lisp, Scheme, Prolog - those were the days. course description
Lovely languages, later I took AI were we only were using Lisp. So for me Lisp automatically translates to AI...

So the Star's article is completely devoid of details - it's a newspaper ! I'll add a few more details so people can get as much information about this topic as they want. First and foremost the latest issue of Nature has an article entitled "Photonics: Opal appeal" specifically about this breakthrough (subscription required). The catch phrase used is a "three-dimensional photonic bandgap material". The team that's accomplished this is a bit more international then indicated so far, consisting of a Spanish team making the opal template, Geoff Ozin's group filling the lattices & then dissolving the template, Henry VanDriel's group performing the laser experiments, and Sajeev John's group providing the theory framework.

For those of you who just want pretty pictures, here are some images of the opals.

Here's the ultimate resource for photonic bandgap materials.

So that should give you more then enough to visit & read. Basically what these materials do is prevent propagation of light of a specific frequency in 3-dimensions. The 'bandgap' of the light can be controlled during the fabrication process allowing these things to block different frequencies. So you could imagine placing one of these materials into an optical fibre & selectively blocking one of the data streams but allowing all others to pass through unimpeded. The current breakthrough is twofold, first these aren't imaginary, they've been made & tested and they aren't decades removed from insertion into optical networks, they're months or years from it, second, this is the first example of a 3D PBG material, previous versions have generally been 2D. One of the neater experiments performed involved putting liquid crystals into the opal holes & then by putting an electric field across the liquid crystals, controlling the transmission through the crystal. A variable transmission photonic bandgap device. Light is fast, electrons are slow, an all optical network would be blazingly fast & these devices bring us a step closer to making that happen.

CJM

So the Star's article is completely devoid of details - it's a newspaper ! I'll add a few more details so people can get as much information about this topic as they want. First and foremost the latest issue of Nature has an article entitled "Photonics: Opal appeal" specifically about this breakthrough (subscription required). The catch phrase used is a "three-dimensional photonic bandgap material". The team that's accomplished this is a bit more international then indicated so far, consisting of a Spanish team making the opal template, Geoff Ozin's group filling the lattices & then dissolving the template, Henry VanDriel's group performing the laser experiments, and Sajeev John's group providing the theory framework.

For those of you who just want pretty pictures, here are some images of the opals.

Here's the ultimate resource for photonic bandgap materials.

So that should give you more then enough to visit & read. Basically what these materials do is prevent propagation of light of a specific frequency in 3-dimensions. The 'bandgap' of the light can be controlled during the fabrication process allowing these things to block different frequencies. So you could imagine placing one of these materials into an optical fibre & selectively blocking one of the data streams but allowing all others to pass through unimpeded. The current breakthrough is twofold, first these aren't imaginary, they've been made & tested and they aren't decades removed from insertion into optical networks, they're months or years from it, second, this is the first example of a 3D PBG material, previous versions have generally been 2D. One of the neater experiments performed involved putting liquid crystals into the opal holes & then by putting an electric field across the liquid crystals, controlling the transmission through the crystal. A variable transmission photonic bandgap device. Light is fast, electrons are slow, an all optical network would be blazingly fast & these devices bring us a step closer to making that happen.

CJM

Try Sajeev's homepage and read about Photon Localization and Photon Band Gaps. He invented the theory that in certain disordered systems band gaps can exist for light, meaning that it does not propagate and is trapped/localized.
Prof. John was on my thesis committee but my work was on other stuff.

Anyways, you'll notice that the publications start back in the early 90's. The 'new' thing they've discovered together might be what is talked about here, and is more clearly described here and here (Sajeev John's page contained links to this stuff...).

It's just a new way of making something that's been researched for the past 10 years, photonic band gap materials.

I haven't seen anything yet to tell us if this is such a better way of making this class of material that it counts as a 'revolution'. We have to find someone who knows a lot more about the current state of the art in creating photonic band gap materials and get this person to analyze this new method and it's results, to tell us if it's a significant advance, or what it's advantages are.

AKA: More peer review please.

Anyways, you'll notice that the publications start back in the early 90's. The 'new' thing they've discovered together might be what is talked about here, and is more clearly described here and here (Sajeev John's page contained links to this stuff...).

It's just a new way of making something that's been researched for the past 10 years, photonic band gap materials.

I haven't seen anything yet to tell us if this is such a better way of making this class of material that it counts as a 'revolution'. We have to find someone who knows a lot more about the current state of the art in creating photonic band gap materials and get this person to analyze this new method and it's results, to tell us if it's a significant advance, or what it's advantages are.

AKA: More peer review please.

As for security (students requiring root on the boxes and all), we handled this by putting all the boxes behind a switch and requiring the use of ssh for all communications. Students caught doing anything stupid (like DoS attacks) can get expelled; FWIW, we didn't catch any.