Slashdot Mirror
Stanford Rejects Business School Hackers
robbarrett writes "The Stanford Report offers the next chapter in a continuing story about business school applicants manipulating URLs on the ApplyYourself system to determine their personal admission status. Harvard immediately rejected the 'hacker' applicants, but Stanford gave 'offenders' the opportunity to defend their actions. However, none of the competitive applicants 'was able to explain his/her actions to our satisfaction,' according to Stanford's dean, so all were rejected. The story mentions the decisions reached by other schools involved in the mess."
They should have been immediately accepted!
But in this case you get what you deserve. Whats the difference of finding out now or later that you didnt get accepted to Stanford?
...and it should be known by now
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yet more of this mindless usage of the word "hacker." Don't people understand that they can use these analytical type people, the ones who actually want to pursue information, to their advantage?
ahh, in some ways i guess this is good...
Episode VI
RETURN OF THE H@X0R
Applicant-1337 has returned to
his home planet of ParentsBasement in
an attempt to rescue his
friend University Education from the
clutches of the vile gangster
The Big Guy.
Much does Hax0r know that the
HARVARD EMPIRE has controversially
begun construction on a new
armored hax0r-rejection policy even
more powerful than the first
dreaded competitive admission system.
When completed, this ultimate
weapon will spell certain doom
for the small band of hax0rs
struggling to restore freedom
to the interweb....
They hardly ought to be called "hackers". It's like calling arsonists "pyrotechnicians". Sure, the tools may be the same, but the level of expertise is very different.
They didn't mention the speed at which they typed the new url? I'm *still* asked my WPM on silly web-based forms.
"Joss noted that while Stanford was dismayed by the actions of the candidates who tried to gain unauthorized access, it "did not rush to judgment given the limited information available to us initially. By carefully reviewing the file of each applicant involved in these incidents, we upheld the business school's values while treating each applicant fairly. As an educational institution, we hope that the applicants involved in this incident might learn from their experience.""
Sounds more like an attempt by the PR departments to cover their collective legal asses after their PHBs jumped the gun and block rejected applicants on the grounds that they committed a crime that technically isn't. IMHO, their position on the matter is weak.
The students didn't steal passwords, spread a virus or trojan. All they did was akin to manually typing in an abiet complicated URL and accessed data on unprotected public servers.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
The sentence reads 'None of '. The subject is 'none'. 'None' is singular.
So the correct verb is 'was'.
Subject verb agreement. The subject is none, not applicants.
"None" is a special case of the singular. It should have a singular verb applied to it.
Quote:
Joss noted that while Stanford was dismayed by the
actions of the candidates who tried to gain
unauthorized access, it "did not rush to judgment
given the limited information available to us
initially. By carefully reviewing the file of each
applicant involved in these incidents, we upheld
the business school's values while treating each
applicant fairly...
That's quite a "holier than thou" sneer at Harvard and MIT.
What I am truly surprised is that none of the schools took actions against ApplyYourSelf as far as I know: rather, the focus has all been on whether the schools took action against the students. I think this plays heavily on the public's fear of "hacking". Just because the applicants peeked using a computer, it suddenly made it such a grave matter.
First, I think ApplyYourSelf should bear some responsibility for not properly securing their web-app in a way that such an action is possible. For many people (and I'd even venture to say that in public opinion), anything that is accessible by typing a URL into a browser window might as well be published. I don't really think the school has the right to penalize the applicants for accessing information that has been made available to them.
Secondly, this whole business has been blown out of proportion: the students were only able to look at their admission status, and that even hinges on the fact that the schools have already published those information to the website. It is not as if the students were actually "hacking" in the sense of escalating their privilege and modifying their admission status. I just don't think this incident is an acurate enough illustration of their moral fibers to warrant such decisions (though I generally have no sympathy for business school applicants).
Thirdly, I think the whole finding out the admission status thing is more akin to being impatient and calling up the admission office with the knowledge that the drunk receptionist would accidentally let the admission status slip out. So why the applicants were treated so harshly and why the ApplyYourself service was not is really troubling me.
W
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
Good grief. I'm guilty of doing this sort of thing all the time.
I'd never really read about what exactly the applicants did before. If the article is right, all they did was poke around the system with URL munged from information they already had. It's not like they exploited buffer overflows to gain control of the system or anything.
Like I said, I do this type of thing all the time. If I'm on a Web site with content I like and I see a series of URLs named something1.htm, something2.htm, something4.htm, etc., you'd better believe I'm going to type something3.htm in and see what happens. On my own dinky Web sites I have, if I don't want people browsing around the system, I take steps to prevent it, such as making sure the server doesn't allow one to list directories, always having an index.htm file in every directory in case I forget, naming files randomly instead of in series, etc.
And, on top of all of that, as the post above states, all these candidates did was find out information that was going to be disclosed to them soon anyway.
So I gotta ask, what the hell is the big deal here? Why is Stanford being such a hard ass about this? If anyone is to blame here for any significant wrongdoing, it has got to be the company that designed software that so easily gives up unauthorized information. I wonder what Stanford did to seek redress against them. (Probably nothing.)
"None" is short for "not one" and so it uses the singular verb form. The subject of the sentence is "none", not "applicants", so the usage is correct.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=none
I pledge, the next time I hear of such a possible exploit, to rip as much information from the system as the website gives me permission to retrieve. Every bit of it -- I shall construct scripts, pore over forums, and create a list of possible students whose data I will then attempt to extract.
Additionally, with these links in hand, I shall paste them to random places on the internet, and specific places such as the most likely forums to find such students. I will also disguise their nature and essence, so that users will not know what they click on until it's too late.
So the next time Stanford comes calling, you go ahead and /blame me/. I could've been the one to do it, after all. You don't know I didn't. They don't know I didn't.
Or they could just accept that their own goddamn marketing department creates an illusion of prestige, and that people with a limited amount of time to waste on non-responsive colleges /sitting on/ important information like that are going to want to know who to stop wasting time on, and that if they don't like it they can /fix their fucking permissions/. Do they not know any decent webapp programmers? Who've they been graduating?
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
In addition to the other posts, it is worthwhile to note that the subject of the sentence is never located within a prepositional phrase. "of the ... applicants" is a prepositional phrase, where a preposition is "of", "on", "in", etc. So this should read "None ... was able to explain", which still sounds rather odd even though it's correct.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
They showed they lack good judgment and a sense of ethics.
I don't want to work with somebody that cuts corners and refuses to play by the rules - what happens when it's a big contract and they decide to "see if we won?" or decide to see if "x is really going to buy Y?"
If I can't trust you to do what is right, I don't want to work with you.
Yes, waiting for B-school admission is a high stress period - but stressful situations is when people's character shows. I can understand HBS and Stanford's stance - they, and their alumni, don't want to be associated with the type of people that will create another Enron.
Overall, they were probably to dumb to get in - from what I saw, the "hack" was a no-brainier - append some code to the end of the URL to hit a page rather than some smart piece of coding; more importantly - didn't they think that there would be alums of schools on the boards that would see th "hack" and let their schools now? And that these alums would be know who to talk to so that the school could investigate and take whatever action is deemed appropriate? If one of the "hackers" had been smart, they'd email the Dean of Admissions and ask - "Someone posted this as a way to check admissions status - is it OK if I use it?"
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Don't Harvard and Stanford have Business Ethics classes? Presumably, you teach a class to educate people on a subject. But apparantly, for these students, the test was administered before the lessons were given. Hurray for Higher Education.
Why choose white shoes?
the applicants, for the most part, are still 'just kids' and even as a woefully too well aged adult, I can still relate to the idea that taking a peek at 'hidde' information on a web site is not evil
the proble is not the kids. i's this culture of zero tolerance which the otherwise liberal educational community has latched onto with a fervor one would normally expect from religous fanatics.
back when i was attending college the attitudes were different. administration had a 'boys will be boys' attitude and was more concerned with helping us understand why certain activites were not acceptable, rather than striking us down like Zeus on the maountain.
Based on the information I've encountered regarding this mess, there seems to be an extreme level of self righteous bigotry on the part of the 'adults'.
Or perhaps they are just too lazy to do their job of education.
Shhhhhhhhhhhh!
Somebody mod this nitpicker down.
Reuters were accused of hacking when they guessed the URL of an upcoming interim report from Swedish IT consulting firm Intentia. There's a Wired article about the incident.
Isn't the school looking for students who are smart enough to work their way around a problem? They should admit everyone who was able to find their way into the system. I guess they'd rather have students who just blindly do whatever they've been told.
Of cause no institution should be forced to accept students it doesn't want to, but morally speaking, these students have done nothing wrong. There are many immoral things one can do on a computer: sabotaging other people's systems, destroying other people's data among others. But finding out personal information by asking a gullible computer the right question is perfectly understandable. If Stanford want this data safe, they should fix their computers so it protects the data. Computers are remote controlled and pretty much do what their asked to do. One wouldn't leave a priceless Monet strapped to a remote control truck that every kid with a toy car can control, so why do people complain about their loose lipped computer squealing numbers to some kid who knows how to use a URL bar? The sooner people see computers for what they are: devices that are told what to do by more people than they should and forget about the whole trespass on private land metaphors, the sooner people might take some responsibility about dumb machines being given too much information. They probably will end up a lot safer in the long term. It really makes me mad when people blame others for exploiting their own gullibility.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
These folks had to be logged in to access the info. Did they agree to a user agreement that said something about attempts to access information they aren't intended to have access to? If not, I say all bets are off and the students exhibited no dishonesty--especially since nothing was "stolen" except innocuous information. If they did accept such an agreement, I would say their actions were dishonest.
These students did nothing wrong. Typing in a URL and reading the web page returned is equivalent to calling ApplyYourself on the phone, asking for the results and listening to the answer. If they weren't supposed to have the results, it was ApplyYourself's responsibility to make sure that answer was "Sorry, you can't have that information."
-Raxxerax
So.. these universities' reasns for not accepting/training potential white hats is because of what they did in the first place to prove a point?
Not only does this sound idiotic, but this gives the potential "good guys" more reasons to be "bad guys" (AKA Black Hats.)
The best course of action would be to accept these students, train them in the ways of ethical hacking, then give them a degree and place them in a field where they would be useful (There are many subdivisions of White Hats/Grey Hats/Black Hats, depends on the subject matter/programming language.)
By not accepting these bright minds, and giving them the education/tools they need for a decent and "acceptable" life, not only are they throwing away the security of the next generation, but IMHO, they're encouraging the proliferation of a more negative generation of problems. While, to some point, this may be economically sound (Can't have good hackers without bad hackers, right?) I fail to see how in the short term (our current generation's economy) where this will be beneficial. These people will to some degree inherently cause problems for us if they don't have the ethical presence of mind to know what's "Good" hacking and "Bad" hacking.
Again, I cannot stress how much Stephen Levy's "Hackers" should be a guiding book for these pupils. They'll learn exactly the original and "true" reasons for hacking. Information must remain public, asides that which is detrimental to any or many members of our society. Were this book a piece of core curriculum for college students, we'd have less problems as it is now, notwithstanding other unethical hackers from the USSR or China, or the Phillippines.... (No, I'm not just listing those out of spite, they're the proven most common occurances of unethical hacking recorded as far as countries go.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Poor Judgement is a possibility here for sure. However, "hacking" is just plain crazy. They didn't hack anything and I agree with most of the postings that say that if anything, the schools should be going after the web people for creating such an insecure system. Did the schools prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the students were the ones that actually looked at the admissions status? Maybe it was someone else. If the students wanted to, I think they each may have a good case for going after the schools for libel and defamation of character lawsuits. Forcing the school to either "put up or shut up." Sounds like they were made examples of in the harshest of ways. And that just isn't right. The way the school handled the situation makes me wonder about it's own ethics.
They did access information that the university decided to make public. If they went to the admissions office 5 minutes before it was set to open some morning, and walked in because the door was unlocked and the university appeared ready to do business, would they have expected a different reaction. Hey wait, did I just shoot the point I was trying to make in the head?
Are you sure? "Not one was accepted" I can see, but "None was accepted" just doesn't sound right.
None may very well be singular (and even that is disputed - see your own link), but it refers to a group - can you therefore not use it in conjunction with a plural verb? I'd put it in the class of words like 'they', which aren't singular or plural themselves but get their number from the concept they embody.
It may be the contraction of 'not one', where singular is definitely used, but none is a fully independent word nowadays and, in my opinion, should be viewed separately from its origins.
On the other hand, the 'was' is part of a quote, a situation where normal grammar rules can become warped.
Jw
How long before a rejected student takes legal action against a school, ApplyYourself or both?
It's that "a sense of ethics" is indicative of a lack of good judgement.
Well, that example still doesn't explain this.
I love English!
Who is morally corrupt in this scenario i ask...
Your modern-day University autocrat has about as much use for morality as a fish has for a bicycle.
This is all about the elites that govern these institutions - they were embarrassed* by the applicants, and now it's payback time.
----------
*Although, for the life of me, I don't see how this** sort of thing would embarrass a normal person, but that just goes to show you how introverted, self-obsessed, narcissistic, and arrogant these monomaniacal little twits really are.
----------
** i.e. typing a URL into a browser with the hope of finding out information ABOUT YOURSELF - information that, in theory, BELONGS TO YOU. Reminds me of hospital administrators who try to ban patients from reading THEIR OWN CHARTS, as if the medical records belonged to the hospital, rather than to THE PATIENTS THEMSELVES.
Just thinking about these kinds of people makes my skin crawl.
Does none refer to a group, or to each individual member of the group?
In either case, I think you'll find that "none of the applicants was" and "none of the applicants were" are both acceptable, but the former is definitely correct, even if the latter is.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"All they did was akin to walking up to an unlocked filing cabinet and rifling through it."
If you can't trust staff to not go rifling through the filing cabinets, you don't have much trust around the office...
My Journal
Although the prospective students have been penalized by Stanford, there is something that I don't quite understand.
It seems that Stanford made this information (acceptance status) available by entering a (guessable) address.
Until this information was issued formally to the student, Stanford apparently considered this information confidential.
By not utilizing an effective password / security system, Stanford then effectively made this information publicly available.
One could argue that any student would have a right / entitlement to know what information on himself / herself was being made publicly available - especially if the information were supposed to have been confidential.
It is arguable that Stanford effectively violated the privacy of the students, but is prepared to punish the (prospective) students for obtaining the information it made publiclay available.
None may very well be singular (and even that is disputed - see your own link), but it refers to a group - can you therefore not use it in conjunction with a plural verb?
You can if you want--it's an accepted usage as well. I normally wouldn't though. "None was" sounds perfectly fine to me. A lot of things that are correct may not sound right at first--"the data are" for example.
By the way, it's not disputed that "none" is singular. If you read the link carefully, you'll see that both the singular and the plural are accepted usages. My point was that the original poster was trying to nitpick a grammar point that was actually the correct (and, in fact, is generally considered the "more correct") usage.
I'd tend to disagree that the 'was' usage is correct.
If you look at the links provided by other posters, it's claimed that 'none' is an indefinite pronoun, both singular and plural. The exact number therefore relies on with which word it is used.
Now, look at the complete subject of the sentence you gave - "none of the applicants". None is used to define a subset of applicants (an empty set, but a set nontheless) and is therefore clearly plural in this case. This is a side effect of the construction "___ of the ___", which will always produce a plural subject.
As for other constructions; I'm no english teacher, but I cannot for the life of me remember another way to use none in the subject, excluding by itself where the "of the" is implied. If you look at the parent phrase "not one", it can be used in a singular subject of the form "Not one [singular noun]", but 'none' cannot be used in this way.
If the 'was' usage is acceptable, it is clearly only due to past usage and is an exception in the english language.
Of course, if you can find a usage of none as part of a singular subject (as indefinite pronoun, not as proper noun naming the word itself), I'll admit that this is all a load of hogwash.
Jw
So only the 'best' hackers are allowed into Stanford, ones who werent caught?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The issue is that Stanford regards this as the equivalent of being asked to wait at an office while someone is away and quickly taking a peek at the list of results lying on their desk. They clearly expected reasonable privacy and you knowingly violated that privacy, now imagine if that list was turned over face-down, or if it it was in a folder or a draw, the violation would be even clearer. Translating this to the Internet is hard and debatable: the user was 'logged in' (aka invited into the admissions office), the information should have been secured, but then the piece of paper should at least have been turned face down or put in a draw. If they hadn't been logged on it would have made a slight difference, at the end of the day, both parties are in the wrong - Stanford failed to use basic security and the students took advantage of that failure. Typing a URL should never be illegal, but the actions you choose to make in front of people who will decide your admission to a university will obviously affect their decision, if you told them to fuck themselves would you expect to be accepted?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Good point about the original poster, and you're correct about the accepted usage, but for me anything that is supposedly correct but just sounds wrong sets off alarm bells.
6 69287
I just posted another comment to this thread about how I believe that 'none' cannot be used in a singular manner and thus the was usage is an irregularity in the language left over from 'not one'.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151031&cid=12
As for 'data are', isn't that a special case where the singular and plural are the same? "The data is" is correct when referring to a single data set, "The data are" correct when referring to multiple datas. I'd also note that "The data are" is rarely used, mostly replace by "The datasets are" or some similar word to indicate multiple blocks or sources.
Aah, the irregularities of the English language... Makes life interesting
Jw
I know cheating is something of a sport these days, often performed almost competitively and without second thought to ethics. But when all the highest rated replies to this story are people defending the actions of those students who gained unauthorized access to that information, that's too much.
/. is a reflection of the corrupted morals of western nations (and increasingly elsewhere). For many of you cheating through life is an easy way out and a deliberate choice, but I know I will be a better man if I go through my life honorably.
What these (prospective) students did was wrong. Period. They willingly and knowingly gained unauthorized access to information that was not theirs to access. I generally hate analogies but here goes: if these students found a key to their professor's room and snuck in to check on their exam results, do you think there'd be a furor as to whether they are guilty of cheatin or not?
Now, whether that access gives them an unfair edge like cheating in exams does is irrelevant. Also, whether these students knew they were "hacking" or not is irrelevant. I am positive every single one of them knew of how the status of their application was to be informed to them, and I'm positive that didn't include manipulating the URL or getting instant messages from friends about how to do it. Just the act of getting access to these records is the offense.
The conclusion is that these students deserved the punishment they got. I am also very happy to learn that there are other schools than my alma mater which take honor of their students (and faculty) seriously.
I'm afraid the reaction to this story on
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
Our team is skilled in the integration of technology and business processes that help maximize both effectiveness and ROI, resulting in a better applicant experience, higher quality applicants, more applicants, quicker decision making, and accurate timely reporting.
The ApplyYourself i-Class decision toolkit satisfies your most anxious applicants and saves your staff time and effort by allowing applicants access to acceptance decisions, through their secure online application account.
Sure sounds like it to me!
MBA applicants. Unethical behaviour. Don't admit them, just hand them diplomas!
"I'm not a lawyer, but I certainly know right from wrong."
As an employee of the Office of Admissions at a public university, I know that students love our status check system. Of course, it usually only takes about 2 days to approve undergrads, so we only have the status check for graduates and international undergraduates.
I cannot imagine how it could be "right" to reject students for this, unless the intention is to weed out the one "hacker" who originally figured it out. If that was the case, ban the first one to do it. I'm also a little concerned why they haven't immediately canceled service with "ApplyYourself", though I imagine they have a contract and it'll be up at the end of the year.
Stanford just annouced to the world, with this action, that they don't wish to employ the very best Knowledge Workers that are currently available. Congratulations and thanks, Stanford, you're making us other universities look great!
Was to ask "did I pass" and then listen to the response.
OK, technically, the webbrowser did. The idea is identical. The site didn't *have* to tell them.
As an educational institution, we hope that the applicants involved in this incident might learn from their experience.
I hope the educational institution might have learned something too. Like have a secure system.
Sure temptation is there and control should have been exercised. However it is really stupid just to brush everyone or any of them aside. It's just like the rules now days where the punishment is the punishment because you don't have to think.
No one gains a thing out of it. Well except Berkely. They gain some more people cheering for them when they play Stanford.
The applicants were evidently viewing publicly accessible pages, protected only because the applicants didn't actually have a link to them yet. Furthermore, the URL wasn't something obscure, it was a plain-text reference using the same applicant ID as all the other pages, just a different page.
If viewing those kinds of pages violates anybody's rules, then that's a bad precedent. The intent of the applicants may have been bad, but punishing them for this sort of innocuous URL manipulation sets a bad precedent for the entire WWW.
The people who should get "rejected" are the people who created the web site: obviously, ApplyYourself.com is incapable of creating a minimally secure web site. Is a site with such poor security acceptable to Stanford, Harvard, and other universities to handle sensitive personal data? What does that say about the integrity and ethics of those universities?
(We are actually looking for an outsourced service like ApplyYourself--does anybody know of more reputable alternatives?)
As for 'data are', isn't that a special case where the singular and plural are the same?
No, the singular is datum.
If you wish to register your disgust with Stanford's actions here, you might want to hit them where it hurts. Write other alums, perhaps circulate a petition, and threaten to withhold donations (or maybe just earmark donations specifically NOT to be used for the business school) until it changes its stance. Better yet, tell them you'll give them an opportunity to explain their actions, and that you might reconsider based on how satisfactory their explanation is :).
The datum is - the data are. It's Latin for "what is given".
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Wrong. "None" is a special case either way pronoun. None of the cake was eaten, and none of the students were eaten. "All" is the same way. Nobody is singular always (As with everybody).
I hate grammar Nazi's.
the faggot format of your post
Yeah, but the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.
That's why it was kind long winded. With footnotes, no less.
PS: Since when do ACs get mod points?
"We're shocked - SHOCKED! to find that b-school applicants have no integrity."
--American Business
Not in the common usage of the word. 'Data' as I understand it has come to represent a collection of information, the collection being a thing itself. In this sense, 'data' is singular. Datums is no longer in common use, as far as I know.
Of course, common usage isn't everything, but it is what eventually defines a language.
Jw
Quite possibly, but that is not the meaning that is in use today. I can clearly see where it's coming from, but as far as I know datum is no longer used seeing as data is usually not considered divisible. A single data point is rarely useful, and thus the word data seems to have evolved to represent a block of datums instead of being the plural of datum.
Of course I'm no english language professor, but isn't it common use that defines a language?
Jw
Let's say SBS has an acceptance rate of 10%.
So of those 41, only 4 would have gotten in anyway.
What's the big deal?
Stanford decided to sacrifice 4 people to make
themselves look good and ethical and get some PR.
Do I get accepted now?
The issue here is dead simple: Stanford placed certain records on a public server in a manner that is trivially accessible to anyone who is even moderately technical -- ie. all that's needed is the ability to type in a URL.
The applicants passed the technical cluefulness test.
Stanford sysadmins did not, since (we assume) the records were not supposed to have been made publicly accessible.
Stanford PHBs are of course clueless just like any other PHBs, so they're making all kind of fudges about it. But what it comes down to is, Stanford staff failed the cluefulness test.
Stanford has absolutely no obligation to accept anybody to their B-school. It is a privilige, not a right. The school has absolutely no reason to accept these applicants who, by their actions, called their own integrity into question when (especially in the case of Stanford) there are hundreds of other extremely qualified applicants.
"Of course I'm no english language professor, but isn't it common use that defines a language?"
Depends what language you're talking about. Some languages - like formal Spanish - are actually defined by a committee. Other languages - like American English - are largely codified in dictionaries but have no central defining body.
There is a tendancy within American and European English to limit "correct" English to what is currently in dictionaries (and corresponding grammatical texts), but that has one obvious issue: during the yearlong gap between editions, words/usages will appear that will by definition be incorrect that year but will (the next year) retroactively be deemed correct. How should those be handled?
In the data/datum case, I'd say that since almost no Americans (or Europeans, for that matter) are aware of the word "datum", no one would reasonably fault you for using data as both plural/singular.
"Stumble before you crawl"
I just finished a round of college admissions (luckily for me I didn't hear about this "hack" until after it hit the news, or else I probably what have done it).. BUT
Why are people not blaming ApplyYourself? The first thing any of these colleges should have done is canceled their contract with this vendor for screwing up. It's not hte kids fault the data was public. ApplyYourself is the worst college application system of all the ones I encountered. Terrible interface, ugly forms, confusing system, security holes such as these. The number one thing these schools could do to improve the admissions process, is to drop apply yourself.
If anyone wants a free business opportunity - create and sell an admissions package that kicks applyYourself security holed riddled self - I promise you, it wouldn't be hard.
It's not so much that I see it as being both singular and plural (although that is what I said *sheepish*) but that I believe that 'data' has taken on a new meaning, specifically as a synonym for 'dataset' and other similar terms.
What's your opinion on this? Would this be a valid evolution of a language? If there was an English council, would they allow this evolution or would they stick to datum, the technically correct and historically accurate term?
I can definitely see the point in keeping the word datum and using dataset instead of data, but is it wrong to define (redefine) a word for the convenience of the langauge's users (assuming it doesn't lead to exception rules)?
Jw
In this case, Stanford did not put plagues, etc, in the box. They simply said, "don't peek". Ethical people play by the rules, even if they see no harm in getting an early peek. It's as though your professor had next week's quiz on his desk when you stopped by his office. Just because he forgot to hide it doesn't mean it's ethical for you to look. Taking advantage of someone else's mistake is not ethical business. The ethical thing is to inform them of the situation, while noticably looking away.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
What do you think that they thought they were doing?
Who are they? Putting aside whether or not they were hacking, and whether or not they should be punished for it, how would one know just who they were? How would one know that the person who tried to check an applicant's status was actually the applicant and not his friend, or his neighbor, or his enemy, or just someone who pulled a name out of a hat because he wanted to see how it worked?
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
I'm not a linguist, but I have a limited background in historical linguistics so take this with an appropriate grain of salt. My study of language is primarily rooted in my philosophical work (philosophy of language, by the way, is insanely esoteric...please never ever study it if you're not sure about being a philosophy major...).
My feeling is that there's no such thing as an "invalid" evolution of language, any more than there is an invalid evolution of a species (sorry, Creationists). Language is a living thing, in the sense that it simply cannot remain static without a strictly controlling body. Consider the emergence of a word like "bad" as meaning "good" (yes, I know I'm dating myself a bit here). Arguably it perhaps first arose as an extension of sarcasm, but it certainly seperated itself enough that when people said "Man, that's bad!" they didn't think of themselves as being sarcastic. Were they wrong to consider the word as having seperated from its original use? I can't believe they were wrong.
As to data/datum/dataset specifically, I think the point is that until the last ten, twenty years or so, no living speaker used data, datum or dataset excent in the most jargonistic fashion. It was a peice of argot, with an extremely narrowly defined meaning. I think it is arguable that as data grew into common use, it appropriated the former meanings of datum and dataset, so that the current English word (as opposed to the Latin word) has fully subsumed those other meanings.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Just because he forgot to hide it doesn't mean it's ethical for you to look. Taking advantage of someone else's mistake is not ethical business
You don't live on this planet.
Without being cynical in the slightest, what you describe has absolutely zero relevance to how real world business operates.
Ethics? That's not even funny. Business ethics is a platitude, part of the normal M.O. of companies for adornment of public image, and has absolutely nothing to do with their actual operation. Quite simply, a company that operates under the constraints of ethics is a company that operates under a disadvantage in the free market, simply because ethics-based intangibles account for no more than 10% on the balance of competitive advantages, and often much less.
What you describe might apply in some utopian free market where everyone upholds the rule of ethics. It certainly does not apply in the real world.
Poor security doesn't justify the means. From a referenced slashdot article:
This, in my opinion, is really the heart of the issue. I jumped into this discussion a little late, so I haven't had time to read all 150 posts, but what I've read so far I find a little disturbing. There seems to be a common theme that The school had bad security and the hackers were merely (in the words of one comment) asking the right question. I disagree.
I don't think poorly obfuscated information intended to be kept confidential justifies hackers taking or accessing it, much less publicizing for others how to do the same. It seems unethical to me. And, I know I'm risking big time going down the chute of flamebait and troll modding hell for saying so, but I just think the pervasive "justification" of this hacking many of "us" perpetuates the stereotype of "in your face" behavior just because we know the technology and you (rhetorical) don't.
The school blew it only in the sense they didn't have much of a mechanism to prevent access, but would we still be saying it was okay if the school had some huge encryption in place to hide data and someone had hacked that? It really isn't that much different. The fact that the school "hid" the information sets the bar high enough to define the standard as to what the hackers did as inappropriate hacking. Just my $.02
The debate you're trying to frame -- "should the rules of grammar follow usage or vice versa" -- is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammar, and is fought by first-year English students in every college in America (and probably the UK as well). Descriptive grammar seeks to describe how language is used commonly, and must evolve; prescriptive seeks to codify how language ought to be used, and tends to hold its ground against the incursions of slang forms.
A quick summary of how the fight usually goes:
Well, you have more experience in it than me - as an engineering major I can only rely on my intution.
My feeling is that there's no such thing as an "invalid" evolution of language
I'm completely in agreement with you here, and it's something I've discussed with many people over the years. For me it's particularly relevant, as I am Belgian and we have at least a good dozen dialects which, if I'm not mistaken, were mutually unintelligible until modern times. You still see some elderly on TV talking in dialects that are supposedly dutch, but have to be subtitled to be understandable.
The point that I'm often confronted with is that there IS an official language and that's the right one, common usage and mannerisms be damned. It's a valid point of view and was definitely necessary to create a unified language here, but that mentality also holds the evolution of the language back. Personally I enjoy playing with language and am of the opinion that the communication of meaning is more important than the form, but...
It's the idea that "there's correct way to speak a language, and that's that!" that I've always disliked. A correct way to write I can see (and even then only for non-fiction), but speech should be causual and can definitely be entertaining.
Jw
Acording to wikipedia, cracking is "the act of compromising the security of a system without permission from an authorized party". They were obviously not authorized
Acording to dictionary.com, hacking is "To gain access to (a computer file or network) illegally or without authorization: "
Just type "What is hacking" in google, and you get all kinds of definitions
"Unauthorized access to or use of data"
"Unauthorized use, or attempts to circumvent or bypass the security mechanisms of an information system or network"
"The unauthorized access to a computer system."
Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure what what it means to hack into a computer. From everything I can tell, they got access to this data and knew it wasn't unauthorized. Yea Stanford was being a dick by kicking them out for something that "we" in the computer biz would blaim the site for, and yea lost of "us" look much lighter upon "hacking" than "cracking", but there is no question in my mind the students accessed data that stanford had not authorized them to access.
Just because it's easy to do doesn't make it ok.
Thanks for clearing that up - it makes me wonder what I've missed by choosing to stay strictly in engineering.
In any case, I must say I'm a zealous descriptive in my speech (formal writing is something else alltogether) and enjoy being able to tinker and play with a language. It's truly beautiful in how many ways the human mind can express an idea.
Of course, I understand the need for prescriptives as a balanceing force. I enjoy twisting the language, but I do realize that if that was the norm we'd lose the ability to understand each other. Slang is fun and entertaining, but an elegant, finely crafted sentence can be stunning in its layers of meaning and subtext.
Jw
I'm a geek and after many years of making fun of those MBA-types had a change of fate and applied to several business schools. I was waiting for my acceptance notification when the news about the "hack" broke.
Due to the staggered and overlapping notification dates, it would have been extremely helpful to know results in advance. Imagine the scenario of being accepted to one school with your deposit deadline due before being notified if you got into your preferred, but more difficult to get into school. Do you pass on sure thing behind door #1 or skip it for a chance at door #2? When you're facing relocation and close to $100,000 of expenses (with no income) over the next two years you want to make as informed a choice as possible. So I understand the desire to get the extra information.
HOWEVER, these are business schools. They all have a huge emphasis on ethics and take it very seriously (especially over the past several years due to high profile scandals). As soon as I saw the news I knew it would end badly for peakers. No matter if you believe it was acceptable or not to peak - as a business school candidate you should have realized peaking could get you into trouble.
I found it amusing that the b-school(s) gave the accused an opportunity to defend their actions. It almost implies the ethics violation would have been tolerated had the candidate been persuasive enough to talk their way out of it.
at fault?
If a human admissions officer put the info. on their door, and then hung a sheet of paper over it to 'secure it', would the students be 'hackers' if they lifted the paper up? Now in this case, perhaps the admissions folks really thought the paper was a form of security, it seems like an 'emperor wears no clothes' kind of thing: is the tailor at fault for telling the emperor he was wearing a suit? Is the emperor for not checking it out? In this case we are blaming the people who looked at the emperor and saw him naked!
Anything that is accessble by an unsecured url is publicly published (it's a 'uniform resource LOCATOR', after all). There was a cognitive choice made at some point to call this system 'secure', --or someone didn't read the manual--and that person is the one who published the information at a public URL.
The applicants just found the place it had been publically published before they were told to look there, which hardly seems a 'crime', really it seems more like initiative than anything else.
Stanford owes all their applicants, indeed their entire business and academic communities, an explanation for their gaping secuity hole. They "protected" applicants personal info by making a visible URL select applicant data by applicant ID code in plaintext in the URL. Like protecting a vault with a screen door. That kind of insecurity is unacceptable from one of America's top institues of business and technical training. What other insecurity will students' and clients' private data face in their hands? They get billions in government contracts, much of it secret, much of it liable to arm an enemy. They produce many powerful executives and their professionals, many of whom, if blackmailed, could threaten the economy, politics, or other national security. Sure, this is a little project, in a smalll department, not itself involved in any such sensitive projects. But how far does the insecurity go? How many other departments use the technique? Stanford's reputation, and the huge profits and privileges that go with it, depend on the notion that they're good at this kind of thing. They need to clear their name, and define the scope of the problem, immediately. Or lose it all, sooner than later.
--
make install -not war
Wow, a grammar Nazi who gets it wrong!
I think its alarming how many people feel that since the Univerity allowed the loophole to exist, the students did nothing wrong. Its this very mentality that is pevasive amoung young people that to me is the real issue. Did you know that if you find a wallet with identification in it, and you keep the money and the wallet you have committed a crime? Picking it up is legal, looking through it is legal, contacting the owner is legal, giving it to the police is legal, but keeping the money and items in the wallet is illegal. I am not using this as an analogy for someone geek figuring out a URL gives admission info, but rather an analogy of moral issues. The point I am making is that regardless of what you decided to do with the wallet, you didnt have to be told that keeping the money was wrong, you KNEW it would be WRONG before you did take it (if you chose to take it). I think that less and less this is true, people dont know when to KNOW its wrong. How many kids have said that they cheat in school because everyone else does it and they would be at a disadvantage if they didnt do it. The real problem here is that personal advancement takes priority over moral values and highground more often than not. I severly dislike Stanford University, yet I applaud there unwavering strictness in setting an example that dishonesty and ethical deviation will not be tolerated. Hopefully, Once this blows over they can get back to churning out corporate moral deviants like Condaleza Rice capable of lying to the faces of millions of people at a time. Good going stanford.
It's not a passcode. Nothing is checked against a stored number or key.
The correct analogy is:
There's two folders one on the outside of the door of the Deans office and one on the inside. The records were on the coffeee table of the reception room of the dean's office.
Just because it's complicated doesn't mean it's a hack. Getting to the deans office requires you go to the elevator, up two floors, take the third hallway on the left then turn a right past the second bathroom after the teacher's lounge afer the second janitor's closet on the left.
THE DEAN HAS TO GO THAT ROUTE EVERYDAY. Granted he has a nice tour guide (the database) to take him there.
Now if they had knocked out the tour guide (attacked the db) so they could go everywhere then it would be called CRACKING. But they did not they just asked a few questions.
It's not the ME, ME, ME that is the problem it's the everyone else is your enemy that is the problem.
Though this is a private school, most aren't. I wonder if any students have ever tried submitting a FOIA request about their status after their application. Would be interresting to see how a school responds.
Didn't the exact same thing happen last year? Wouldn't people realize this? -- These CAPTCHAs keep getting harder to read! "xdbrzcc"
I can't believe those schools are punishing prospective students for being too intelligent. On the other hand those schools are not as great anymore as they've been once. Those students can do better than wasting a couple years of their lives learning stupid stuff and afterwards paying off hundreds of thousands in student loans.
The students should purse legal action against the ApplyYourSelf website for releasing their names to the Universities. If this was truly "illegal" (which is was not) then ApplyYourSelf should have contacted the authorities. Instead, they released names of students who supposedly violated some URL-typing ethics.
from the ApplyYourSelf legal notice.
"If you do choose to provide us personally identifiable information, you can be assured that its sole purpose will be to support your customer and/or potential employee relationship(s) with ApplyYourself."
How is this a troll? Why don't you go mod yourself -2 DIPSHIT
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Cool, thanks.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
... they should look at it as a learning experience. They just "learned" what we all knew years ago, it's all good so long as you don't get caught. Getting caught getting information that others deem as secret generally has consequences. They just got theirs.
It's a valuable life lesson... yah.
(As a side note, I do really think it was a bit harsh since they left their shit all over the place like that... maybe one of the students should sue them for leaving their private data publically accessable without their consent?)
*yawn* next story, move along.
Shadus
The problem here is perception. The colleges are thinking of it as someone going into an admissions office and looking in a file cabinet(possibly even a locked one) to find their results. Whereas people on Slashdot, who know what the internet is, have no expectation of privacy and know that if you post something online it cannot be protected by just not publishing where it is located. What this is more like is Stanford buying a lot somewhere and placing a giant grid of billboards with admissions status on them, and the students being told, if you go here and look at the billboard with your SSN on the side, it'll tell you if you got in or not. This is a big problem, and probably a big reason why we keep hearing about information getting out from where it shouldn't. People are treating webservers like locked file cabinets, putting anything and everything in there. While in actuality the information is open to anyone. The strange thing is that people seem to be even more careless with information they put on the internet putting up information that they wouldn't even leave on their desks. I sympathise with the students because I do this sort of thing all the time, looking at URL's and trying to get to other content, and it's never malicious. Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you put something in a public place? How about if you don't tell people it's there?
Perhaps they need to read that article[1] that was posted the other day. [1]http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0 5/28/2058251&from=rss
So they screwed up. Admissions people aren't necessarily technical. So they hired someone who was. Apparently, they hired the wrong "experts". They weren't even alone, plenty of other reputable schools hired these same "experts". How do they get out of a bad situation? Hopefully, they fire the so-called "experts" and tell the applicants to apply again next year.
Do you know a better way to handle it? One that would be equally fair to the students who could successfully resist their curiousity? Turning back time is not an option.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Let me see if I have this straight....
1) No hacking or cracking was involved - the information was available to anybody who had a login/password by adding freely available information (again, if one has a login/password) to the url.
2) No one is claiming that someone viewed admission status for anyone but themselves (except for the sister but that's another story).
3) No information on the server was changed by the students, simply viewed (ie, admission status was not changed not could it be via this process).
4) Some posters are claiming that the students were told they shouldn't do this, but I have yet to read anything supporting this.
5) In some cases, this act was the sole basis for a denial from the school.
Simply put, the schools will and should get sued by the students who had their admissions taken away. No law was broken, and no attempt at cheating was made.
If you put information on the web, it will be viewed. Period. You can bitch and moan all you want about it, but if the information is not protected, it's your own damn fault. Blaming the students is a sad attempt at diverting the focus from the real issue - security by obscurity does not work.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
Skinning alive is too good for them!
I say we do the chinese death by inches thing. Wrap them in wire so it forms a grid, then start cutting off one or two squares per day of skin.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"they, and their alumni, don't want to be associated with the type of people that will create another Enron."
I'm sorry, but did you just equate figuring out your own admission status from a URL to embezzling, lying to the public, and squandering countless people's pensions and lifelong investments?
The posted the information publicly. If the information was not supposed to be accessed they shouldn't have posted it. What I've learned from this is that the Stanford Computer Science department probably isn't the one to enroll in if you want a good education in CS, especially in the area of security.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Personally if I had to make a call on this, I would agree with the schools and reject the applicants. However I'm glad I don't have to make that decision because it's not a easy one, you can make a good case for either side.
To play's devil's advocate, the arguments for the students are:
1. It's almost (but not quite) the same as entrapment. Most people in the same situation would be tempted to check.
2. There was no harm done. The students are checking their own information.
The arguments against the students are:
1. It was still wrong no matter how easy it was. The physical world equivalent would be the admissions office left the list inside a folder on their front desk. The folder is marked confidential/private... (The students were aware this was a 'hack')
2. These are tomorrow's leaders and they should be held to a higher standard. I'm sure there would numerous occasions where similar temptations come into play... and someone can always justify it won't hurt anyone.
3. Wrong is wrong.
Anyone who resists their own curiosity has no business being a student. They should go get a McJob and leave that university seat for the next Adam Smith.
Type a URL did they. What a load of rubbish
Dude, to get into law/med/art/etc school you first gotta prove that you already know the course material and are already an expert in the field. To get a bank loan, you first gotta prove that you don't need one. Why is this any different? ;-)
Can they prove that these students actually looked up their status? I mean there exists multiple possiblities of other users accessing the same info. One example is a random ID generating script (not likely). Or leaving computer logged in, and pesky young brother or friend does the "hack". Can they prove that the students in question were the ones who actually accessed this info?
Even if these student applicants were the only ones that could've possibly accessed the data, what kind of proof is still needed? Or do they not require proof - i.e. they can just refuse anyone they like without any justification?
...would have blamed it on a roommate, parent, sibling, or other person who might have plausibly had access to the machine the inquiry was made on.
Extra points if the person it was blamed on died of an accident or "natural causes" in the interim -- then the candidate is not only a good MBA candidate, but likely headed into politics after that.
"It's pretty obvious...[...]" Gray said. "I'm not a lawyer, but I certainly know right from wrong."
/.er!
Greetings my fellow
"DG: You're a jerk and a pedant. PG: Yes, but I'm still right. Neener neener neener."
Honestly, this gave me a great laugh. Not so much because of the "neener" part, but rather the fact that I actually heard someone [in a philosophy class about group ethics] call someone else, literally, 'a pedantic jerk' in class once for basically the same reason (the philosophical analogue was a debate about whether or not to use the author's given explanation or a third-party's interpretation).
"Stumble before you crawl"
The students were not actually able to access their own material, it was not currently up. However, they are being rejected anyway for so much as attempting to.
This may or may not change the arguments people are making here. It's worth pointing out however because few people seem to be taking this into account.
"Unauthorized access to or use of data"
"Unauthorized use, or attempts to circumvent or bypass the security mechanisms of an information system or network"
"The unauthorized access to a computer system."
Hmmm.. Did you receive WRITTEN PERMISSION to use Slashdot's service?
Sounds like hacking to me.
Or the word 'access' is defined by whomever.
Well, they decided they did not want any of the (minimally) resourceful and curious students to be admitted. Great.
If I have an opportunity to hire people, I will go for those kids rather than Stanford graduates. Innovative and curious minds are always better than slowpokes that truly believe it's ethical for higher education entity NOT to tell them whether they're admitted even though decision has been already made, and only reason for that is they wouldn't be able to say "Yes" to another college in case they were not.
Hyperom.com
Fear of those they can not control,
/. - that's a human weakness!)
Fear of those with l337 sKiLz that can lay waste to their systems.
Fear of Actually having to bring their computer security up to date for 2005 - not 1975.
Like an Honorary PhD - they have done these people a favor -
the degree is Useless trash - good for kitty boxes and bird cages.
If they want something to hang on a wall - go to a state school night classes.
If they want more skilz - start their own business and learn from the University of Real Life.
-p.s.
(Scripts know better than to waste their cycles on
UNI:
Dam you kids for being intelligent!
No more edumacation for you!
I didn't know that until now, either. For more info: http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/sv_agr.htm
That's the shit that feds me up
And you do all you're told to do, right? You probably never had any independent idea.
The notion that they did wrong by using an unadvertised resource that Stanford did not give out is dangerous. It implies that doing anything out of what's officially sanctioned is bad for society. Which is a very wrong idea to entertain and evangelize.
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
It all comes down to ethics. Until grades are formally released, you are NOT authorised to view them. Stanford is not interested in people who are acting unethically before they even make it in the door.
On a different note, I hope all these students had backup plans in place so that they don't suffer too much from this problem.
I think part of the problem is that HTTP is viewed in different ways by different people. There are some people who view non-linked portions of a webserver as private. However, HTTP is a medium of publishing. It takes a explicit act to add a file to the server and given a publically accessable name.
So the file that was accessed was published explitily by the company contracted to provide services. There was no unauthorized access because of this (nor is it tresspass in any form).
So I add to the massive list of annologies with the following: You have a tv programmed to view the first 10 channels of the spectrum with the channel up buttons, though you can access any channel using the direct number buttons. The content providor tests content on channel 15 before showing it on one of the first 10 channels. That is the access case.
When looked at it from this perspective, there is nothing to suggest morality from the access case.
However, more important is the agreement between the school and the students and the students and the website.
For example, if the web site has a terms of service that explicitly denies authorization for access to non-linked pages by user accounts, then there is an exsisting agreement.
Further the university makes clear its expected conduct during the process. They clearly thought the information was private and would not be published. As has been mentioned, it is entirely within their rights to determine admission in anyway they choose. If they feel that this decision allows them to achieve thier goals, then they were right in their actions.
However, had I been in the situation, I would have checked the form. With the knowledge of the schools reaction, I would not have. I do not concider it wrong for the student (reading published but not relased information is not unethical without outside factors) to look at the information.
Stanford was correct to ask for reasoning, though I find it difficult that not one of the applicants met their standards. A good faith belief that the information was explicitly published justifies the actions, as does a host of other reasons. Misunderstandings are not ethic dilemas.
As to the issue of punishing the web developer: everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes other's notice. I would just expect them to fix the problem as soon as possible. If there are contract segments relating to these sorts of issues, they should be followed. Otherwise, it was a good faith problem that simply needs to be corrected.
I wonder if anyone reads this.
historically none will default singular, as linked, an conveys a number or adjective, adding the ne prefix creates a pronoun. the link fails to mention aelfred's biblical use much earlier, and plural use is much less common.
none can also be a singular plural in a group reference from our french influence with on, third person singular. the use in english is in what is inferred, most often a single group entity, including the individual members of the group.
--
on y va
This is a side effect of the construction "___ of the ___", which will always produce a plural subject.
This post provides a singular counter-example ("All of the newspaper was soaked.").
The mnemonic that I use to determine whether "none" is singular or plural is: if "none" can be replaced with "zero" ("naught" (or "nought"? I don't know the spelling) for the UKers) without changing the meaning of the sentence, then it's plural (in the broad sense that "plural" means "not one" instead of "more than one"); if it can be replaced with "no part of" without changing the meaning, then it's singular. In your two examples, "No part of the cake was eaten." means that "none" is singular in that case, and "Zero of the students were eaten." means that "none" is plural in that case.
My bad. I should have said that "None of the ___" always produces plural. You cannot say "none of the newspaper"...
Jw
"Datum" _is_ still used. Talk to a geodecist sometime. They have the concept of a geodetic datum as a figure of the earth (and there a quite a few of them in common use). Of course, with the plural of "datum" being "data", they have a tough time when discussing several of them ...
What a long, strange trip it's been.
The impression I get from a quick google search is that a geodetic datum is a particular model of the shape of the Earth - please correct me if I'm wrong. If this is the case, they are not using datum's original meaning - a single unit of information - but have redefined it to mean model for their own use, just like the rest of the world redefined 'data' as a synonym for dataset.
And by the way, I was referring to common use. Say 'data' to someone on the street, they'll know what you mean. Say 'datum' and you'll probably get funny looks.
Jw
They are using it in its original meaning, as they are talking about one bunch of numbers. Each datum is defined by its semimajor axis, flattening, and assumed centre (which may, as in the case of the old Australian Geodetic Datum, be defined implicitly by reference to a point on the earth's surface where the geoidal separation is believed - incorrectly as it happened - to be zero). A geodetic datum is then taken as a given thing on which all subsequent surveying calculations are based. Although I'm mot a geodecist, I've done number-crunching for them.
I'm not a big fan of equating "common usage" with "correct", by the way. That way lies madness (incorrect usage of apostrophes, using "different than" when you mean "different from", misspelling "received", etc.). I used to have arguments with my ex-wife, a kind of closet postmodernist, about this very point.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
These are not hackers or computer science students. These are prospective business school students. Their aim is to be successful through whatever means is available to them. Competition is mind numbingly high to get into a prestigious school.
To know whether you got in or not, before other applications is priceless. It lets you know if you should be calling ahead and making arrangements and being setup and ready before your other competition. Likewise, if you were rejected, you will know that you shouldn't waste any more time/money/effort on that particular school. I mean... if you know you're not accepted, by bother trying to make folks happy there. Ie, why be lead on when you know the outcome?
To call this a hacking issue is like saying someone who finds the key hidden under the flowerpot is skilled at picking locks.
More than anything else, this is probably a stunt to do one or more of several things:
The applicants sought to learn their status early. The process did not let them change their status, change or view other peoples' status, or access personal information which they did not already have access to.
This is the equivelent of guessing the correct URL on a website to view content not originally meant to be viewed. Or, it can be considered the equivelent of going through your instructor's gradebook to see how you are doing.
As for the students who tried to view the information, well, curiosity has its price. The only question is whether their names will be entered into a kind of "ethical" blacklist between the schools.
It would be nice, and naive, to think that business leaders don't push the ethical envelope to get the results they want. If you get the info before your competition, that's an advantage you have over them. You don't give a hand to your competiting business if they have a hard year. You probably would like to know the contacts they have, that you don't. What are the ethics of befriending them to learn their contacts and using those contacts to your personal advantage? Would it be naive to think that people and companies don't do that?
Guess what I'm saying is that these 119 people who wanted to succeed so bad, were willing to step over that ethical line. Are they the exception or the rule of the highly desired schools? If they are the rule, what are these schools doing to change the culture that breeds such behaviour?
Winged Power Photography
My mistake - checked the dictionary, and apparently a reference surface can also be called a valid datum. Just seems strange, as doesn't look like a unit of information at first glance.
I don't neccessarily equate common usage with correct, but I do believe that people should have the freedom to play with the language freely in casual communication and that people who try to hold everyone to the strict rules are holding back the evolution of the language. On the other hand, formal writing per definition must stick to the formalized and codified set of rules that make up the language.
I have the same discussions with my mother about Dutch and its dialects, as I enjoy playing with the sound of the language whereas her mother was a Dutch language teacher. I consider myself able to see both sides, but am of the common usage camp myself.
Jw
Or the word 'access' is defined by whomever.
Their accounts were given read access to that information. That sure sounds like authorization to read it.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
To continue this discussion about MBA, here is an interesting article about the value of Wharton MBA In the wake of Enron and other corporate scandals, America's best-known business school- Wharton, the place that produced Michael Milken and Frank Quattrone, is under siege. Maureen Tkacik spent a year there figuring out what's going on. You'll develop lifelong connections and leadership skills to engage the world and transform your career in ways that extend far beyond your return on investment, ROI for short, on their degrees. Excepting the preambulatory niceties, what Wharton is really telling prospective students is that they'll get a return on investment, ROI for short, on their degrees. -- To read the full version, click here http://www.phillymag.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=569