Rob, dude, you really should think about some of these stories a little more before posting them. We're all drinking urine (and other much more horrible things) each and every day. It's what those costly water treatment plants on Earth are responsible for filtering, and it's what those expensive systems for the ISS are designed for. What's the difference? Either way the if the coffee tastes good, and it's clean water that's used, I'm happy drinking it:)
I was one of the judges on the awards last night. I have to say that it was a pretty interesting set of awards we had to give out - and I'm glad that Alan got reconised for the work he has done over the last more than a decade. It was good also to see some of the reacton from those receiving - Mark Shuttleworth was especially cool thanking Debian for the hard work which fueled the Ubuntu project.
Those who were there might have noticed I had them play some Runrig when Alan received his award (since they're one of the bands he likes).
There seems to be little attention given to the fundamental unfairness of this test presented.
The distributions were running with different software versions initially and although this was corrected there seems to have been little consideration given to the minor tweaks given to each different installation used. Which services were running on each system? Were the kernel settings identical in use? Were the machines experiencing differences in performance due to the X setup causing X to add different loads?
etc.
Fundamentally this test was probably not complete enough to suggest anything in particular.
Perhaps it would have been better to boot a single machine three times and perform the sequence of events exactly the same each time as this would have also ruled out some other potential factors.
Perhaps you're not using the Intel mindset, forgive me, this is Slashdot after all (read in to that what you will):-)
The thing is, 16 bits is actually quite a reasonable address space for a function call or what have you, and in practice the benefits of fixed size instructions and the resulting size for immediates outweighs the relatively less common case of actually requiring to load an absolute address.
If you load using IMMEDIATE addressing then you'll note that it will take up to five instructions to get at a 64bit address (4 additions and a shift) but if you're doing everything with the mindset of an Intel programmer then something is wrong. Usually, loads are performed as indirect offsets to registers - in which case a single instruction is all that is required (i.e. once you've loaded a pointer to the current stack frame then accesses can be relative to that).
Apple like to infer the Tibooks are 64bit machines. In reality, they're nice 32bit machines with full floating point and 128bit vector units - but they're still 32bit machines.
64bit is often defined as 64LP or LP64, meaning that longs and pointers are 64bit (i.e. full 64bit address space) - which the SPARCbook obviously is.
Another option would be to force them to use a specific working directory, and get the admin to set up a shell script to mass-archive all studuents' work every 6 hours or so. If the script just picks code files (as opposed to object and binary files), the space required will be miniscule.
This option is even worse really when you consider how many people actually wish to sit in front of CS department machines to code all day. I know I don't.
Rather than using one of the sometimes scarse 300 odd W2K machines (of course I'd rather shoot myself in the head than willingly subjecy myself to M$ in a place of learning) or one of the 3 deadrat boxen, I prefer to sit at home with a warm cup of hot chocolate and have loud music playing. Any requirement to change work practices to such a significant extent in the name of plagarism prevention is obsurd.
I'm not sure what the "best" solution is, but I know your idea (though useful) is not it.
Placing students' work on a public CVS repository would make the situation worse.
Can't say I agree with that entirely, though its uefulness would be very limited, that is true.
The idea of education is to learn.
Most education stopped being about learning the moment the corporations and other interests got in the way. Call me synical if you must, but think about it...
Normally I love the idea of open source, but in this case I think it is a bad idea. Now after the assignment is due and turned in, I think students have the right to post their assignments open source if they like (as long as it does not include any code provided by the instructor or others). Though, that forces the instructor to come up with a new assignment the next time the class is taught (if they realize).
Actually, I believe we were talking about Free Software, though for the purposes of this discussion I shall assume that it what you actually meant.
Students do have the fundamental right to freely publish their work, in my opinion. Unfortunately, having read through various rules and regulations, I would imagine at lot of these so called "far issue" issues are a moot point in reality. After all, the regulations where I study make it a heinous crime to even accidentally drop a single item of litter, or so my unqualified understanding of the rules would suggest. Anyway, if lecturers must create new assignments each time the course is presented, surely this not only ensures that material is not re-used beyond its lifetime but also that other students do not offer previous year's solutions to "new recruits"?
"I believe 127 people were accused of cheating by the CS [ed.ac.uk] department - including me."
Well, I couldn't quote figures, but I've heard similar results from elsewhere. Perhaps, they're online like this example? - http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/CourseMaster/more_info/ht ml/Java-u6-bsort-pub.htm
"Naturally I was outraged and got on the phone to the head of department. He explained that my submission was unacceptably similar to one other person and either someone copied it or we had collorated - I hadn't collaborated, copied or let my work be copied."
I have heard other stories similar to this one, where friends have had their code "borrowed" through such means as you describe. At least they get to blame you rather than blame the system...
"My father and I responded that it wasn't right that I should have to prove my innocence since it's a basic human right to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. We suggested we would seek legal council, and they were quick to write back reinstating my original mark."
I've had a similar run-in, not for the same reasons as yours, it's never nice when this happens.
"Cheat detection systems are fine as a mechanism to prompt staff to possible problems but they certainly shouldn't be used as the judge and jury."
Oh, but these days everything can be cured with a shell script surely:P I my situation it's plagarism detection, copyright material detection, you name it, it's all thrown in there.
"Given that CS typically has large class sizes - mine was over 300 at one point - and CS assignments are often quite short and often closely related to textbook examples... it's infeasible to hope that no two students will produce very similar results."
I'm reminded of a story involving Bill Gates and a certain law suit he filed years ago, in which he discussed how difficult it was for two programs to operate in the same way to achieve the same objective. The difference here, is the code is often Mickey Mouse and designed to enforce just one learning objective, whether it be how to program with arrays of Objects or merely output a Postal Address to the screen.
This solution could perhaps offer some protection however would require a few alterations.
The CVS would have to remain private to each individual. We're in a climate now where it's easy to find CS students who not only do not know what permissions are, but are unaware that they have the majority of their files available to the world. You can imagine how difficult it would be to thus implement CVS en masse.
The GPL aspect is interesting however whenever I have put my code online under a GPL license (after all due submission dates were passed) I have been asked to remove it. I don't think Universities like the idea of code being GPL'd, and there's also the legal issue of whether they have rights to everything a student produces for them (which I don't personally agree with either, and depends upon local laws).
To be honest, this issue is much more complex than merely persuading people to use system X. They must be educated and supported in protecting their work from prying eyes, and assessment mechnisms such as class based closed-book exams should be considered as another method for assessing true ability.
I'm not blaming one particular system for the reasons I don't like automated assessment, still I feel automated assessment is fundamentally wrong. This is my personal opinion only of course:-)
Coding mentors would of course represent a somewhat idealistic situation in which unlimited resources could be put towards the problem. I agree that it both far better and beats "screaming at CourseMaster":-) and the quality of code at the end of the course could very well be improved also. As you say, in reality this aint gonna happen.
I think the idea of a coding mentor can be adapted towards a situation which would scale reasonably well with the sizes of classes as they are now. Many of the automated methods rely on fairly trivial exercises where pattern matching and analysis are used to detect those "features" disired from the submitted code. Instead, fewer however much more detailed exercises which are handmarked would be better overall. Not only would this encourage development of larger projects but it would be both challenging and far more interesting than inserting X many "public static final int Long_Random_Name_Goes_Here" because that's what is being looked for in the code...sigh.
One of the reasons that I submitted the link to the software used at my University was to point out how routine this kind of thing has become.
The idea of automated cheat detection is fundamentally a good one, it helps to remove complete weeds from around us. However, at the same time we must remember that software is only as good as what you put in to it. False positives and other negative aspects quickly displace the usefulness of such applications in my mind - especially when you may find that the analysis of "similarity" between submissions is publically available for all to see.
The problem in my mind is when automated cheat detection develops in to other forms of automated assessment, which in my opinion are wrong. I do not believe that even the best current AI software is able to judge submissions in quite the same way as a human being, we should remember this.
In any case, I suggest that you guys take a look around at the information each organisation has on its assessment software - it's become quite an interest of mine of late.
This is a very valid point and one which should be considered carefully.
In this country, BT are currently beginning the ADSL rollout and, since they haven't been able to successfully resolve the security implications, access will now be totally non-firewalled for home users by "default". They are expected to use the "correct" firewalling software. Tell me, who honestly thinks that John Doe (or rather, John Smith over here...) is going to have a clue about security.
Additionally, many home users will not appreciate that the bandwidth they are about to experience is disproportionate to that offered anywhere else - some parts of the world have no access, some are stuck on 9600bps and some now have up to 10Mbit in to the home with 53Mbit a very real possibility in the next few years.
There will come a time when a customer can walk in to PC world and pick up an "ADSL kit" which they can self-install to "convert" their home access to ADSL. New homes will have ADSL as standard within 5-10 years - are the majority of people really ready for the day that a cracker can h4x0r their ADSL based TV and transmit crap into someone's home. Are people really prepared for the time bomb that is now ticking?
I recently wrote an article for a Linux magazine targetted to business in which I addressed some of these issues. I'll check some issues with my editor, but I can see no reason why we cannot get the article put up on our website and the URL sent in...
What is slashdot coming to when we start to get these kind of stories posted? A few points:
Use of the word "pirate" is plain dumb
This alternative registration was tried with alternic - they're still going, but "in the end, there can be only one" if you see what I mean. We don't have 10 different phone books, instead, the cable companies and other telcos share one common directory service - this is how it _has_ to be for DNS to work.
"What I had in mind was a system that was totally open and free, anyone can register any domain name or TLD."
That's a nice FANTASY. Whilst I am one of the biggest supportors of FREEDOM in this day and age, you have to face it - maintaining DNS _costs money_. Someone ultimately has to pay. The current system has its faults, but whilst we still live an a backward, money centred world, someone has to foot the bill and the current system allows this.
"In order to keep this DNS from leaking into the old DNS, I guess the servers could run on different ports."
This guy needs a good LARTing. He's getting confused between domain registration and DNS. NSI (with whom the guy seems to have an unhealthy obsession) are just one of many ICANN "approved" domain registrars. They aint the only boat on the ocean and there are alternative registrars. DNS aint quite the same as name registration is it?:) Deciding to replace a perfectly excellent system with a "new" idea is the Microsoft way - DON'T DO IT.
"I also had in mind a modified version of the DNS protocol, where data could be distributed in a Gnutella or FreeNet fashion."
When I first read this guy's submission I almost hit the monitor, he clearly has NO IDEA how DNS actually works. DNS _is_ distributed. Ultimately YES, we do rely on a few root servers to occasionally be up to perform zone transfers, but in reality, the system is pretty damn distributed in nature. This guy is getting the non-distributed nature of the WEB and the distributed nature of the internet confused and has obviously noticed how easily twits like Cliff will post drivel given half a chance.
" However it would be vulnerable to spoofing and faking data. "
How about requiring authentication and known zone transfer lists? Oh...wait! WE ALREADY HAVE THIS - IT'S PART OF DNS!:)
"Another alternative would be to only use this system to add new TLD's and use the NSI DNS for.com, etc.. This would allow TLD's such as.god,.sucks or.anything-you-want to be set up without interfering with servers not recognizing this new DNS. This would avoid naming collisions with the old DNS. "
So go talk to ICANN and get yourself set up as the registrar for.god,.sucks or.anything-you-want - sheeeesh, this guy has NO IDEA how ANY of the technology ACTUALLY WORKS!!!
"My hope was that something built in this fashion would be controlled by the normaleveryday users of the Internet, not by corporations."
NO! Your hope was to get a load of drivelly crap posted on slashdot, and, once again, you suceeded. Someone remove Clif's posting auth, please.
Some idiot Moderator is going to think this is flamebait or somesuch - NO! It's an honest retort to the rediculous submission that was allowed in. I'll be talking to the poster separately about their need to learn how things already work before they try to break everything with their idiotic ideas.
All the people that replied to the above comment failed to notice that the 0.5 second timing is for a single thread to ping a host and has nothing to do with available bandwidth.
A single host with several thousand simulataneous threads scanning hosts in "parallel" would easily manage the entire address range.
My goodness, aren't we all so dumb not to have thought of this?
Hi, This is the trouble isn' it? Getting jobs whilst at school.
I myself am 18 now and I've just left secondary school (our "High School") but I've also been doing a computing degree for the last 5 years. I am quite versed in many areas of computing including GNU/Linux and the whole concept of Free Software, Security and web stuff - I also write for several magazines.
I have now got a decent summer job via some contacts. I'd suggest that it's more about contacts at your age because you're still at school and people don't like to hire "school boys" but they will hire "John Doe from XYZ LUG who know's what he's doing".
For anyone that is interested, Easy Penguin will be an internet venture of mine to offer Linux Support and Community Services, amoungst other things, and I _will_ be hiring based on ability and not on age or any other characteristic.
Some interesting comments, however, let me suggest that you introduce yourself to the "locate" (often now slocate) command. It builds a database of available files (via anacron ("cron") or whatever...) and then allows you to very quickly locate files without waiting for find.
Hi, I'd just like to let you all know publically that, should the RIP Bill go through Lords and become Law in its present state, I WILL TAKE THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT TO THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. In addition I will seek to have Jack Straw arrested and locked up for a very long time for his insistance to commit human rights crimes.
Jack Straw is introducing a LOT of new legislation that gives the Home Secretary (him) a LOT of power. In a way this is worse than dictators such as Hitler because Straw is doing this silently under the guise of protecting the public interest. He must be stopped from committing human rights crimes and I will try to do anything possible in the courts that I can to stop him.
Perhaps we do need some kind of new provisions in the law, but let's do it by extending existing laws not introducing new laws. I will not ever hand over my computer decryption keys and if the British Government don't like it then I'll have the ECHR remove them from office.
Hi, Whilst I may be as pissed over this as the next Slashdotter, it's not really surprising is it? The RIAA do not "understand" the internet. To them, it represents something that is different and allows for open communication much more than ever before.
The RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) are all about keeping things closed. They exist because some group of people "artists" thought that they should implement some kind of industry hard boy to monitor what goes on and to crank down on anyone that so much as whistles the latest teeny pop song from Miss Spears without paying her record company a royalty. Not only would she be unlikely to receive any money that I paid in royalties, but she would be lead to believe that the RIAA had her best interests at heart.
So I am trying to establish the point that the RIAA represents everything which is closed and restricted in the record industry.
Now as I said, the internet comes along and all of a sudden the RIAA has a lot of potential "violations" of copyright and they decide to act. They have repeatedly attempted to have any online music initiatives quashed as soon as the started.
I'm not just talking about the illegal activities - don't you wonder why every artist doesn't have full versions of their videos online for streaming? etc.? It's not that the artist is concerned that a few technically minded, or even "script kiddies" would figure out how to store the poorer quality streamed content to watch later, it's that the RIAA and those like them have attempted to convince the artists and their record companies that there is no alternative to "stamping out" these internet users - and clearly every internet user is an obvious pirate (a-hoy there) waiting to happen.
The RIAA is in a somewhat different position than the MPAA as, currently, bandwidth offerings to end users in many developed parts of the world are plain crap. They are not really sufficient for anything like reasonable quality video to be streamed in real time and without latency issues. Hence the MPAA (don't get me started on the MPAA), although it acts like an idiot, doesn't have to worry so much. On the other hand, music can easily be encoded in to an mp3, vorbis, mpeg1-2, aac, , and whilst they may not be of the best quality at the reasonably "low" bit rates commonly offered online (in the 64-196kpbs range) they are perfectly reasonable for every day listening and indeed I am listing to a large playlist at the moment as I type this. Thus the RIAA is concerned about the "illegal" uses of "its" music. What they do not seem to realise is that the number of violators is proportionally very small. If you were to investigate each and every download through napster you would probably find that they represent less than 0.001% of the music purchasing population (or something). Such a small figure is clearly "unacceptable" from the RIAA's point of view, but then I ask you to investigate how much those users already pay to the RIAA and to record companies for the music that they listen to. How many of them (like myself) feel moral implications for downloading music that they have not licensed to listen to? When you take all of these actions in to account, I bet that the picture changes somewhat.
Now let's also think about the cost of purchasing music in this day and age - music is rediculoulsy expensive. I am currently listening to "Toca's Miracle" which came on a collective albulm. This was fairly expensive, but not too bad when one considers the cost of purchasing music singles. On the other hand, I have a copy of "Go Let It Out" from Oasis sitting here on my desk, which cost about £3 for just one song! If I had been able to purchase that song online and then download it to my peecee, I would probably have done so. I could then have avoided paying the costs for packaging and pressing and the CD itself. I haven't touched that CD in months, it is somewhere in my mp3 collection but I've not used the CD since I bought the music. If I could have a choice between bying a CD in the shop for music that I am likely to listen to in a CD player, to take with me in my portable, etc. or downloading and putting in to my collection and paying less, I believe less "piracy" would occur.
So I hope that I have established my points concerning the RIAA as a general organisation. Now let us consider their latest blunder.
Instead of supporting the enabling-technology of the internet, the RIAA has decided that it represents a (very very minor) "threat" to its business and so must therefore die. The RIAA knows full well that online music "piracy" is much smaller than they make it out to be and they also know fully the consequences of their actions.
They aren't just trying to have this one site shut down and to stop "illegal distribution of mp3s", they would like to have a legal precident for the linking to sensitive or illegal information established. The RIAA has no particular vested interest in the internet, their friends at the MPAA certainly do not. The many other groups that the represent and have associations with may use the internet ("because everyone else does"), but they'd happily return to 10 years ago when internet usage was not commonplace in the home (it still isn't relatively speaking) and what usage did occur was mostly educational in nature. Certainly the MPEG group didn't exist and such high compression codecs as we have today were "dreams" on a whiteboard somewhere. Back in the "dark old days", the RIAA had much more control over music distribution. They were able to clamp down far more easily on offenders because some kind of physical transfer was typically required. They are _scared_ of the internet and the tremendous possibilities ahead.
They have no vested interest in particular therefore they do not care if they try to destroy what they have created - as making responsible the linker would certainly do.
-- If you read this far then yes, I am karma whorin. Jon.
Slashdot Mirror
I just did!
Rob, dude, you really should think about some of these stories a little more before posting them. We're all drinking urine (and other much more horrible things) each and every day. It's what those costly water treatment plants on Earth are responsible for filtering, and it's what those expensive systems for the ISS are designed for. What's the difference? Either way the if the coffee tastes good, and it's clean water that's used, I'm happy drinking it :)
Hi folks,
I was one of the judges on the awards last night. I have to say that it was a pretty interesting set of awards we had to give out - and I'm glad that Alan got reconised for the work he has done over the last more than a decade. It was good also to see some of the reacton from those receiving - Mark Shuttleworth was especially cool thanking Debian for the hard work which fueled the Ubuntu project.
Those who were there might have noticed I had them play some Runrig when Alan received his award (since they're one of the bands he likes).
Jon.
There seems to be little attention given to the fundamental unfairness of this test presented.
The distributions were running with different software versions initially and although this was corrected there seems to have been little consideration given to the minor tweaks given to each different installation used. Which services were running on each system? Were the kernel settings identical in use? Were the machines experiencing differences in performance due to the X setup causing X to add different loads?
etc.
Fundamentally this test was probably not complete enough to suggest anything in particular. Perhaps it would have been better to boot a single machine three times and perform the sequence of events exactly the same each time as this would have also ruled out some other potential factors.
Jon.
Hi,
:-)
Perhaps you're not using the Intel mindset, forgive me, this is Slashdot after all (read in to that what you will)
The thing is, 16 bits is actually quite a reasonable address space for a function call or what have you, and in practice the benefits of fixed size instructions and the resulting size for immediates outweighs the relatively less common case of actually requiring to load an absolute address.
Jon.
That's not true at all. Read the specs.
If you load using IMMEDIATE addressing then you'll note that it will take up to five instructions to get at a 64bit address (4 additions and a shift) but if you're doing everything with the mindset of an Intel programmer then something is wrong. Usually, loads are performed as indirect offsets to registers - in which case a single instruction is all that is required (i.e. once you've loaded a pointer to the current stack frame then accesses can be relative to that).
Jon.
Apple like to infer the Tibooks are 64bit machines. In reality, they're nice 32bit machines with full floating point and 128bit vector units - but they're still 32bit machines.
64bit is often defined as 64LP or LP64, meaning that longs and pointers are 64bit (i.e. full 64bit address space) - which the SPARCbook obviously is.
Jon (who will be buying one).
Another option would be to force them to use a specific working directory, and get the admin to set up a shell script to mass-archive all studuents' work every 6 hours or so. If the script just picks code files (as opposed to object and binary files), the space required will be miniscule.
This option is even worse really when you consider how many people actually wish to sit in front of CS department machines to code all day. I know I don't.
Rather than using one of the sometimes scarse 300 odd W2K machines (of course I'd rather shoot myself in the head than willingly subjecy myself to M$ in a place of learning) or one of the 3 deadrat boxen, I prefer to sit at home with a warm cup of hot chocolate and have loud music playing. Any requirement to change work practices to such a significant extent in the name of plagarism prevention is obsurd.
I'm not sure what the "best" solution is, but I know your idea (though useful) is not it.
--jcm
Placing students' work on a public CVS repository would make the situation worse.
Can't say I agree with that entirely, though its uefulness would be very limited, that is true.
The idea of education is to learn.
Most education stopped being about learning the moment the corporations and other interests got in the way. Call me synical if you must, but think about it...
Normally I love the idea of open source, but in this case I think it is a bad idea. Now after the assignment is due and turned in, I think students have the right to post their assignments open source if they like (as long as it does not include any code provided by the instructor or others). Though, that forces the instructor to come up with a new assignment the next time the class is taught (if they realize).
Actually, I believe we were talking about Free Software, though for the purposes of this discussion I shall assume that it what you actually meant.
Students do have the fundamental right to freely publish their work, in my opinion. Unfortunately, having read through various rules and regulations, I would imagine at lot of these so called "far issue" issues are a moot point in reality. After all, the regulations where I study make it a heinous crime to even accidentally drop a single item of litter, or so my unqualified understanding of the rules would suggest. Anyway, if lecturers must create new assignments each time the course is presented, surely this not only ensures that material is not re-used beyond its lifetime but also that other students do not offer previous year's solutions to "new recruits"?
Then they devise an elaborate and fanstastic scheme to justify their own lack of initiative and apparent incompetence.
:-)
Fantastic comment. I agree absolutely
--jcm
"I believe 127 people were accused of cheating by the CS [ed.ac.uk] department - including me."
t ml/Java-u6-bsort-pub.htm
:P I my situation it's plagarism detection, copyright material detection, you name it, it's all thrown in there.
... it's infeasible to hope that no two students will produce very similar results."
Well, I couldn't quote figures, but I've heard similar results from elsewhere. Perhaps, they're online like this example? - http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/CourseMaster/more_info/h
"Naturally I was outraged and got on the phone to the head of department. He explained that my submission was unacceptably similar to one other person and either someone copied it or we had collorated - I hadn't collaborated, copied or let my work be copied."
I have heard other stories similar to this one, where friends have had their code "borrowed" through such means as you describe. At least they get to blame you rather than blame the system...
"My father and I responded that it wasn't right that I should have to prove my innocence since it's a basic human right to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. We suggested we would seek legal council, and they were quick to write back reinstating my original mark."
I've had a similar run-in, not for the same reasons as yours, it's never nice when this happens.
"Cheat detection systems are fine as a mechanism to prompt staff to possible problems but they certainly shouldn't be used as the judge and jury."
Oh, but these days everything can be cured with a shell script surely
"Given that CS typically has large class sizes - mine was over 300 at one point - and CS assignments are often quite short and often closely related to textbook examples
I'm reminded of a story involving Bill Gates and a certain law suit he filed years ago, in which he discussed how difficult it was for two programs to operate in the same way to achieve the same objective. The difference here, is the code is often Mickey Mouse and designed to enforce just one learning objective, whether it be how to program with arrays of Objects or merely output a Postal Address to the screen.
--jcm
This solution could perhaps offer some protection however would require a few alterations.
The CVS would have to remain private to each individual. We're in a climate now where it's easy to find CS students who not only do not know what permissions are, but are unaware that they have the majority of their files available to the world. You can imagine how difficult it would be to thus implement CVS en masse.
The GPL aspect is interesting however whenever I have put my code online under a GPL license (after all due submission dates were passed) I have been asked to remove it. I don't think Universities like the idea of code being GPL'd, and there's also the legal issue of whether they have rights to everything a student produces for them (which I don't personally agree with either, and depends upon local laws).
To be honest, this issue is much more complex than merely persuading people to use system X. They must be educated and supported in protecting their work from prying eyes, and assessment mechnisms such as class based closed-book exams should be considered as another method for assessing true ability.
Hi there,
:-)
:-) and the quality of code at the end of the course could very well be improved also. As you say, in reality this aint gonna happen.
I'm not blaming one particular system for the reasons I don't like automated assessment, still I feel automated assessment is fundamentally wrong. This is my personal opinion only of course
Coding mentors would of course represent a somewhat idealistic situation in which unlimited resources could be put towards the problem. I agree that it both far better and beats "screaming at CourseMaster"
I think the idea of a coding mentor can be adapted towards a situation which would scale reasonably well with the sizes of classes as they are now. Many of the automated methods rely on fairly trivial exercises where pattern matching and analysis are used to detect those "features" disired from the submitted code. Instead, fewer however much more detailed exercises which are handmarked would be better overall. Not only would this encourage development of larger projects but it would be both challenging and far more interesting than inserting X many "public static final int Long_Random_Name_Goes_Here" because that's what is being looked for in the code...sigh.
Hi,
One of the reasons that I submitted the link to the software used at my University was to point out how routine this kind of thing has become.
The idea of automated cheat detection is fundamentally a good one, it helps to remove complete weeds from around us. However, at the same time we must remember that software is only as good as what you put in to it. False positives and other negative aspects quickly displace the usefulness of such applications in my mind - especially when you may find that the analysis of "similarity" between submissions is publically available for all to see.
The problem in my mind is when automated cheat detection develops in to other forms of automated assessment, which in my opinion are wrong. I do not believe that even the best current AI software is able to judge submissions in quite the same way as a human being, we should remember this.
In any case, I suggest that you guys take a look around at the information each organisation has on its assessment software - it's become quite an interest of mine of late.
--
Jon Masters
http://www.jonmasters.org/
This is a very valid point and one which should be considered carefully.
In this country, BT are currently beginning the ADSL rollout and, since they haven't been able to successfully resolve the security implications, access will now be totally non-firewalled for home users by "default". They are expected to use the "correct" firewalling software. Tell me, who honestly thinks that John Doe (or rather, John Smith over here...) is going to have a clue about security.
Additionally, many home users will not appreciate that the bandwidth they are about to experience is disproportionate to that offered anywhere else - some parts of the world have no access, some are stuck on 9600bps and some now have up to 10Mbit in to the home with 53Mbit a very real possibility in the next few years.
There will come a time when a customer can walk in to PC world and pick up an "ADSL kit" which they can self-install to "convert" their home access to ADSL. New homes will have ADSL as standard within 5-10 years - are the majority of people really ready for the day that a cracker can h4x0r their ADSL based TV and transmit crap into someone's home. Are people really prepared for the time bomb that is now ticking?
I recently wrote an article for a Linux magazine targetted to business in which I addressed some of these issues. I'll check some issues with my editor, but I can see no reason why we cannot get the article put up on our website and the URL sent in...
Microsoft did not invent the optical mouse, please correct you brain and restart.
Jon.
1). Advertising in MP3s is a good way to get the MPAA off our backs
2). Advertising in MP3s is about as useful as the "C sharp" programming language and will just make life worse for everyone
3). Advertising in MP3s will allow the RIAA to embed yet more secret mind control subliminal messages to take over our minds
4). This poll sucks
5). BLUE
6). This poll doesn't add up!
To create your own poll, simply follow the example above and share with your friends! Enjoy.
-- Jon.
What is slashdot coming to when we start to get these kind of stories posted? A few points:
:) Deciding to replace a perfectly excellent system with a "new" idea is the Microsoft way - DON'T DO IT.
:)
.com, etc.. This would allow TLD's such as .god, .sucks or .anything-you-want to be set up without interfering with servers not recognizing this new DNS. This would avoid naming collisions with the old DNS. "
.god, .sucks or .anything-you-want - sheeeesh, this guy has NO IDEA how ANY of the technology ACTUALLY WORKS!!!
Use of the word "pirate" is plain dumb
This alternative registration was tried with alternic - they're still going, but "in the end, there can be only one" if you see what I mean. We don't have 10 different phone books, instead, the cable companies and other telcos share one common directory service - this is how it _has_ to be for DNS to work.
"What I had in mind was a system that was totally open and free, anyone can register any domain name or TLD."
That's a nice FANTASY. Whilst I am one of the biggest supportors of FREEDOM in this day and age, you have to face it - maintaining DNS _costs money_. Someone ultimately has to pay. The current system has its faults, but whilst we still live an a backward, money centred world, someone has to foot the bill and the current system allows this.
"In order to keep this DNS from leaking into the old DNS, I guess the servers could run on different ports."
This guy needs a good LARTing. He's getting confused between domain registration and DNS. NSI (with whom the guy seems to have an unhealthy obsession) are just one of many ICANN "approved" domain registrars. They aint the only boat on the ocean and there are alternative registrars. DNS aint quite the same as name registration is it?
"I also had in mind a modified version of the DNS protocol, where data could be distributed in a Gnutella or FreeNet fashion."
When I first read this guy's submission I almost hit the monitor, he clearly has NO IDEA how DNS actually works. DNS _is_ distributed. Ultimately YES, we do rely on a few root servers to occasionally be up to perform zone transfers, but in reality, the system is pretty damn distributed in nature. This guy is getting the non-distributed nature of the WEB and the distributed nature of the internet confused and has obviously noticed how easily twits like Cliff will post drivel given half a chance.
" However it would be vulnerable to spoofing and faking data. "
How about requiring authentication and known zone transfer lists? Oh...wait! WE ALREADY HAVE THIS - IT'S PART OF DNS!
"Another alternative would be to only use this system to add new TLD's and use the NSI DNS for
So go talk to ICANN and get yourself set up as the registrar for
"My hope was that something built in this fashion would be controlled by the normaleveryday users of the Internet, not by corporations."
NO! Your hope was to get a load of drivelly crap posted on slashdot, and, once again, you suceeded. Someone remove Clif's posting auth, please.
Some idiot Moderator is going to think this is flamebait or somesuch - NO! It's an honest retort to the rediculous submission that was allowed in. I'll be talking to the poster separately about their need to learn how things already work before they try to break everything with their idiotic ideas.
--
Jon.
All the people that replied to the above comment failed to notice that the 0.5 second timing is for a single thread to ping a host and has nothing to do with available bandwidth.
A single host with several thousand simulataneous threads scanning hosts in "parallel" would easily manage the entire address range.
My goodness, aren't we all so dumb not to have thought of this?
--
Jon.
Hi,
This is the trouble isn' it? Getting jobs whilst at school.
I myself am 18 now and I've just left secondary school (our "High School") but I've also been doing a computing degree for the last 5 years. I am quite versed in many areas of computing including GNU/Linux and the whole concept of Free Software, Security and web stuff - I also write for several magazines.
I have now got a decent summer job via some contacts. I'd suggest that it's more about contacts at your age because you're still at school and people don't like to hire "school boys" but they will hire "John Doe from XYZ LUG who know's what he's doing".
For anyone that is interested, Easy Penguin will be an internet venture of mine to offer Linux Support and Community Services, amoungst other things, and I _will_ be hiring based on ability and not on age or any other characteristic.
--
Jon.
Some interesting comments, however, let me suggest that you introduce yourself to the "locate" (often now slocate) command. It builds a database of available files (via anacron ("cron") or whatever...) and then allows you to very quickly locate files without waiting for find.
--
Jon.
Do not try to post answers to questions that you do not understand.
--
Jack Straw is introducing a LOT of new legislation that gives the Home Secretary (him) a LOT of power. In a way this is worse than dictators such as Hitler because Straw is doing this silently under the guise of protecting the public interest. He must be stopped from committing human rights crimes and I will try to do anything possible in the courts that I can to stop him.
Perhaps we do need some kind of new provisions in the law, but let's do it by extending existing laws not introducing new laws . I will not ever hand over my computer decryption keys and if the British Government don't like it then I'll have the ECHR remove them from office.
-- Jonathan.
Hi,
Some git has been impersonating me again. I'm sorry guys.
Please don't moderate me down too much.
sorry.
--
Jon.
Hi,
Whilst I may be as pissed over this as the next Slashdotter, it's not really surprising is it? The RIAA do not "understand" the internet. To them, it represents something that is different and allows for open communication much more than ever before.
The RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) are all about keeping things closed. They exist because some group of people "artists" thought that they should implement some kind of industry hard boy to monitor what goes on and to crank down on anyone that so much as whistles the latest teeny pop song from Miss Spears without paying her record company a royalty. Not only would she be unlikely to receive any money that I paid in royalties, but she would be lead to believe that the RIAA had her best interests at heart.
So I am trying to establish the point that the RIAA represents everything which is closed and restricted in the record industry.
Now as I said, the internet comes along and all of a sudden the RIAA has a lot of potential "violations" of copyright and they decide to act. They have repeatedly attempted to have any online music initiatives quashed as soon as the started.
I'm not just talking about the illegal activities - don't you wonder why every artist doesn't have full versions of their videos online for streaming? etc.? It's not that the artist is concerned that a few technically minded, or even "script kiddies" would figure out how to store the poorer quality streamed content to watch later, it's that the RIAA and those like them have attempted to convince the artists and their record companies that there is no alternative to "stamping out" these internet users - and clearly every internet user is an obvious pirate (a-hoy there) waiting to happen.
The RIAA is in a somewhat different position than the MPAA as, currently, bandwidth offerings to end users in many developed parts of the world are plain crap. They are not really sufficient for anything like reasonable quality video to be streamed in real time and without latency issues. Hence the MPAA (don't get me started on the MPAA), although it acts like an idiot, doesn't have to worry so much. On the other hand, music can easily be encoded in to an mp3, vorbis, mpeg1-2, aac, , and whilst they may not be of the best quality at the reasonably "low" bit rates commonly offered online (in the 64-196kpbs range) they are perfectly reasonable for every day listening and indeed I am listing to a large playlist at the moment as I type this. Thus the RIAA is concerned about the "illegal" uses of "its" music. What they do not seem to realise is that the number of violators is proportionally very small. If you were to investigate each and every download through napster you would probably find that they represent less than 0.001% of the music purchasing population (or something). Such a small figure is clearly "unacceptable" from the RIAA's point of view, but then I ask you to investigate how much those users already pay to the RIAA and to record companies for the music that they listen to. How many of them (like myself) feel moral implications for downloading music that they have not licensed to listen to? When you take all of these actions in to account, I bet that the picture changes somewhat.
Now let's also think about the cost of purchasing music in this day and age - music is rediculoulsy expensive. I am currently listening to "Toca's Miracle" which came on a collective albulm. This was fairly expensive, but not too bad when one considers the cost of purchasing music singles. On the other hand, I have a copy of "Go Let It Out" from Oasis sitting here on my desk, which cost about £3 for just one song! If I had been able to purchase that song online and then download it to my peecee, I would probably have done so. I could then have avoided paying the costs for packaging and pressing and the CD itself. I haven't touched that CD in months, it is somewhere in my mp3 collection but I've not used the CD since I bought the music. If I could have a choice between bying a CD in the shop for music that I am likely to listen to in a CD player, to take with me in my portable, etc. or downloading and putting in to my collection and paying less, I believe less "piracy" would occur.
So I hope that I have established my points concerning the RIAA as a general organisation. Now let us consider their latest blunder.
Instead of supporting the enabling-technology of the internet, the RIAA has decided that it represents a (very very minor) "threat" to its business and so must therefore die. The RIAA knows full well that online music "piracy" is much smaller than they make it out to be and they also know fully the consequences of their actions.
They aren't just trying to have this one site shut down and to stop "illegal distribution of mp3s", they would like to have a legal precident for the linking to sensitive or illegal information established. The RIAA has no particular vested interest in the internet, their friends at the MPAA certainly do not. The many other groups that the represent and have associations with may use the internet ("because everyone else does"), but they'd happily return to 10 years ago when internet usage was not commonplace in the home (it still isn't relatively speaking) and what usage did occur was mostly educational in nature. Certainly the MPEG group didn't exist and such high compression codecs as we have today were "dreams" on a whiteboard somewhere. Back in the "dark old days", the RIAA had much more control over music distribution. They were able to clamp down far more easily on offenders because some kind of physical transfer was typically required. They are _scared_ of the internet and the tremendous possibilities ahead.
They have no vested interest in particular therefore they do not care if they try to destroy what they have created - as making responsible the linker would certainly do.
--
If you read this far then yes, I am karma whorin.
Jon.