What's "new" in this announcement/advertisement is that they've opened the service up to home users. Basically every law firm in New York uses this service to supply menus and dinner to their associates - I was temping in law firms for about 6 months, and used SW at every firm I was at to order food after hours. Corporate customers are undoubtedly underwriting the bill for the new "home users" section.
It's worth it for the law firms to keep their associates at their desks for ungodly numbers of hours. The restaurants get to penetrate the corporate market without having to set up a delivery infrastructure or build up a reputation for corporate catering. And Seamless Web clearly figure they can add a nickel- and dime-level profits to their solid corporate base.
IANAL, but I am a university professor of English. Admittedly, I have the advantage of teaching thousand year old books at a world-class university, which definitely narrows the options for 'buy em' papers to be submitted, but beyond that, avoiding/catching the 'purchased paper' all comes down to proper teaching. First, one can always assign particular paper topics: what sort of cow-town university assigns a paper, even for Freshman intro to composition, on 'Gatsby' without providing further guidance - themes and topics discussed, already, in class, issues examined and developed throughout the class, etc. This in itself gets rid of the ex nihilo aspect of purchased papers: 'gatsby as hero', 'gatsby as anti-hero' don't hack it when you've been discussing 'daisy as hero' or 'novels of social disfunction', for example.
If you do choose to give students freedom in choosing paper topics, which I prefer, at least know your students and their work. Although it can be more problematic in large survey/lecture classes, somebody should know them and their abilities - you, TA, GSI, somebody. Again, the relevance of the paper to at least some of the ideas discussed in class is an obvious tip-off, as is a comparison to the students' interests exhibited in previously submitted work. It's not hard to spot a purchased paper, at all, if the professor/teacher is doing their job of teaching properly. 'Book reports' and cliffs' notes at the university level? Pah.
All of which brings me to the point of my rant - this kind of stuff only happens at institutions that employ crap teachers. Not necessarily lousy universities, but ones that permit shoddy, sub-standard teachers who should be teaching elementary-school english to pose and parade as 'professors'. Even with a 4/4 brutal teaching load at a large public institution, this kind of thing is simply a non-issue for teachers that actually work at it, rather than treating academia as if it were some sort of sinecure. It's an ivory tower only if you let it be, and if purchased essays are proliferating throughout academia, it reflects far worse on the professors who are too thick and lazy to preclude such submissions (or identify them, without google or a paid service, on the strength of their knowledge of the student and his/her work), and the institutions employing them, than students, of whom there will always be a few willing to try and cheat their way around substandard interest, intellect, or discipline./rant.
I do find headphones tend to keep most of the riff-raff at bay. Similarly, I learned in college that in order to walk through the main 'square' of campus, it was advisable to be carrying things in both hands in order to avoid being flier-ed to death by eager student groups. Headphones, a cup of coffee, and a bag, along with that glazed-over 'I'm not here right now' look tend to work and keep the tree-killers at a loss, waving their fistfulls of fliers helplessly.
It's a column. She writes chatty, informal bits on tech and geeks for the SF Guardian. Columns suceed precisely because of their individual tone; although writing in a tech-heavy area, there are still the unwired masses that she reaches, as well.
Although she's been writing for the Guardian for a while, she's been writing, at least occasionally, on geek subjects/the web since Bad Subjects, 1995. If you want to fault/. for posting it, why bother commenting on how, presumably as a 'true' geek, that you're completely and utterly unimpressed with Newitz's writings/geek credentials?
For the time being, I'm the guy doing the monitoring. Recorded calls, live calls, I shudder to think how many I've listened to in the past months. And we do indeed listen to them (whilst existing in that impossible state of forced-web-browsing-boredom) with at least one ear. Occasionally I get callers fired, largely for fun, but sometimes because they're rubbish. Of course, this is telemarketing, not tech support, and the government (UK) have reasonably strict laws on what will and won't hack it. Same third-party, outsourced set up. Perhaps some sort of regulatory/accountability / government-in-your-backyard intervention is required?
Slashdot Mirror
What's "new" in this announcement/advertisement is that they've opened the service up to home users. Basically every law firm in New York uses this service to supply menus and dinner to their associates - I was temping in law firms for about 6 months, and used SW at every firm I was at to order food after hours. Corporate customers are undoubtedly underwriting the bill for the new "home users" section. It's worth it for the law firms to keep their associates at their desks for ungodly numbers of hours. The restaurants get to penetrate the corporate market without having to set up a delivery infrastructure or build up a reputation for corporate catering. And Seamless Web clearly figure they can add a nickel- and dime-level profits to their solid corporate base.
Assuming, that is, the EULA didn't prohibit resale. That was disturbing. But the XT brought fond tears to my eyes, as did reversi.
If you do choose to give students freedom in choosing paper topics, which I prefer, at least know your students and their work. Although it can be more problematic in large survey/lecture classes, somebody should know them and their abilities - you, TA, GSI, somebody. Again, the relevance of the paper to at least some of the ideas discussed in class is an obvious tip-off, as is a comparison to the students' interests exhibited in previously submitted work. It's not hard to spot a purchased paper, at all, if the professor/teacher is doing their job of teaching properly. 'Book reports' and cliffs' notes at the university level? Pah.
All of which brings me to the point of my rant - this kind of stuff only happens at institutions that employ crap teachers. Not necessarily lousy universities, but ones that permit shoddy, sub-standard teachers who should be teaching elementary-school english to pose and parade as 'professors'. Even with a 4/4 brutal teaching load at a large public institution, this kind of thing is simply a non-issue for teachers that actually work at it, rather than treating academia as if it were some sort of sinecure. It's an ivory tower only if you let it be, and if purchased essays are proliferating throughout academia, it reflects far worse on the professors who are too thick and lazy to preclude such submissions (or identify them, without google or a paid service, on the strength of their knowledge of the student and his/her work), and the institutions employing them, than students, of whom there will always be a few willing to try and cheat their way around substandard interest, intellect, or discipline. /rant.
I do find headphones tend to keep most of the riff-raff at bay. Similarly, I learned in college that in order to walk through the main 'square' of campus, it was advisable to be carrying things in both hands in order to avoid being flier-ed to death by eager student groups. Headphones, a cup of coffee, and a bag, along with that glazed-over 'I'm not here right now' look tend to work and keep the tree-killers at a loss, waving their fistfulls of fliers helplessly.
Although she's been writing for the Guardian for a while, she's been writing, at least occasionally, on geek subjects/the web since Bad Subjects, 1995. If you want to fault /. for posting it, why bother commenting on how, presumably as a 'true' geek, that you're completely and utterly unimpressed with Newitz's writings/geek credentials?
For the time being, I'm the guy doing the monitoring. Recorded calls, live calls, I shudder to think how many I've listened to in the past months. And we do indeed listen to them (whilst existing in that impossible state of forced-web-browsing-boredom) with at least one ear. Occasionally I get callers fired, largely for fun, but sometimes because they're rubbish. Of course, this is telemarketing, not tech support, and the government (UK) have reasonably strict laws on what will and won't hack it. Same third-party, outsourced set up. Perhaps some sort of regulatory/accountability / government-in-your-backyard intervention is required?
Are you suggesting that Verisign are really alien lizards in disguise? That explains a lot. Including the yak-marketing.
Mentioning the wrong place name works fine if they're not using a graphical traceroute while they're compiling the information.