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Does blatant plagiarism count? My groupmate for a database project decided to wait until the last minute (the day before the project was due) to work on it. I was failing and couldn't do anything about it, so it didn't really matter to me whether we got the project done or not. That said I wasn't going to hang him out to dry because I was failing (personal reasons that I have now rectified), so I told him I would help him work on it. When he told me 2 days before the thing was due that he wanted to do the whole thing the day before, I told him no since I had other classes to focus on. Last night I got curious and decided to see what exactly he had gotten done. I found a readme.txt that contained copyright information in the project folder and a link to a tutorial that had a zip of the exact same code he used. Needless to say I emailed the professor including my IP address to absolve myself of any wrong-doing. My groupmate was also supposed to graduate this semester. Guess not. This is the extremely condensed version. If anyone wants the unabridged version complete with screenshots, I will post it once finals are over for me. If this doesn't belong in this thread, let me know and I'll edit it out.
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Dec 13, 2010 11:22
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Tux Racer posted:Does blatant plagiarism count? It sounds like he wasn't doing it right, but many times in academics I've used copyrighted and others code, I just attribute it, leave GNU in, etc. The key is to identify what the professor is trying to teach and contract out all the rest of your work.
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Dec 13, 2010 12:46
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baquerd posted:It sounds like he wasn't doing it right, but many times in academics I've used copyrighted and others code, I just attribute it, leave GNU in, etc. The key is to identify what the professor is trying to teach and contract out all the rest of your work. It was a final project meant to demonstrate our ability to effectively design and implement a database and apply that database using a web application. The point was to learn how to use a database in a real-world implementation. It's not like he was using a framework. He literally took the entire zip file of the website's example and just changed server information, queries, and forms in order to implement a form for a student registration. He even modified the file to add tables to the DB to set up our database. The problem with that is if he just fired up mysql, he would have seen that I did that already. I know exactly what you're talking about since I do the same thing with different probability distributions in my simulations course. If I wanted to, I could research the algorithm for the various distributions and implement them, but it's way easier when someone has done it already and the code is published. That's not what he was doing. He was just copying code so that he could turn this in and get his grade. I have a strong feeling he has no love for the field. From what I understand, he has a job lined up through his dad as a low-level manager at a software company, provided he graduates. When I make my full post, you will see why this is a terrible idea. EDIT: Also, my school has a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism. If it even looks like it might be plagiarism, the professor is encouraged to report the incident and the professor has the option of failing you on the assignment or the entire course. That's just the first offense. With the second offense, most people are suspended or expelled. Tux Racer fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Dec 13, 2010 |
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Dec 13, 2010 13:23
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You said he left the copyrights in the project, is it really plagiarism if you are not presenting poo poo as your own work
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Dec 13, 2010 13:47
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Vanadium posted:You said he left the copyrights in the project, is it really plagiarism if you are not presenting poo poo as your own work It also had instructions on how to cite the source properly, which he did not do. I must mention that he asked me for a link to the database. He also asked me how to SSH into the CS server. Just to humor you guys, here's the copyright information. quote:CONTACTS DATABASE EDIT: Let's put it this way. If I paste a code segment into google, he has modified it so little that I get a list of forum topics people have posted on different forums discussing the exact same package. EDIT2: We were also told to assume this would be something that would be production code. It was just as much a software engineering assigment as it was a databases assignment and just as much both of those as it is a web application assignment. Tux Racer fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Dec 13, 2010 |
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Dec 13, 2010 14:38
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Tux Racer posted:Does blatant plagiarism count? My groupmate for a database project decided to wait until the last minute (the day before the project was due) to work on it. I was failing and couldn't do anything about it, so it didn't really matter to me whether we got the project done or not. That said I wasn't going to hang him out to dry because I was failing (personal reasons that I have now rectified), so I told him I would help him work on it. Completely thought you were one of my students  Similar story. Instead of leaving copyright notices in, though, the copycat got done because his E-RD was an almost identical copy of another guys (he'd changed the direction of a relationship, incorrectly) and I had a copy of his original one that he sent to me to check over. End result; expulsion from the unit, and because he was an international student that had failed three units in a year, expulsion from the course, university and country.Moral of the story: don't plagiarise
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Dec 13, 2010 18:51
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As an educator, would you say this situation that I am describing would count as plagiarism?
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Dec 13, 2010 19:06
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Tux Racer posted:As an educator, would you say this situation that I am describing would count as plagiarism? I'd give him a terrible mark for being a lazy shitheel, but I likely wouldn't pursue any of the more hardcore plagiarism smackdowns, particularly if he's going to fail anyway. We've been told to go relatively easy on code plagiarism lately, as a couple of years ago one of the lecturers hit 12 students with plagiarism notices on an ASM assignment and there was some fallout from that. Especially when it comes to people using web frameworks, a lot of the time we just tell them to note which source files they've actually written and assume everything else is framework code. That said, if an entire assignment was blatantly copied from https://www.webmasterextremecodinghelpandserveradmintutorials.com they'll probably get hit.
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Dec 13, 2010 19:13
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Tux Racer posted:Does blatant plagiarism count? After the second exam, the professor mentioned in class that someone had posted the exam on Rent-A-Coder, and that someone had told him about it. I can sort of see this: someone really desperate to get a good grade, and doesn't expect the professor to be watching those sites for the exam to show up. The professor dithers on the final for awhile after this, but finally decides to make it a take-home exam as well. One day, I check the course webpage and there's a news update: the same username has posted the final on the same site. The next day, another update: some other user has accepted the job. The afternoon the exam was due, though, the other user withdrew, saying it was "unethical". I sort of wonder how much of a hand the professors had in this.
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Dec 13, 2010 20:53
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Hell, if I were the professor and I had enough free time I'd watch Rent-A-Coder, bid low for the contract, get the student's contact information and then throw the book at them.
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Dec 13, 2010 20:59
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Thing is, cobbling poo poo together from examples is actually how a lot of work gets done in the real world.
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Dec 13, 2010 21:30
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Tux Racer posted:As an educator, would you say this situation that I am describing would count as plagiarism? Why do you have such a hard-on for getting your partner punished? From what you've described, he's making no attempt to pass it off as his own work. He's lazy and should probably get a bad grade, but you don't exactly sound like a prince either. The horror is that you both let it get to this point without talking to the professor about the situation much earlier.
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Dec 13, 2010 21:35
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Incoherence posted:This is more a coder horror than a coding horror, but we had something fun happen in one of my freshman CS classes. We had take-home exams, because doing a CS exam in a lecture hall on paper is really dumb and just means the graders have to figure out exactly how many syntax errors we let you make before we decide you actually don't know how to program (I ended up TAing the same class afterward). If the professor was smart / evil, he would have accepted the job himself, taken some of the kids cash, then flunked the kid for plagiarizing the profs work. 
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Dec 13, 2010 21:58
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ErIog posted:Why do you have such a hard-on for getting your partner punished? From what you've described, he's making no attempt to pass it off as his own work. He's lazy and should probably get a bad grade, but you don't exactly sound like a prince either. Like I said, I had personal issues that I have now sorted out. I wasn't a prince, but I have never plagiarized anything in my life. I actually did talk to the professor and apologized for being a horrible student and offered to be candid about why. What I got from her was that my partner was no better. When I had looked at the project and seen what needed to be done, I asked my partner if he wanted to finish it since I was screwed either way for that course and had other courses I was doing well in. He said yes and then waited until the day before when he wanted to start. I don't have a vendetta for getting him punished or anything. I just hate academic dishonesty. I also wanted to absolve myself of any wrong-doing in the case that she found it (he couldn't figure out that he had to put the files in public_html. they were all in a different folder). The reason I jump to the conclusion that he's a dumbass that plagiarized this without covering his rear end is because he is a dumbass. I will leave whether or not this is plagiarism up to the professor. On that note, let's get back to bad code.
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Dec 13, 2010 23:23
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I once had to maintain a whole mess of Perl code written by a guy who "didn't believe in" modules or CPAN. What if you are on a secured network that can't readily pull packages from CPAN? What if you update a module and it breaks your code? Half of the scripts were full of copy-pasted subroutines to do network stuff, forks, etc. all by hand.
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Dec 13, 2010 23:32
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ErIog posted:Why do you have such a hard-on for getting your partner punished? From what you've described, he's making no attempt to pass it off as his own work. He's lazy and should probably get a bad grade, but you don't exactly sound like a prince either. Being too lazy to change all but a few of the copyright notices doesn't exactly count as giving proper attribution. I would tell your professor ASAP so you both don't end up being accused of plagiarism. Otherwise, take your name off the project, and turn in what work you did separately. You can get in way more trouble than a failing grade for plagiarism.
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Dec 14, 2010 00:14
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This kind of thing does end up being important in the workplace btw - copy-paste solutions are a legal liability if you don't keep track of the usage terms and copyrights.
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Dec 14, 2010 00:20
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evensevenone posted:Being too lazy to change all but a few of the copyright notices doesn't exactly count as giving proper attribution. Did it the moment I saw what it. I haven't gotten a response from her yet. I will probably call her tomorrow to find out if she got it or not. EDIT: Also, it's not like he had to change anything. It's a readme.txt. He just didn't delete it. Even if he did, you can paste a segment of his code into Google and find tons of results of people asking for help using the same code. Tux Racer fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Dec 14, 2010 |
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Dec 14, 2010 00:49
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Hammerite posted:If you want to slate PHP For what it is worth (not much), the talk that started this derail is online: http://vimeo.com/17675268 The first bit is james on why php isn't that great, and the second bit is me waffling on like an idiot. Finally there is some q&a where I'm rude to the audience.
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Dec 14, 2010 06:37
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h_double posted:I once had to maintain a whole mess of Perl code written by a guy who "didn't believe in" modules or CPAN. What if you are on a secured network that can't readily pull packages from CPAN? What if you update a module and it breaks your code? We have that kind of scenario where I work, but the problem is our Perl needs to be run on about 65 different machines all running different operating systems. "Getting a module from CPAN" becomes such a tall order that if something isn't included in every Perl installation by default, rolling your own or figuring out how to do without it almost always ends up being quicker and easier.
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Dec 14, 2010 12:26
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qntm posted:We have that kind of scenario where I work, but the problem is our Perl needs to be run on about 65 different machines all running different operating systems. "Getting a module from CPAN" becomes such a tall order that if something isn't included in every Perl installation by default, rolling your own or figuring out how to do without it almost always ends up being quicker and easier. The better question at this point is, why are your 65 machines running different operating systems?
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Dec 14, 2010 15:45
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ErIog posted:The better question at this point is, why are your 65 machines running different operating systems? "Because if every machine is running a different OS on different hardware, an attacker will have a much harder time compromising all of them" - My Boss
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Dec 14, 2010 17:04
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tef posted:For what it is worth (not much), the talk that started this derail is online: http://vimeo.com/17675268 Thanks that was fun to watch.
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Dec 14, 2010 17:35
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Munkeymon posted:"Because if every machine is running a different OS on different hardware, an attacker will have a much harder time compromising all of them" - My Boss 
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Dec 14, 2010 18:53
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Munkeymon posted:"Because if every machine is running a different OS on different hardware, an attacker will have a much harder time compromising all of them" - My Boss Another question: Why aren't you running Puppet?
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Dec 14, 2010 19:02
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ErIog posted:The better question at this point is, why are your 65 machines running different operating systems? They're test machines. The software I work on is available for almost every platform you've ever heard of, so we need to test it in a fairly hefty variety of environments. The Perl in question is our test material. You would be amazed how many otherwise robust and useful Perl modules have never been tested on an EBCDIC system.
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Dec 14, 2010 19:39
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tef posted:For what it is worth (not much), the talk that started this derail is online: http://vimeo.com/17675268 I'd be rude as well. "BUT I MAKE MONEY OFF DRUPAL" and wouldn't loving give it up. Aspie fucks are so goddamn thick.
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Dec 14, 2010 19:45
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qntm posted:They're test machines. The software I work on is available for almost every platform you've ever heard of, so we need to test it in a fairly hefty variety of environments. The Perl in question is our test material. You would be amazed how many otherwise robust and useful Perl modules have never been tested on an EBCDIC system.
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Dec 14, 2010 20:25
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Captain Capacitor posted:Another question: Why aren't you running Puppet? If it's not part of the standard PHP distribution, Apache 2, MySQL, or some homemade Perl+BASH abomination, it's not going to get used here because nobody can be bothered to custom-compile them every time. No, we don't use the versions of these software packages that come pre-installed: they could be too old or too new. Munkeymon fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Dec 14, 2010 |
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Dec 14, 2010 20:46
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Janin posted:I'm honestly shocked that Perl runs at all on a EBCDIC platform EBCDIC is the real coding horror.
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Dec 14, 2010 20:49
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Who still uses EBCDIC? I'm genuinely curious, I thought it was terrible in every way and the only use I can think of is compatibility with things like banking or airline software written in the 70s.
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Dec 14, 2010 21:01
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YeOldeButchere posted:Who still uses EBCDIC? I'm genuinely curious, I thought it was terrible in every way and the only use I can think of is compatibility with things like banking or airline software written in the 70s.
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Dec 14, 2010 21:16
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Well, no, but I meant other than that. Or is it really all it's used for?
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Dec 14, 2010 21:23
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YeOldeButchere posted:Who still uses EBCDIC?
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Dec 14, 2010 21:26
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This counts as a horror, right: http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-1061043.php If the first two characters of a text file (like a CSV) are 'ID', Excel assumes its a symlink file and refuses to open it. 
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Dec 14, 2010 21:53
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Munkeymon posted:This counts as a horror, right: Wikipedia article on SYmbolic LinK (SYLK) posted:Not to be confused with symbolic link. Not so sure that's such a horror, though they could probably have chosen something a bit less likely to appear at the start of a csv file than "ID".
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Dec 14, 2010 22:25
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Munkeymon posted:If the first two characters of a text file (like a CSV) are 'ID', Excel assumes its a symlink file and refuses to open it.
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Dec 14, 2010 22:26
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Ohhh  It's still loving stupid that I had to commit a file with ID changed to Id
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Dec 14, 2010 22:31
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YeOldeButchere posted:Well, no, but I meant other than that. Or is it really all it's used for? IBM makes literally billions of dollars from ensuring that the banking and airline software that these banks and airlines use - software which was indeed written in the 1970s, for original System/360 machines, in COBOL, in EBCDIC, whose original source code is lost, and whose original programmers probably retired in the 1980s and died in the 2000s - continues to work and does not need to be replaced. When you look at the amount of commerce which passes through those systems (since these are investment banks, they're running into the trillions each year), the track record of reliability that those programs have proved themselves to have (a level of reliability which any replacement program would have to match) and you realise just how much there is to lose if the replacement program fails, and how likely it is that the replacement program will in fact fail somehow, you find yourself willing to pay really insane amounts of money not to have to make that change. It's actually not a terrible business partnership. The customer gets a fairly strong guarantee that their system is bulletproof and IBM doesn't have to do much beyond gradually improve the performance and capacity of each year's new mainframe. If you want to work with the same system for thirty years and never learn anything new, which a frightening number of IT people inexplicably seem to want to do, a job writing COBOL is a job for life, or at least for the forseeable future. Of course, if you're a fresh-faced newcomer to the world of software engineering and you're used to the natural state of information technology being one of continuous rapid change (and improvement), then using green screen terminals is quite a culture shock. And realising that the green screens are never, ever going to go away is worse. And converting everything from EBCDIC to ASCII in order to edit it locally (instead of editing it on the remote machine using vi - not vim, vi) gets old fast.
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Dec 14, 2010 22:50
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qntm posted:Of course, if you're a fresh-faced newcomer to the world of software engineering and you're used to the natural state of information technology being one of continuous rapid change (and improvement), then using green screen terminals is quite a culture shock. And realising that the green screens are never, ever going to go away is worse. And converting everything from EBCDIC to ASCII in order to edit it locally (instead of editing it on the remote machine using vi - not vim, vi) gets old fast. When you're and end user of a terrible XML based web service which is based on a terrible EDI based rpc system (usually by wrapping the data in <data> tags and specifying where the data is by byte offset) which is itself running by scraping a VT100 terminal (which explains why the data tends to be expressed in imperative rather than declarative form) that is attached to said EBDIC based mainframes - deep breath, full stop coming up - you might have the right to be a little bit miffed. When you see an entire industry which is actually warped itself around said systems, miffed doesn't begin to describe it.
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Dec 14, 2010 23:19
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