Academic Advice (Professionals only Please)

[Adam Maass]

If, however, he had grabbed some GPL source to solve his problem, and
put it in his company's proprietary software, it would have been far
from ok. What Robocop did seems similar in terms of misunderstanding
the rules.

Acck, foo. I was imaginging going to a colleague and grabbing code from
there.

You're right, of course.

-- Adam Maass

 

[Elspeth Thorne]

Consider yourself lucky.

At the university where I attended, if you were caught cheating (eg,
copying code off a forum, to make your program work, /no matter how
trivial the change/) you /failed/ that course. Immediately. No appeal.

On the other hand, if you copied code, and cited the reference, you
simply got 0 for the assignment, as 'your' code would be without
academic merit.

If someone copied *your* code, and got caught, you would *both* suffer
at the very least failure of that assignment - if you were lucky, and
the lecturer was in a good mood. They would be perfectly within their
rights to class it as plagarism instead, and fail both students.

All these poilices are in every course syllabus, and on every course web
page, and on every assignment sheet, and we have to either do a
click-through agreement saying we comply to the policy when
electronically submitting work, or sign a cover page saying that we have
read and understood and are complying with the policy in the case of
hardcopy submission.

To simply suffer a 5% loss in this case...well, I think you're getting
off lightly. /Extremely/ lightly.

Welcome to academia. Oh - and learn to pay attention when they tell you
about their definitions of academic misconduct.


Elspeth.

 

[Carl Howells]

If someone copied *your* code, and got caught, you would *both* suffer
at the very least failure of that assignment - if you were lucky, and
the lecturer was in a good mood. They would be perfectly within their
rights to class it as plagarism instead, and fail both students.

Well, not every time. Someone copied my code for one class, a few years
back. But I didn't know about it. I'd simply not remembered to mark the
directories on our Solaris system as not readable to world, and someone
found my code and copied it. They were caught, and got in trouble for
it. I didn't, as I clearly wasn't at fault, thought I was careless.

Then, the next term, I was grading for that course... And came across
someone handing in that same code, again, slightly rewritten so it
wasn't quite so obviously mine. So, another person got failed for
copying my work, a term later.

Anyway, to "Robocop": You should have been at least failed on the
assignment. A 5% penalty on one assignment is so minor as to be
entirely meaningless. Every time you whine, you demonstrate an
inability to constructively interact with the real world.

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

Actually...at my university, you would have been at fault. If you walk
away from your computer (for example, to collect the printout for the
assignment you just did) and someone copies your code off the
screen...you've just been a participant in collusion.

The lawyer in me can't resist commenting on this. It's not clear exactly how
your university defined "fault." There are two possibilities, one
unenforceable and the other uncertain.

The first possibility is absolute liability: if someone copied your work,
you're at fault. Period. If you stored your work in a casino-quality safe,
and another student cut the safe open with a plasma torch, causing thousands
of dollars of damage to the hardware which you purchased to protect yourself
from just such an occurrence... it's your fault. Certain? Yes. Enforceable?
Not really; this type of policy is so grossly unfair that usually no one
dares enforce it.

The second possibility is qualified liability: if you fail to exercise
reasonable care to protect your work, you are liable for the foreseeable
consequences. Enforceable? Yes. Certain? Of course not; the question of what
constitutes "reasonable care" has no final answer. The school may publish an
encyclopedic definition of it, but some case will always come up where the
rules do not apply, or yield a manifestly absurd result.

None of this is meant to suggest that plagiarism policies as such are
unfair, unreasonable, or unenforceable. But there will always be cases in
the gray zone, and no amount of strictness or care will eliminate them.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

....
Actually...at my university, you would have been at fault. If you walk
away from your computer (for example, to collect the printout for the
assignment you just did) and someone copies your code off the
screen...you've just been a participant in collusion.

I know of a situation where student A gave code
to student B, who then gave it ten other people.
All of them were charged with academic misconduct.

At this point, student B accused student A of
'stealing it off his monitor', student A
shrugged vaguely, and the other students..

The university decided they did not care, student
B was decided to have not taken proper care* of
their work, *everybody* was found 'guilty'.
All of them failed the assignment.

* Which, yes, was specifically stated in the
documents relating to academic honesty/misconduct.

If you ordered a print of course works you were
expected to immediately log off, walk to the
printer, and wait for the print-out to arrive.
If you failed to do so, you were held responsible.

[ No situation was ever detected/suggested where
a student 'hacked into' the system to steal code,
but then, if they could, ..would they actually
*need* to? ]

 

[Elspeth Thorne]

Well, not every time. Someone copied my code for one class, a few years
back. But I didn't know about it. I'd simply not remembered to mark the
directories on our Solaris system as not readable to world, and someone
found my code and copied it. They were caught, and got in trouble for
it. I didn't, as I clearly wasn't at fault, thought I was careless.

Then, the next term, I was grading for that course... And came across
someone handing in that same code, again, slightly rewritten so it
wasn't quite so obviously mine. So, another person got failed for
copying my work, a term later.

Actually...at my university, you would have been at fault. If you walk
away from your computer (for example, to collect the printout for the
assignment you just did) and someone copies your code off the
screen...you've just been a participant in collusion. It's a tough
policy, and hasn't made any friends amongst the students (for obvious
reasons!), but that's the way it is. Although, it does encourage
students to resist the temptation of copying - with or without permission.


Not nice, but there you go. And since most coding assignments are
submitted electronically, and analysed for plagarism (I hear the
algorithms that do this are getting better, too) before the marker even
sees them, the rate of cheating - or at least outright copying - has
dropped considerably.


Elspeth.

 

[Rene]

Actually...at my university, you would have been at fault. If you walk
away from your computer (for example, to collect the printout for the
assignment you just did) and someone copies your code off the
screen...you've just been a participant in collusion. It's a tough
policy, and hasn't made any friends amongst the students (for obvious
reasons!), but that's the way it is. Although, it does encourage
students to resist the temptation of copying - with or without
permission.

Well generally there is a mechanism to lock the screen. If you're working
on Windows NT systems (nt4, w2k, xp) press ctrl-alt-delete then either
select Lock manually or just press return (it is the first button). At my
university in some of the rooms this was once disabled (the button is
greyed out and not pressable) however it was a typical microsoft solution,
there is only a registry key that disables the butten, the function is
still around and active, you just need to activate it via a very simple
call using "runddl32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation".

If you work at unix machines, there's generally a lock utility. vlock or
alock or whatever. If you're working under X (graphic subsystem) under
unix, there's often xscreensaver or xlock.

Lock your machine, walk away, come back later. If none of this works write
a little programm that puts itself into the foreground and refuses to yield
unless a specific passphrase has been entered. This at least makes you
aware that someone fumbled around if it isn't running anymore and has been
shot down by taskmanager or kill.

CU

René

 

[Malcolm Dew-Jones]

Adam Maass ([email protected]) wrote:

: > Dear Folks:
: >
: > >> PLEASE REPLY I WOULD REALLY BE THANKFUL <<
: > I would extremely appreciate your advices, as it would help me make my
: > decisions. Please spare some time to read the following.
: > Here is what happened with me. We had to do an assignment worth only
: > 2%. In it we had to make 7 classes one of them is below.
: > After spending hours I completed the entire assgn. and I had a little
: > bug in one of the class given below, so I decided to go to a forum.
: > There we discussed the problem and one person gave the code GIVEN
: > BELOW. So I ran it with my other classes and it worked, when I looked
: > at the code written by the person from the forum I quickly realized
: > what the _mistake_ in my code was and what changes it needed, as that
: > mistake was pretty much "trivial" and mediocre; I didn't bother to
: > correct that mistake in my code and I sent the code from the forum
: > given below as according to me it was no big deal as no one was ever
: > going to SEE the code and mark it and also the implementation of the
: > method in the code given by the person in the forum was pretty good
: > and no. of lines were few compared to MINE so I favored that code and
: > NOT mine . Moreover, the code was ONLY going to be marked by a
: > "TESTDRIVER" AUTOMATICALLY based on the OUTPUTS of the methods.
: > If you look at the code below (from the forum) and the one after it
: > (MINE). BOTH the codes will give SAME OUTPUTS if tested by the
: > TESTDRIVER, so it doesn't matter which code I used.
: > I've ALSO POSTED THE "method" (at the bottom) in the class written by
: > me which compelled me to take OUTSIDE HELP.
: >
: > Now I am charged with >>>"ACADEMIC DISHONESTY"<<< I don't know what to
: > do now.

: The academic world works a lot differently than the professional world.

: In the professional world, what you did would be perfectly acceptable and
: indeed, even preferable: you found a way to answer the problem posed, and
: probably saved a good amount of time rather than trying to figure it out for
: yourself.


That's not entirely correct.

In the professional world many wheels are purposely reinvented to avoid
possible lawsuits or other problems related to ownership of the code.

e.g. accidently embedding some GNU code in your flagship commercial
product could be disastrous to your bottom line.


: But in the academic world, the point is not to solve the problem, but to
: learn how to solve problems.

That is 100% true.

 

[mromarkhan]

Dear Folks:

Peace be unto you.

I am not a professional (yet) - i am thinking lawyer, judge,
programmer,
etc when you mention that word -
but here is how I look at your unfortunate circumstance,
see main point at bottom

and also the implementation of the
method in the code given by the person in the forum was pretty good
and no. of lines were few compared to MINE so I favored that code and
NOT mine

From their perspective - In your words - So you copied two more
things: implementation and brevity

Moreover, the code was ONLY going to be marked by a
"TESTDRIVER" AUTOMATICALLY based on the OUTPUTS of the methods.

All the more for the university/college to lay judgement on you
From their perspective, I guess they might consider the roach effect
- "For every one cockroach
you see there can be up to 200 more behind your wall."
http://www.gardenspestcontrol.com/bugopedia/ - I have images
turned off in my browser so I do not know if this page has picture
of nasty bugs...so forgive me

also me being a first year student, I don't think its fair.

Actually, a third year or fourth year student might get off easier
than you,
since they probably have establish a repertoire that others
notice and might have a good relationship with the instructor.
Plus the instructor might be more lenient since they might
know the student's course load and later year class
sizes may me smaller.

SO, for thing of 0.2% I've to LOSE 5%????

I am not sure if this is standard policy at your education
institution, but maybe looking at mines might help
your decision
http://sitae.humberc.on.ca/standards.html
H) Academic Penalty
Academic penalty begins with the awarding
of a zero on the assignment/project/test
for the first offence and a notification
in writing, of the offence.
This notification is copied to the
coordinators and director, and is
kept on file in the School's offices.
A subsequent offence may result in
removal from the course and possibly
complete withdrawal from the program.

I could have avoided this whole thing had I known that "we have to add
the name and the address of the reference" from where the segment of
the class was taken from. But being a NOVICE I wasn't aware.

Well now you know, and this provision might help you alot in
future assignments, and that seems like a good point to raise up
if you ever decide to defend your case,
since it is a public forum - by the way I have
not read your other postings in depth
Then again they may raise up the point, that "ignorance is no excuse"

"I've seen many postings in the hackers' realm
reflecting the attitude that if anyone is
inept enough to leave obvious vulnerabilities
in their computer systems, they deserve to be
hacked. Ignorance is no excuse when it comes
to computer security. It's also fair to say that
a strong anti-Microsoft sentiment pervades
hacker communities"
- https://mscs.marad.dot.gov/clips/5-2-03.htm

the few things I said about the
INSTITUTION.

Hopefully, they were good.

SHOULD I GO FOR A FORMAL HEARING IN FRONT OF LOT MORE PEOPLE TO PROVE
MYSELF INNOCENT OR SHOULD I ACCEPT THE CHARGES AND PLEAD *GUILTY* AND
ACCEPT 5% DECREASE IN MY OVERALL RESULT???

My advice, if your brave enough and you feel guilt free
to stand before more people,
then defend your case. Otherwise, you still have
the chance of building back your reputation since your in
your first year.
But this is just a general advice for advice sake.
Maybe this thing might take up too much
time in your other studies.

My Main point
Your in the King's court, so unfortunately
for you, the king might exercise his or her(queen) law
see Joseph's (peace be unto him) story :

Then he (Joseph) began the search with their bags before his
brother's bag, then he produced it from his brother's bag. Thus did We
contrive for Joseph. He could not have taken his brother according to
the
king's law unless Allah willed. We raise by grades (of mercy) whom We
will,
and over every lord of knowledge there is one more knowing.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/012.qmt.html#012.076

 

[Elspeth Thorne]

Well generally there is a mechanism to lock the screen. If you're working

I know this. The administration knows this. That's part of the reason
why *not* locking your screen (so that your code is on display) when you
aren't present in front of it is considered misconduct, in the
circumstances above.

Elspeth.