🚀 go-pugleaf

A slight divergence here...copying that isn't cheating

I was once in a summer class for high-school students at a small
college back home.  I typed in a BASIC program on the computer 
system (system name and OS elude me) that made those banner signs
that we're all familiar with.

Well, being high-school students, we thought this was kind of a "rad"
(I don't want to date myself, so I'll use current terminology)
program.  Everyone wanted a copy for their own accounts (why? 
Well, we were kids and didn't know better).  Anyway, there were
20 or so copies on the system (that I knew of) and apparently
too many of us were running them at the same time.  Sure tied up
the printers and generally hosed the system's response time.

The system administrator and our teachers were none too happy.  They
went into our accounts and searched for all traces of the program
and eliminated them (what a bunch of squares!).  They didn't find
my copy, though...I renamed it to the name of one of my assignments!
-- 
   /   George D. Nincehelser           \  uunet!swbatl!george       \
  / /   Southwestern Bell Telephone     \  Phone: (314) 235-6544     \
 / / /   Advanced Technology Laboratory  \  Fax:  (314) 235-5797      \
/ / / /\  1010 Pine, St. Louis, MO 63101  \  de asini umbra disceptare \

In article <16...@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk> i...@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Moor) writes:
>Last term we found several copies of the same program handed in for a
>first year exercise, the originator had mistyped the word `that' as `taht' in
>a comment. One this was spotted we used find and grep to locate all
>copies. 

>During this search we found copies of sample solutions produced in previous
>years, complete with names of the teaching staff in comments, as these 
>exercises were not set I left them alone, but hoped the guy would come and
>ask for increased disk quota -- `Just remove those stolen files and you'll
> have enough space'

I.  Since we are on the subject of ethics, is it ethical to rummage
through the files in someone else's account?  I think you should have
damned good reason at the very least even if it is your computer.

II.  What is wrong with having copies of last year's solutions?  Is
education a game that you want to win by failing students?  If not,
then why do you object to their learning from old homeworks?

III.  What's wrong with having copies of other people's homework as
long as you hand in original work?

I think MIT had a real good attitude on this.

You were as likely to get copies of last year's work in your class
notes as from a friend.  Bibles (compilations of notes, homework,
tests, and finals) were freely available from almost anyone who had
taken the course before.  We were there to learn using any and all
available methods and sources, including old homework, professors,
upper-classmen, and each other.  Not to play some bizarre dominance
game with professors.
--
The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the
Soviet Union will mean is death as a living ideology ... .  For while
there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua,
Pyongyang, or Cambridge, MA ...   - Francis Fukuyama

In article <1199@swbatl.UUCP> george@swbatl.UUCP (George Nincehelser 5-6544) writes:
>20 or so copies on the system (that I knew of) and apparently
>too many of us were running them at the same time.  Sure tied up
...
>The system administrator and our teachers were none too happy.  They
>went into our accounts and searched for all traces of the program
>and eliminated them (what a bunch of squares!).  They didn't find
>my copy, though...I renamed it to the name of one of my assignments!

Ahh, memories.  Waaay back, like in 82, I was a Labbie for the
last "computer archticture" class at Rice to use PDP11s.  It
was a disaster of a class, since the only things you could do
in assembly language on the machine were the same old DP-inspired
introductory programming assignmnents, except you had to torture
them into assembly language.  The next year they got nifty little
single board computers with elevator simulators and assorted
implements of destruction ...

Anyway, picture if you will...  A PDP-11/45 with, oh maybe 1/4 Meg
and 12 terminals running a seriously hacked V7 kernel.  (Hi JD).
How hacked?  So hacked ... that the home-brew multiwindow editor
it ran spent most of its time inside the kernel, in a really
large piece of code that had been hacked out of the editor and
bludgeoned into looking like a line discipline.

Now imagine people logged into all of these terminals.. Say, 4
running the full-screen editor, 4 running the assembler/linker,
and 3 running an infinite loop.  And the Labbie, playing rogue.

It didn't take long for there to be several copies of rogue, and
a good thing it was, too, since the powers-that-were caught on
relatively quickly.  Fortunately, their first attempt at
erradicating the game was not thorough enough, and we were
ready for them the next time.

First they scanned for files name rogue -- we renamed them.
Then they scanned for files the same size as rogue -- we split them.
Then they scanned for the strings in rogue -- we encrypted them...

The startup script took longer and longer to run ... :-)

Sigh -- If they had been more careful the first time I'd
probably have a degree now.


Another story from the same time, a different machine -- The
official computer center was running MVS as its student
programming environment because they hadn't figured out how
to pinch the pennies in VM yet.  This means cards, with all
the associated horror, which I would have thought hillarious
in 1981-82 if I hadn't had to use it.  Anyway, JCL isn't
an accademically interesting language so it isn't taught,
most people just used canned control cards.  Along comes
the first Pascal lab of the new semester, and the handout
has the canned JCL on it...

Except it wasn't completely canned.  The prof had thoughtfully
left a variable in it.  //jobname job whatever,time=(0,sec),
or something like that.  No, "jobname" wasn't the variable --
as far as I know every job ever submitted for that class
was named "jobname" -- I'm talking about "sec".  It was supposed
to be replaced by a number, like say 15.  A number less
than 60.  A number, in any case, with less than 3 digits....

Now "sec", while not a number, also has more than two characters
in it....  And of course some bright spark had saved the world
the price of a bowl of rice by cleverly stuffing the characters
from that parsing step in between two critical system variables.
I never learned what exactly was getting squashed, but it was
memorable...

If you've never done it, there is something viscerally gratifying
about watching a card reader digest your deck.  You get used to the
rhythm, it comforts you to hear and see that all is well with
your job...   So it was a real attention getter when somebody
put a deck with the canned job card in it in the reader and
punched start.  whrrrr chk chk chk -----------silence-------

Millions of dollars worth of equipment brought to its knees by
a 0.03 cent piece of paper.  Had to be cold booted every time,
and it happened a lot.  Next day there was a rather stern announcement
in class...


Speaking of viscerally gratifying things in computing ... watching
a DOS user trying to cope with the asyncronous activity of a
Unix disk is more fun than pulling the legs off chips.  They
really get the disk activity patterns wired into their skulls.

Oh well, time to get some sleep.  g'night.
-- 
Steve Nuchia	      South Coast Computing Services      (713) 964-2462
"You have no scars on your face, and you cannot handle pressure." - Billy Joel

In article <1990Feb27....@oracle.com> mfriedma@oracle.UUCP (Michael Friedman) writes:
>
>I.  Since we are on the subject of ethics, is it ethical to rummage
>through the files in someone else's account?  I think you should have
>damned good reason at the very least even if it is your computer.

'grep' is hardly rummaging.  You only find what you already know to look for.

>II.  What is wrong with having copies of last year's solutions?  Is
>education a game that you want to win by failing students?  If not,
>then why do you object to their learning from old homeworks?

There's nothing at all wrong with learning from old homeworks.  However, 
retyping them in lieu of doing any creative work is not an acceptible practice.

>
>III.  What's wrong with having copies of other people's homework as
>long as you hand in original work?

They didn't.

> [MIT nostalgia deleted]  We were there to learn using any and all
>available methods and sources, including old homework, professors,
>upper-classmen, and each other.  Not to play some bizarre dominance
>game with professors.

Oh grow up.  I have never met a faculty member who wouldn't have given a year's
pay to never have to worry about scummy little undergraduate weasels stealing
their fellow-students' code, breaking into offices to steal copies of upcoming
tests, sabotaging other students' work, copying on exams, etc.  We don't
enjoy this sh*t, and it's not a game.  It's what lets people graduate with
college engineering degrees, so they can go on to design walkways for Hyatt
Hotels in Kansas City.  It's what gets the bright commuter student failed out
of the class, because he/she *didn't* cheat with the rest of the class, and so
lost the advantage of pooled effort.

Of course, some of us also have this weird notion that people should have some
personal integrity.  I envy professors at schools with honor codes, where you
don't have to worry about it, because anyone caught is gone.  Too many schools
these days are like juvenile court: we can catch 'em, but it doesn't do us any
good because we can *do* anything to 'em without University backing.

I'm not saying there aren't professors who engage in "bizarre dominance games"
with students.  My personal least-favorite is the "I'm going to prove to you
that you're stupid and I'm brilliant, by humiliating you publicly" game.  But
don't kid yourself about academic integrity; they all take it seriously, and
they're right to do so.


-- 
        David M. Tate       | "It made the basses of their being throb in    
  dt...@unix.cis.pitt.edu   |  witching chords, and their thin blood pulse
                            |  pizzicati of Hosanna..."
 "A Man for all Seasonings" |                     -- Wallace Stevens 

[In response the someone who felt that TA's can peruse their student's 
accounts]

What ever happened to privacy.  It is generally assumed that any information
protected by a password will NEVER by viewed unless (1) The owner allows this
or (2) There is a probable cause that certain data could undermine the integry
of the whole system (ie root shells) or (3) Someone has commited an illegal
act and comprmised the user's right to privacy.   

If you want to detect copying, se the evidence you have-- the turned-in 
assignments, but don't use root priv unless it is absolutelly (ie system
security or maintainence) necessary.

flame off

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Jochen Fritz            | For though we live in the world, we do not |
| joef...@pawl.rpi.edu   | wage war as the world does.-- 2 Cor. 10:3  |      
| usergk2s@rpitsmts.bitnet| You have heard it said, Love your neighbor |
| Noah [the peace monger] | and hate your enemy.  But I tell you: Love |
|                         | your enemies.  Matt. 5:43-44               |
------------------------------------------------------------------------

In article <1199@swbatl.UUCP> george@swbatl.UUCP (George Nincehelser 5-6544) writes:
o 
o The system administrator and our teachers were none too happy.  They
o went into our accounts and searched for all traces of the program
o and eliminated them (what a bunch of squares!).  They didn't find
o my copy, though...I renamed it to the name of one of my assignments!
o -- 

THat reminds me about how we used to play rogue back in my undergrad days:
Games were strictly forbidden on the system, so we all had a link to someone's
copy in their private directory.  It was called -csh.

-charles

(Hi wrb... You out there?)

-- 
Charles Daffinger  >Take me to the river, Drop me in the water<  (812) 339-7354
cd...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu             			 
Home of the Whitewater mailing list:    whitewate...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu

In article <-B*#1...@rpi.edu>, joefritz@pawl (Jochen M. Fritz) writes:
>[In response the someone who felt that TA's can peruse their student's 
>accounts]

>What ever happened to privacy.  It is generally assumed that any information
>protected by a password will NEVER by viewed unless (1) The owner allows this
>or (2) There is a probable cause that certain data could undermine the integry
>of the whole system (ie root shells) or (3) Someone has commited an illegal
>act and comprmised the user's right to privacy.   

I don't remember the TA making any mention of the protection levels on
this student's files.

If the files are world-readable, has the owner given implicit permission
for those files to be viewed by anyone with the desire to do so, under
(1) above?

--woodstock
-- 
	   "What I like is when you're looking and thinking and looking
	   and thinking...and suddenly you wake up."   - Hobbes

nh...@oracle.com or ...!uunet!oracle!nhess or (415) 598-3046

In article <37...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> cd...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Charles Daffinger) writes:
>
>THat reminds me about how we used to play rogue back in my undergrad days:
>Games were strictly forbidden on the system, so we all had a link to someone's
>copy in their private directory.  It was called -csh.
>
I did the same thing with rn - not that it was forbidden, but we had a nosey
system administrator who thought Usenet was the devil's work (although this
belief didn't keep him from running it on his own).  Some system administators
get this "control attitude" (hell, I've had it myself) that causes them to
nose into other people's intellectual property...

In my early computing days I used a system called MUSIC (McGill University
System for Interactive Computing - still exists as an IBM product, MUSIC/SP 
- but they call it Multiple User System for Interactive Computing). At one
point there was a bulletin board program called Forum written by a guy named
Rob Fritz which I used heavily.  One day, in a fit of administative
excess it was removed from the system by the powers that be - no notice, no
explanation, just gone.   

So I set out and wrote my own, which would run out of my student account.
I called it FMMS (Forum Memorial Message Service).  While the original
Forum was a "public" executable, users had to log into my student account
to use FMMS (which ran automatically).  One of the student consultants
helped me set up some public files to advertise it, which we called FORUM
and FMMS.

Although there was no written or verbal policy against such programs, none
the less I was kind of paranoid.  So the advertising programs were set up
to print the system message for a missing file "ERROR 4: File not accessable"
when run between the hours of 8:00am to 5:00pm and if run from a set of
suspect tty's (not what they were called, by the way, but you get the point).
In addition, more out of humor than anything else, I added a check for the
tty in the actual BBS program itself.  If run from one of the tty's that I
had targeted as the administrators, it would print "Chiggers, its the cops!"
and destroy itself and its database.

Well it ran for several weeks, and then an individual calling himself
IRONMAN discovered it and wiped it clean, leading a snide little message
behind.  So I had to rebuild the thing.  He wiped it again.  I finally
set up stuff in my research account so that when he wiped it all I had
to do was type one command and it was restored.  In addition, I changed the
code to do regular backups of itself.  It was a pain, but I learned alot
about programming and systems, so I guess I'm grateful, though at the time
I was pretty stressed out (and I wasn't going to run to the administrators,
because of my paranoia - which my student consultant friends did nothing to
abate).

IRONMAN, it seemed was also into other activities.  He too had student
consultants as friends (but not the same ones as mine) and had managed
to get the password of a key account from them, where upon he went on
a sort of rampage.  Actually, except for me, he apparently didn't do 
anything damaging, but he did create alot of privileged accounts and
apparently sent a certain administrator into "witch-hunt" mode.

Anyway one morning I go to log on and nada.  Not on MUSIC, or any of the
other systems that I had accounts on.  Every account I had had been removed
from the system.  

Apparently the administrator, in his hunt for IRONMAN, had stumbled across
FMMS. And apparently "Chiggers its the cops!" had put him over the edge.
Well I sweated for a day, at first worried (I am a big worrier) and then
angry.  After all, I hadn't done anything wrong.  Who was he to go rummaging
through my accounts?  So I went and confronted him and got my accounts back.
At the same time I learned of the other activities of IRONMAN, which maybe
made the administrator's action more understandable, but still not ethical.

I've since learned that this sort of administrative policy was locally 
called "who screams".  The idea is to see who complains, with the 
assumption being only the innocent will object. IMHO it's a bad policy.

Jim

--
James Purdon
pur...@cons1.mit.edu

In article <-B*#1...@rpi.edu> joef...@pawl.rpi.edu (Jochen M. Fritz) writes:
>[In response the someone who felt that TA's can peruse their student's 
>accounts]
>
>What ever happened to privacy.  It is generally assumed that any information
>protected by a password will NEVER by viewed unless (1) The owner allows this
>flame off

In case anybody cares, this is not meant to be a flame. But when I get my BBS
up and running again, I'll have the usual notices which say, basically, Nothing
on this computer is considered private to the Super user. And that the Sysop
has the basic right to be a tyrant. I was pretty good in the past, I only asked
that the user backed off the language. But I have removed users for posting
info which was not public domain etc,etc. If I were a School admin (I'd
probably be 28 and bald) I would have use the bylaws and rules of the school
guide my descisions.

BTW - I have had 3rd year rutgers comp sci students ask me how to create a
program the gets passwords  nd logins. I decided that if they had to ask the
program was definitely too tough for them to write. And many students will
cheat if they can, but not all.
NJC

In article <1990Feb28.1...@athena.mit.edu>, pur...@athena.mit.edu (James
R Purdon) says:
>
>I've since learned that this sort of administrative policy was locally
>called "who screams".  The idea is to see who complains, with the
>assumption being only the innocent will object. IMHO it's a bad policy.

A similar event happened here recently.  First, let's call the system
administrator in question "Butch", and the machine "ButchVM".

Well, some people I know were running various sorts of "illegal" programs
on ButchVM.  One was running a "chat machine" (similar to Relay, for those
familiar with Bitnet).  Apparently, he had been told that this was "illegal"
and persisted to run it.  (Note that I have never been formally told that
such a thing is against Bitnet policy, just that it needs the sysadmin's
approval.  They were basing this argument on the fact that it *is* against
Bitnet policy.  Hm.)

Anyway, there were several other "illegal" servers of various sorts.  But the
one that apparently got Butch really peeved was the "Aboveground Server",
which had, among other things, solutions to adventure games, Star Trek
parodies, and lots of Monty Python lyrics.  Well, I'm told that much of this
material is (C)opyrighted, and that the person running the server, Tim, was
in "big trouble."  (As far as I know, nothing actually happened to him.)

Well, I had once requested an index of the files on the server, and had been
sent it.  Well, Butch used this as an excuse to rummage around my ButchVM
account, whereupon he found the REXX source for another "chat machine."  This
chat machine had never been run on ButchVM, and I got really peeved when
Butch disabled my account simply because it was there.

Of course, they couldn't be bothered to tell me.  The only notice I got was
that "CMH not in CP directory" when I tried to log on.  Nice.

Well, a couple of weeks passed, and I was getting really pissed off.  So I
went to talk to Butch.  He told me the above information, so I *assume* that
it was true.  I told him I thought "it's a piss poor way to administrate a
system."  The only things I could get out of him were, "So?  It's our system;
we can do whatever we want." and "What do you want me to do about it?"  I
finally got sick of his attitude, and went to see his boss, Mr. Apple.

Well, Mr. Apple gave me a long horangue about "illegal" progams and
(C)opyrighted software, and how bad PSU's name on the net is, and how the FBI
was investigating the (C)opyright infringements (Bullshit!).  I sat, and
listening, and ignored ever word he said.  Well, after a little bit of
bickering, he said the same thing as Butch, "It our system; we can do whatever
we want." and he made it clear that I, being a student, was insignificant next
to the research that was going on.  (This was bullshit, too.  ButchVM is rarely
used for *anything*.)

Well, I finally managed to get my account back.  Frankly, I hope I really
pissed off Butch and Mr. Apple.  They both deserve it.

I thought in the American judicial system that only *overt* acts were
admissable evidence.  Never having run the chat machine on my account, what
*overt* act had I committed, storing a file there?  Gimme a break.  Does
anyone *really* think this is the proper way to administrate a system?


Virtually,
- Charles Martin Hannum II       "Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within."
    (That's Charles to you!)     "To life immortal!"
  cmh117@psuvm.{bitnet,psu.edu}  "No noozzzz izzz netzzzsnoozzzzz..."
  c9h@psuecl.{bitnet,psu.edu}    "Mem'ry, all alone in the moonlight ..."

In article <90059.170...@psuvm.psu.edu> CMH...@psuvm.psu.edu (Charles Hannum) writes:
|A similar event happened here recently.  First, let's call the system
|administrator in question "Butch", and the machine "ButchVM".
|
|Well, I had once requested an index of the files on the server, and had been
|sent it.  Well, Butch used this as an excuse to rummage around my ButchVM
|account, whereupon he found the REXX source for another "chat machine."  This
|chat machine had never been run on ButchVM, and I got really peeved when
|Butch disabled my account simply because it was there.

Of course, what Charles completely fails to mention was the fact that he had
announced the arrival of a brand new neato-keen chat machine, running on
ButchVM, to be started a couple of days after the date of the account
suspension.  So he had intent to break the rules, although he had broken
none yet.  So, is what Butch did good, because he prevented a violation of
the rules, or bad, because Charles had not *yet* done anything wrong.

ButchVM never really had a file-ownership policy ("The files on this machine
belong to us" or "The files on this machine belong to the student."), so
the only thing that Charles can complain was violated was something that he
had no reason to expect.

-- 
Bill Fenner                   w...@hcx.psu.edu             ..!psuvax1!psuhcx!wcf
sy...@hogbbs.fidonet.org (1:129/87 - 814/238-9633)     ..!lll-winken!/

In article <1199@swbatl.UUCP> george@swbatl.UUCP (6544) writes:


>   The system administrator and our teachers were none too happy.  They
>   went into our accounts and searched for all traces of the program
>   and eliminated them (what a bunch of squares!).  They didn't find
>   my copy, though...I renamed it to the name of one of my assignments!

Loading some files from another site I once came across a file called
`mail.exe', when I ran it, the first output it produced was
`You are now in command of the Starship Enterprise'... Guess somebody
else had to hide their games.


--
Ian W Moor
  UUCP: uunet!mcvax!ukc!icdoc!iwm     
  ARPA: i...@doc.ic.ac.uk
  JANET: iwm@uk.ac.ic.doc
           
 Department of Computing,          Thou shalt not make a machine
 Imperial College.                 in the likeness of a human mind --
 180 Queensgate                     Butler.
 London SW7 UK.