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News & ArtsMonday, June 8, 2009
Teh Internets This Week in Procrastination
Posted by Lindy West on Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 4:04 PM
I have to say, this is a fucking good idea:
Corrupted-Files.com offers a service—recently noted by several academic bloggers who have expressed concern—that sells students (for only $3.95, soon to go up to $5.95) intentionally corrupted files. Why buy a corrupted file? Here's what the site says: "Step 1: After purchasing a file, rename the file e.g. Mike_Final-Paper. Step 2: E-mail the file to your professor along with your 'here's my assignment' e-mail. Step 3: It will take your professor several hours if not days to notice your file is 'unfortunately' corrupted. Use the time this website just bought you wisely and finish that paper!!!"The site promises that students can stop using "lame excuses" like the deaths of grandmothers or turning in poor work.
Via Inside Higher Ed.
1
Eh, there are a million variations on the "a dog ate my homework" theme. Point being: the student is responsible for handing in a legible, accessible copy of a file. One TA I know requires students to submit papers in PDF to get around weirdnesses with various publishing programs.
2
waste of cash: just rename that nudie pic of yourself hiding on your hard drive paper.docx or paper.pdf. voila, corrupted file. plus, your cute TA may finally get the hint if they are savvy enough to figure out what the MIME type actually is . . .
4
OK Lindy...you know that some of us appreciate your amusing posts...but, in case you didn't know, SIFF is still going on. You haven't done a SIFF picks of the day since last Wednesday. Is it really that hard to comb through the schedule and give us at least one SIFF post a day? I mean, you haven't even made a post about SIFF since Friday.
6
How long is it going to take for professors to catch on and start opening files on the due date? Or just requiring hard copies?
Like, five minutes?
Like, five minutes?
8
@1 Yeah I know that placing the responsibility for any technology failures on the student is becoming more common. Its really how it should work. You want to take advantage of the ease of email, then you take the responsibility if it doesn't work.
10
I will admit that I pulled that stunt once, back in college, when I was desperate, desperate, desperate after an all night push that still hadn't finished the paper I'd been procrastinating on. It was a small class, so the ruse only bought a few hours, but it was enough. I know it was wrong, but in the list of wrong things I've done in my life, it was not too high on the list. I didn't pay for a file, though, I corrupted my own file and it took about thirty seconds, even though I hadn't slept in a day and a half.
11
Like overworked grad students don't have enough B.S. to put up with.
Look people, if you didn't do the assignment then take the bad grade. If you have a reason for not getting your paper in on time, ask for an extension. But please, please don't make your TA hunt you down to get an "uncorrupted" file. When you're managing 50 students and doing research and writing your own thesis, dealing with this kind of crap makes you all stabby.
You do realize TA's make a little over minimum wage, right? Don't be a dick.
Look people, if you didn't do the assignment then take the bad grade. If you have a reason for not getting your paper in on time, ask for an extension. But please, please don't make your TA hunt you down to get an "uncorrupted" file. When you're managing 50 students and doing research and writing your own thesis, dealing with this kind of crap makes you all stabby.
You do realize TA's make a little over minimum wage, right? Don't be a dick.
12
@11 is right. TAs are already overworked, underpaid, and used like tools by their advisors. Do them a favor and make grading easier. They're almost always lenient (they just finished undergrad themselves) and they'll probably let you turn it in late without losing credit.
Nobody likes a cheater.
Nobody likes a cheater.
13
Pssshhh. I've never had an instructor allow a student to e-mail an assignment. Hard copy, always.
14
save yourself $5.95 by finding an osx/linux nerd to do
dd if=/dev/urandom of=brokenfile.docx count=450 bs=1024
for you. there's a nice 450k garbage file that is "corrupted" in any office program; change extension/size (aka count) as needed.
also @11 wah wah wah you're the one who wanted to be poor and go to grad school and deal with stupid students. deal with it or find a real job.
dd if=/dev/urandom of=brokenfile.docx count=450 bs=1024
for you. there's a nice 450k garbage file that is "corrupted" in any office program; change extension/size (aka count) as needed.
also @11 wah wah wah you're the one who wanted to be poor and go to grad school and deal with stupid students. deal with it or find a real job.
16
I just got a corrupted file from one of my A students. I have to give her the benefit of the doubt as thanks to Microsoft, files do get corrupted and its happened to me on many occasions. I just emailed her to resend the file, it bought her a few hours but if she did do this intensionally, she now has plenty of time to finish the paper and I can't say a thing as it does happen. I tip my hat to the person who thought up of this excuse, I fear what things he/she will think up of next.
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