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http://www.corrupted-files.com/
They advertise that it will take days for your professor to notice that the submitted paper file is corrupted. He then asks you for an uncorrupted copy, but in the meantime you have purchased a copy of the term paper you need.
I thank Tucker Hughes for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 3, 2009 at 10:34 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
I know students do this kind of thing. I used to tell them that they could feel free to email papers, but if the file is corrupted, it counts as late and they lose credit.
Posted by: Jason Brennan at Jun 3, 2009 11:05:02 AM
Reminds me of that (if I recall correctly) SNL skit about the express delivery company that would back-date your correspondence as you wished, and then take the blame for not delivering it on time...
Posted by: JackTrade at Jun 3, 2009 11:05:26 AM
That's funny. Fail Blog posted an advertisement for this site recently, calling it a SOLUTION FAIL.
http://failblog.org/2009/06/03/solution-fail/
Posted by: Vake at Jun 3, 2009 11:05:56 AM
LOL! ;-)
Posted by: Speedmaster at Jun 3, 2009 11:37:58 AM
This isn't limited to academe -- it's a sufficiently common software industry practice that it even has a name. "Empty-boxing" refers to a (possibly apocryphal) story of IBM sending a customer an empty tape box, then explaining when it arrived that it must have been screwed up in the shipping department. This bought the necessary time for the software to be completed.
I worked for a large telecom equipment company that was a true master of empty-boxing. In these days of instantaneous electronic deliveries, it takes a bit more skill. Extremely slow and ultimately unsuccessful downloads from ftp sites featured prominently.
Posted by: Grant Gould at Jun 3, 2009 11:59:58 AM
I'm saddened by the state of our education that it's come to this... How hard is it to open a word file or PDF in text editor and just remove the header and/or footer info? Or simply throw in a few extra random characters? Kids don't even try today.
Posted by: kxf_in_dc at Jun 3, 2009 12:00:04 PM
My first thought was much like kxf's: stupid kids can't even corrupt their own files? What next, www.wipeyourassforyou.com?
Posted by: Paul Gowder at Jun 3, 2009 12:37:11 PM
You could just take some non-PDF file and rename it with a PDF extension. It's not so hard.
Posted by: Andy at Jun 3, 2009 12:57:27 PM
It all depends on exactly how long you need. There is also the classic send them an email saying "Here is my paper" with no attachment, and then take the extra couple minutes/hours to finish, depending how often they check their email and how forgiving the professor is. As far as I've been able to tell, this strategy has seen much wider adoption in the business world.
Posted by: Elliott at Jun 3, 2009 1:37:08 PM
This is just annoying. Why not submit a not high-quality paper instead? I would take a B anytime over the risk of spoiling my name.
Posted by: Irina I at Jun 3, 2009 1:52:54 PM
Stuff like this is why in the freshman chemistry labs I taught, us TAs were instructed to only accept hard copies of assignments.
Posted by: Sbard at Jun 3, 2009 3:15:26 PM
Also, who wants to bet the dumbasses who run the website leave recoverable metadata in those corrupted files showing who wrote it?
Posted by: Paul Gowder at Jun 3, 2009 3:40:04 PM
Or buy the term paper in the first place. If a student is so disorganized that they need to corrupt a file just to give themselves time to buy a paper, are they really that likely actually to come up with this two-pronged solution?
And, nice call on the SNL "Jiffy Express" skit: "We'll take the package-AND the blame."
Posted by: ah at Jun 3, 2009 3:45:43 PM
Easy enough to deal with. Require both a hard copy and digital copy. You'll grade the hard copy and run the digital copy thorough a plagiarism checker.
Posted by: David at Jun 3, 2009 4:36:34 PM
When the plagiarism detector points out that your corrupted file just happens to match another student's exactly, then you're in all kinds of trouble...
Posted by: improbable at Jun 3, 2009 7:10:03 PM
So much for keeping the site a secret ;)
Posted by: Dave at Jun 3, 2009 7:16:46 PM
That's why my school requires a paper copy and an electronic one that's scanned for plagiarism.
Posted by: dk.au at Jun 3, 2009 10:10:37 PM
I will be adding a section to my syllabus that corrupted files or missing file attachments for electronic submissions will be considered late.
Posted by: Ben at Jun 4, 2009 11:06:19 AM
I had one professor complain that the file I sent her was corrupted. I had to explain that /LaTeX is supposed to look like that.
Posted by: Zach at Jun 4, 2009 12:33:29 PM
Wow... now I've seen everything!! Someone actually thought of a way to monetize time. Genius!! Does anyone know who's behind this?
Posted by: Mark at Jun 4, 2009 11:45:04 PM
When assignments are due I check my e-mail constantly, and then open and save all attachments, so this would only buy one of my students about five minutes. I'm sure there will be something else next year...
Posted by: John at Jun 5, 2009 9:01:16 AM
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.
Posted by: Stewart at Jun 5, 2009 1:09:13 PM
If you do this, you have to be careful with time stamps
Posted by: Freddie at Jun 5, 2009 5:14:17 PM
My wife is taking her masters degree on line. On one occasion a paper she submitted was corrupted and she received a zero grade within hours after she sent it off on the grounds that it was the students responsibility to submit “clean” assignments. She complained immediately and was advised that if she could provide an uncorrupted text by return email it would be graded without penalty.
Students can be advised at the outset of their studies that corrupted papers will receive an immediate and automatic zero which can be reversed if a clean version is submitted within a very short time frame. This way students buy themselves very little time with the program and run the risk of a zero if they do not have something ready to submit
Posted by: Maurice at Jun 7, 2009 10:18:32 AM
"On one occasion a paper she submitted was corrupted and she received a zero grade within hours after she sent it off on the grounds that it was the students responsibility to submit “clean” assignments."
"I used to tell them that they could feel free to email papers, but if the file is corrupted, it counts as late and they lose credit."
That is complete bullshit. How can the teacher possibly know that the student didn't submit a "clean" assignment, and that it wasn't the teacher's computer or e-mail server that corrupted the file? That policy reeks of "I don't understand computers, and I want to discourage you from using them for your assignments."
There are several ways to detect that a person is cheating. Perhaps you can do a md5sum, and a sha1sum, and look up the results in google, and find out that the file is something unrelated to the project. You can run the "file" command on the file, and if it says PNG Image, then it is fake. If the file is indistinguishable from random data, then it is unlikely to be derived from a real document. As another poster pointed out, if two students turn in the same corrupted file, it is fake. In the future, teachers might have a list of previous corrupted files (or just their checksums), and they can check any attempts against the list.
Posted by: Bob at Jun 11, 2009 12:08:46 AM
