Jamie's Blog

Friday, March 30, 2007

Students Suing anti Plagiarism service TurnItIn



Two students from McLean High School in Virginia are suing the Anti-plagiarism service Turnitin for copyright violations.
Turnitin is a company that provides teachers with an easy way to catch students who have plagiarized their papers. It actively crawls the internet archiving and categorizing material posted on websites. When a teacher or student submits a paper to the service, it will compare that paper to its archive and prepare a report for the teacher on possible plagiarism instances in the paper. The report is quite detailed and allows the teacher to compare side by side the suspect paragraph or sentence with the possibly plagiarized source. At that point, it is up to the teacher to decide if the passage was plagiarism, poor referencing, or simply coincidence.
Where the possible copyright violation comes in, is in the submitting of the student’s paper. All submitted papers are also archived and added to the Turnitin database for plagiarism comparison. So that means that you won't be able to turn in a paper written by students who took the class last year, or who took a similar class at another school that also uses the service.
Turnitin claims that the use of the student’s papers is fair use and does not violate any copyrights. They claim that they are not selling or publishing the student’s papers, and are in fact protecting the students copyright on the papers by preventing someone from stealing their work.
The students claim that because Turnitin is a commercial enterprise and does not get explicit permission to use the papers, they do not qualify for fair use on the copyright issue.
The purpose of this lawsuit doesn't seem to be about protecting copyright. It seems to be more about shutting down the service. One of the parents of the students suing was quoted as saying, "My son's major objection is that he does not cheat, and this assumes he does." In researching the service for this post, I found that the presumption of guilt seems to be one of the main objections to the use of this service. My question is, does requiring the use of this service presume guilt?


McLean Students Sue Anti-Cheating Service
Official website of TurnItIn
Wikipedia Article on use of TurnItIn service

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Thursday, March 29, 2007

Google Search Trends

Last year I turned on Google's search history feature for my account. basically what happens is that Google keeps a record of all searches you do while logged into your account. It also keeps links attached to your search record of any site you went to as a result of the search. This is really useful when you remember finding some site before, but can't remember what you searched for to find it or can't remember which of the results of the search you clicked on.
I've used it multiple times already to find things that I should have bookmarked and didn't. Or to find data that wasn't significant or relevant enough when I first read it, but now has become important. This can really be a time saver.
But other than the above uses, I never really looked at all of the features it offers. It also offers you a look at your search trend and habits, over the last year, week, or month. It offers those trends in easy to see bar graphs like the one below.


What you are seeing is the average number of searches on each day of the week over the last year. as you can see, I seem to have a much higher number of searches on Wednesday. Very few searches on Saturday and Sunday, and a roughly even number of searches for the other weekdays.
I understand why I have low searches on Saturday and Sunday. Most Saturday's I'm either working on something at home(yard work, etc.) that doesn't include using the computer, or I'm not home at all. And on Sundays, I usually leave the house in the morning and don't return until late that night. So again, very little computer time. The only stat I don't understand is why Wednesday is so high. What is it about Wednesday that causes me to do more searches on that day then others?

The next graph is a breakdown of averages by hour.

This graph I understand a little better. The greatest number of searches is between 8 and 5 with very few before or after. Can you guess what hours I work?
Searches in the 8:00 am hour start off relatively low, which makes sense. I usually start the day off responding to emails and voice mails that came in over night. It would probably be lower still, if I actually started work at the official 8:00 am start time. But since I usually arrive at work early, I can actually get started sooner. The joys of a salaried job.
Searches increase in the 9:00 hour as I really get into my work. They then start to drop off as we get closer to lunch. Can you guess what time I eat lunch?
Picks up again dramatically after lunch. Probably because I've had a chance to think about what ever problem I was having while I ate.
Drops off in the 5:00 hour. Would probably be lower, but I often don't leave work on time.
6:00 and 7:00 are almost empty. I would have been on the road at those times, or I just got home and am going through the mail and fixing dinner.

So as you can see, there is quite a bit of data that you could glean from looking at these graphs. Without knowing anything about me, you could actually come up with a lot of very accurate information.
1. I work in a job that requires a lot of web access. Probably IT related, but it could be news or journalistic.(If you had access to the actual sites I clicked on, which Google does, you could confirm my likely job)
2. I don't work on the weekends.
3. I work from 8 am to 5 pm.
4. I generally take lunch around 12:00 and get back around 1:00 pm(most likely an hour lunch)
5. I most likely am traveling or am not at a computer in the 6:00 and 7:00 hours.
6. I probably go to bed sometime after midnight and wake up sometime after 6:00 am.

I'm not entirely sure how this information would help Google, but it is surprising how much it tells them about me.

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Space junk just misses airliner



A Russian satellite came down in the pacific ocean near New Zealand Tuesday night and narrowly missed an airliner that was flying from Santiago, Chile to Auckland, New Zealand. The Russian space agency had warned New Zealand and surrounding areas that the satellite was coming down, but it wasn't supposed to be coming down quite as soon as it did, or in the location it came down in.
The story here.

Scientists are becoming increasingly worried about the sheer quantity of "junk" that is orbiting the earth. Both because it could come down anywhere, and because it jeopardizes existing and future spacecraft and satellites. NASA currently tracks over 10,000 distinct objects orbiting the earth. Most of which are literally junk. It is estimated that there are anywhere from 600,000 to 1,000,000 man made items currently orbiting the earth that could cause collisions and damage.
Check out the wikipedea article on space debris here
A National Geographic article on space cleanup here

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Color Night Vision goggles



A company called Tenebraex has come up with a pair of night vision goggles that can create a color image rather than the traditional green monochromatic view of night vision goggles. The goggles are completely mechanical with no computer parts. So there is no heavy power pack required. The color view does require some light. A minimum of at least a quarter moon light is required for the color view. But if there isn't enough light for color images, you can easily switch them to the green view by twisting a knob.
The main application for this is probably in the medical field. Doctors have long complained that it is difficult to work using night vision goggles, due to the lack of color. But over all, this could be useful for everyone.
The price for the goggles is currently $6,000. The company that developed them hopes to start selling them to the military, though they do not currently have any contract in place.

Check out the original story here
The Tenebraex official website here

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

High School kid creates Nuclear Fusion at home



Found this story about a High School senior that created nuclear fusion in his home. it seems that he bought all the parts needed from his local Home Depot and Ebay. This is actually a bit scary. Just think, your neighbor might be building a fusion reactor in his basement next door.
Check out the story here

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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Sugar powered batteries



Researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri have come up with a fuel cell that can run on nearly any sugar source. It converts the sugar into electricity and potentially can create power sources that are much smaller than current lithium batteries. Converting sugar into power is not a new concept. Several years ago some scientists came up with a fuel cell idea for powering pacemakers. It was also powered by sugar. It converted the glucose in the patients blood into electric power. There have also been a few other fuel cell technologies that converted various sources of sugar into power.
The difference in this system, is that the researchers claim to be able to use any source of sugar. So you may soon be able to pour some cola into your Ipod when it runs low on power.
Check the article out here

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Monday, March 19, 2007

Intern selling stolen Civil war documents on Ebay



Denning McTague, an antiques and rare books dealer was interning for the national Archives in Philadelphia last summer. It seems that while he was working there, he walked out with at least 165 civil war documents. Including the official War Department's announcement of President Lincoln's death. He then sold them on Ebay to private collectors. It seems that one of the items he sold, aroused suspicion and got the FBI involved in an investigation. McTague was working with the Archives arranging and organizing documents for the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
He's now been caught and arrested, but has been cooperating with law enforcement on retrieving the items he stole. Most of the documents have been retrieved already.

What caught me about this story, was how he was able to simply walk out of the archives taking the documents. He wasn't caught stealing them, he was caught after the fact when he was selling them. Seems like the Archives should have had better security and accounting of it's documents.

The guy has a website where he sells books, but the site seems to be down. I'm not sure if that is because of the extra traffic this story has generated, or because he took the site down himself.
Check out his site here assuming that it ever comes back up,
and the story here

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Friday, March 16, 2007

Watches made from Bone and Wood



Found this amazing image of a pocket watch made entirely of Bone. The only things in the watch that aren't bone, are the metal springs. Apparently the Bronnikov family from Vjatka, Russia made these watches back in the 1800s. The watches today can command up to $25,000 at auction. Each watch was hand carved and painstakingly put together.

Here is the blog where I found the original story Watchismo
Check out the history of the watch here

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Memory editing using drugs?



Found this article about some scientists that were able to erase a specific memory in lab rats using an experimental drug. They trained the rats to associate a particular sound with pain. They were then able to make those rats forget that sound by giving them a combination of drugs.
The scientists say this could be a big breakthrough for future development in the field of psychiatrics. Especially for people dealing with trauma related conditions. Personally I think it is a little scary. To think that in the near future someone might be able to selectively edit some of my memories is quite frightening. So much of who I am and how I react to daily life is based on my memory. Removing those memories could seriously change who I am.

Scientists Wipe out a single memory

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Friday, March 02, 2007

Teacher texts the cops for weed



Found this interesting story about a teacher who was trying to buy marijuana. It seems that she was trying to set up a meeting with her dealer but got the number wrong. instead of her dealers number, she ended up messaging the cell phone of an offduty cop. The cop thought the messages were a joke at first, but then decided they were real. So he set up a meeting with her. When she came to pick up her drugs, she was arrested instead. The best thing about the article was the statement by the cop at the end. "She learned her lesson. Program your dealers into your phone"

You can check out the story here.

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