Digenis.org

If you’re a new reader to this site you may not be aware of an ongoing series I started back in 2004, when I was a student at Moscow International University. The series is called ‘Academic Integrity po-russky’ and explores the lax attitude towards plagiarism in Russian academic circles and the controversy that’s come up against initiatives to curb it.

My previous posts told of the wide-scale plagiarism I saw as a student, how one could buy research papers in the Moscow metro, the ingenuity of Russian shpargalki (crib-sheets), and Russian LiveJournal reactions to the accusations that Putin himself was a plagiarizer (gasp!).

I’ll just begin this post with a short humorous quip I heard as I was asking some Russians about this topic:

“Списывание с одного источника - плагиат, с двух - компиляция, с трёх и более - диссертация.”

“Copying from another source is called ‘plagiarism’. Copying from two sources is called ‘a compilation’. Copying from three or more sources is called ‘a dissertation’.

Whether or not you think plagiarism is a big deal, it’s clear that it’s becoming a hotter issue in educational institutions thanks to peer-to-peer networks, where users trade not only pirated music and video, but also documents and research papers. There are also a few websites, for example, 5ballov.ru (5 points, the Russian equivalent of an A+ mark), where Russian students can freely download tens of thousands of term papers on a number of subjects.

Kommersant Newspaper last Thursday ran an article entitled ‘Антиплагиат не пройдет’ (Anti-plagiarism Won’t be Tolerated) about the controversy over a website where Russian instructors can check their students’ papers for instances of plagiarism.

The web application, which resides at Antiplagiat.ru, has in fact been around since 2005. According to the website, the purpose of the initiative is ‘to improve the quality of the Russian education system, specifically in those areas where students are required to write research papers, term reports, and other original compositions’. As of September 21, 2007, the Antiplagiat database contains over 10,600,000 documents with which it compares the papers uploaded and checked by instructors. Since its launch, many institutes, universities, and even the Russian Ministry of Education have given their support to the project.

As it turns out, the site is also frequented by students themselves, no doubt using the service to see if the complex algorithms can indeed detect instances of ‘borrowing’ in their course work. In fact, one of the more active threads at the Antiplagiat Forums is titled ‘How to get around the system’, where many students have voiced their frustrations:

Наша кафедра взяла на вооружение антиплагиат…. млин, я никогда так не мучался с курсовой!!! (Петров Иван Аликович

Our department is now armed with the Antiplagiat system… Dang, I’ve never been so tormented by a term paper!!! (Ivan Alikovich Petrov)

and

Готов заплатить больше, чем Министерство образование (за создание сайта) - только бросьте этот, по-моему, “дурацкий” проект. (Пономарев Алексей Владимирович)

I’m willing to outpay the Ministry of Education (to build a site) - just abandon this stupid project (Aleksei Vladimirovich Ponomarev)

The commentary goes on and on with people’s suggestions on how to ‘fool’ the system and the moderators’ claims that it cannot be fooled. The author of the Kommersant article tracked down a Russian hacker named Georgi who claims to have created a program called ‘Killer’, which can effectively fool the Antiplagiat system.

Here’s a screenshot of the results of feeding a plagiarized paper through Antiplagiat:

The table shows three instances of plagiarism and their original sources.

Whether or not any such services could effectively curb plagiarism is still up for debate; students will either use their creativity to write original papers or they will use it to find ways around the system. Student groups in the United States have been successful in pressuring their universities to cease using such systems under the premise that it’s an infringement of their intellectual property rights for their papers to be added automatically to these databases.

In my opinion, the real test of determining whether such a system could actually work actually rests with the instructors and professors. Do they really have the time or will power to digitize and upload each paper of each of their students, then weeding out false positives? With the relatively low salaries of teachers, I highly doubt that many of them would consider it worth their time. I’d give the Antiplagiat site an ‘A for effort’, but I don’t think it passes the test in practicality.

If you’re like me, there’s a certain set of reference websites you visit and search frequently. If you’re like me, you’re also a savvy Firefox user, so a tip on how to perform searches at any website straight from your browser’s address bar may prove helpful and timesaving.

It goes something like this: You’re working on a blog post, a translation, or whatever have you when you come across a term and you need to consult an online reference site. Sure, you could easily open a new tab/window, type ‘www.wikipedia.com’ in the address bar, wait for the page to load, scroll down the page to the search box, type your search query, and be on your happy way four steps later when the search results have loaded…

Or you can set up a streamline keyword search. Here’s how:

1. Load any webpage (in Firefox) where you anticipate you’ll frequently perform search functions. For the sake of example, let’s take dictionary.com.

2. Find the search box and right-click on it. An options box will appear and you should select ‘Add a Keyword for this Search’ (sorry, mine’s in Russian, but you get the idea)

3. A new box will appear and you’ll fill in the following details.

Then click ‘Ok’

4. Now we can test our quick search feature. From any page just go to the address bar and type ‘d query, which ‘query’ being the term you wish to know more about.

Voila!

As you can see, I like to take it a step further and use key letters instead of just ‘keywords’. Afterall, if you’re gonna make shortcuts shorter for quick common tasks, why not go all the way?

I figure there are about 20 sites I visit frequently for reference searches, so I’ve decided to use a letter of the alphabet for each:
Need a synonym for exuberant? Just type ‘t exuberant’ (thesaurus.reference.com)
Need to know how to say ” in English? Just type ‘m меценат’ (multitran.ru)
Forget the definition of the word defenestrate? Type ‘d defenestrate’ (dictionary.com)
Want to quickly look up a passage from the Bible? Type ‘b 1 Cor 13′ (esv.org)
Need to know what year the whole Napoleon Great Fire of Moscow affair took place? type ‘w Fire of Moscow’ (wikipedia.com)

The possibilities are endless. Also, as you can see from one of my examples above, you can use multiple character encodings and languages.

(via A Mac Tip Every Day, but you can use it with PC Firefox as well)

Not sure where this humorous comic on the Leopard delay originated, but it’s been floating around the net:

See also John Gruber’s comments.

Tim Gaden at Hawkwings has posted a method for speeding up Mail.app by vacuuming the Envelope Index. I’ve got several years worth of four POP accounts running in my Mail.app, and this quick trick trimmed down the loading time significantly. There are a few ways to accomplish this, but for those who like to get down and dirty with Terminal here’s how I did it:

1. Quit Mail.
2. Open Terminal.
3. Type the following:

cd ~/Library/Mail
sqlite3 Envelope\ Index

An sqlite> prompt will appear.

At that prompt, type vacuum subjects;.

After a short delay, the prompt will return. Type Control-D to exit.
4. Restart Mail and enjoy the extra speed.

A lot of great comments followed the post, including a few ideas on other ways to achieve this same task through Terminal. Most interestingly, a follow-up entry explained how to use an easy AppleScript (or an Automater script, if that’s your flavour) to automate this task through iCal. It goes without saying that you’ll only notice great changes the first time you use it, but automation will keep your Envelope Index from getting unwieldy.

My Apple iPod earphones have been on the fritz lately. It’s probably fixable with a little soldering and electrical tape, but I don’t have a soldering gun here. I ended up picking up some Philips SHE2610 earphones since I didn’t want to drop another $50 on Apple brand. Less than $20 later I am entirely pleased.

Woah. Jeff Croft has ‘geocoded’ nearly all the content on his website. Now you can browse his photos and posts according to the location where they were made. Interesting use of metadata and taxonomy. I’d consider doing this myself for experimental purposes, but I’m becoming more and more cautious of just how much personal information I put on this site.

Google has created an interesting mashup using Google Books and Google Maps: Google searches through the text of books in the Google Books database and displays the locations mentioned on Google Maps. Take for instance the Google Books entry on Tolstoy’s War and Peace (scroll to the bottom of the page to see the map) or The Travels of Marco Polo.

According to the Russian Gizmodo page, Hewlett-Packard Black printer ink #45 costs nearly twice as much as human blood and significantly more than penicillin, vodka, Red Bull, and crude oil.