Don’t hand in a Garbage Paper, send a Corrupted File Instead

corrupted-files.com

5 points·kqr2··6 comments

This is an interesting twist on the "dog ate my homework".

Cute idea, but I wouldn't pay to use something like this. You can just open up whatever file in a texteditor and delete some header info or even some strings randomly, you have a corrupted file.

Besides, by handing in fake homework, you are just cheating yourself of education.

I wonder how long sites like turnitin.com will take to respond to this, if it becomes widespread.

If I were a professor (I've said this too many times-- maybe it's time for a career change) I'd seriously freak out if a student pulled this crap. The first of the pain he'd be feeling would be the 0 he got on the paper/powerpoint.

My other problem with this is the turnaround time on their custom orders. Who gets themselves into this situation with 12 hours to spare?

If this becomes widespread, someone will just write a file validity checker. If the file is corrupted, the site won't accept it.

Perhaps professors should just stop accepting "the computer ate my homework" as an excuse to extend a deadline.

In every course I've ever TA-ed or even taken, a corrupted paper or code submission is considered the problem of the sender, and thus late. Last term, the penalty for one student who, I think through an honest mistake, submitted a corrupted file, was -50%.

Even easier, have the students hand in the paper on actual....paper. Hard to corrupt that.

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