February 7, 2006 at 4:54 pm
It's amazing to me that someone can take the words from another and publish them as their own. I guess that's why sites such as essayrelief.com. And why other sites like turnitin.com have sprung up to help combat that type of behavior. Actually if you want to get a great Christmas Present for your kid's high school, get parents to raise money to subscribe to some plagiarism prevention service.
Actually a Google search on "essay help" turned up entirely too many places where you can get an essay written. Amazing how many of these tout their essays as "100% non plagiarized". I guess if you hire writers to write something, but that's a small step away from stealing someone else's work for profit or gain. It's just plain wrong to hire someone to do your work, as is starting to happen on Rent a Coder, where people are paying to get computer science assignments completed for them. There was a great Wall Street Journal article on this very topic.
And unfortunately, another article today from me on the same topic.
This is a great quote from the WSJ:
"This is a fairly simple program," wrote "Goradia" of Sammamish, Wash. "It is my homework, but since I am busy, I want someone to do this for me."
If it's so simple, just do it. It's your work, you are paying (in college) to learn, or investing in yourself in high school. Just do the work and accept the grade for your work. I cannot fathom why people do not want to earn their own accomplishments. I guess there always will be people that cheat, but it's still amazing to me.
The only things you have in life are those that you earn and the mistakes you make. Enjoy them, relish them, learn from them, accept your failures and work to do better.
Steve Jones
February 8, 2006 at 3:22 am
A saw a lecture by Mr.Dyson, a British engineer who invented a new vacumn cleaner and made an awful lot of money in selling them, where he thinks that too much emphasis is placed on "success", meaning the final result of an assignment, whereas he believes that results should be judged on peoples mistakes, such as what mistakes they made, how they dealt with those mistakes and how they learned from them.
In the current educational system only the final grades are important so in a way it encourages people to cheat. Do you try your best on your own and come out better educated with comparibly low grades or do you cheat, learn less but get better grades? Tough choice.
February 8, 2006 at 6:19 am
Regarding rent-a-coder:
There are some legitimate coders and renters on rent-a-coder. Some of the projects are actually for businesses that want their program written by someone on the cheap. I have bid a couple of times on rent-a-coder but alas, my price was too high.
I do think that it is morally wrong for a person to pay someone else to do their assignment. Also, I think that the person receiving the funds is incorrect as well. I would always look real close to the assignment and make sure that it looked like a legitimate business venture and not someone's CS project. Its real easy to see which ones are legit and which ones are for an assignment, you can tell by the deadline, generally by the description (some of the people there make it real easy, "This is for my C++ assignment"), and finally the price (businesses are willing to spend more, college students are on there asking for work done usually under $100.00). One has to wonder if after they get their degree if their future boss will accept someone elses work..
Aleksei
February 8, 2006 at 6:42 am
How can someone complain about their job being outsourced when they themselves outsourced their education?
Regards,
Scott
February 8, 2006 at 6:45 am
February 8, 2006 at 7:08 am
I agree with the comments regarding outsourcing CS projects being reflective of outsourcing in general. Funny thing though, if you don't enjoy what you're doing enough to do it in school, then this is probably not the career for you.
Edward
February 8, 2006 at 7:30 am
Having gained most of my computer education in the Navy (23 year veteran), it absollutely boggles my mind that someone would hand off their education to a third party! I learned on my own time and was very fortunate to have learned Basic and DBase II under an officer who once was a student of Admiral Grace Hopper - the "Mother" of COBOL. That education was like being given a diamond mine! I am constantly learning new languages and techniques (which is one reason I subscribe to sqlservercentral.com). I would not be in the position I am today by being too lazy to complete a course of instruction. Some people will never get why they are stuck in neutral with that kind of philosophy.
One more note about the person who was too lazy to do his assignment. Grace Hopper once noted that she created the COBOL compiler because she was too lazy to manually compile the code and wanted to spend more time on the primary love of her life - mathematics. Now that I can fathom.
John Minkkinen
February 8, 2006 at 8:01 am
Ah, the wonderful world of postmodern thought. There are no absolutes of right and wrong, and notions of goodness and badness are often measured in terms of convenience, rather than truth. Very sad.
Thanks for the article Steve. Hope things are going well in your new abode.
February 8, 2006 at 8:31 am
February 8, 2006 at 8:47 am
rent-a-coder huh? at least they're paying for the price. That reminds me of my time back in college. Someone in the same class that I don't even know the names would somehow manage to find my room number and showed up the night before the project deadline asking for my source.
February 8, 2006 at 8:54 am
"Is it wrong to hire someone to do your work?..." Do you repair your plumbing yourself or you call the company? Do you grow your own grains for bread or do you go to the store? Do you design your own cloths?
The great economist and philosopher Adam Smith in his "The Wealth Of Nations" (1776) says that the Division Of Labor is a basis for the "..greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor..."
And it has nothing to do with plagiarism which is certainly morally wrong. You have to give people credit for what they do and pay them for their work as appropriate. But I still will buy a takeout a couple of times a week instead of spending 2 hours in the kitchen every day.
Yelena
Regards,Yelena Varsha
February 8, 2006 at 10:16 am
No, it's not wrong to hire someone else to do work for you. That is, as you stated, the basis of the service economy. However, it is very wrong to hire someone else to do work that you are supposed to be doing yourself. Further, it is even more wrong to hire someone else to do the work, and then say that you did it yourself. This is what people are doing all too often - I have seen it, both in college and in the business world. It makes me wonder if that's the reason why colleges are producing so many people with "degrees" in various subjects that the people with those degrees know nothing about. English majors who can't spell or write, Management graduates who can't manage their way out of a paper sack, and Computer Programmers who can't program a simple application... and nobody seems to be able to write a good email these days!
As a single woman, I get about 4 or 5 emails a week from "interested" men, who find my profile online. Most of these are one-liners ("you are hot", or something to that effect), which is just plain stupid and a waste of everyone's time. Sometimes I get a long message with horrible spelling, no capitalisation, no punctuation, and no substance. I'm not sure which is worse. However, when I get the (very rare) email from someone who paid attention in his education and learned basic communication skills, they always get a reply. Perhaps if colleges taught communication skills about how to make it with the opposite sex, without getting them drunk, then more people would pay attention in class!
Jasmine
February 8, 2006 at 10:43 am
I think the latter would be the worst. At least you wasted less time reading the one-liners messages. Just my 2 cents:-)
February 8, 2006 at 10:49 am
Paying for work to be done for you is not wrong. The idea behind Rent A Coder is great.
However turning this work in to a professor is misrepresenting it. You are taking "credit" for someone else's work and violating the code of conduct as a student. If you turn it in and say "I paid someone to do this" then I think you'd at least be honest, but I doubt your teacher would accept it.
I hire consultants at times. Sometimes because I don't have time and sometimes because I'm not qualified to do the work. And the work they do belongs to me when they are done. I might even have copyright to it. But it would be wrong for me to take "credit" for the work. I'd still need to disclose that I paid someone else to do it.
February 8, 2006 at 11:39 am
Steve,
don't misunderstand me, I never say I did something when someone else did it. In many cases I even credit other people with something I suggested first. So let's talk theoretically:
- I saw a topic on Seven News about a month ago about the catering company that takes your dishes and cooks food for your party and puts it in your dishes as though you cooked it yourself. Moreover, the idea of the business was initially implemented by our dear Martha Stuart, see a movie about her. This is a service. Is it good or bad? By the way, if I would be using this service, I would probably tell my guests about "the great service I discovered that cooked this food as though I did it myself..."
Jasmine,
don't contradict yourself. You say you reply only to polite and well-formed replies and don't reply to original but poorly formed letters. These well-formed replies may be no more then copies of someone else's templates or they asked a friend to create a reply for them. Trust me. There is a whole business about it too. I would rather reply to a poorly formed letter, because in this case I would be sure that the person expressed himself, not someone else.
Regards,Yelena Varsha
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