New Service Lets You Use 'The Computer Ate My Homework' As An Excuse
from the wow dept
The old standby for unfinished homework, "the dog ate my homework" has long since gone out of style. It certainly has become popular to claim that one's computer was the problem, with people saying that files got lost or corrupted or the computer died. However, Mathew Ingram points us to a new service that tries to help bad students get away with this, by selling students corrupted files that they can turn in. Yes. They will sell you a corrupted Word document, Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation for just $3.95 (a bargain!). The service claims that this can be useful as a diversionary tactic to "buy time" since it may be days before the teacher/professor tries to open the bogus file -- at which point you may have completed the actual assignment. Or, you know, you can just do the work on time.
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Filed Under: corrupted files, homework
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You're right!
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Old idea in software
I *have* seen hardware companies play such games. To be able to mark some piece of hardware as shipped by the end of a quarter, a company shipped a university CS department a box containing the power supply and backplanes for a hypercube multiprocessor. The cards containing actual CPU's weren't ready, and were shipped months later. Meanwhile, the empty box was good for many a laugh.
I suppose the service at issue represents yet another example of the consumerization of technology....
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Re: Old idea in software
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$3.95?!!!
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Just a hunch, but
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Thats why the days of floppies were great.
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Even if this worked ...
In fact, I have to wonder if news of this service even existing will prompt educators to put this sort of policy in place preemptively.
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