Saturday, February 13, 2010

News Roundup

This just in -- computer science students at Stanford cheat! I love this quote: "Historically, the computer science department accounts for between 20 to 60 percent of all honor-code cases, even though the courses represent about 7 percent of student enrollment." This may be because cheating in computer science is relatively easy -- cut-and-paste. But I think it's also more due to the fact that in computer science we have and use the tools to catch copying. If you're using automatic tools, it's easy to find; if you're not, then you'll find it less.

One of those "denied-tenure-leads-to-shooting" incidents, this time in Alabama. (To be clear, the details about the reasons for the shooting are still, I think, unofficial.) I always feel a twinge when I hear a story like that... it makes me glad that Harvard's tenure process is extremely super-secret. A professor's job is, naturally, very safe, so stories of students or faculty losing it like this hit home. Oh, and I like how most news articles feel important to point out the shooter was "Harvard-trained".

Not-just-Harvard with budget woes. At least we seem to be reducing our red ink at a good pace.

Speaking of budgets, we have proposed increases in the NSF budget for the coming year. Although it seems to take advantage of it, you might want to start working in energy technologies. And there will be a new NSF director; I'm not sure how that affects us academics.

Any other news of note?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

it makes me glad that Harvard's tenure process is extremely super-secret.

What's super secret about "just say no"?

Jico said...

This announcement was interesting to me:

What would one do with a home gigabit connection ? Will the Boston community be interested ?... Oh, the possibilities...

Anonymous said...

I was just curious if you could talk about the sigcomm submissions from this year. Is there a lot less/more junk than in other years? It seems that the number of submitted papers is bigger than in other years.

Anonymous said...

any other news of note?

well the Alabama prof apparently also shot her brother 23 years ago..
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/14/alabama.university.shooting/index.html?hpt=T2

Anonymous said...

The Australian Research Council, NSF equivalent, has released its ranking of journals. ACM SIGCOMM CCR is ranked as 'C' -- 'shit' grade.

Check out for yourself:
http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_journal_list.htm

Fair?

Harry Lewis said...

Bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. NB that there is something her lawyer calls "the Harvard mentality" which is being used as a defense!


Amy Bishop's Lawyer Says She Is Probably Insane
Amy Bishop's court-appointed lawyer says the professor accused of killing three of her colleagues appears to have paranoid schizophrenia and while she is "aware of what she's done" and is full of remorse, she can't remember the shootings. Roy W. Miller, the lawyer, told the Associated Press that her failure to get tenure at the University of Alabama at Huntsville was the likely key to the shootings.

"Obviously she was very distraught and concerned over that tenure," Mr. Miller said. "It insulted her and slapped her in the face, and it's probably tied in with the Harvard mentality. She brooded and brooded and brooded over it, and then, 'bingo.'"