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I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

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Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#111

Post by compootr »

stikit wrote: post #57

something is missing from this story. it doesn’t make sense they jumped right to blocking your account because you requested to integrate. You sort of skipped over the part where you got hold of the Swagger files. would you care to elaborate on how exactly you found those files and if this might have been the reason for the heavy handed response? usually swagger files would be locked down on the backend .

they're public. After searching for "university of washington student web service" thr homepage literally links to https://ws.admin.washington.edu/student/swagger/index.html

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#112

Post by pockmarked19 »

chatmasta wrote: post #89
pockmarked19 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine governments tend to be the same way, though my only direct experience here is that I don't report anything and nothing bad happens. The funny thing to me is that the discovery of these issues is not what triggers retaliation, but the audacity of reporting them. Were I personally impacted, I would just submit information to the media as an anonymous whistleblower to get it fixed.

Really? If you’re personally impacted then surely you don’t want the media bringing attention to an open vulnerability where anyone can steal your data. I’d opt for silence in this case and hope that some future update patches the bug (accidentally or otherwise).

Depends on the impact. In some cases you do, so a class action lawsuit gets some traction.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#113

Post by Aurornis »

dylan604 wrote: post #35
throwway120385 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. You'd be surprised what kinds of problems go away when you mention your lawyer casually or you have a lawyer send a letter. Even if you don't get the right kind of lawyer right away, they might be able to recommend someone or tell you how to research the right kind of lawyer to get ahold of. Professionals are usually helpful about those kinds of things. Also get a second or third opinion. I've sometimes go…

Don't mention a lawyer casually. Just have the lawyer send a letter. Don't give them the option to call your bluff. People casually mention a lawyer so frequently it means nothing. Receiving a letter from an actual lawyer means everything.

Having a lawyer send a letter isn't an automatic win. Once you turn it into a legal threat you force them to escalate to their legal team. Reasonable lawyers would likely roll their eyes and talk the university back from this weird move, but you're not guaranteed reasonable lawyers on the other end. If they feel threatened they might start looking even deeper into into contracts you signed as a way to protect themselves or as legal leverage to silence you with further threats.

I've witnessed a couple cases where things went from hiring a lawyer, to sending a letter, to a stalemate where legal bills started getting so expensive that the only winners were the lawyers. When you're dealing with a big bureaucracy you can't count on them giving up at the first sight of a letter from a lawyer.

The legal route also takes time and locks any further conversations into the speed of both sides' lawyers. Time matters in this case because this student needs to get registered for classes, so anything that could stall that process needs to be weighed carefully.

I wouldn't be surprised if this issue magically goes away as soon as the publicity comes around to local news media and/or some alumni with connections.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#114

Post by loeg »

buildbot wrote: post #103
uwthrowaway wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a uw cs student, it is made pretty clear that you're not supposed to trade spots or otherwise automate any part of the registration. Students typically know not to talk about this stuff. While well-intentioned, if this was commonly used it would mess registration up even more by making the "constrained" classes valuable and would be filled up quickly by people who wouldn't take them.

I was an EE student and worked for UW CSE back in the day, someone tried to do this back then as well and got very in trouble. There may have been some browser automation scripts about… I wouldn’t know.

I benefited from a UW CSE spot trade in like 2010 and didn't get in trouble for it at the time.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#115

Post by ta988 »

Stay calm, they will be the ones that will loose a lot and they will end up spending a lot ot time and money to clean-up their mess.

You will get plenty of job offers out of your post, and you don't need their useless degree anyway.

Universities are specialized in bullying from their admins (and often faculty) that have way too much time on their hands.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#116

Post by ta988 »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #42
Aurornis wrote: post #21

I have several friends on the administrative side at Universities. The two things you have to realize is that there are an incredible number of administrative staff at Universities and they're extremely territorial. You rocked someone's boat and they got upset. They have a lot of time on their hands because there are so, so many people in administration. Now they're coming after you like it's their job. I think you'r…

I've spent quite a bit of time in academia and was going to post something similar. Universities, no matter how great, are filled to the brim with petty bureaucrats just itching to exert whatever meager power they wield over someone whenever they get the chance. > So be loud, but polite. Fully agree. In academia problems don't get fixed until it's more annoying to not fix it. The more attention this gets the more lik…

This reflects my experience as well.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#117

Post by jimt1234 »

jdkaim wrote: post #7

Update: I immediately took down my class project site after receiving yesterday’s ultimatum. I still don’t think the simple demo site violated the letter or spirit of the registration rules, but I took it down because I always want to operate in good faith. They followed up today to thank me for doing it, but also indicated that they were putting a hold on my account anyway. As a result, I am not going to be able to…

Do you need an account to register for classes? Can't you just register in-person like I did back when we roamed the earth with dinosaurs?

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#118

Post by greatgib »

Aurornis wrote: post #21

I have several friends on the administrative side at Universities. The two things you have to realize is that there are an incredible number of administrative staff at Universities and they're extremely territorial. You rocked someone's boat and they got upset. They have a lot of time on their hands because there are so, so many people in administration. Now they're coming after you like it's their job. I think you'r…

This is the negative part of bullshit jobs that become harmful to others once their existence starts to be threatened!

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#119

Post by uwthrowaway »

simonbw wrote: post #91

I went to UW a decade ago, and back then it was pretty common knowledge that you don't fuck with software and the class registration system. Registering for classes was really competitive and they were really strict about making sure that no one had an edge over anyone else by being able to write code. There were plenty of rumors of people being expelled for using scripts to try to get the classes they wanted right w…

UW cs student - most current cs students would still know that this would get you in trouble.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#120

Post by chillfox »

darth_avocado wrote: post #56
Aurornis wrote: post #21

I have several friends on the administrative side at Universities. The two things you have to realize is that there are an incredible number of administrative staff at Universities and they're extremely territorial. You rocked someone's boat and they got upset. They have a lot of time on their hands because there are so, so many people in administration. Now they're coming after you like it's their job. I think you'r…

> They have a lot of time on their hands because there are so, so many people in administration. Not so polite take: most of them could be replaced by a 20 line shell script.

lolz.

Having worked at a university your job isn't to get shit done. Your job is to make managers happy, usually by attending meetings, being knowledgeable, polite and always available. Your manager's job is to inflate headcount for the executives, so their empires grow and their ranking among other executives improves.

People at the higher levels literally use words like empire and fiefdom (of x) to refer to departments instead of the departments name.

The first few years I didn't understand this, so I would suggest automations and process improvements at meetings, my manager was always unhappy with me when I did this. I was literally told once that there was value in a human doing a task when I suggested we automate something that could be done with about 5 lines of code.

Eventually I understood and improved. I would automate some tasks silently and then use the freed-up time to prepare for meetings and generally being a better team member. After starting doing this I frequently got highlighted as one of the top 3 team members.

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