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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

#301

Post by nayuki »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #284
nayuki wrote: post #43

As a non-student, I received an overzealous takedown request from the University of Washington a decade ago. https://github.com/nayuki/Reference-Huffman-coding/issues/1 Also related: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/295420/how-to-cope-...

You are so much more polite than I am. Admirable.

I would love to see examples of your sassy writings. Maybe I could learn a thing or two about responding to people.

Note that I've become more cynical in these 10 years that passed. I was, let's say, more charitable with people in the past.

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

#302

Post by KPGv2 »

dylan604 wrote: post #179
eru wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think so?

Because even if you "win", you now have all of those lovely legal bills that the lawyer sends you. If you loose, you now have all of those lovely legal bills that the lawyer sends you. So the lawyer wins either way.

> Because even if you "win", you now have all of those lovely legal bills that the lawyer sends you

Oh come on, that's like saying when you involve engineers to build a bridge, the only people who wins are the engineers because you have to pay them.

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

#303

Post by KPGv2 »

dylan604 wrote: post #226
roywiggins wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, if you hire someone to help you with something, you often end up owing them money, whether or not it ends up successful.

Whether it ends up being successful or not while still having to pay the lawyer is how the lawyer always win. This is not the gotcha you think it is

Except the original claim was that *only* the lawyers win.

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

#304

Post by KPGv2 »

croemer wrote: post #199
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…

One half of me is sympathetic with you, the other wonders whether you're trying to get attention for a job (this is how the end of your LinkedIn post makes it sound). It's hard to judge from the outside as you haven't shared the actual writing from UW. I would probably cut this from the end of the LinkedIn post, this makes you look like you're possibly trying to blow this out of proportion for attention: > I'm schedu…

> That would mean you'd just take 2 years instead of the normal 4?

FWIW my wife was a fourth-year the start of her second year at uni because she'd tested out of a ton of basics or taken dual-credit courses in high school. I was a fourth-year the end of my second year.

I AP'd my way out of 6 hours of English, 14 or so hours of Spanish, 8 hours of physics, 8 hours of calculus, and a hodgepodge of psych, sociology, etc., plus I'd taken some uni courses as a high school student as well.

I basically spent two years taking nothing but upper div math classes + a year living in Japan working on a second degree.

AP classes, my friend, save you so much time and money.

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

#305

Post by croemer »

onepointsixC wrote: post #290
cvoss wrote: post #272

The comments here are almost entirely of one voice: UW bad. Student innocent. It is not hard to find the policy in question. I quote from the UW Registrar's website, their policy on tampering and abuse of the registration system, as cited in the subject of the email the student received: > The registration system is provided for the sole express purpose for students to register themselves into sections. Any use of th…

Except the policy in question was never actually abused as the student did not receive an API key as requested. A proportional response would be a simple denial for API key and reminder of policy. Not preventing a student from graduating. Unless the student is lying here, this is an outrageous response on the part of UW.

Not necessarily lying, TFA could just be misrepresenting/misunderstanding what happened, without intent. Lying implies intent.

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

#306

Post by sneak »

School-Cotton wrote: post #75
sneak wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way that the leadership will make it right in the end is VIA YOUR LAWYER. Without a lawyer they have no reason to do anything. You paid a lot to graduate, it is nothing short of foolish to squander that investment by forgoing legal representation while they try to extort you. Don’t have any more unrecorded conversations with them. They are playing hardball and you are pretending that everything is a-ok, when it c…

It seems reasonable to at least attempt to resolve the situation by emailing someone higher up than whichever random bureaucrat put a hold on his account before immediately jumping to hiring lawyers.

The lawyer emails someone higher up, otherwise the higher up will simply smash the hammer harder to protect against liability. Showing up without representation here is a mark of unseriousness.

Adult businesspeople always have lawyers do the fighting for them; if you don’t it says more about you than the fight.

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

#307

Post by croemer »

cvoss wrote: post #272

The comments here are almost entirely of one voice: UW bad. Student innocent. It is not hard to find the policy in question. I quote from the UW Registrar's website, their policy on tampering and abuse of the registration system, as cited in the subject of the email the student received: > The registration system is provided for the sole express purpose for students to register themselves into sections. Any use of th…

This is the comment I was looking for!

Note also that the student uses the LinkedIn post to advertise themselves to potential employers. This reduces credibility in my mind as it provides a reason why TFA might benefit from exaggeration/misrepresentation.

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

#308

Post by KPGv2 »

croemer wrote: post #235
loeg wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely bang out all the major requirements in 2 years if you don't need any gen ed classes (e.g. community college or other transfer credits). ~18 class-quarters of requirements, 3 classes/quarter => 6 quarters. Possibly as short as 4-5 quarters if you can manage a higher courseload.

Wow, really? So you just pay for a year instead of 4 years? Why do people not do that more?

Because you have to go to a high school that offers special courses, you have to be willing to work much harder than the average student, and you have to know about this trick when you're like 15yo and comprehend how much $$$ and time it's going to save you in the long run.

I fortunately did take advantage of this, and so did my wife. Thought we took advantage of it so we could do cheap study abroad and not have to take any courses toward our degree plan (indeed, I actually earned a second degree in a completely unrelated field while doing my study abroad)

But to be clear, this was because I took every advanced class offered at my high school and took other courses at the local community college instead of hanging out with my friends during lunch, etc. It was a constant gaming of the system to eventually get the results I wanted.

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

#309

Post by DaSHacka »

loeg wrote: post #240
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…

I'd heard of people writing these kinds of scripts but never heard of anyone getting expelled for it (ca. 2010).

At my University, scripts like these are pretty much universal.

We even have an alumni-run site that scrapes the registration platform's API for the details of every course to provide a better UI interface.

It even has a tool to generate an AutoHotkey script so students can insta-register for all their classes seconds after registration opens up for them (it's usually a mad rush at midnight when course registration opens for freshman/sophomores as they all compete for the remaining course slots left after seniors and juniors have already registered).

Seems inane an institution would crack down on it.

We even have another alumni-run site that does nothing but FOIA the average GPA of all courses from every professor; While I can't imagine the university is thrilled about it, as it's completely legal they haven't tried to pressure the creators to shut it down afaik.

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

#310

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

UW CSE alum (but graduated 1^H25 years ago).

You should at least talk to a guidance counselor if you are close to graduating. They have a lot of incentive to get you graduated, and would probably just register you for your courses manually (because...you weren't officially expelled so there has to be a way). Anyways, the counselor will have options for you, and won't be constrained by whoever is running the registration site (and aren't going to be their allies either). If that doesn't work, go to UW administration, they are going to be less interested in allying with the tech department the higher up you go (unless this came from them, and not the tech department?).

Alternatively, if you can put your work with the university on your CV, it isn't a clear loss for you. You should also consider getting a lawyer involved, but it might be better just to get what you can and graduate.

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