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The Great Firewall of Yale

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Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#81

Post by Crito »

khawkins wrote: post #63
Smudge wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yale has the same student feedback/rating data available in their official online coursebook. From what I understand, ybbplus/coursetable was simply aggregating it in a way that made it easier for students to use. If there is something fundamentally wrong with subjective ratings, it seems strange that Yale would provide it in one context and censor it in another.

Maintaining data integrity is probably fairly important to them. By allowing a separate service which is used by a significant portion of the students, the system is open to serious exploitation. Professors can get black-balled by disgruntled system administrators or hackers, just by screwing with the numbers. Yale owning both the data and the interface is understandably important to them, though this might be an opp…

Blackmail is illegal, and intentionally screwing with ratings is almost certainly libel. Both of those hypothetical can be dealt with by the law already; I don' think there is much sense in warping copyright law to protect you from the possibility of those things happening.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#82

Post by jstanley »

hrrsn wrote: post #60
zaidf wrote: post #9

I thought my school was bad but reading this makes the administration at my school look like angels. When I launched a similar service at UNC Chapel Hill, the IT dept blocked requests from my server to theirs for scraping latest data. They claimed I was creating excess load, which is silly because if they really did the math, given how many people were using my service I was probably saving them resources.

Some students at my university created a website to turn your timetable into a file that could be imported into a calendar app by screen scraping the timetabling website. The University actually helped out with hosting it and providing access to their SSO system. Win win.

I've done the same at my university, and they've mostly turned a blind eye to it. The timetabling department expressed concerns about students relying on timetables that are outside the university's direct control but have thankfully not taken any action.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#83

Post by shtylman »

jsrozner wrote: post #80
bentcorner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over 2,000 students out of a campus of 5,000 were using it as of today noon, when the Yale administration began censoring it using traffic inspection. They had contacted us warning that we were using copyrighted data. It doesn't seem automated, and if there was a DoS wouldn't they just go out and say so?

The data was scraped quite some time ago. There is no issue with a DoS on the Yale servers.

This is very unfortunate that they are doing this if the data was scraped and not hitting their servers. Is it that some part of the data they think is copyrighted (like grades) versus just courses?

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#84

Post by javert »

zaidf wrote: post #9

I thought my school was bad but reading this makes the administration at my school look like angels. When I launched a similar service at UNC Chapel Hill, the IT dept blocked requests from my server to theirs for scraping latest data. They claimed I was creating excess load, which is silly because if they really did the math, given how many people were using my service I was probably saving them resources.

UNC invested in what was initially planned to be the most expensive academic ERP system ever, and which then went way over budget and schedule.

The result? An even older version of PeopleSoft (which apparently is Oracle's second-tier offering) than what was being sold to other universities in prior years.

It's barely useable at all. It's utter shit-ware. The prior in-house system, which was early-90s HTML presumably layered over 1980s mainframe software, was MUCH better.

Personally, I am convinced that this was a MASSIVE kickback scheme. Tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, have been stolen from the State of North Carolina, and people need to go to jail for it.

IIRC the project actually did get a special appropriation from the NC legislature, but don't quote me on that.

This isn't just incompetence, I think it is actually a cover for massive fraud. I know, always blame things on stupidity if you can... but from what I know, no, you can't in this case.

I wish some enterprising journalist would hurry up and investigate this... could net them a Pulitzer or something. That is why I am posting this comment.

zaidf, if you didn't realize this already (and you probably did), when you made your alternative portal, you were fucking with some very powerful people.

Meanhwhile, UNC has also been uncovered as using the Afro Studies department to hand out free grades to athletes for decades. There were hundreds of courses and grades listed that literally did not happen. Fraud is absolutely rampant at UNC. Maybe that's why our new Chancellor left after like a year? The state of NC needs to completely clean house.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#85

Post by Crito »

nathancahill wrote: post #43
grecy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not news. If you're numb to it, then it's imperative that it is news. Imagine when the headlines read "Millions killed in Nazi camps" and people said "This is not news."

Godwin's Law

"Chinese crack down on Tibet" "Not news."

"Israel/Palestine peace talks halt." "Not news."

"Millions die of malaria." "Not news."

"Armed robbery at the corner of Ellis and Leavenworth St." "Not news."

"Your kid flunked his math exam." "Not news."

Just because somebody chooses to use Nazi Germany as an example, does not mean that they do not have a point. It certainly does not make them automatically wrong.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#86

Post by nmodu »

If I'm paying $58,000 to attend an institution (rather, if my family is sacrificing $58,000 for me to attend an institution...or,worse yet, if I am taking out $58,000 worth of student loans per year), I should be able to use a course listing service so that I can tailor my academic experience however I chose. THAT is how we open this debate, not with comments about who the proper copyright holder is or whether or not this constitutes as deep packet inspection.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#87

Post by el_devo »

milkshakes wrote: post #48
dekz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter whether you control the user environment to covertly install the MITM certificate. You simple notify your network users this is happening with instructions on how to install the certificate. Either the user installs it or not, it's their choice. I am in no way advocating this abhorrent system of 'security'. Simply noting that it is obviously done in the workplaces and in many workplaces. That it can…

> It doesn't matter whether you control the user environment to covertly install the MITM certificate. You simple notify your network users this is happening with instructions on how to install the certificate. Respectfully, I disagree. This is certainly possible, but from an operational perspective this would be a nightmare. Even setting aside the likely backlash that would follow in response to such a sweeping poli…

For what it's worth, at my university, UNC Chapel Hill, there are two networks, one of which requires you to install a custom root certificate, and is the network that the university prefers you connect to. For devices on which this is not possible, there is another network which only requires that you register your device's MAC address to your university id for access.

Regardless of which option you choose, you are required to install another program (unless the OUI of your MAC indicates that it is a device other than a computer) which scans your computer for malware and any software which the university does not allow you to have, such as torrenting applications, and will not allow you to connect to the network until after your machine is cleared. This program must be running the entire time you are connected to the network or you will be disconnected.

As a student who works as tech support in the dorms, it certainly is a nightmare!

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#88

Post by magnawave »

Nanzikambe wrote: post #7

If it were only deep packet inspection, the solution would be simply to prefix https:// and be done with it. As other posters have remarked, I suspect the article means an IP based block.

Actually most SSL based browsers will transmit the domain cleartext as part of SSL handshaking. This was added so virtual hosting webservers can all have independent certs on the same IP

See the following link for the specifics ... but needless to say its easy to block SSL access with a transparent proxy or layer 7 firewall. (which based on the error page looks like a Palo Alto device which definitely can do this...)

https://idea.popcount.org/2012-06-16-dissecting-ssl-handshak...

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#89

Post by avanderveen »

maurits wrote: post #25
zaidf wrote: post #9

I thought my school was bad but reading this makes the administration at my school look like angels. When I launched a similar service at UNC Chapel Hill, the IT dept blocked requests from my server to theirs for scraping latest data. They claimed I was creating excess load, which is silly because if they really did the math, given how many people were using my service I was probably saving them resources.

To me it feels like people protecting their little kingdoms within a large organisation. There is no market in which you have to compete against the new (superior) competitor so the only tool you are left with are fallacies like referring to regulations and proper protocol.

Semi-unrelated but, plenty of corporations see these fallacies as the best (and sometimes only) tools. In large markets money, political connections, and entrenched position are king.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism for details on political abuses, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry for examples of these fallacies.

There's no such thing as open market as long as there is also government and regulation (not that government or regulation are bad or anything).

But you're right, they're not the only tools. They're just (unfortunately) the strongest ones for those than can wield them.

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