Bravo
He should get at least an A for this.
Dear Dr Langensiepen: We learned with interest that one of the assignments you set your students studying Computer Systems (Forensics & Security) at Nottingham Trent University is to write an article in the style of The Register. We were also interested to note that only one of your students, Tom Watson by name, considered …
Surely a round for the El Reg staff would cost more than £500?
Do you think their staff that large, or their tastes that high end? I have no idea, but I suspect neither is true and you could get away for well under £500 for a single round.
If you had to take the staff out for the whole night, on the other hand, you will likely need to up the limit on your card and may want to consider a second mortgage just to be safe.
But we do feel that Mr Watson showed commendable initiative and a suitably twisty mindset for a career in computing security by trying to social-engineer his way to a solid outside confirmation that his assignment had been satisfactorily completed
Now if he'd mentioned the CCTV stills he has of you, the proxy logs of goat porn, or even just the location of a quiet and deep pit with adequate lime supplies, that would definitely have shown promise...
Vic.
I think the guy had a lucky escape.
If he had got his article in "print" and then submitted the same piece of work for course assessment he could have set off alarm bells from the college's systems that detect students copying stuff wholesale off t'net.
Obv. having the same name as the submitted work's author could help his case, but it could still lead to some awkward questions and some unwelcome scrutiny. Although any El Reg. in-house editing could be difficult to explain.
ElReg has transitioned from being unorthodox to Establishment. Have you turned 30 ?
In a century will ElReg be the Daily Email or Electric Grauniad ? Decisions, decisions; hang on, not this generations problem.
As the old saw has it, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"
It's not like there's no rash of historical articles --- there's old computer hard & software almost weekly, there's the recent 2-part article on running a porn site through the ages, etc etc.
But we should be told if he was writing the Estonian article in 2011 El Reg style, or anachronistically in 2013 style. That should be the difference between a 1 or 2:1.
Suprisingly it is possible to have an excessive amount of alcoholic beverages if we assume that the alcoholic beverage requires consumption within a certain time frame (e.g. bar closing) and consumption leaves you with insufficient hand eye co-ordination skills to raise beverage to mouth.
Fortunately in most cases this can be solved by the help of (temporary) friends. However application of the solution careful judgement to be excercised to prevent the abundance from rapidly becoming a drought. Unfortunately experience suggests that the majority of people in this situation find the excercing of careful judgement challenging.
a true compute science approach to generate an ElReg-style paper would be to write a script to turn an ordinary paper into and ElReg paper by auto replacement of terms like "scientist" into "boffin", "psychologist" into "trick cyclist", and convert every SI unit into approved ElReg units. Alternatively, adapt the SCIgen automatic scientific paper generator into an ElReg article generator
We'd note that Mr Watson was cunning to think of this for the first time, but would caution others that copying him, now that the idea is out, would be merely to waste our time and one's own.
This is definitely true.
I heard a story along a similar line a few years ago. I cannot vouch for it's accuracy, but it is amusing and I thought I would share.
A lad applied to an art college, and was invited for an interview/audition. After speaking with the admissions panel, he was taken to a large room at around 10am. In this room were all manner of art supplies, from paints to pottery wheels, along with a buffet table with a large selection of food. He was told to make something by 4pm.
He proceeded to spend the next few hours dabbling, hoping for some inspiration. He started painting a landscape from memory, then abandoned it. He tried producing a sculpture from clay, and gave up. He tried a few snacks. Nothing was coming to him.
Around 2pm, he resigned himself to the fact that he had failed. He had tried just about every format available, and couldn't think of any way to proceed. He had also finished the entire table of food, except a small piece of cheese he had dropped. This is when he decided to have some fun.
He started at the piece of cheese, and painted tiny mouse footprints along the floor. When he reached the wall, he chiselled out a mouse hole in the skirting. He painted a new window in between the existing 2, replicating the view outside (a brick wall). He was like a mad man, running around and adding bits to (or removing from) the room everywhere, until he heard a knock at the door.
As the door opened, his heart sank. He felt sure he would be booted out, or possibly arrested for criminal damage. Looking around the faces of the admissions panel seemed to confirm this view: There was a look of horror on their faces.
At this point, one of the panel spoke: "This... What... This...
"is amazing". He went on to say that it was the most creative and imaginative piece of artwork he had ever seen, and immediately offered him a place at the college.
When he got home, he told his friends about this. The next week, one of those friends went to the same college. He took the same idea, and made the room into a piece of art (albeit in a slightly different way). At 4pm, when the panel arrived to inspect his work, he was escorted off the premises and told to expect a bill for the damages.