Fuddland

Much of the weekend was, and most evenings this week will be, spent marking Computer Science essays entitled “Spam and the abuse of email”. I’m about a quarter of the way through, and there have been some classic, sweeping statements made regarding the problems that spam causes. Circumventing the Data Protection Act by cunningly exploiting the loophole of ignoring it entirely, here are a few examples:

• “Spam is such a problem that students are writing essays on the subject.” My goodness, I didn’t realise it was that serious.

• This has to be the typo of the year: “whwtehetr” instead of “whether”.

• Apparently some “people don’t go out in public because they [sic] afraid of being spammed”. Are we talking about email spam, or being slapped on the forehead to the cry of “Spam!” like we [well, not me, of course] used to do at school?

• When listing sources, most people call it a “bibliography”, or give it the heading “References”; I’d prefer either of those to “Links of Inspiration”. And “my own knowledge” is not generally a recognised source, at least not by me.

• The note that “sources are written in italics” isn’t much good to me when you’re instructed to submit a plain text file.

• “A large quantity of spam is sent during manhours”. No kidding.

• “Over the past century spam has increased enormously.” Probably only since, you know, we’ve actually had computers, email and the internet though.

• “Privacy is a prized value”. Yes. Erm. What?

• You can’t write me a little note after your essay explaining that you’re sorry you’ve gone over the word limit by about 1,000 words but you couldn’t see how to make it shorter when you’ve spent half a page explaining how your Dad gets all excited when he receives 200 new messages only to be disappointed they’re all spam. Give me facts and figures, not anecdotes!

• “Spam can contain sexually implicit images.” Bastards, not only do they send porn, it’s porn I have to think about.

And if I have to read one more unfunny, eighth-hand description of the Monty Python Spam Sketch from people who’ve never seen a single Python sketch I think I might go a bit mad. But not before I’ve scribbled out every usage of the word “quote” as a noun and scrawled “quotation” in the space above it.

Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam…

The following are entries which follows on from the above:

1. Despammed [Fuddland]. Excerpt: Phew. All spam essays marked. Will to live intact, but just barely. The bad grammar, bizarre, sweeping statements and terrible descriptions of Monty Python sketches stopped being amusing fairly rapidly and just became irritating and tiresome. Much like...

2. Prying eyes [Fuddland]. Excerpt: Yes, sorry, yet more talk about spam. It's a fairly hot topic at the moment, regardless of those essays I am trying to forget I ever read, what with a new report indicating things are getting worse and worse. Wanadoo...

#1

David (TEFL Smiler) | 2004 / 05 / 17 – 17:09

Who wrote these essays? Was it really first year university students, as I fear it might have been? If so, that’s really shocking. Didn’t they go to school, or am I making the classic mistake of remembering standards being higher in my day? ;-)

#2

David | 2004 / 05 / 17 – 17:18

Re #1: I’m afraid your fears are not unfounded — yes, it’s first years. I try not think about the fact that most of them were born in 1985/86, it’s too depressing to realise that I’m now old enough to say “in my day” without meaning it ironically. ;)

#3

Mark | 2004 / 05 / 17 – 18:26

That’s from university students? Oh dear Lord, the end-times really are a-comin’.

When I went to university there were a handful of students who were studying computing after getting their ‘A’ levels in some unrelated subject such as pottery and croissant-cooking but, even still, they were intelligent people. You had to be and I’m only talking about Liverpool University in 1991. Have standards slipped so far so quickly?

#4

Clair | 2004 / 05 / 18 – 08:44

Computer scientists? Writing essays? *Falls over laughing*

#5

Gordon | 2004 / 05 / 18 – 11:53

Computer scientists. Writing. *falls over laughing*

(and I’m qualified to say that… well in as much as I’m a Technical Author working with these Computer Scien.. er.. developers everyday!)

That last bullet point is definitely my favourite though.

#6

mrtn | 2004 / 05 / 18 – 12:13

computer scientists? *falls over laughing*

sorry, that seemed to fit the pattern syntactically, if not logically. and i am one, so i’m only laughing at myself.

#7

mrtn | 2004 / 05 / 18 – 12:15

re #6: was going to edit that comment when i realised on re-reading that it reinforces most of the points made about comp scientists ;)

#8

richard | 2004 / 05 / 18 – 22:08

Presumably a “sexually implicit” image would be one of, say, a solitary, unwrapped mars bar…

#9

David | 2004 / 05 / 19 – 10:56

Re #8: I’d prefer a Twix myself… ;)

#10

Daisy | 2004 / 05 / 19 – 15:15

Re #9 dammit, I rarely get the chance to say something funny and you beat me to it.

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