Monday, 18 August 2008

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  Professors are out to get you!

  Ever think that college profs were out to get you?  They are.  They want to break you emotionally, financially, and have you second guessing your own sanity.  But to what end?  I have my own paranoid theories on that, but let me share an experience I had in college as a case study.
  
  I'll call him Dr. Larry.  Dr. Larry was by far my favorite educator.  I make a distinction between professors and educators.  Professors teach because it's a contractual obligation and a necessary evil in their career.  Educators are professors that enjoy and excel at teaching.  Anyway, I had taken a few courses with Dr. Larry and this time he was teaching Operating Systems.  Dr. Larry's teaching style was very engaging.  It consisted of covering the curriculum through anecdotal experiences he had throughout his lengthy career.
  
  We came to a chapter on benchmarking.  Dr. Larry then explained on the various types and techniques of benchmarking a computer regardless of the platform.  One such tool for was called SpecInt.  Our homework assignment was to acquire the source code for SpecInt and identify the different subroutines and algorithms used to quantify the performance of the machine.  Assignment was due in two days.  That sounded like a pretty cool assignment.  Up to that point I had never heard of SpecInt and I suspected it was some public domain program that was available at some university.
  
  Just a little bit of background information.  Back then, the internet was not what it is now.  This was in the days when ARPANET was transitioning to what we know today.  It was before Google, Netscape was king, and IE didn't exist yet.  We used things like Alta Vista, Archie, and Gopher to perform in depth searches.  After those options were exhausted we turned to the Usenet and started asking questions.  Since this topic was very specific, I found a benchmark subgroup on the comp.* hierarchy.  And I decided to ask the professionals about where to find the source code for SpecInt.  I was not prepared for the answer.
  
  If you're not familiar with Usenet at that time, it was like a text based forum in which the topics were sorted into topics and subtopics.  Anyone can post without a membership of any kind, but you had no choice but to leave your email address and some information about your connection.  My question was simple enough, "Does anyone know where I can download a copy of the SpecInt source code?"  The replies were quite emphatic.  "SpecInt is a proprietary software suite.  I doubt the source code is available anywhere public."  That was one of the more kinder replies.  It escalated from there that the source had been leaked, and many asked if I had found it.  Upon further study, many of these questions were coming from SpecInt Corporation.  Whoa, this is corporate software?  Does Dr. Larry know this?  Turns out that SpecInt is an industry standard and part of a very expensive software suite.  It was a highly protected intellectual property and had several patents on it.  I did not respond to any of the replies I received and decided that was enough homework for that afternoon.  Maybe I'd ask Dr. Larry about it during his office hours the next day.
  
  If that had been the end of it, I wouldn't be writing this story.  Later that evening I received a phone call.  It was the director of Intellectual Property from SpecInt Corporation.  He had gone through the effort of tracing my access information back to the University, found my exact personal data and looked up my phone number.  (Internet Security was also not what it is now.)  He was very emphatic about learning who I was and what I wanted with the source code.  I tried to stay as calm as possible, was very forthright with information and explained the situation.  I was a student, we were issued a homework assignment, and that's it.  No industrial espionage going on here.  I was polite and very apologetic.  The SpecInt guy seemed satiated, but still a little grumpy.  Dr. Larry was definitely going to be hearing from me.
  
  If that had been the end of it, I would have been glad.  The next morning I was getting ready for school at around 9:00a.  The phone rang.  The man on the other end introduced himself as Agent Carter from the FBI.  He was investigating the allegation that I was interested in purchasing stolen merchandise in form of computer code that had been leaked from it's producing company.  Holy blown out of proportions Batman!  This was getting out of hand!  I again explained to the agent what was going on, that I had not received any code or information on how to get it.  Furthermore, I was no longer interested in getting it, and was contemplating my interest in even finishing my education.  The agent tried to calm me down a little and explained that he was only trying to verify information that he had received on a possible leak of Intellectual Property.  I was not calm.  I gave the agent everything I knew and more.  After the call ended, I paced around my apartment for a while.  Screw Dr. Larry, I grabbed my backpack and made a bee line for the Dean's office.
  
  The receptionist at the Dean's office was less than cordial and gave me the standard about the Dean being a busy man and might have some time later in the week.  "Look Miss (Whatever her name was), this is important.  I need to see the Dean RIGHT NOW!"  She looked at me for the first time and saw the look of earnest panic on my face.  She escorted me to his office.  I had never met the Dean prior to this so I didn't know what to expect.  I explained the situation as calmly as I could.  I described the phone calls I had received and asked if the University could do anything in terms of legal support should I need any.
  
  The Dean just sat back, smiled and began to chuckle a little.  "I wouldn't worry about it.  This isn't the first time something like this has happened", he replied.  "Let's take care of this right now."  He turned around to his PC and invited me to look over his shoulder as he constructed a new email.
  
  "Dear Dr. Larry,
  
  "It has come to my attention that you are trying to get your students arrested by assigning them illegal homework.  It is not this University's policy to intentionally add to the criminal record of our students.  Please stop.  If you would like to discuss the matter further, feel free to call."
  
  Regards,
  
  The Dean
  
  "That aught to get his attention." the Dean chuckled again.  He assured me that this was nothing to worry about and he would take care of everything.
  
  The next day, I showed up to Dr Larry's class.  He showed up a few minutes early, put down his backpack walked directly up to me.  "I'm surprised you're here.  If one of my professors had tried to get me arrested I would be for dropping the course," he joked.  "Yeah, what's up with that?" I replied.  He then got pretty serious.  He had no idea the code was patented and was shocked that the FBI had got involved at all, let alone on how fast they responded.  Apparently the FBI had similar phone calls to him and the Dean to verify my story.  It freaked him out just about as much as it freaked me out.
  
  Class started.  Dr. Larry started out discussing the homework.  "I understand that there was some trouble doing the homework.  For that reason, I'm going to cancel it.  If you completed it, I don't want to know about it.  Please get rid any information you have regarding it."  He then went on to explain the concept of Intellectual Property and how it's enforced in industry.  For some reason he had a lot of recent information on it.
  
  
  

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