Embarassing advertising

Google Ads are a great thing, right? You get to use their search engine, and they pay you for using it because they insert ads before the search results appear. Other search companies are jumping on the band wagon, too, because it seems like free money.

But: what if the ads presented are, well, embarassing?

Try this one for yourself: Go to the TU Darmstadt, Department of Computing. You want to know all about getting a doctorate at this fine university, so you look for the "Promotionsordnung", the rules for doing a dissertation. The navigation is a mess, so you go to the search box. Oh, the search box is gone because too many people were laughing about this. No problem, the link is still valid. Don't try the German one, because that one was killed when this was first reported, but there is an English search page. Type in "Promotionsordnung" and see what you get - nope, no hits, but advertising for shady companies "helping" you to obtain your doctorate for a slight fee...

Just in case it disappears again: Entry two is:

Doktortitel
Der schnelle Weg zum legalen und anerkannten Dr.-Titel in D & Europa

Translation: Doctorate degree - the quick way to a legal and accepted doctorate in Germany and Europe

What this service actually does is find a poor, starving Eastern European School that will, for a fee, accept doctoral students. (Addendum 2005-08-25: Seems there are German Professors willing to help out for a fee, too - Spiegel Online, 26. August 2005, "Doktortitel gegen Geld")

You can find the deep link by reading the source code of the page - the search field is just commented out.

I have a screen shot, should this ever rightly disappear.

Moral: there is no such thing as a free lunch. Some come with embarassing side-effects.

How German it is

So now I am German. It is official. It says so on the nice certificate I picked up this morning and on the temporary ID card I was issued. It was just another administrative task. Get up, have breakfast, brush your teeth, fill out some more papers, pay some money, get your citizenship, go shopping, get the mail, make dinner.

"Did you do anything special, today, honey?" "Oh, I'm now a citizen of Germany". "That's nice, pass the salt".

No ceremony, the lady at the desk for the IDs just wanted to see my "abgesiegeltes Passbild" and kept a dour expression on her face the entire time. They must have training for this at adminstrative school. How to keep a scowl on your face for the entire transaction. No "Welcome!", no fanfare, no Lord Mayor with a handshake. Okay, the Beamte handing me my certificate gave me a handshake. But that was it.

So I had to do something, and thus I went out and bought a dirndl (a decent one, no colored flowers and no apron, although an apron would look nice with this) and wore it this evening. No one wanted to dance polka with me, but at least the friends helping me empty two bottles of bubbly said "Welcome". Well, to be honest, one said "My deepest sympathy" and another one said "I hope you know what you are doing". Really comforting, guys.

Fake Conferences

I am quite enthralled by the work of Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn, and Dan Aguayo with their project SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator. They had a generated paper accepted at WMSCI 2005. There has been a lot of fuss about this, whether it was legit to so such a thing, or if it was okay because the conference is a fake one anyway. I got many introductions to submit papers to this conference (at different locations) and has it on my list of "fishy stuff" to look at some day. Now that the discussion is going on in earnest, I am corresponding with someone who had a paper accepted and does not think the conference is a fake.

So I've been doing research instead of grading papers, and began wondering who this Nagib Callaos fellow is.

Anthony Liekens has a fake conferences page discussing it, Greg Elin looked at Callaos publication record - one paper. I also found some proceedings that he edited. Callaos is listed in the paper as president of the Venezuelan chapter of the IEEE/Computer Society. Okay, that's the IEEE connection. His dissertation sounds strange, I wanted to have a closer look, but both the OPACs of the National Library of Venezuela and of the University Simon Bolivar seem to be down at the moment.

Out of interest I checked the conferences I could find with Callaos as chair: SCI 1997 (Caracas), SCI1998/ISAS1998 (Orlando), ISAS 1999 (Orlando), SCI2000 IEEE (Orlando), ISAS'2000 (Orlando), SCI 2001 IEEE (Orlando), SCI 2002, SCI 2003 (Orlando), WMSCI (Orlando), WMSCI 2005 (Orlando, Belgrade).

The Sheraton in Orlando must *love* this guy! His organization has a site (http://www.iiis.org/) but that appears to be hacked (check out http://www.iiis.org/isas/).

There are also some "Asilomar Conversations" going back to 1989 (http://www.nhpress.com/isi/lib/proceedings.html) . Hey, here's something: Callaos, N., 1995, Metodología Sistémica de Sistemas, trabajo de ascenso a titular de la Universidad simón Bolivar, Caracas, Cap. 18, p. 649. Hmm. "Trabajo de ascenso", Work of ascent - to what title? I must profess my ignorance here. I googled through the sponsors of the 1998 ISAS and then the sponsors of the 2005 event - they have pretty much stayed the same. Let's run down the current list:

• WOSC: World Organization on Systemics and Cybernetics (France)
  I can only find this on diverse calls for papers over the past 10 years
• The Center for Systems Studies (UK)
  http://www.hull.ac.uk/hubs/research/css/
  Hull University, Director is Jennifer Wilby
• Systems Society of Poland
  Does not exist. I find a page with a link
  http://www.pwr.wroc.pl/~bazew/
  which delivers a 404. But it sure sponsers a lot of conferences!
• Society Applied Systems Research (Canada)
  Hmm. Maybe this is The International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics (Canada)? http://www.iias.edu/. Their main job seems to be sponsering conferences
  http://www.iias.edu/frameset_start_inters_ann.html
• Slovenian Artificial Intelligence Society
  http://www-ai.ijs.si/slais/index.html
  They hold conferences, too, but here you submit your camera-ready copy before the registration is due...
• Pole System Society (Poland)
  Same as above, can't find it.
  
• Italian Society of Systemics
  Nada. But they sponser a lot of conferences together with the Polish System Society.
  
• ISSS: International Society for the Systems Sciences (USA)
  http://www.isss.org/
  They organize conferences, too: http://www.isss.org/conferences/cancun2005/callforpapers.html
  "The conference registration form and fees are also due with the abstract submission. The payment will be refunded if the abstract is not accepted." Hmm. I've submitted lots of papers that were rejected and I still attended the conference....
  
• ISI: The International Systems Institute (USA)
  http://www.isiconversations.org/
• IFSR: International Federation of Systems Research (Austria/USA)
  http://www.ifsr.org/, the board meets biannually. The page is rather full of mundane stuff, may be legit, may not be.
• Cybernetics and Human Knowing: A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics and Cybersemiotics (Denmark)
  I can find a CYBERNETICS & HUMAN KNOWING A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics, Autopoiesis & Cyber-Semiotics. Lost some Autopoiesis there...(Definition from Wikipedia: "self-production". How fitting, how strange that it is missing.
• Concurrency and Architecture Group, the Telematics Engineering Department of the University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria (Spain).
  Sponsers a lot of conferences together with above groups, but I can't find such a department. There's a telecoms department, but they don't appear to have a concurrency group.
• CUST, Engineer Science Institute of the Blaise Pascal University (France)
  A polytechnic in France http://cust.univ-bpclermont.fr/
• The Tunisian Scientific Society (Tunisia).
  Hmm. I only find one in Canada. But their webpage is broken.
  
• American Society for Cybernetics (Canada)
  http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/
  
• ANS (Academy of non-linear Sciences, RUSSIA)
  http://www.kcn.ru/tat_en/science/ans/ans.html
• University Politehnica of Bucharest, Department of Mathematics, and Balkan Society of Geometers (Romania)
  http://www.mathem.pub.ro/ and http://www.mathem.pub.ro/dept/bsg.htm

17 sponsors, of which I find 6 non-existant. Maybe I am just a bad googler.

The discussion with my email partner has centered on the topic of minority inclusion in research. It seems that you have to be a white person at a big-name school to get published. People with "foreign" names at little schools throughout the globe have to make their own conferences so that they have a chance to publish, and Callaos is the champion of the small guy.

Well, that is a thought, but I would feel better if I felt that these conferences were actually well-reviewed.

There are other fake conferences around, I attended one myself. I found it strange to be paying my fee together with the submission, but was happy the paper was accepted with no further criticism by the referees. I felt great! At the conference there were many people who did not show up, the talks were never held (one had paid and the proceedings were printed, what more did I want?), the venue was not really comfortable for all the money we paid. I had some nice discussions with people from small countries, but no really great talks. (Except my own, of course!).

I had another paper that a student had written with me - we wanted to have it published, so we used the same conference again, this time, he went and gave the talk. He reported on the same situation. I decided that it was unethical to continue to support this conference (which has the same General Chair year after year after year) and so I tear up their invitations when they arrive. They invited me to be invited speaker this year if I could pay my own airfare, they would let me sleep in the guest bed of one of the organizers. I declined. If I am invited speaker I want my travel expenses covered.

What is to be done about this situation?

Copy & Paste Culture

I'm so honored - I have been invited to the University of Linz in Austria to speak about plagiarism at a seminar on "Copy & Paste Culture". Plagiarism and unethical behavior in research seems to be running rampart these days.

I just got a link to a blog about a guy jerking around a woman who is using him as her ghostwriter [A week of kindness] . It is so utterly shocking to see this woman's complete disregard for what she is supposed to be in college for - to learn. She only cares about getting good grades and has made the dean's list. I sincerely hope that her professor discovers the plagiarism!

For readers of German, my own portal on plagiarism: http://plagiat.fhtw-berlin.de/

Broken Electronics

Our son needed a new mobile phone. Okay, he didn't *need* one, but he had fufilled the requirements we stipulated for getting a new one. We spent all afternoon, up and down the Schloßstr., and settled on one from LG. It said on the box "Infrared interface". This is important, as the old handy has all sorts of noise bits he wants to transfer to his new phone.

Got it home, unpacked ("Cool!"), charged, and tried to upload a sound. Nothing. Not with another phone, not with my PDA, not with a computer. Sigh. I hate electronics that don't work. So I started in on the handbook which makes the impression of having been translated from the Korean via Spanish to English. Infrared.... ah, here's a bit: Infrared only works with additional software and cable, which are not included.

Hello? Infrared cable? Infrared does not need a cable, it is a cable-less connection. I dug through the Internet, no avail. The next day we went back to the store (Schaulandt). No, all sales are final. If we wanted IR we should have purchased a more expensive phone. I point out that it says on the box that it has IR. Yes, well. Some phones only work together with other phones of the same kind. Sounds like a rip-off scheme to get people to send expensive MMS to each other.

So we send it in for "repairs". We fill out forms, and wait 3 weeks. Nothing happens. I call Schaulandt, it is always busy. The fax does not pick up. So I drag myself down, and lo and behold, the fax was out of paper
and was blocking the telefone line..... No sign of the phone, but they would call, we were to come backe the end of the next week. So we did, got the phone, it was recorded that the IR had been "repaired" - except that it did not work, just like it did 4 weeks ago.

So back we went to complain. The guy noted down my problems, and promised to call. Yeah, right. The amazing thing is: he did call and left a message on my answering machine! I called back, he had found some software updates. We tried this, no avail. He called again, he had found a new IR driver. We tried that, it did not work either. Extra points for calling, but the phone still did not work.

I got rather picky at this point, and lo and behold, we were able to return the phone. For cash back.

Phew!

Now we still have to find another phone, and meanwhile we bought a new computer from Aldi and it, too, does not work. I think I am being followed by broken electronics....

A Modern Quilting Bee

The German Wikipedia is coming out on DVD in the near future, so it was time to get the thing polished up. A good DVD needs lots of indices, so it was decided that the 13 000+ personal entries in the Wikipedia needed entered into a category. What a job.



The publishing house that is printing the DVD, Digitalmedia, offered to host a tagging party. They would organize food, drink, and Internet connection, people could come by with laptops and tag together.



What a lot of fun! Sitting 3-4 at a table, using Apper's cool tagging tool, we were each busy with our own jobs, but were constantly talking. Talking about the strange people we encountered, about which names were last names, about intellectual property, about all sorts of stuff. We socialized, we enjoyed Club-Mate and Bionade and a whole crate of tangerines, and we knocked off tags by the dozen.



As in quilting bees of yore, all worked for the common good, chatting and eating together. It was nice to hear more about people one pretty much only knew from chats or briefly from the Stammtisch in Berlin. I hope we have a chance to repeat this, it was fun!

Stateless for real

The deed is done.

The US consulate played all sorts of cute games with me in the interim (see my blog entry "A Woman Without a Country"). Oh, you need this form. Didn't we send that to you? Call for an appointment. No, we can't talk to you on the phone without you sending in all the paperwork first. You are missing a paper. No appointments for the next 3 weeks.

But today was the day. The paperwork - an awesome pile of 20 documents (The informed consent page, the oath page, the renunciation of citizenship block of forms and the witness page, each with 5 copies) was prepared, typed and printed with today's date and each page embossed with a seal.

The vice consul read one to me, then he read one having me repeat it after him with my right hand raised (it was on a paper in front of me, I can *read*, you know). Having signed that one, I was officially stateless. I handed in my passport (which would have expired in March, I made good use of that!), the vice consul wished me luck in this new portion of my life (hey, I've lived here for 28 years!) and they got up to leave. I made a point of shaking hands all around a second time, remarking that I am a German now, I shake hands a lot.

It only took 15 minutes, and I was back at the gate collecting my 17 different electrical and battery-operated and deadly devices that I had to check with the guard. They didn't take my Swiss Army Office from me, a little pen knife with a USB stick in it, or my metal toothpick that I once had to forfeit on a flight. I am pretty sure the whole visitation stuff is a fake.

Back out in the cold and snow I asked myself: do you feel any different now? The answer is no. Just like having a birthday, it is something that just happens. You do not feel magically transformed. I have no desire to go out and buy a dirndl. I still don't like beer. I will not eat a Schweinshaxe. But wait, one little triumph: when Bush marches into Iran, it will no longer be in my name. And that is a relief.