Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

I just got this email from Facebook (revealing personal details redacted):

From: Facebook <upda...@facebookmail.com>
Reply-to: Facebook <upda...@facebookmail.com>
To: XXXXXXXXXXXX Park <xxxx...@berkeley.edu>
Subject: YYYYYYYYYY Park is waiting to share with you on Facebook
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:32:53 -0700

=======================================
To see what YYYYYYYYYY is up to and start sharing, go to Facebook:
<link deleted>
=======================================

Hi XXXXXXXXXXXX,

Just a reminder that YYYYYYYYYY Park has confirmed your friend
request and you're now friends on Facebook.

YYYYYYYYYY Park:
<link deleted>

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

To see what YYYYYYYYYY is up to and start sharing, go to Facebook:
<link deleted>

=======================================
This message was intended for xxxx...@berkeley.edu. If you do not wish
to receive this type of email from Facebook in the future, please
click on the link below to unsubscribe.
<link deleted>
Facebook, Inc. P.O. Box 10005, Palo Alto, CA 94303

Well. If I didn’t happen to own both accounts, I might have thought “YYYYYYYYYY Park” was actually doing something to attract my attention. Then the scary (and creepy) thought is, how many emails has Facebook sent “on my behalf”?

I hated this when third party apps were doing this (oh, was that 3 years or 4 years now), and I can’t say I love it now.

What does ‘online study group’ exactly mean?

Study groups may be a virtual trademark of the Ivory Tower – but a virtual study group has been slammed as cheating by Ryerson University.

First-year student Chris Avenir is fighting charges of academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group via Facebook last term, where 146 classmates swapped tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark.

Well, I’ll say this much: in my years of grading upper division physics homework, the homework that looked most like each other (showing various evidences of cheating, to reveal just a few symptoms (since I need to keep a few aces in the sleeve when I grade again), intermediate steps look identical, and unusual choices of variable name is repeated) were of those who were “in a study group”.

I’m not saying everyone in a study group is a cheater, but I am saying that those in a study group has to take extraordinary precaution that they don’t cheat by accident (such as only discussing ideas together and keeping specific implementations secret from each other). Somehow, Facebook doesn’t seem to be a best place to do that.