Listics

My Inbox included some subscription spammage from Search Networking. They were touting the inclusivity of their updated telecom glossary so I bit and followed the link. Damn. Wrong link. It took us to the entire glossary. Good glossary even if it does leave out proprietary stuff like Cisco Tag switching. It includes OSPF so what more do you really need? Anyway, I backed out of the depths of that collection back to the Spam to see if I could find the new updates. Found it! Okay. Forgive me. Some of this stuff is so bogus it isn’t worth the pixels. But a new term for me that looks like it has some real world promise is Virtual Private LAN Service. I don’t know how this differs from a VPN exactly but it has pizazz. Sounds like a good way to get out from under the burden of old Frame Relay contracts, improve throughput and cut down some WAN administration costs.

But that’s not what inspired this post. While I was rummaging around looking for info on Cisco Tag Switching I fell back to Google and found this link. This information is buried in a Cheat Service: Term Papers for Sale. I didn’t exactly have a paper I wanted to contribute, and I wasn’t willing to pay the subscription price so the info on Tag Switching that these people hold will remain forever hidden from my view.

The deceit implicit in the existence of this service is troubling. A search in the database reveals 903 papers for sale on the keyword “Cheating.” Even so, the ironic recursion is too delicious. These people are plagiarizing papers on plagiarism. How funny is that?