Overview

The 1st Annual Conference on Silly and Egregious Violations of Common Sense seeks to present exciting, entertaining, probably original research related to the practice of computer science without the limitations of common sense. Our goal is to bring together researchers from across the fields of computer science who have unconventional or nonsensical ideas that might not be accepted to other computer science conferences. SIGSEGV '14 will provide a high-baud-rate forum for presenting and discussing results, non-results, and half-baked ideas that further the expansion of the field of computer science beyond its traditional boundaries of respectability.

We solicit papers describing original and hopefully unpublished research including contributions to the area of nonsensical computer science. Striving for respectability and respecting the boundaries of common sense has traditionally limited the scope of computer science research, so our conference accepts submissions from a wide range of topics. Subjects of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Design and implementation of needlessly complex systems
  • Unavailable distributed systems
  • File and storage systems with inconsistency guarantees
  • Brain-embedded computing
  • Artificial stupidity and inexpert systems
  • Perplexity theory results and applications
  • Formal semantics of formal semantics
  • Computational xenobiology
  • Incomprehensibly esoteric mathematics
  • Thaughmaturgy and black magic for performance optimization

Since SIGSEGV is a minimally selective conference, papers should report reasonably novel results in a manner most likely to entertain the program committee. Submissions will be judged on originality, clarity, irreverence, humor, and likelihood of being rejected from mainstream computer science conferences. All accepted papers will be made available online one day before the conference, which will facilitate research discussion among members of the community with time travel devices. Submissions will be done electronically via the HotCRP system linked below.

Submission Guidelines

All papers must be submitted in PDF format through the official online submission system. SIGSEGV is single-blind, so authors may include their names on paper submissions and should not obscure references to their previous work.

Formatting rules

  • Submitted papers may have at most 10 pages of technical content, including text, figures, appendices, prependices, appendages, attached source code, random cat pictures, etc. The page size must be 8.5"x11", and text must be a reasonable size that is easily readable without a magnifying glass.
  • In addition to the 10 pages allowed for technical content, a submission may include any number of additional pages of bibliographic references.
  • Any typeface is allowed for text, except for Comic Sans because everyone hates it. The paper review committee encourages the use of creative and interesting fonts, since they normally have to spend all day reading walls of text printed in Computer Modern.
  • Submissions must be typeset using LaTeX in order to ensure the conference is taken seriously. Papers written using consumer word-processing software such as Microsoft Word will be rejected without review.
  • Pages should not be numbered, so that submitted PDFs can easily be amalgamated into a conference proceedings document without bothering to recompile them.
  • Using color to enhance graphs and figures is encouraged, since everyone has a color printer these days. Bonus points are awarded if the meaning of the paper would change significantly if printed in grayscale.
  • Symbols and labels used in the graphs should be readable as printed, and not only with a 20x on-screen magnification.
  • Try to limit the file size to less than 15 MB.

SIGSEGV Policies

Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, and plagiarism of other authors is usually considered unacceptable. However, SIGSEGV allows submissions that have been simultaneously or previously published in other conferences, as long as the other conference is not SIGBOVIK. Such papers will probably have reduced chances of acceptance, given that SIGSEGV seeks to promote work that would normally be unpublishable, but sufficiently unorthodox work will still be considered because we really need more submissions.

Plagiarism is still prohibited and will result in extreme disciplinary action being taken against the perpetrator. Even we have standards.

Papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms, end-user license agreements, or any other wall of text filled with legal jargon will not be considered. All submissions will be treated as confidential prior to publication on the SIGSEGV web site; rejected submissions will be permanently destroyed and cease to exist, so their confidentiality is a non-issue.

Paper submission link

Submit papers online here. Unfortunately, this site is only accessible within the Cornell CS network because of the eldritch horror known as the Department Firewall, which imprisons all CS department computers within an icy darkness of isolation and despair. If you cannot use an in-department computer to reach the website, have an in-department colleague submit the paper on your behalf.

If the link appears broken, but you are within the CS department, it may be the result of uncontrolled spacetime fluctuations or SPARCs in the Linux kernel. Sacrifice a goat to Richard Stallman and try again later.