Secondary Exam Results In India Mean An SMS Flood

Just imagine the traffic... by Advocadus+Diaboli · 2004-05-23 20:02 · Score: 5, Funny

...if you could get the answers for the exam by SMS during the exam. :-)

Re:Just imagine the traffic... by Viceice · 2004-05-23 20:10 · Score: 3, Interesting

you maybe trying to be funny, but i've read that in some places (Indonesia?) that is a problem. Apparently parents who want their children to score well in an exam will hire a syndicate where during the exam, the candidate will be provided with a phone, and the syndicate will obtain a copy of the exam paper and a genius outside will do the exam and sms the answers to the candidate.

The invigilators and so on are duly paid off.

--
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by gl4ss · 2004-05-23 20:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

that's not a sms or tech problem at all.
it's just a bribery/corruption problem.

if the officials holding the exam are paid off succesfully what does it matter HOW the right answers end up on the cheaters papers?

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:30 · Score: 0

funeee.....but oh it does happen...and some studets even sneak in a digital diary and tell the examiner its a calculator...and the poor old sod bought that.
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 21:11 · Score: 0

This will help you with exams
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by ArsenneLupin · 2004-05-23 21:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

that's not a sms or tech problem at all. it's just a bribery/corruption problem.
In that particular case, it may be a bribery problem. However, given the ubiquity of phones (or worse: highres camera phones) and smart calculators which can communicate via infra-red, etc., high tech cheating becomes a real problem. Go into exam, discreetly snap highres picture of paper, MMS it to a team of accomplices outside, and get the answer back.
Or alternatively, enter short message into calculator, point its infrared diode to the calculator of friend accross the hall, and now work together on the question!
With the number of different phones and different calculators out there today, how will the teacher know which are cheat-enabled, and which are innocent? And in today's world, where phones are part of normal teenage attire, banning phones altogether may not be an option. And banning calculators (in a math exam) is even less feasible. In the olden days, the only thing to worry about where programmable calculators (used to store "notes"), nowadays, you need to worry about comms as well.
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by kartiknarayan · 2004-05-23 21:53 · Score: 3, Informative

Most universities (well at least the one I graduated from) would have an approved list of calculators, and you have to get your calculator certified before the exams. Calculators which don't have the ceritification sticker would result in the candidate being asked to leave the hall...

And last time I checked - I haven't heard of any sel respecting examiner who would allow mobile phones and pagers into his exam hall.
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by gl4ss · 2004-05-23 23:30 · Score: 1

"Go into exam, discreetly snap highres picture of paper, MMS it to a team of accomplices outside, and get the answer back."

but if you could do that you could just as well sneak in the book and read the answers from there. ie, that technique would ONLY work if there was no supervision at all at the exam, so in that kind of environment you could cheat with variety of other techniques like peaking or sneaking in a paper with all the essential stuff.

*With the number of different phones and different calculators out there today, how will the teacher know which are cheat-enabled, and which are innocent?*

you don't need to worry about comms BECAUSE USING THEM DURING THE TEST IS BANNED. you don't need to worry about sign language either because if something like that is spotted it's the same as passing notes - it's CHEATING.

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by $exyNerdie · 2004-05-24 00:55 · Score: 2, Informative

And banning calculators (in a math exam) is even less feasible
From google search, you can see that in India, calculators are banned in all school exams. You have to use log tables. For college exams, calculators are allowed.
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 03:23 · Score: 0

Well at my university the exam regulations say that no electronic devices ares allow, and neither are communications devices. That covers pretty much anything you can think of.

Plus, there is only one model of calculator allowed and if you don't have that model you have to get yours approved well before the exam.
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by Cruciform · 2004-05-24 04:08 · Score: 1

I hereby decree all future college exams must be taken in the nude! Especially liberal arts!

On the other hand, all engineering and comp-sci students are exempt from this ruling. *shudder*
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by cloudmaster · 2004-05-24 05:24 · Score: 1

And banning calculators (in a math exam) is even less feasible.

So that's why my parents can't do basic math - there was no math testing back before calculators were available! Sigh. I took calculus through differential equations, and some matrix theory, etc. Not once have I taken a math test that couldn't be done without a calculator (most prohibited it - including the Mathematic-taught math classes). If kids can't do math without a calculator, then they haven't learned enough.

I also think everyone should be able to drive a car with a manual transmission, but that's different... :)
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 14:16 · Score: 0

Don't need to look that far for cheats. This happened in the SF Bay area (USA). A couple of high school kids tried to use their phone-cameras to send each other the answers. Now, schools ban phones during tests 8-).
Re:Just imagine the traffic... by tcr · 2004-05-24 22:32 · Score: 1

And in today's world, where phones are part of normal teenage attire, banning phones altogether may not be an option.

I still can't see why this would be the case in an exam hall...

--

Information wants to be beer.

Wow by Loonacy · 2004-05-23 20:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's a lot of work for something that really doesn't matter that much. I mean sure, grades are important, but they're not so important you can't wait until Monday to see your results.

Re:Wow by vvatsa · 2004-05-23 20:06 · Score: 1

Actually they are very important to schools kids over there, kids are under so much pressure, results from these exmas can make or break your life for the next few years.
Re:Wow by nacturation · 2004-05-23 20:09 · Score: 1

Mods on crack again? Someone please enlighten me why the parent is a troll. Honestly, what does 24 hours matter in getting your grades? Very cool use of technology, but the end result isn't all that technologically cool, except from the perspective of volume of messages handled.

--
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Re:Wow by nabil_IQ · 2004-05-23 20:21 · Score: 3, Interesting

I took a similar secondary school exam in Iraq. You whole Future (and past) rests on 8 subjects examination. 3 hours per subject, one subject a day.

if you get high marks, you get into Engineering or Med. school, i.e. big bukcs. If get low marks you get into "community colleges" i.e. no money. I wish we had something like what India has now back then, that would have saved me teh 4 sleepless nights I had when I heared the results are out in 5 days :|

p.s.: if you are curious, I got 93% in the examination and got into Computer Engineering. This was 8 years ago.

--

Won't somebody please think of the Karma!
Re:Wow by verittaas · 2004-05-23 20:27 · Score: 0

First of all, I wonder why this is a "news" to talk about in slashdot. I have seen pretty "high" volume SMS handling networks elsewhere.

I got to say that CBSE results are one of the much awaited results over here. This is not just any grades - a 0.5 percentage point can decide whether you are into medicine or engineering or nothing. it decides your future!!

You either get into one of those professional fields or be damned - I can hear a dad of a poor Indian student shouting. So I can understand the anxiety and rush to see those results. And besides no one can ignore the vested interests of BSNL in all these.

--
-- Pls separate your sig from your msg so that I know when to ignore it. :-D
Re:Wow by turgid · 2004-05-23 20:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

When your acceptance into university depends on your exma grades, there can be many sleepless nights between your final exam and the notification of the results. In my day, they came by post.

--
Stick Men
Re:Wow by Zusstin · 2004-05-23 20:37 · Score: 0, Redundant

Perhaps this is one of those instances where technology was put to some good use. In India, education is still a very high priority - among all families. Thats one of BIG reasons why you see all this outsourcing to India. If you dont trust Indian's, read that article by some Friedman article in NYT (if I am right). Here it goes for you in Friedman's words: The Great Indian Dream By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: March 11, 2004 BANGALORE, India Nine years ago, as Japan was beating America's brains out in the auto industry, I wrote a column about playing a computer geography game with my daughter, then 9 years old. I was trying to help her with a clue that clearly pointed to Detroit, so I asked her, "Where are cars made?" And she answered, "Japan." Ouch. Well, I was reminded of that story while visiting an Indian software design firm in Bangalore, Global Edge. The company's marketing manager, Rajesh Rao, told me he had just made a cold call to the vice president for engineering of a U.S. company, trying to drum up business. As soon as Mr. Rao introduced himself as calling from an Indian software firm, the U.S. executive said to him, "Namaste" - a common Hindi greeting. Said Mr. Rao: "A few years ago nobody in America wanted to talk to us. Now they are eager." And a few even know how to say hi in proper Hindu fashion. So now I wonder: if I have a granddaughter one day, and I tell her I'm going to India, will she say, "Grandpa, is that where software comes from?" Driving around Bangalore you might think so. The Pizza Hut billboard shows a steaming pizza under the headline "Gigabites of Taste!" Some traffic signs are sponsored by Texas Instruments. And when you tee off on the first hole at Bangalore's KGA golf course, your playing partner points at two new glass-and-steel buildings in the distance and says: "Aim at either Microsoft or I.B.M." How did India, in 15 years, go from being a synonym for massive poverty to the brainy country that is going to take all our best jobs? Answer: good timing, hard work, talent and luck. The good timing starts with India's decision in 1991 to shuck off decades of socialism and move toward a free-market economy with a focus on foreign trade. This made it possible for Indians who wanted to succeed at innovation to stay at home, not go to the West. This, in turn, enabled India to harvest a lot of its natural assets for the age of globalization. One such asset was Indian culture's strong emphasis on education and the widely held belief here that the greatest thing any son or daughter could do was to become a doctor or an engineer, which created a huge pool of potential software technicians. Second, by accident of history and the British occupation of India, most of those engineers were educated in English and could easily communicate with Silicon Valley. India was also neatly on the other side of the world from America, so U.S. designers could work during the day and e-mail their output to their Indian subcontractors in the evening. The Indians would then work on it for all of their day and e-mail it back. Presto: the 24-hour workday. Also, this was the age of globalization, and the countries that succeed best at globalization are those that are best at "glocalization" - taking the best global innovations, styles and practices and melding them with their own culture, so they don't feel overwhelmed. India has been naturally glocalizing for thousands of years. Then add some luck. The dot-com bubble led to a huge overinvestment in undersea fiber-optic cables, which made it dirt-cheap to transfer data, projects or phone calls to far-flung places like India, where Indian techies could work on them
Re:Wow by manavendra · 2004-05-23 21:01 · Score: 4, Informative

While this may sound surprising to the western world, kids in India are under tremendous social, parental and peer pressure to perform well in exams, especially the Secondary (high school( exams, and for several reasons:

1. Your chances of getting even your application considered for admission in any college depend entirely upon the Secondary school results.

2. The Seconday exam results are seen as a measure of success and dedication of not only the kid, but the parents as well. Unlike the developed countries, it is extremely difficult for anyone to find a job without a college education. There aren't all that many alternative, yet well-paying streams to choose from.

3. With a population of a billion, competition is fierce over every single seat in every college. There are instances where more than 100 students compete for a single place, and even a tenth of a difference in high-school percentage can make a difference

4. Parents as well the kids are under pressure to make a showing of their emphasis and sincerity towards education. It is almost unthinkable for a parents that their kid would fail in Secondary - that's virtually a stigma on the entire family.

And finally, in typical Indian fashion, there are hearty celebrations and distribution of sweets if the kids score well (the definition of "well" means anything over 80 or 85%)

--
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Re:Wow by guy-in-corner · 2004-05-23 21:25 · Score: 2, Informative

In the UK, if your 'A' level results are marginal, you might have to apply to a different university than the one you originally applied for. It's called 'clearing'.

Knowing your results earlier allows you to jump straight into the clearing system, possibly allowing you to grab a place at a better university than if you'd waited until Monday.
Re:Wow by Xenna · 2004-05-23 21:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

We've been doing this for 4 years at the Dutch university where I work (in fact I set up the system, not that much work to add to an already web-based system, actually). All students have the option to enter their GSM numbers on their personal webpages. About 2/3 of the registered students take advantage of this.

We send the messages thru a 3rd party Internet SMS provider for about 10 Eurocents a piece. It costs a few thousand dollars a year but the students are very happy with it because they receive their results as soon as the prof has graded their work.

We had an angry professor here because he was teaching a class to ~600 students when the results for an important exam were sent out. Of course, the students are required to switch of their phones, but some of them had used their vibra alerts and started to warn the others.

The prof had a very hard time getting the attention of his class again...

X.
Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 23:06 · Score: 0

Mabruk :-)
Re:Wow by HungWeiLo · 2004-05-24 01:37 · Score: 1

And finally, in typical Indian fashion, there are hearty celebrations and distribution of sweets if the kids score well (the definition of "well" means anything over 80 or 85%)

We East Asians don't stop getting a whippin' until we get over 99%, you insensitive clod! Sweets will come after we score that 1600 on the SATs and make first violin at Juilliard.

--
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Re:Wow by The+Cydonian · 2004-05-24 03:38 · Score: 1

Heheh, wish I could say that about my brother... dude scored over 80%, and still is in depression; apparently, grade inflation has become pandemic over the years, what with the highest scorer allegedly scoring a freaking 98.4% (AP state board, not CBSE).
And oh, 1 in 100 is only for "normal" institutions like the IIT's; when I applied to the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Hyderabad some five years back, the ratio was more to the tune of 1 in 2500. :-)

--
More than mere navel gazing.
Re:Wow by Strych9 · 2004-05-24 06:39 · Score: 1

Interesting:

So what happens to the other 99?
Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 07:13 · Score: 0

With a population of a billion, competition is fierce over every single seat in every college. There are instances where more than 100 students compete for a single place, and even a tenth of a difference in high-school percentage can make a difference

Which makes me wonder how long a system like that can be sustained since the difference between success and failure is so drastic and competition is so fierce.

Eventually, (especially if the system is not perceived as "fair"), that's got to lead to social-breakdown as people begin to become jaded that they'll have a fair shot at improving their station in life.

Perhaps we see the beginnings of that in the latest Indian elections.
Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 16:07 · Score: 0

and just to add to those very insightful statements..

Every year there are at least 20-30 students who commit suicide or run away from home because of a "poor" result. I guess they also need time to think about their decision whether to face life or run away from it. Yeah ..that's competition.
Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 16:12 · Score: 0

Cab drivers, shop keepers, cannon fodder in Kashmir take your pick.

Re:Ok. by mphase · 2004-05-23 20:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

Err...that is not racism. Granted racism may also be present along with anger about outsourced jobs they do not really go hand in hand. Even if you wanted to associate some sort of prejudice with anger over outsourcing (which you do seem to want) then it would be a form a nationalistic discrimination. Really all it comes down to is looking out for your own interests.

--
vampirical

India Shining!! by gdnr · 2004-05-23 20:07 · Score: 1, Troll

that's good use of the technolgy....
otherwise it would have been so painful for students to wait till monday to get their results from School!!
It shows that indians are making use to the technolgy in their day to day lives and yes, the network can support it!!!
Yes, India is shining!!

Re:India Shining!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:10 · Score: 1, Insightful

this proves the fact that india is catching up with the telecommunications field. few years back in india, having a mobile is a luxury, but now every one carries one.
Re:India Shining!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:18 · Score: 0

Mods on Crack, Why is the parent a troll???
Re:India Shining!! by nshravan · 2004-05-23 20:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm tired of all the India Shining crap. Being an Indian myself, its embarassing to see my fellow countrymen gloating over this as an example of India Shining. STFU. And posting on slashdot aint a status symbol. Now that I've posted its a pity I cant mod down these idiots.
Re:India Shining!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:50 · Score: 0

Ummm, I think that the Parent post (i.e. grandparent to mine) was being _sarcastic_ ....
and there's no need to get all fucked up about India Shining. To quote my fellow Americans, if you don't like the country, you can always leave. India is shining my friend, so take off your blinders and try to enjoy it.
Re:India Shining!! by gdnr · 2004-05-23 20:54 · Score: 1

it's not boasting something or talking crap about india shining. it's a simple fact that new technolgy is being used for people's benefit. to ease a little tension the little children are having when they can't see their results when they are actually declared. This is just the beginning that indians are make use of technolgy and more will follow.
Re:India Shining!! by 2674 · 2004-05-23 20:54 · Score: 1

I don't understand. If I were an Indian, I would be at least moderately happy that my developing country is finally catching up in some areas, at least. Why would you tell this poster to STFU? Or you one of those Indians who are living in US and are ashamed of their Native country. I know a couple of people like that. If yes, then I am sorry for India to have ignorant and un-appreciative citizens like you who bad-mouth their own country. I have worked with Indians IN India before and I think it a great country with lots of Potential. I just feel sorry for you.
Re:India Shining!! by nshravan · 2004-05-23 21:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

I am definitely happy that my country is catching up. I thought I made my point pretty clear when I said, this isn't an example of India Shining. IT touches a minisucle of India's population and the Indian elections are proof that the majority of the population who vote haven't been touched by the economic properity which we seem to associate with India nowadays.

Go read up on post-election analysis as to why one of the stalwarts of India's IT boom, Chandrababu Naidu got kicked out by his electorate. Lot more issues which effect Indians than IT and the earlier we realise that and start addressing them the better. At the same time,I do agree that the money coming in because of IT helps in alleviating those basic problems.

But we still have a long way to go before we can say India's Truly Shining.

To answer your last point, I love my country. Its just that having the second largest population in the world causes a lot of bs to filter thru.
Re:India Shining!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 21:15 · Score: 0

Dude - the country with a billion people cannot all shine togehter. But there has been a move or an effort to move in the right direction.

You should appreciate that - even if you dont like BJP.
Re:India Shining!! by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 21:26 · Score: 1

IT touches a miniscule amount of the population

When a software company opens up in India, it needs to pay construction workers to set up a building. Plumbers to make bathrooms. Security guards. Canteen workers. Cleaners. Pay for electricity. Pay the transporters for ferrying their workers to the buildings. Shops and restaurants open up nearby to cater to the high-income software workers. The high-income workers have more money, to pay rent, buy cars, computers. When they buy more cars, the auto factory workrs get more money. When they pay rent, they are giving a landlord his due. When these people get paid, they spend (and save) further and so on. This is basic fucking Economics 101 - it's called the Multiplier Effect. And Naidu didn't lose because he was pro-IT. He lost because he forgot about the rest. But that's no reason to stop supporting IT. India is richer now than it has been in the entire 57 years since its inception. But as a typical Cynical old-style Indian, you find it hard to look at the positive.

--
My Favourite Meme
Re:India Shining!! by nmk · 2004-05-23 22:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

See the problem with this India Shining thing is that you still have over half a billion people who are poverty stricken. The last time I was in Delhi (addmitidly about ten years ago) I saw homeless people everywhere. The sidewalks were crammed with people who didn't have anything to eat, or any place to live. I'm sure things have come along since then, but India's middle class is still less than 200 million people. With a population of one billion people, this still leaves a lot of people under the poverty line. I'm Pakistani, so I've seen the plight of the urban and rural masses. As much as developing countries catch up to the west, a majority of their population still lives in poverty. Untill this issue can be addressed, I think everyone should keep their ego under controll.
Re:India Shining!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 03:44 · Score: 0

Erm, everyone?!?

You're saying I could walk through any city and rural village in India and it would be hard to find a citizen without a cell phone?
Re:India Shining!! by The+Cydonian · 2004-05-24 04:37 · Score: 1

While I share your scepticism regarding the India Shining propaganda, I must however point out here that CB Naidu didn't lose because he focussed on IT; he lost because he got his political equation wrong.
Remember folks, elections are just that:- elections. They are NOT vox populi, they are NOT referenda on governance (or even economic prosperity). If they were, Laloo (or the Left in West Bengal, to answer the point about economic prosperity; look up the article for comparitive stats on that) wouldn't be elected every freaking time.

--
More than mere navel gazing.
Re:India Shining!! by The+Cydonian · 2004-05-24 04:53 · Score: 1

The main point about India Shining is rather simple; it's all about saying "we can catch up with the First World [if we do x]", not say, "we are the First World". No ego trips intended, not with you Pakis or Nepalis or B'deshis or anyone; wonder why you think otherwise.
Now, the reason why it failed is, I believe, a failure of the media and the messengers more than that of the message; the mass media, for one, has discernably turned out to be less mass than what the political managers thought. Also, most voters (and I'm one of them, incidentally) never made the connection between 'prosperity' and the 'incumbent government'; quite clearly, economic policy has now mostly become a matter of non-debate in political circles these days (implementation is a different matter altogether) so there was no real reason to vote for the incumbent anyway.
But all the same, I don't see why anyone should object if we Indians pat ourselves on our backs; things have certainly improved in prosperity terms for all sections of Indian society over the past 15 years.

--
More than mere navel gazing.
Re:India Shining!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 05:05 · Score: 0

IOW, people in India and people in the US, and probably elsewhere as well, are about the same.
Re:India Shining!! by shm · 2004-05-24 05:42 · Score: 1

Well, in villages there is probably one guy you'll see carrying a cell phone - the postman. There's a scheme by which the postman goes house to house delivering letters, and if the phoneless resident wants to make a call, s/he makes it using the postman's mobile, and pays up in cash immediately.

I want it. by mphase · 2004-05-23 20:07 · Score: 3, Funny

I would love a service like this for US Colleges. Currently I have to go through various problems with postcards and other bull trying to get grades sooner then a month after the semester ends. Though currently there are some online grade services but not many teachers use them so maybe I should be complaining about the lazy luddite professors.

--
vampirical

Re:I want it. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 02:26 · Score: 0

Where do you go to school that you have to wait a month to get grades back??? Our university grade slips were always available online within 2 weeks of the last day of finals, sometimes sooner. Some of the professors would provide final grades as soon as they were done grading. This was about 8 years ago. I mean, if the grades have to be submitted to the school by a certain date (like, so they know if people really graduated or not), why would they hold them back from the students?
Re:I want it. by madygoosey · 2004-05-24 16:30 · Score: 1

haha the thing is that exams are in march, so people have already been out of school for a long time. My results actually came out june 6th or something when I was deep into summer vacation. that's a good 2 months after exams ended(end before april), so it's really not all that much faster. It's just that people really want to know their scores there, I'm sure people do here too, I still do for college.

Not really a record or something.... by aralin · 2004-05-23 20:08 · Score: 3, Informative

I understand this might be interesting, considering all of them came from the same source, but for a country so large as India it should not really be a big deal, one million SMS. In Czech Republic thats a pretty much a daily standard for one of the three cell networks and thats a country with only 10 million people. Last Christmas there was over 10 million SMS in about one evening. So, what I am trying to say, considering they have about 100 times more people, they should prepare for much larger loads in the future.

--
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.

Re:Not really a record or something.... by martingunnarsson · 2004-05-23 20:12 · Score: 2, Informative

You said it yourself, this was to one single service! Not all the messages in an entire network.

--
Martin
Re:Not really a record or something.... by ongeboren · 2004-05-23 21:37 · Score: 1

Did somebody of you guys ever bothered to think of the ammount of traffic that passes through an IRC network of 80K+ users?
That's for sure orders above the SMS traffic.

So why is this so interesting?

--
First I wanted to be a chef. Then I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambitions have continued to grow ever since.
Re:Not really a record or something.... by OriginalChops · 2004-05-23 23:31 · Score: 1

Quote: Did somebody of you guys ever bothered to think of the ammount of traffic that passes through an IRC network of 80K+ users?

Fact: Num of ppl that can use IRC Num of ppl that can use SMS.

And besides you dont get all 80k on 1 server do you.

On another note. India is not 'such a large country' in comparison to Russia. It has a much larger population though.

Now that I got that out of my system, I recon its a pretty good idea. I still remember how annoying it was to hear my parents ask if I got my results yet every day for 2 month.

I couldnt go on my last big holiday not knowing whether my place at Uni was secure...
Re:Not really a record or something.... by MoonBuggy · 2004-05-24 00:24 · Score: 1

I don't know if there's really any point putting extra infrastructure in place for use once or twice a year though. Here in the UK the networks are reliable all year round, but they routinely crash completely under the load at 12:00 on January 1st. I wouldn't want to have the cost of equipment for that one day passed down to my bill when the rest of the year it works fine.

A billion people by darnok · 2004-05-23 20:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm sure IT managers in India must chuckle to themselves when they see discussion of the dreaded "Slashdot effect".

A one-off hit of 100,000 SMS hits per hour on a site would be newsworthy and probably site-melting just about anywhere else, but in India it's just another day at the office.

If it isn't already, Indian IT infrastructure should be THE reference testing ground for application scalability and load testing. Doesn't matter if it's systems for voting in elections, distributing exam results, traffic information, drought/flood information - if your system works in India, it's pretty much guaranteed to work anywhere else in the world from a load/stress perspective.

Re:A billion people by 2674 · 2004-05-23 20:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

You are absolutely right. I once worked on a project for implementing an SMS service for a portal to check availability of Movie tickets Online and they planed for 50,000 Hits an hour on a friday evening (when the New movies come out) in the City of Bombay. Moreover they were pretty non-chalant about it.
Re:A billion people by L.Torvalds · 2004-05-23 20:17 · Score: 0, Insightful

For a country that cannot feed itself, they sure do waste a lot of time, effort, and money, on SMS.
Re:A billion people by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 20:21 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is a valid point, which Car companies have picked up long before IT.. If your car can withstand high temperature ranges (-10 degrees C in Kashmir to 52 degrees C in plain - I can't be bothered to convert to Fahrenheit, DIY), deal with some really awful roads and traffic, still manage to not bust your suspension, blow your radiator and keep the a/c cooling, you've got a winner. So even though most Indians can't afford BMW SUVs, or the Porsche Cayenne (it's being relaesed this month in India), they are still sold there. The problem is that when India's National Highway Development Project nears completion, they'll have to find a slightly more thrid-world country to carry on testing... Getting back on topic, you want to see scalable software - Try Indian Railways...!

--
My Favourite Meme
Re:A billion people by torpor · 2004-05-23 21:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not to put a damper on this India-net-testing-ground concept, but I regularly designed systems for ISP's in the US during the 90's that were intended to experience similar work loads, sometimes even greater.

At one point, a deployed RADIUS setup for one of my larger network clients was getting 40-50,000 hits an hour, persistently, for weeks on end. I slept pretty well in those days, due to good, balanced, working-order network design. An operational network able to withstand millions of hits per hour was a very common requirement, and I often had contractual clauses that would require this sort of load-testing as a payment requirement, so you can bet your melted modem we would scale to those sorts of heights in our design, from the starting gate... /.'ers are pretty proud of their 'slashdot effect', but in my opinion the only thing that differentiates the /. meltdown from any other meltdown is that /.'ers have worked hard to get the description of the event into a modern, contemporary online vernacular. heavy mass loads are pretty common in IT infrastructure, wherever you are in the world, by definition ... its just that those responsible for it either a) do make a lot of noise about it, or b) do not make any noise about it, and just go on with regular business ...

That said, it sure would be nice to one day be able to say that I was responsible, in some way, for deploying a massively useful, massively used, network topology in the Indian market. I'd be happy to do that for the cultural effect on my CV, not just for the dick-swinging effect of having 'built a network that could withstand India' ...

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Re:A billion people by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:56 · Score: 0

A one-off hit of 100,000 SMS hits per hour on a site would be newsworthy and probably site-melting just about anywhere else,

Actually it's not. SMS is just a short text message -- the protocol is stable, and there's just not much to them. AT&T handles over a MILLION an hour for American Idol voting.

This is such a nonstory.
Re:A billion people by HeghmoH · 2004-05-23 23:30 · Score: 1

/.'ers are pretty proud of their 'slashdot effect', but in my opinion the only thing that differentiates the /. meltdown from any other meltdown is that /.'ers have worked hard to get the description of the event into a modern, contemporary online vernacular.

Well, there is another difference. Namely, that the slashdot effect strikes without warning, often on unprepared sites. I have no doubt that it's easy to design something from the ground up to get much more traffic than a slashdotting will give. Indeed, slashdot posts links to Apple, NYT, etc. etc. all the time without any noticeable impact on their operations. But when slashdot posts a link to some dinky server colo'd at a rural ISP running on a single T1 line, which happens quite a lot, then bad stuff happens.

Of course slashdot has plenty of clueless people. Just find the latest movie announcement and look for somebody screaming about how linking to the trailer is such a bad idea... a trailer at Apple.com, hosted by Akamai.

--
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Re:A billion people by data64 · 2004-05-24 03:53 · Score: 1

I worked on the reservation system on Indian Railways. Could you believe all the tickets for about 15 trains getting booked in the first 3 minutes since they become available. Can you imagine what a system down condition would do in this scenario. I have seen near riot conditions when the terminals used at the ticket issueing counters broke down.
Re:A billion people by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 12:21 · Score: 0

Actually my school in Oklahoma City handled triple the amount mentioned in the article with barebones Linux box serving up the grades. It uses java based messaging client to poll the server for grades, doing a database serial number check at the beginning at each poll to see if the grade data had changes since the last polling. This kept the bw/load down to ensure the server didn't get overwhelmed, quite a nice design, really.

This reminds me ... by torpor · 2004-05-23 20:10 · Score: 0, Offtopic

... anyone know how to send an SMS from a shell? Is there an "Internet Way" to do it that can be auto-scripted somehow?

I really want to be able to send myself SMS' when processes finish, but I don't want to have to subscribe to any service for the privilege.

Why can't all these damn nets be wide open, grr... (Don't answer that, I know the answer, I'm just being whiny.)

The last time I did this ('94/'95) it was with a modem and a dedicated 800-# calling into my cell provider, which I was lucky enough to wangle the use of, for free, by doing the legwork servicing of some of the POP's for a friend who worked at the cell-co, but things have changed a lot since then ... surely there are open, public SMS gateways around that folks can use?

*sigh* ah, for the days of UUCP, where men were men and nets weren't unless they were connected to someone else, freely and openly ...

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --

and the thoughput is: by dominux · 2004-05-23 20:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

SMS =160 chars max *100,000 messages per hour *11 hours 176,000,000 bytes /11 /60 /60 =4444 bytes per second *8 =35555 bits per second = about the speed of a modem.

Re:and the thoughput is: by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:46 · Score: 0

Funny - I immediately made the same calculation. However, I was a bit more generous and used a factor of 2 to allow for framing/signaling. Still *not* exactly a great deal of data. On the other hand, 100,000 messages per hour mean serious $ for the telco (US$ 30K per hour?)
Re:and the thoughput is: by mcpkaaos · 2004-05-23 21:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

There's actually a bit more to SMS than that. Sending a message is more like:

Submit request: = 300 or so bytes (max message length with latest protocol (3.4) is 254 characters, not 160). With optional parameters the request will bulk up even more since a TLV requires a minimum of 4 bytes per use.

Submit response: Can be up to 81 bytes with the id assigned to the message.

If delivery receipts are supported and requested, you can expect yet another message from the remote that is a receipt that the original message had been received by the handset. That is going to be the size of the header (16 bytes) plus all the required fields for a submit message type (etc etc) with maybe some info in the message body field (add some more bytes to that...). And to add to the fun, that delivery message needs a response, too.

All of that with the size of the occasional ping/pongs and the other commands in the SMPP, the bandwidth can really start to add up. We're still not breaking out fiber here, but SMPP actually is a pretty heavy protocol. And with all the overhead (i.e., many required fields that 99% of the time are set to protocol defaults or NULL), it will eat up more bandwidth than you might think.

And you could always add an XML wrapper to that, and people do...

Hmm, that was pointless. Just felt like typing, I guess. ;P

--
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Re:and the thoughput is: by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 21:28 · Score: 1, Interesting

yes, assuming that every message is maxed out, which im sure the requests were more in the neighborhood of 1/10 the max message size. which makes the throughput even less impressive. this story is more feel-good than gee-whiz, in my cowardly opinion.
Re:and the thoughput is: by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 21:55 · Score: 0

yes, assuming that every message is maxed out, which im sure the requests were more in the neighborhood of 1/10 the max message size. which makes the throughput even less impressive. this story is more feel-good than gee-whiz, in my cowardly opinion.

You've obviously never worked with SMS-dependant applications, have you?
Re:and the thoughput is: by dominux · 2004-05-23 22:55 · Score: 1

yes but the bottom line is that the total size of all transmissions and the throughput achieved is not particularly astonishing.
Re:and the thoughput is: by losttoy · 2004-05-23 23:52 · Score: 1

What about the number of nodes trying to simultaneously trying to speak to the SMSC?
Re:and the thoughput is: by Gopal.V · 2004-05-24 00:03 · Score: 1

That's just the data .... not the bandwidth used .

And over a mobile line and using the control channel bandwidth too ..

Pretty impressive.

--
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Re:and the thoughput is: by faster · 2004-05-24 04:06 · Score: 1

Yeah, the message bandwidth isn't a big deal, but consider 100k database queries per hour. That's where the load was.

Yeah, that isn't a huge load either. I see that in a few minutes when load testing web apps.

Still, it's interesting as a "tech in society" thing, isn't it?
Re:and the thoughput is: by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 04:51 · Score: 0

yeah, you're right. now that I think about how awesome the achievement was I am sitting here in awe of the team that was able to pull this huge project off.. pffft!

Re:Ok. by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 20:14 · Score: 1, Informative

This would be funny, 'cept that it isn't. There is no Calcutta Tech. You might mean the Indian Institute of Technology, Calcutta/Kharagpur, but then you'd still be a liar. Further, Shiva is part of the Holy Trinity, which consists of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer. If you praise the Destroyer, u start sounding like George Bush. Now u wouldn't want that, would u?

--
My Favourite Meme

Yes it is. by Estanislao+Mart�nez · 2004-05-23 20:14 · Score: 0, Offtopic

You're picking nits that don't exist with this "nationalistic discrimination" distinction. "Nation" and "race" are not at all dissociated concepts in US society.

--

Are you adequate?

Re:Yes it is. by mphase · 2004-05-23 20:18 · Score: 1

No I'm not. I said that if you want to call it a form of discrimination than at least call it the correct closest form, which is not racism.

--
vampirical

Can most Indians afford mobile phones? by Andy+Mitchell · 2004-05-23 20:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've been out to India twice for business trips (mostly in Bangalore) and you cant help noticing the contrast between the rich and educated in the tech industries and the incredibly poor people in the same city. Of course there are a lot of inbetween people as well, but the contrast between the extremes is scary.

Considering a mobile phone is an expensive bit of kit (if you get it "free" you pay for it over a few years on calls) you have to wonder if most people can afford a mobile phone.

Re:Can most Indians afford mobile phones? by Zusstin · 2004-05-23 20:25 · Score: 2, Informative

Not until an year ago. But last year, when Reliance launched their CDMA services, they made sure that *anybody* could buy one. Since then, Reliance have added 40 million subscribers. And thats in just one year. They were offereing LG/Samsung CDMA handset for Rs. 500/- which would be ~ 12 USD. Offcourse, their air-time usage charge was also *very low*. An CDMA to CDMA call would cost you Rs. 0.40 per minute. That could be less than 1 cent.
Re:Can most Indians afford mobile phones? by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 20:27 · Score: 2, Informative

Answer to your header - yes. They can.
Expensive bit of kit? The cheapest mobile phone is available for US$50 in India. But if you buy it thru the commitment plans, you pay nothing for it. How is that expensive? Get opver the fucking contrast. There are 1 billion people living in India. There are lots of poor people, and there are lots of rich.

--
My Favourite Meme
Re:Can most Indians afford mobile phones? by cygnusx · 2004-05-23 21:11 · Score: 3, Informative

Well, many vegetable-sellers* (the kind who have little push-carts full of vegetables) have cellphones now, so do many auto-rickshaw drivers.

Do most poor farmers have cellphones? Nope. As you pointed out, the extremes in India are astonishing. I believe this can be best explained by the fact that a lot of India is uneducated, has a feudal mindset, and believes that suffering is their destiny in life (Karma, however we use it on /., is not a joke to most Indians).

That said, there are _lot_ of vegetable sellers and autorickshaw drivers in India, and they are usually classified as LIGs (Lower Income Groups). So it's sort of heartening to see how far we've come that many of them can afford a cellphone.

Btw, a cellphone could be had for as little as INR 1500, and a pay-as-you-go card that'd last a month can be got for INR 50-200. Not for the "poorest of the poor", but the urban poor can probably afford it.

*Btw, the reason the urban poor buy cellphones is because they get better business this way. For example, people can call a veggie seller up and get veggies on demand at home. Ditto autorickshaw drivers - parents are more likely to trust their kids (to drive them to/from school) to an autorickshaw driver who is always reachable via a cellphone.
Re:Can most Indians afford mobile phones? by supersam · 2004-05-23 22:47 · Score: 1

Isn't it absolutely predictable to see this kind of a comment on any technology news coming out of India?!

For your information, every month, roughly 1.5 million new subscribers are added to the mobile phone user base in India which was about 28 million in December last year.

Till about a year or two ago, there was a definite urban-rural divide in terms of mobile phone usage. This was mostly due to the fact that the mobile phone market had only a few private operators who used to charge exorbitant rates in the absence of real competition. But all that changed with factors like
- free incoming calls
- entry of 'Reliance' in the mobile phone operator market and its introduction of cheap CDMA-based phones
- entry of state-run mobile phone operators like BSNL, MTNL

All these factors meant that mobile phones came within the grasp of anyone and everyone. And we have domestic maids, chauffeurs, vegetable vendors, etc. brandishing mobiles and even doing their business on it!

It will take most of the world a long time to digest this, but the fact remains that the mobile revolution is a reality in India.
Re:Can most Indians afford mobile phones? by ajayvb · 2004-05-24 05:31 · Score: 1

There is an important difference between the way the market operates in India and in the US. In India, pre-paid cards are the norm, and air-time rates are quite cheap (ranging from less than a cent per minute upto 7-8 per minute, depending on where you are and where you are calling, with long-distance between mobile/POTS operators and 'circles' being charged differently).

Another important thing is the thriving market in used cellphones. Rs. 1500 (approx. $33) is probably the average. Even cheaper used handsets can be got - only voice and SMS, no fancy color screens or cameras. These help people get started, and people use it only as much as they need. Many people use it only to receive calls (which is cheaper) and use cheaper ubiquitous payphones for outgoing calls.

Look at it as value and not as cost. With even vendors seeing obvious value in it, the cost can be amortised over the value gained from it.

With India's land-line infrastructure in many rural areas not measuring up (or being too unresponsive, unlike quicker private cellular operators), a cellphone may be possibly someone's first and only phone.

Interestingly, in Africa, many countries have bypassed the land-line phone industry totally, as the first phones almost the whole of the country has seen are cellphones. Makes sense as last-mile connectivity costs are a killer.

Results viewable by anyone... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:16 · Score: 0

Click on the exam results for 2004, and you can type in a roll number to see people's grades. 1211322 is a good one.

Re:Results viewable by anyone... by cujo_1111 · 2004-05-23 20:33 · Score: 1

1211323 is a better one...

--
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Re:Results viewable by anyone... by cujo_1111 · 2004-05-23 20:36 · Score: 2, Funny

1234567 is the guy who will take your job...

--
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Re:Results viewable by anyone... by saurabhchandra · 2004-05-23 20:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think thats OK - even when the results are put up on bulletin boards (physical one's) everyone can see all the results.

--

Watch Out!!
Re:Results viewable by anyone... by Keruo · 2004-05-23 21:57 · Score: 1

1226282 will be the one doing your surgery, next time you're in hospital

--
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Re:Results viewable by anyone... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:23 · Score: 0

1226282! I CHOOSE YOU!

Just cruising for numbers, and I've already got favorites to root for. Fantasy-Smart-Kid baseball! This one's going to win the Guwahati semi-finals, fer sure!
Re:Results viewable by anyone... by stealthmidget · 2004-05-24 00:37 · Score: 0

But when results are posted publicly, they normally don't include the student's name, father's name, and mother's name...at least not in my experiences =P

India... by Viceice · 2004-05-23 20:16 · Score: 4, Funny

There seems to be a lot of talk about India on SlashDot lately. Are the editors being outsourced there too?

--
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.

Re:India... by 2674 · 2004-05-23 20:25 · Score: 0, Redundant

In Soviet Russia, YOU Outsource to India err... Sorry
Re:India... by umeshunni · 2004-05-23 20:30 · Score: 0, Redundant

I think you meant.. In Soviet Russia, India outsources to you!
Re:India... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:30 · Score: 0

U mean, in Soviet Russia, India outsources YOU!...oh er.. never mind DOH! x1000
Re:India... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:47 · Score: 0

I think the grandparent poster meant exactly what he said...It is funny in a reverse way, while being true..Get it?
Re:India... by torpor · 2004-05-23 21:25 · Score: 1

There are a lot of nerds in India. Slashdot is news for nerds. Whats the problem?

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Re:India... by dedazo · 2004-05-23 21:30 · Score: 1

Well if they do we won't be able to tell, just like I am, like, totally fooled when I get a phone call from "Dany" in "Wisconsin" trying to sell me a credit card with an accent right out of those Fanta Shokata commercials.

--
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Re:India... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 01:07 · Score: 0

Sure you can tell, haven't you noticed less duplicate posts lately... look, better service. it has to be indians.
Re:India... by BarefootClown · 2004-05-24 02:08 · Score: 1

There seems to be a lot of talk about India on SlashDot lately. Are the editors being outsourced there too?

If so, it could only improve the editors' grammar.

--
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca

Why is this news? by houghi · 2004-05-23 20:19 · Score: 0, Redundant

I realy wonder why this is news. There was a service offerd to get info per sms. That can not be news. There were no technical problems, so that can not be news.

--
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.

Re:Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:33 · Score: 0

It's basically a way to get a few more racist comments out of Slashdotters - "But wait aren't there a lot of poor people in India? I thought they didn't have enough money to breathe" (Meanwhile, in your Boss's cubicle - "Hey Smart Alec spends too much time flaming on Slashdot. Let's send his job to India!"

Re:This reminds me ... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:20 · Score: 0

Under Debian (the command looks for available packages with the given keyword):

apt-cache search sms
[...]
sms-pl - Send SMs via Polish GSM operators
smsclient - A program for sending short messages (SM / SMS)
smssend - Utility to send SMS messages to GSM mobile phones
[...]

Re:This reminds me ... by jcenters · 2004-05-23 20:21 · Score: 1

Well, if you're on Verizon Wireless, you can email yournumber@vtext.com. I'm sure the other providers offer a similar service.

The "mail" command is your friend.

--

vi ~/.emacs

My sister took the exam this year by arvindn · 2004-05-23 20:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

She got her results from the website, there was no problem. Which surprised me, since results websites are usually "slashdotted" when the resutls are announced.

Incidentally

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=cbseresul ts.nic.in

cbseresults.nic.in was running Microsoft-IIS on Windows 2000 when last queried at 24-May-2004 08:16:18 GMT

*sigh*

This year, election result updates were also available through SMS.

Way off the record! by dnnrly · 2004-05-23 20:21 · Score: 4, Informative

New Year 2003/4 in the UK, 111 MILLION SMSs were sent between midnight 31 December and midnight 1 January, an average of 4.625 million/hour. In reality the first couple of minutes around 37.2 million were sent.

See here for details.

Re:Way off the record! by snkmoorthy · 2004-05-23 21:08 · Score: 0

These SMS you mention are static, the article is referring to query based SMS, makes a lot of difference load wise.
India: Even minorities can be elected Prime Minister
USA: Even morons can be elected President
Re:Way off the record! by sould · 2004-05-23 21:17 · Score: 1

Informative? You're talking about a different record.

Your link was about the number of SMSs sent.

The story is about the number of SMSs sent to (and handled by) a single SMS server.
Re:Way off the record! by mcpkaaos · 2004-05-23 21:21 · Score: 1

Regardless, you have to realize that a SMS service that can handle 100K messages in a single hour could be written in VB script. Any way you look at it this is truly not news.

--
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Re:Way off the record! by ponxx · 2004-05-23 21:26 · Score: 1

As the article you link to also pointed out, this just about wrecked the mobile phone network in london for a few hours. I happened to be there and tried to call someone, no chance... even SMS arrived hours later...

Too Open by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

If you go to the page, and click on exam results, you can enter a roll number.

Roll numbers starting with 12 seem to work, and in less than a minute I had the results of 5 students. Complete names, grades, pass/fail status.

This would never fly in the US. There are laws against the publication of this type of data (apparently)

Re:Too Open by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 20:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

1. So u have their names. What can YOU do with that? Publish it on the internet?
2. Pass/Fail status..hmmm... I think most students would be able to figure out if their friends/enemies made it into the next grade, without the help of this website.... As for future prospective employers, you have to provide your original certificates to them anyway.
Finally, there's a disclaimer on the site saying they're not responsible for any typos, and this site should not taken as the final Word on your grades. Anybody can just deny that the grades in this site are valid.

--
My Favourite Meme
Re:Too Open by tsager · 2004-05-23 20:43 · Score: 1

Same in Switzerland. It's not allowed to publish names in conjunction with marks.
Only roll numbers and marks are allowed (and there is no directory of names/numbers).
Re:Too Open by dedazo · 2004-05-23 21:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

So u have their names.
It's "you", not "u".
What can YOU do with that?
Take a wild guess as to what I can do with all this. Ever heard of social engineering?
I could care less, but for someone who is in India it might prove rather useful.

--
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Re:Too Open by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 21:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

I am in India. New Delhi, in fact. I know Manvendra Singh passed his Exam. I don't know which Manvendra Singh, I don't know where he lives in all India, I don't know what he looks like. And to a non-Indian, you don't even know if it's a He or a She. I would really like to know, What can I do with the information given?

--
My Favourite Meme
Re:Too Open by dash2 · 2004-05-23 21:54 · Score: 1

You're being a bit naive, I think. With that level of information, a determined person could identify one individual, contact them and use their knowledge about their family for social engineering purposes - "Hi, I'm a friend of your father Manmohan, he needs you to meet him at such and such a place/send 10000Rs to this address/etc"

You may not be interested, but that doesn't mean potential criminals aren't.

Besides the danger of fraud, a lot of people might not want everyone else in the world to know their exam results. Just because you don't care about privacy, doesn't mean others shouldn't.
Re:Too Open by Depili · 2004-05-23 21:56 · Score: 1, Interesting

That is why atleast here in finland you have to tick a checkbox when comming to the entrance exams to give your permission to publish the results, which takes care of all the privacy problems and allows the students to get the results easily.
Re:Too Open by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:04 · Score: 0

Since these thinks are more open in India, people are more resistant to such frauds.

Darwin's theory at work again.
Re:Too Open by thodu · 2004-05-23 22:26 · Score: 5, Informative

You are right. It is a privacy issue. But, here, in India, traditionally, the entire spreadsheet of all students is put up in a public place in the institute (college, school, board, wherever) for all to see. Therefore, it is not a big issue for somebody who has grown up here.
Re:Too Open by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:32 · Score: 0

Wow. I'm the one who originally posted that you could do this.

And, with the parents' info, I think you can do a lot more than you think. Knowing the approximate age of the student, the parents' names, what classes were taken. FAR too much information if you're in the US. Yes, it's all 'up and publicly available' at universities in India... The availability of it to ANYONE with a Web connection is what worries me. They could mine all of the information, and put it all in a database, searchable by names. Have fun with future employers who know what grades you got! Even if you steal our American jobs! (and yes, you probably deserve it a lot more than our drivel of output from American schools...)
Re:Too Open by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 22:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

You future employers are going to demand your grades anyway. So basically you're saying this prevents you from lying to your boss about your grades. So although I agree that people could mess with your names and all, they'd have to be close to you in some way - go to the same school at the very least. One of the posters above said that they could use to get somebody's father's name and then say "Show up at such and such place with the money.." - How? In order for any of this stuff to be of any use to you, u have to already know something about the person. You only know if the grades you've just seen belong to person X, if you know what person X's roll number already is (in which case, it's the same as having someone's password). You may know a person X, whose father's name is Y, but how do you know that this X and Y are the one's living in your neighbourhood? And if you already know that this is that person, there is really only so much you can do with the grades on the web - which you would still need the roll number for. I don't see any addresses or telephone numbers. Yes, maybe I'm naive, but I still haven't heard a plausible argument as to how this site is dangerous.

--
My Favourite Meme
Re:Too Open by bakwas_internet · 2004-05-23 23:55 · Score: 1

the results which are being discussed here are for CBSE exam which is sort of fedral examonation board.....well the state education boards in india still publish the result of whole state in newspapers....so u only need to pay Rs.2(4 cents) to see anybody's result..now thats open....
Re:Too Open by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 00:50 · Score: 0

Not all (I'd say not many) states publish their full exam results in newspapers (Gujarat, Maharashtra are two that I'm familiar with). Also, both these states have similar online and SMS systems to get your exam results, and is open like this. This totally sucks, but I guess they don't bother much with issues like privacy. I even pointed this out 3 years ago when my sister and cousins took these exams.
Re:Too Open by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 00:50 · Score: 0

We, in India are not as paranoid as dudes in other countries about "privacy"..
And, yes, we dont carry guns with us all the time, either..
Re:Too Open by Joseph+Vigneau · 2004-05-24 02:13 · Score: 1

We, in India are not as paranoid as dudes in other countries about "privacy".. And, yes, we dont carry guns with us all the time, either..

We in the U.S. don't, either. Though I find it curious that you are paranoid enough to post as an Anonymous Coward.
Re:Too Open by nstrugnell · 2004-05-24 08:32 · Score: 1

These are public examinations - what's the problem? In the UK, degree results are published with name, degree taken and mark achieved in the national newspapers (Times, Guardian, Telegraph etc.)
Re:Too Open by arekq · 2004-05-24 08:33 · Score: 1

Do they have the option not to tick the checkbox?
Not to pick on you but you phase like if a student doesn't tick the checkbox he/she isn't allowed to take the exam. :)
Re:Too Open by MagicDude · 2004-05-24 09:21 · Score: 1

Not officially anyway. But I've had lots of professors who'll just do it anyway. But usually it's kept private to the class. Either the list will be posted outside the professor's office, or we'll have an Excel file E-Mailed to the entire class. Also, what you did could be considered illegal on some levels. You basically hacked they're system by entering in random numbers until you got a hit, so think about who's doing something illegal before you post.

Yes but ! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:29 · Score: 0

Arriving at school to get the result is something much more exciting that getting a blody SMS : "U GETI" :o)

Sorry, but i still much preffer the pupils stressing at home and enjoy the moment where they see the result ;-)

Maybe they should, first send an SMS "Result incomming..." then make a count down, and voila :P

Re:Ok. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:31 · Score: 0

Please don't feed the trolls.

Just saying so doesn't make it so. by Estanislao+Mart�nez · 2004-05-23 20:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Correct closest form" on what grounds? Just because you say so?

You used the word "nationalism". The notion of a "nation", classically, is tightly linked to that of "race": a nation is a group of people who share certain characteristics: race, language and a homeland. This linkage hasn't evaporated from the folk usage of the term in the USA: Americans, for example, popularly judge Hispanics to be "non-whites" in general, regardless of actual skin pigmentation.

--

Are you adequate?

Re:Just saying so doesn't make it so. by mphase · 2004-05-23 20:56 · Score: 1

Not because I say so, because of the definition of the words and what they mean. I don't accept your assertion of what a nation is especially where America is concerned. I'll agree to disagree if you will.

--
vampirical

When the SMS is incorrect by Rurouni+Joe · 2004-05-23 20:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

Below is a link to a story of teenager who commited suicide after receiving an sms telling her she had failed, when in reality she had passed. It just goes to show the pressures some of these teenagers face in India today.

news.com.au

Re:When the SMS is incorrect by DragoonAK · 2004-05-24 06:14 · Score: 1

So that's sad, yes, but how much sadder than if she truly had failed and committed suicide?
Re:When the SMS is incorrect by Tomster · 2004-05-24 07:50 · Score: 1

Pressure from parents and peers on students to score high marks in the exams is immense and each year dozens across the country kill themselves when they find they have failed.
Okay, folks. An education is valuable, and high grades help get a better education which can help you get a higher-paying or more-prestigious job.
But, let's take the reality pill here. First off, your life is not over if you do poorly on an exam, if you flunk a class, or if you don't graduate. You can go on to be very successful. Second, the really important things in life are intangibles that have little to do with material rewards, career successes, and how much money or power you have.
Parents and other people who place so much value and importance on a kid's academic success have forgotten (or never really knew) about these intangibles. Unfortunately, the kids suffer for it because they are too young to know any better. When mom and dad act like that science grade is The Most Important Thing in life and that success in life requires a high grade, and then the kid fails that class (or gets a 'B'), of course they are going to think their life is a failure.
-Thomas

slashdotting... by tsager · 2004-05-23 20:37 · Score: 0

So let's at least kill the web server then.

Re:Ok. by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 20:45 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Sorry I couldn't resist. I'm still hoping to get modded "Informative" by the Slashdot Gods.

--
My Favourite Meme

Drawbacks by gokulpod · 2004-05-23 20:48 · Score: 3, Interesting

Just so that we don't get all gung ho over the news, here's a very sad story.. A girl committed suicide when she got a result over SMS that she had failed. She had in fact passed the exams.

--
My mom never taught me to sign.

Re:Drawbacks by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:57 · Score: 0

blame her parents and relatives who created such insecurity. even it was paper result or the sms result, its the pressure the student is facing which has to be thought abt.
Re:Drawbacks by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 05:03 · Score: 0

"Drawback"? Excuse me?

Try 100,000 messages in 5 seconds by jpatokal · 2004-05-23 20:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

This is newsworthy more from a societal than a technological point of view. 100,000 messages per hour (=27 msg/s) is chicken feed for your typical SMSC, which usually measure traffic in hundreds of SMSes per second. There are even SMS bulk delivery tools that plug directly into SS7 and claim a throughput of 20,000 messages per second. Working in the industry myself (at a competitor, mind you) I'm a little skeptical about this particular claim, but I do know that there are SMSC networks out there capable of handling sustained loads of several thousand msg/s.

But it's neat anyway. Then again, I thought it was pretty nifty to be able to call me university's automated service and get my results via phone 10 years ago... although I'm sure that little wait between "You have..." and "passed" was put there on purpose!.

Cheers,
-j.

Re:Try 100,000 messages in 5 seconds by mcpkaaos · 2004-05-23 21:51 · Score: 1

Working in the industry myself (at a competitor, mind you) I'm a little skeptical about this particular claim

Working in the industry myself, and not for your competitor, mind you, I can tell you to drop the skepticism. A handful of newer dual proc boxes on a decent pipe will hit those numbers easily. The only real challenge is in the bandwidth - SMPP is a little on the chubby side.

--
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Re:Try 100,000 messages in 5 seconds by isorox · 2004-05-24 04:53 · Score: 1

27 msg/s

My SMS skills suck so much I'm lucky to get 1 msg per 27 seconds!
Re:Try 100,000 messages in 5 seconds by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-25 00:19 · Score: 0

There are even SMS bulk delivery tools that plug directly into SS7 and claim a throughput of 20,000 messages per second.

These are not real SMSCs. They only implement a small subset of the SMSC functionality.
SMS is a store-and-forward service. These are more like routers, that try to deliver a message ONCE. If the delivery fails, they then pass the SMS to the real SMSC for the actual work of storing the message and retrying delivery.

Now read that description again and note the fluffy vage sales-speak.

Working in the industry myself (at a competitor, mind you) I'm a little skeptical about this particular claim, but I do know that there are SMSC networks out there capable of handling sustained loads of several thousand msg/s.

Yes, like the one I work on ;-)

I doubt that thay actually tested the "20.000 msg/sec to SS7" claim. AFAIK most SS7 networks have trouble handling even 2000 msg/sec. That's one reason why network operators are moving SMS traffic from SS7 to IP. The bottleneck is now the SS7 network, not the SMSC. Wll, at least with our SMSC :-D

This is what can happen when you get it wrong.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:53 · Score: 0

Suicide

Not a billion people with net access by delibes · 2004-05-23 20:54 · Score: 1

I acknowledge that India has a huge population, with many cities that have over a million inhabitants, but... they don't all have broadband Internet access do they?

--
This is not a sig

Re:Not a billion people with net access by baywulf · 2004-05-24 03:59 · Score: 1

I was in India last year and broadband internet is there and it is cheaper than here(USA) taking it account relative cost of living and salary. And the three cities I stayed in were not exactly the biggest populated areas. The main issue is not many people have computers yet since they can still be expensive.
Re:Not a billion people with net access by ek-1000-ek · 2004-05-24 05:12 · Score: 1

What many people do not realise is that there is a huge secondary market such electronics goods in India. When my cousin discarded a Pentium based PC, he sold it to a STD PCO (Phone booth kiosk that typically allows you to make internation, national, local calls, make photocopies, take print out, a mini-kinkos) for mere INR 3000. That happens to cellular phones too. Since many people upgrade often, this leads to an amazing affordability of such equipment.

--
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?

Re:My sister took the exam this year by dedazo · 2004-05-23 20:57 · Score: 1

cbseresults.nic.in was running Microsoft-IIS on Windows 2000 when last queried at 24-May-2004 08:16:18 GMT

And this is relevant because...?

--
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo

Some more details? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

I think this might have been more interesting on Slashdot if we could have gotten some more details. What systems and programming languages did they use? What development methodologies? What unique problems did they face and how did they solve them?

That would have been an interesting read (and a sure way to start "my language is better than yours" flamewars ;)

This headline trivia is just...meh.

Incidentally, I was involved in a project dealing with SMS processing. It was the worst thing I have ever seen. Several development teams had worked on it and then quit or burned out. We got the task of trying to save it before the last bits of funding were cut.

An enormous Oracle database with around 50 tables (all with obscure nondescriptive names), most of them were not used anymore but remained because something just might break if you deleted them, they tables did not have proper keys, foreign keys or normalisations. The code itself was several HUNDRED java classes. Most were not used (same story with as with the DB tables, you could not be sure you didn't break anything by removing them). Actually what did all the work in the system was basically a single huge class, 4000 lines or so of procedural code written in java. The whole class was a single main method (no additional methods to speak of), consisting of an infinite loop with nested if/switch/try/catch/loop constructs. Lots and lots of cut and paste, empty catch statements, repeated string comparisons instead of final variables, messages built with String instead of StringBuffer, thread concurrency issues, many short lived database connections without a pool, etc etc etc etc. Almost every bad programming error you could think of.

There were almost no documentation or comments in the code. Once we understood the state of the mess we tried to tell the customer that their demands ("You MUST get this working in a couple of weeks! We told or sponsors we would be able to do a demo!") were impossible, but they wouldn't listen. Our relationship with them did not end well and they refused to pay us money for the time we spent. The project remained a mess of course.

But do you think they got their funding cut? No...becuase it was public sector money, so they got a firm admonishment to do better and kept getting money they wasted. Tax payer money... (Swedish tax payer, so no need to get angry if you live in another country. I you are a fellow Swede, please be furious.) So off they went to hire more consultants who would save them this time.

I'd better post anon this time, I think you can guess why.

So, that's my story of how to do it wrong. I would have liked to see how the Indians did it right. :-)

Don't they protect the privacy of their students? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 20:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

Browsing the site I came across a results page:
http://cbseresults.nic.in/class12/cbse12.as p
it asks for a 7 digit number, and within 3 attempts i found a working one: 1228540
Roll No: 1228540
Name:
SREEJA SURENDRAN
Mother's Name: BHARATHI SURENDRAN
Father's Name: SURENDRAN NAIR

and from their i can continue harvesting information and school scores for my devilish purposes:
Roll No: 1228539
Name:
SNIGDHA THAKUR
Mother's Name: BITHI THAKUR
Father's Name: RAVINDRA NATH THAKUR
I guess privacy isn't that big of an issue to them

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 21:02 · Score: 0

What will you do with this information? And who has got the time?

SMS Costs by HeghmoH · 2004-05-23 21:06 · Score: 1

This is slightly OT, but everybody's talking about how little bandwidth these messages actually take up.

My question is, why do SMS's cost so damned much? For a max of 160 bytes of data, the phone companies charge an unbelievable amount! It's something like a tenth of a second worth of voice traffic, but they're not priced accordingly. Is there a technical reason for this or, (more likely) are the phone companies just money-grubbing rat bastards?

--
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!

Re:SMS Costs by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:24 · Score: 0

It's all about maximising profits. Majority of customers may complain about high SMS prices, but they bear them, and even if prices would drop considerably, bringing profit margins down, those customers wouldn't probably send more messages than the ratio of profit margins between two scenarios would suggest. Technical doesn't dictate the costs of largely immaterial service costs in real life. As long as there's true competition between the service providers and interoperability is maintained, this shouldn't be a big problem.
Re:SMS Costs by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:39 · Score: 0

In India, they are free half the time, other times you have to pay from 1.20 to 3 rupees per sms. That is 2.5 to 7.5 cents.
Re:SMS Costs by Alif · 2004-05-23 22:44 · Score: 1

Delivery of a SMS message is much more complicated then of an ordinary GSM packet - think only about the harddisk where it waits when the recipient has his mobile switched off. This could be some excuse for the mobile network provider.
Re:SMS Costs by gl4ss · 2004-05-24 00:03 · Score: 1

they cost for few reasons..
first, the profit.
second, if they cost nothing people would use them for data loggers and stuff like that for which it doesn't work very well(unnecessary big network loads.. and yes, people did abuse this already here when there were unlimited sms's on some carriers for a while, now there's some 1000 sms monthly limits on their flat price sms subscriptions).

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:SMS Costs by HeghmoH · 2004-05-24 00:21 · Score: 1

That excuse doesn't fly with me. I can send multimegabyte e-mails around the world for zero marginal cost, which have the exact same infrastructure problems, minus the wireless part. The wireless part also can't be that expensive, since I can buy communications for around a dollar an hour in bulk. Put together cheap e-mail and cheap wireless and you get... incredibly expensive text messaging.

--
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!

Re:Ok. by verittaas · 2004-05-23 21:07 · Score: 0

"Further, Shiva is part of the Holy Trinity, which consists of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer. If you praise the Destroyer, u start sounding like George Bush"

The Destroyer holds an equal and important place just like the Creator and the Preserver. So praising, worshipping and courting Him is all part of the game.

--
-- Pls separate your sig from your msg so that I know when to ignore it. :-D

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 21:29 · Score: 0

Heh. you and I are different creatures.

I viewed the source, figured out what a correct value would be from the handy javascript (whichever fuckmuppet thought client-side variable parsing was a good idea should be shot), and figured it out that way - 1200XXX, where XXX is your choice of integer, for instance. You can even pick results by schoool district.

And I'll bet you since it's client-side parsed, it isn't in the *LEAST* bit server-side parsed. That site has to be vulnerable to a fuckload of SQL injection, because it will almost certainly be running mysql or mssql, since it's asp-driven.

I pray they fix it before someone malicious gets into it.

Vegetable Vendors Have Cell Phones by toofanx · 2004-05-23 21:32 · Score: 1

I completely agree with your post. Infact, I was myself stumped when I was busy haggling with this cart vendor, and his cell phone rang. He picked up, apparently talked to a buyer who wanted him to keep the vegetables ready so that he can just drive up and pick up everything.

You have your own e-tailer here.

Why would you need calculator on a math test? by Cyberax · 2004-05-23 21:49 · Score: 0

Why would you need calculator on a _math_ test?

Calculators and any other artificial aids should be banned from exams. In fact, in Russia and many other countries calculators (as well as mobile phones) are banned on most exams.

Exam problems should be chosen so that to solve them you shouldn't need calculators/logarithmic rulers/etc.

For example, to compare sqrt(2) and 1.4 you don't need calculator. In fact, naive calculator-solution "1,4142135623730950488016887242097 is greater that 1.4" is incorrect. Correct solution is: "2>(1.4)^2".

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:05 · Score: 0

"Smart kid..."
1218940

"He's gonna grow 5 inches in the next year."

Can your Indian beat my Indian? by Vertex+Operator · 2004-05-23 22:12 · Score: 5, Funny

Go to

http://cbseresults.nic.in/class12/cbse12.htm

Enter 1200003

GRADE
301 ENGLISH CORE 087 A1
041 MATHEMATICS 095 A1
042 PHYSICS 097 A1
043 CHEMISTRY 095 A1
044 BIOLOGY 097 A1
500 WORK EXPERIENCE --- A2
502 PHY & HEALTH EDUCA --- A2
503 GENERAL STUDIES --- A2

Can anyone find another Indian that beats my
Indian?

--
San Diego Padres, 100 Park Blvd, San Diego CA 92101

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by

Re:Can your Indian beat my Indian? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:31 · Score: 0

Check out 1200647.
Re:Can your Indian beat my Indian? by jonastullus · 2004-05-23 22:35 · Score: 1

well, you seem to have found the UBER-indian!

let me just finish this perl-script and see whether there IS another one to beat yours *ggg*
Re:Can your Indian beat my Indian? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 04:01 · Score: 0

No, but I'm guessing that Kishanlal and Vandana Pasi are going to be rather upset that their child, Niharika Guatam, has failed Math, Physics, and Chemistry (#1200021)
Re:Can your Indian beat my Indian? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 07:13 · Score: 0

Actually this is not a great score for CBSC! Complete result is not avaiable and for sure there will be a lot of people with better scores!
Re:Can your Indian beat my Indian? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 14:20 · Score: 0

begin brag
Me :) 90,99,96,94,99 although the last one was Electronics
end brag

Re:This reminds me ... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:30 · Score: 0

I use a program call smash (http://smash.sourceforge.net/). It allows you to use a modem, internet provider, etc using a plugin method.

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by jonastullus · 2004-05-23 22:33 · Score: 1

talking about privacy, maybe you shouldn't have posted the COMPLETE details here on slashdot.
the possibility of just guessing roll numbers has been noted before in this thread but the author was kind enough not to post the personal data!!!

well, now these kids can be googled for, that's not so bad either ;-)

1226282 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:40 · Score: 0

Straight A1s

Education In India by nate+nice · 2004-05-23 22:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

I've talked to some Indian friends of mine in school about what school is like in India. It's a whole different game there. You basically have 3 options; engineering, business and "other". You don't want to end up in the other part. You must be an engineer (computer programmer et all) or business person and it all rides on your grades. I asked about people interested in art and other similar topics and going to college for something like that just is not an option. In fact they don't have those degress really.

They would talk about how it is not fun at all but is the way it is. Hell, being a teacher or professor is actually looked down upon, it's amazing.

My problems with this approach is it seems like people get very 1-dimensional educations and are not put into fields they are good at. Creativity is pushed aside and it's only about numbers. But then again, the "best" wil get through. I think as far as outsourcing goes, this has to be looked at. They really do have a lot of people, and I mean a lot, going for the type of software engineering and IT jobs many of us are looking for.

--
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."

Re:Education In India by tarunthegreat2 · 2004-05-23 22:54 · Score: 1

You probably spoke to what? 3 People? 4? Here we go again - there are 1 BILLION people in India. You think all of them work in software? And it's not like the English/Arts/History majors aren't looked down upon here in America. I went to UPENN, and over there the students that went to Wharton thought they were all the hot shit, gonna become investment bankers and all. And then came the dotcom bubble.
You ask any wall-streeter what life must be like for an arts major, and they'd give you the same answer as those Indians.

--
My Favourite Meme
Re:Education In India by upside · 2004-05-23 23:29 · Score: 1

It's the same in developed countries like Finland. We produce the largest number of university-educated engineers per population in the world, IIRC. Top executives are often engineers too. If you graduate with an arts degree you go straight on the dole.

The cause is the economization of society, and on a larger scale it's globalization. The government measures everything in terms of efficiency.

It's kind of sad because when you have a society going through changes such as economic growth and transformation towards an industrialized society (in the case of developing countries), awareness of societal implications is necessary to smooth out the process. Social and political development don't always match economic development.

--
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Re:Education In India by The+Cydonian · 2004-05-24 04:26 · Score: 1

Well, in net terms, India still churns out more Arts grads than science/engin grads; in fact, policymakers here often point to places like Ireland and keep telling us how we need to actually increase the percentage of tech grads. (60% of all fresh Irish grads are apparently sci/tech types, compared to the 25 - 30% that we have currently).
The reason why tech grads have more visibility (and hype) than arts grads is because the number of good engineering schools is more than the number of good Arts schools. So you tend to see more successful Indian techies than successful Indian lib arts types. Moreover, the job market for the past 10 years or so is uniquely tailored to techies, so Arts grads are definitely going to lose out.
Creativity... the response we got here was entirely different. Not to beat my own drum, but we had a Harvard prof visit us once to observe how classes are conducted over here. We were later told that he was very impressed by the quality of discussion in our class and by how the system generally puts a high value on verbal skills.
My take on it:- it takes a lot of people to be India. :-)

--
More than mere navel gazing.
Re:Education In India by shm · 2004-05-24 05:54 · Score: 1

Actually the choices are

1. Engineer
2. Doctor
3. Business
4. The civil services - i.e. live off taxpayers' money
4. None of the above

Interesting effect takes place in business oriented families - their kids try options 1 or 2 for a while, and then quit to run the business - usually pays better.
Re:Education In India by nate+nice · 2004-05-24 10:04 · Score: 1

Yeah, forgot about doctor. But what you have listed is exactally what they told me, and in that order.

--
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
Re:Education In India by nate+nice · 2004-05-24 10:12 · Score: 1

Yeah, only talked to a few, which is more than many engineering students can say, but they all had the same reply. They all come from different parts of India and from different types of families. They were shocked when I told them my sister goes to school for Photography. They thought it was cool that you could do that actually and that they wished there were options like that back home. But simply there is not. Of course I haven't gotten 989759327432 different Indian's opinion but seeing that the few I did talk to all have the same reply makes me assume it's at least a *little* correct.
They all told me about the tests and work they had to do and it all pointed in the same direction. The people who get "other" degrees are simply the ones who are not good at math. There is not much else for them at this point unless they are wealthy. Those that are not wealthy and get jobs doing technical things don't become wealthy either. So, we have thousands of people going to school for engineering or medical that know they won't make anything; how are Americans supposed to compete with that? All we can do is hope that our more complete education will allow us to think in more vast ways and this could make us worth it. The sad news for many engineering students is they don't pay attention to those topics and essentially end up 1-dimensional like an Indian graduate except the Indian can do the same thing for much less.

--
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."

This is inane bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:42 · Score: 0

This isn't newsworthy. SMS has existed for some time and people use the meesaging. END of STORY !

The signal : noise ratio on /. is getting to the point that it's barely worth coming to the site.

This needs to be addressed by someone who can filter out stuff which just doesn't matter.

That throughput is impressive by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-23 22:43 · Score: 0

MO (mobile originating) SMS maxes out at about 300 messages/hour.

SMPP using high bandwidth connection to SMSC can do up to 18k messages/hour so I suspect that the service was highly optimiese and SMSC "protected" to ensure no failover.

Re:That throughput is impressive by Kynde · 2004-05-23 22:55 · Score: 1

MO (mobile originating) SMS maxes out at about 300 messages/hour.

Really?
That's some 13 bytes of payload per second. I don't care what the framing is or what encryption layers there are, but to have a system such as that working in 200X is ... er ... I don't have words to describe that.

--
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
Re:That throughput is impressive by multipartmixed · 2004-05-24 02:24 · Score: 1

The OP is right, more or less.

He's talking about a single MO device, but obviously one without more-messages-to-send enabled (or the network doesn't support it).

There is a little more to a cellular network than just sending short messages. 300/hr (I've clocked it higher than that, BTW, but I can't remember the exact figure.. Somewhere around 500 IIRC) is about the upper bounds of how fast you can type on those friggin' keypads anyhow.

--

Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?

Re:Who is responsible for this murder/suicide?! by verittaas · 2004-05-23 22:45 · Score: 0

"Disclaimer: Neither NIC nor CBSE is responsible for any inadvertent error that may have crept in the results being published on NET. The results published on net are for immediate information to the examinees. These cannot be treated as original mark sheets. Original mark sheets have been issued by the Board separately."

Who is responsible then?
1) Herself
2) Her parents
3) God

I hope from now on they either provide results with 100% accuracy or not.

--
-- Pls separate your sig from your msg so that I know when to ignore it. :-D

Better do push instedad of pull! by patrixx · 2004-05-23 23:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

Better to have a field on the exam (or in a student directory service) where you can enter a cellphone number. When there is a score to report, the database atomatically sends an sms to that number.
Saves all the hazzle with a SMS-query interface.
We have a system like this in Sweden. Works perfect.

Suicide by SMS by andy1307 · 2004-05-23 23:35 · Score: 1

I heard a girl killed herself because she got an SMS saying she had failed. She had actually passed.

Good SMS Example by Thyamine · 2004-05-23 23:44 · Score: 1

It's nice to see an example of something useful with SMS instead of the normal bad-mouthing of the technology by the media who seem to think it's nothing more than a toy for school kids to play with and spend their parents money.

Oh wait, it's that too isn't it? =)

And I think that anyone who went to school understands the 'need to know' involved with testing like this. The older you get, the easier it is to forget all the stresses that we do put on kids in light of our own daily stress.

--
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria

Indian Film Style ... by asadsalm · 2004-05-23 23:55 · Score: 0

Maa Mein Pass Ho Gaya !

Re:Indian Film Style ... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 03:08 · Score: 0

The scene:

Old mother sitting by the gate waiting for her son to return. In midst of gloom and poverty, the Her shines with immaculate clothes and perfect grooming. He run to his mother and scream, "Ma! Mai pass ho gaya hu. First class first mai." (Mother, I have passed. With high distinction.)

Mother hugs the Hero joyfully and they run to the small temple inside their home.

(in Hindi)
Mother - God, you have listened to my prayers. Thanks for you blessing
Hero - No mother, it was you blessing
Mother - My son!

Hero bends and touches her feet.

Hero - OK mother, I have to run and meet my friends.

Hero run away while is mother is left screaming asking him to be back in time for dinner.

Then we see the hero heroine sing a wonderful tune.

(Jaane ja, dhoondta phir raha hu tumhe raat din, mai yaha say waha
Mujh ko aawaz do, kho gaye ho sanam, mai yaha, tu kaha)

...

Typical plot of a Hindi movie made in 70s

Re:My sister took the exam this year by arvindn · 2004-05-24 00:05 · Score: 1

because India's govt. makes a lot of noise about open source, and I was wondering if they are putting their money where their mouth is.

Deathly Mistakes by s0ny · 2004-05-24 00:29 · Score: 0, Redundant

According to the Herald Sun, one 17 year old student killed herself after the computers sent her the wrong sms telling her that'd she'd failed while she'd in fact passed.

Bad mistakes by s0ny · 2004-05-24 00:33 · Score: 3, Funny

According to the Herald Sun, one 17 year old student killed herself after the computers sent her the wrong sms telling her that'd she'd failed while she'd in fact past. (sorry a repost because my a href didnt work properly)

obviously by bsDaemon · 2004-05-24 01:20 · Score: 1

obviously, they mean for nerds of European decent.

Not just in India... by blorg · 2004-05-24 01:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

That's a lot of work for something that really doesn't matter that much.

You are either trolling, or are just unaware of how important final-year school exams can be, and how seriously they are taken. This is the case in many countries throughout the world; it's in no way specific to India or to developing nations.

Here in Ireland these exams are the most important you will ever do and count as a fairly pivotal point in your life. How many points you get in your final school exams determine what course you do and in what university, and from that what you do for your career. (There is a fixed number of places on each course, and students compete for entry on the basis of highest exam points.)

People get enormously concerned about the results; other posters have already pointed out the suicide of a girl who erroneously thought she had failed, and this is only one of thousands of exam-related suicides in India around this time of year.

So yes, I think students would like to know the results as soon as possible.

More mistakes... by blorg · 2004-05-24 01:45 · Score: 1

telling her that'd she'd failed while she'd in fact past. (sorry a repost because my a href didnt work properly)

Well you fixed your HREF but your spelling seems to suffered for it. The cosmic balance is restored ;-)

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by rpillala · 2004-05-24 01:55 · Score: 1

That second one is interesting since the father's name is pretty much Rabindranath Tagore. I wonder if it's fake. Ravi

--
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 02:07 · Score: 0

This is INDIA Dude, forget about privacy. What will you do even if you have this information. We in India are not branded as Inmates(Social Security) like you have in USA. You cant get a credit card with the info.

Some reasons by ZakMcCracken · 2004-05-24 02:16 · Score: 1

Part of the reason for high SMS cost is because the GSM network wasn't really meant to handle such traffic in the first place. SMS was built in as an extra feature, primarily for operator notification services (voice mail, overage warning...)

A GSM base station channelises the radio bandwidth into eight main voice channels and a few low-bandwidth signal channels. SMS is carried on top of one of the low-bandwidth signal channels, not in the main voice channels.

Therefore, even if there is ample bandwidth available on the voice channels, the SMS is constrained in a much smaller channel which can quickly be overloaded. And channel assignment is static: the only way to expand the channel is to install a new base station!

Add to that the fact that one SMS message provides 140 bytes of *reliable* traffic (i.e. 160 characters in 7-bit GSM encoding), but the real traffic can be much more because the reliability necessitates acknowledgments / retransmissions.

These are the technical reasons that I've heard of. Now phone companies could as well just be "money-grubbing rat bastards". :-)

In spite of all these inadequacies, SMS remains a killer even at this price for one simple reason: interoperability and reliability. It just plain works, across operators and handsets and network vendors.

India uses CDMA?! by Joseph+Vigneau · 2004-05-24 02:18 · Score: 1

Wow. I thought we only used CDMA here in the 'states. GSM is a growing market, but none of the GSM providers (the largest being AT&T/Cingular) has the coverage that the largest CDMA provider (Verizon) has. Do they use CDMA in India due to the size of the country?

Re:India uses CDMA?! by shm · 2004-05-24 05:32 · Score: 1

Yes, India uses CDMA:

1. In 94 or 95, Qualcomm persuaded MTNL in Delhi to trial IS-95 (the original CDMA "standard")

2. In 97, Bharti Telenet deployed CDMA against a basic services (ie landline) license under the guise of WiLL (Motorola speak for Wireless Local Loop). This went nowhere fast as Bharti didn't want to test the limits of their license legally - WLL at that time strictly meant NO mobility outside of the cell that the subscriber was supposed to located. If you know CDMA, you'll understand that technically this is not possible, due to soft and softer handoffs.

3. Reliance and Tata Telecom started deploying 3G-1X (IS-2000??) in late 2002. Reliance is a much more aggressive company than most, and unlike Bharti, pushed the limits of their license to take on the GSM operators. If you know Reliance, you'll understand that they pretty much have their way with anything; we're talking 800 pound gorilla on steroids here.

4. The regulatory authority buckled, and now CDMA is legally allowed to be mobile and therefore India has gone from having ONE operator for just landlines to places like Bangalore where there are at 7 networks (wireline and wireless) - BSNL (the incumbent former monopoly), Airtel, Spice, Hutch, Reliance, and Tata. Yes, that adds up to six, but BSNL runs two mobile networks - GSM and CDMA.

As for size determining CDMA or GSM, I don't think that's a factor - most people I know prefer GSM to CDMA - GSM roaming *works*, CDMA roaming is a joke. GSM lets you change your mobile when you feel like it - I've changed 4 mobiles in 5 years, without messing about with ESN numbers etc which would be a problem with CDMA. Be aware that the CDMA operators in India do not support mobiles which you did not buy from them. At least, I've been unable to find one willling to take a "foreign" ESN number into their network. It may be a policy problem, or just plain stupidity or ignorance.

While you're there, check out the exam content! by ErichTheRed · 2004-05-24 02:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

If these are end-of-high school exams, no wonder the Indians are taking all of the technical jobs! The amount of math and science knowledge they're expected to have is amazing compared to what it is here. Take a look at the New York regents exam content and compare it to the samples on the Indian website:

http://www.nysedregents.org/testing/hsregents.ht ml

When I have a kid, I'm turning it into an education robot...it will do nothing but study from pre-school onward. It's the only way for us to stay competitive.

Re:While you're there, check out the exam content! by taped2thedesk · 2004-05-24 03:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

If these are end-of-high school exams, no wonder the Indians are taking all of the technical jobs!
I checked out the sample exams (math and science) and they basically look like hybrids of the SAT/ACT and Advanced Placement tests.
You can't really compare them to state tests. State tests are written with a much lower standard in mind, because the purpose of state tests is to measure whether students are learning the basic parts of the state cirriculum. Most students (should?) score very high on these exams, assuming that they are written well. (This usually fails in practice, but that's a whole nother story...)
SAT/ACT and AP tests are specifically geared to rank the abilities/knowledge/whatever of students, and are designed to seperate them into more bins (usually with the largest distribution near the middle - think bell curve. The scores are generally adjusted to make sure the results fit this distribution).
State tests usually just seperate students into two bins, passing and failing, because that's really the only purpose. If you have too many failing students, then the school loses money because there MUST be something wrong with the schools/teachers/district. At least that's the theory behind the Leave Every Child Behind act.
The amount of math and science knowledge they're expected to have is amazing compared to what it is here.
Keep in mind they aren't expected to know everything on those exams... again, this plays into the different goals of state exams vs. college exams. If state tests were SATs, every student is, in theory, supposed to get a 1600. The test is written so that there isn't anything hard.
AP/SAT/ACT are usually written so that 1/3 of the questions are pretty easy, 1/3 are normal, and 1/3 are hard. They don't expect many people to get a 1600, because if they did, the test wouldn't tell colleges anything. They need to differentate between students.
State exams are (mostly) important on a collective level, and usually it's the lower part of the distribution that matters. The exams are written to reflect this.
Re:While you're there, check out the exam content! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 05:52 · Score: 0

Forget the CBSE, take a look at the JEE papers,
for admission to the IITs.

http://www.brilliant-tutorials.com/iitjeesolutio ns /iitjeemainsolutions.shtml
Re:While you're there, check out the exam content! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 10:41 · Score: 0

If you're referring to these sample papers, I don't see what's so amazing about the exam material. It seems to be basic high-school stuff (taught in India): basic algebra and geometry in Maths, and the foundations of phychembio for science. I agree though that the standard of Maths in India is generally much higher than the US high-school system.

Good business for cell phones by balubk · 2004-05-24 02:38 · Score: 1

I can hear a lot of cell phones being smashed. Will be a good business for cell phone manufacturers.

O/T GSM 03.42 by multipartmixed · 2004-05-24 02:39 · Score: 1

Working in the industry myself, I'm trying to find phones which work with North American GSM frequencies and supports GSM 03.42 (or whatever its called nowadays) Huffman Compression for interoperability testing.

Anybody know of any?

--

Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?

This is just like the GRE by bobbabemagnet · 2004-05-24 03:04 · Score: 2, Interesting

The GRE is the standard test for admission to graduate school. There is a lot of pressure surrounding this test, as well. But rather than having to wait to get our results, we know exactly what we got at the very end for two of the three sections (the third section is writing, and it takes a few weeks before we find out).

It seems to me that this method is way better than having to distribute based on some centralized service.

Also, competition for graduate school is just as bad as in India. I applied to two schools only to find out that over 3000 had applied to a school that was only accepting 100. If you don't have the numbers, they won't even look at the application.

some already have it by drewness · 2004-05-24 03:10 · Score: 1

Some colleges already have this. Ohio State certainly does. We have a "View Grades" thing we can look at any time on the osu.edu webpage. You can also look at your grades for any other quarter you attended. As soon as the profs enter your grade it shows up. I've had grades appear within a day of the final, and all grades have to be turned in within a week or less of finals.

security issues? by spectasaurus · 2004-05-24 03:17 · Score: 1

I'm not sure this site has the best security out there. Enter a 7 digit number (for example, starts with 1 and ends with 7, hint, hint) to see someone elses marks. Not good.

100 Million SMS messages a day by kihbord · 2004-05-24 03:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

I live in a country where sending SMS messages is part of the daily life. In the Philippines, SMS traffic averages more than 20 a day. At more than 5 million GSM phone users, SMS traffic amounts to about 100 million SMS messages per day.

Indeed, by The+Cydonian · 2004-05-24 03:45 · Score: 1

we still have to remember that teenage girls, particularly in the nation's south, have one of the highest suicide rates for any demographic in this part of the world.

Sad, seriously sad.

--
More than mere navel gazing.

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by The+Cydonian · 2004-05-24 03:49 · Score: 1

Trust me, as an Indian, I probably should be more paranoid about details like this than you international folk. Consider this:- a google search for my surname, for instance, results exactly 20 hits. 18 of them are about me.

It's probably not an issue for surnames mentioned here (Malayali and North Indian respectively), but for ethnicities such as mine, I believe surname privacy is a very serious issue, and it's time gov.in does something about securing access.

--
More than mere navel gazing.

Re:My sister took the exam this year by The+Cydonian · 2004-05-24 03:54 · Score: 1

Actually, the impression I got was that it was only "liberal" governments such as MP's and Kerala's (for some reason, we seem to have concentrated our OSS firepower in Mallu-land) that was mouthing niceties at OSS; ap.gov.in certainly was more pro-MS than OSS, at least under Chandrababu Naidu was at the helm.

Don't get me wrong, I think the (I)IIT's and all research institutes are deeply into OSS, but governmental organisations (NIC, ERNET, ICAR, CMC etc).... mmay be not.

--
More than mere navel gazing.

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by The+Cydonian · 2004-05-24 04:02 · Score: 1

'Thakur' is a caste name, a feudal caste of landowners in northern India. In places such as Bihar, trouble between old money castes such as this and the (so-called) lower castes often lead to rioting and massacres; the outlawed "private army", the Ranbir Sena, is often seen as a ragtag band of armed Thakurs and Bhumihars desperate to cling to political and societal power that was once theirs.

I probably over evil-ised Thakurs :-), which certainly wasn't my intention, I have a lot of Thakur friends, but just to clarify that it certainly is not fake. OTOH, Rabindranath's surname is, indeed, an Anglicised version of the Indic 'Thakur'. Ironic that you should believe it's the opposite.

--
More than mere navel gazing.

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by rpillala · 2004-05-24 04:16 · Score: 1

Oh I'm named for Rabindranath Tagore myself I just though it was interesting that the father's first and last name were so close to the famous man. If I saw someone's father listed as Francis S. Key in the US I'd have the same suspicion.

Ravi

--
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."

Re:My sister took the exam this year by arvindn · 2004-05-24 04:34 · Score: 1

The Mallu connection is clear enough: Stallman's "GNU/communist manifesto" (not to be taken literally of course) appeals to them a lot. The majority of OSS adoption in Kerala is for philosophical than for pragmatic reasons. The Tamil Nadu govt. was also muddying its feet; I heard that TNEB switched (don't know if that meant servers or desktops) and some more stories too. From the central govt. side, there used to be a lot of news a year back (like http://atulchitnis.net/writings/oss-govt.php) but I haven't heard anything lately. And then of course there's the Abdul Kalam factor. Don't know if he can make any difference. On an unrelated note, a couple (perhaps more) of large banks are switching employees (yup, desktops) wholesale to linux this year.

fuck india by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 05:39 · Score: 0

fo sho.

Re:Ok. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 05:40 · Score: 0

Holy _ARYAN_ trinity actually.....

Re:This reminds me ... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 05:51 · Score: 0

yep, most operators offer a email to sms gateway support, in india too....

Agreed, with some caveats by IncohereD · 2004-05-24 06:35 · Score: 1

After a while most math classes get to the point where answer tends to be 1, 0, or sqrt(2), so no, you don't really need a calculator.

On the other hand, to do most physics or engineering problems, you definitely need a calculator. Although usually they want you to arrange the problem symbolically first before plugging in the numbers, so you can get almost full marks even if you mess up the calculation.

On my last midterm of University (Telecom Engineering) I forgot my calculator, and had to do factorials and long division by hand. And it still wasn't that hard...probably because I hadn't relied on it in the past.

Re:Agreed, with some caveats by Obfiscator · 2004-05-24 08:08 · Score: 1

On the other hand, to do most physics or engineering problems, you definitely need a calculator. Although usually they want you to arrange the problem symbolically first before plugging in the numbers, so you can get almost full marks even if you mess up the calculation.

Agreed, for most things. One of my physics classes back in college was large enough that the prof gave multiple choice exams, with no partial credit. He also didn't allow calculators. That would've been no problem, except that some of the problems involved solving the quadratic equation...and the answers differed in the third significant digit. That made it more of a challenge (to the point that the average on the first exam was 15%).

--
"Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." -Indiana Jones

throughput isn't important, it's the design by IncohereD · 2004-05-24 06:43 · Score: 1

First off, if they're sending full results, they're probably close to the maximum message size.

Secondly, as everyone else has pointed out, there's huge overhead in all the many, many layers that the message passes through. And this is actually much WORSE - percentage wise - with small payloads.

I still agree that the throughput isn't that amazing. BUT, the fact that the system didn't crash still is.

As most cell providers are in business to make money, they're not going to provide for the maximum possible worst-case usage at every single link in the chain. Check out erlang.com for some info on blocking probability and resource assignment. So if there's all of a sudden a huge spike in traffic that wasn't anticipated when the system was last upgraded, there should be some blockages. I'd expect more in the centres that handle the message switching than in actual over the air bandwidth.

Also, there is probably only once or twice a year where the school system has to deal with this sort of think, and its the first time they're doing it this way. I think the most impressive part of the whole thing is that their database stood up to it. Electronic registration/grade checking systems are still pretty shit, in my experience with a few Canadian Universities. I even had the extreme displeasure of trying to interface a program to one of the beasts *shudder*.

Nitpicking by vijaya_chandra · 2004-05-24 07:01 · Score: 1

that's a girl for your information

I would have been more interested by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 07:25 · Score: 1, Interesting

If the study was on how many SMS messages were sent DURING the testing- I keep hearing about how loose Asians are with cheating, and this would prove it.

Sun's hiring by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 07:27 · Score: 0

Not really beating yours, but this guy will get a work at Sun's tech support:

Roll No: 1200137
Name: D HARSH JAIN
Mother's Name: REKHA JAIN
Father's Name: PANKAJ S JAIN

301 ENGLISH CORE 097 A1
041 MATHEMATICS 093 A1
042 PHYSICS 081 A1
043 CHEMISTRY 095 A1
044 BIOLOGY 088 A1
500 WORK EXPERIENCE --- B1
502 PHY & HEALTH EDUCA --- A1
503 GENERAL STUDIES --- C1

CBSE Options by Greenisloved · 2004-05-24 09:39 · Score: 1

CBSE {Central board of secondary education} is a type of educationl system catering to indians all over india unlike state schools.

The Reason why the gal might have felt bad abt her marks is becuz of the

Extreme compettition to get admission to colleges.Exams conducted by state schools are the basis for admission into a college in the state.They dont care abt the score that a CBSE guy achieves. only Birla Institute of Technology takes CBSE high school results for admission , althought it takes scores for state schools as well.

That s why CBSE guys find it hard to get admission into local and national colleges.They are usually brighter , {most of the IIT guys are CBSE guys} and so failure in CBSE stream is too much of a pressure .A guy who gets 60% in State schools gets admission easier {ofcourse there is an entrance exam into consideration which focusses state curricvulum} and CBSE guys are having a totally different curriculum which is more practical oriented and relatively less to stuuf thing onto mind.

Inshort CBSE guys in INdia are

brighter than state school guys , Lesser number of colleges for them , extreme compettition

and obviously , the gal seems to have strained a bit too much and less emotional support from parents ..

--
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way

Re:Ok. by Frizzle+Fry · 2004-05-24 12:08 · Score: 1

Why is this insightful? The OP said we are going to hear racist jokes that involve outsourcing. mphase says the jokes we hear aren't going to be racist. Are the mods illiterate, or does mphase have psychic that the mods know about and I don't? If he hasn't heard the jokes yet, how can he know that they aren't going to be racist?

You may think that someone is going to post an impolite response to this, but I actually can insightfully tell you that the response won't be impolite.

--
I'd rather be lucky than good.

Urgency and Privacy of results by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 12:42 · Score: 0

Eighteen years ago when I cleared the Maharashtra State Higher Secondary Certificate examinations, I
remember collecting my mark-sheet and rushing off to the college of my choice. In about 6 hours, by noon, all available seats to that rather sought after college was full - except for a few that were filled by quotas. I barely squeaked in even though I had opted to go for a bachelors in physics. The most sought after careers were engineering and medicine. This is at the 10+2 level. This is where students make career choices influenced heavily by parents, neighbours, teachers etc. So it is a big deal. Getting results on time is a matter of life and death.

Privacy is not a concern. All results are published by rank. My American wife often argues that she favours that system because a rank is a reward and that is lacking in the American system.

Re:Don't they protect the privacy of their student by InterruptDescriptorT · 2004-05-24 13:34 · Score: 1

I understand that one of them was an impressive rhyming orator, but he had a bit of a lisp. His name? Tupac Thakur. :-)

--
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)

Vulnerability in their system + proof by fingerfucker · 2004-05-24 20:28 · Score: 1

1. Go to http://cbseresults.nic.in/.
2. Click on for example "Class XII Exam Results 2004".
3. Feel free to view the JavaScript source code and you will see that a valid "roll number" is at least 7 digits long (and also seems like max. 10 digits long) AND contains characters ['0'..'9'] AND starts with "12" or "22" or "32" or "62" or "42".
4. Enter a valid roll number, e.g. 1235321.
5. ???
6. Profit! (See people's names, grades, mothers' names, fathers' names, ...)

This is outright infuriating!!!! (And thank goodness I'm not from India so I don't have to deal with this very unfortunate problem.)

I could theoretically write an automated script to brute-force the entire database and submit any possible combination of a "roll number" and collect so much data that the heads of their government officials would be spinning if it gets publicized......

Exactly the same over here by clockpenalty · 2004-05-24 20:44 · Score: 1

Your SSCE examination results are a simple barrier between a chance at life and an existence without hope.

The only recourse for those who fail is to become Islamic clerics, Evangelists, or scam artists- among other things.

I'm talking about Nigeria, but I'm sure it's the same all over West Africa, the competition in secondary school is absolutely overwhelming, and the examinations are incredibly difficult, far above the standard of education in most schools.

This means that attending certain secondary schools almost guarantees failure.

By the way, something similar has been done in Nigeria for the J.A.M.B examinations.

--
Shinsengumi de gozaru

One word ... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-24 22:25 · Score: 0

Paragraphs.

/s/grades/slashdot story/ by sorbits · 2004-05-27 03:26 · Score: 1

Honestly, what does 24 hours matter in getting your grades?

Why wait for information when you can get it now? And probably it's easier for most to get them by SMS than look at some board at their school or whatever means they use to communicate the grades.

Re:/s/grades/slashdot story/ by nacturation · 2004-05-27 07:15 · Score: 1

Why wait for information when you can get it now? And probably it's easier for most to get them by SMS than look at some board at their school or whatever means they use to communicate the grades.

Of course it is easier, and better to get information now. That much is quite obvious, which makes you wonder why it made the front page of Slashdot given that no new technology is involved.

--
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.

Slashdot Mirror

Secondary Exam Results In India Mean An SMS Flood

244 comments