I hope that I'm mistaken ...

  • Thread starter slippymississippi
  • Start date
S

slippymississippi

I went to take the SCJP test Friday. I sat down, entered my test
number, and immediately was redirected to a survey with a fifteen
minute clock. Annoying, maybe, but innocuous enough. I finished up
the survey and hit submit, preparing to see the exam start. Sure
enough, the exam clock began ticking in the right hand corner of the
screen, but instead of seeing an exam question, I was presented with
several pages of information requesting that I allow Sun to distribute
my email address to other parties.

WTH! I have asked other people who took the exam if they experienced
the same problem, and nobody remembers noticing the exam clock ticking
away in the corner of the screen. I distinctly remember the incredible
chagrin when I looked up and saw a 1:59:59 ticking away while Sun asked
me if they could open up the spam pipeline to my email address, because
I'm one of those test takers who use every available second to double
check all my answers.

Please, someone, tell me that I'm mistaken.
 
R

Rhino

I went to take the SCJP test Friday. I sat down, entered my test
number, and immediately was redirected to a survey with a fifteen
minute clock. Annoying, maybe, but innocuous enough. I finished up
the survey and hit submit, preparing to see the exam start. Sure
enough, the exam clock began ticking in the right hand corner of the
screen, but instead of seeing an exam question, I was presented with
several pages of information requesting that I allow Sun to distribute
my email address to other parties.

WTH! I have asked other people who took the exam if they experienced
the same problem, and nobody remembers noticing the exam clock ticking
away in the corner of the screen. I distinctly remember the incredible
chagrin when I looked up and saw a 1:59:59 ticking away while Sun asked
me if they could open up the spam pipeline to my email address, because
I'm one of those test takers who use every available second to double
check all my answers.

Please, someone, tell me that I'm mistaken.
I have no idea if they actually took exam time while asking you for
permission to send you marketing propaganda - I've never taken any of their
certification exams - but, if they did, I agree that is a horrible misuse of
exam time.

On the other hand, it wouldn't have taken me very long at all to say "NO" to
their requests if it had been me encountering those requests; I certainly
wouldn't have spent several minutes reading the pages carefully and
considering their requests. I would have figured out what these requests
were within 10 seconds, immediately looked for the "no" checkbox, clicked on
the next page button, and moved on to the test. In other words, if you
wasted more than a few seconds on this during your exam period, you were
partially responsible for wasting your own time.

I think you're doing the right thing by verifying that exam time was used by
this shameless marketing on Sun's part and you're doing it at the right
time: AFTER the exam is over. I hope that if people confirm that they had
the same experience you take the bull by the horns and send an indignant
letter or email to Sun and encourage everyone else to do the same.
Complaining doesn't always work but it certainly does _sometimes_.

Several years back, the biggest cable company in this area tried some
"negative option marketing": in other words, they sent you a notice with
your bill saying that they were upgrading you to a new, more expensive cable
package automatically unless you contacted them to say that you weren't
interested. Believe me, that caused a _heck_ of a stir and the public outcry
made the news with several stories over several days. The cable company
quickly backed away from that policy and the outcry got the attention of
every other company in the area: I haven't heard of anyone trying that
little dodge since.

If there's an outcry over test time being used to plug their products, Sun
is likely to stop pretty quickly. On the other hand, if people just shrug
and express indifference, you might find that Sun takes that as permission
to do it again and consume even more test time on future occasions.

--

Your post has reminded me of a joke about tests so I'm going to tell it,
just for the heck of it.

A guy goes into a final exam in an examination room with dozens of fellow
students. They all know that the exam has 100 true or false questions on it.
He turns the exam over, goes visibly pale, and immediately turns the exam
face down again and soon starts twiddling his thumbs. The guy supervising
the exam sees all this happen and immediately understands what is going on:
the student hadn't studied for the exam and, as soon as he saw the
questions, knew he didn't have a chance so he started twiddling just to kill
time until he could leave.

Twenty minutes later, the supervisor looks over and sees the student turn
the paper over and start looking at the questions again. He sees a
despondent look cross the student's face, then a "Eureka!" look as the
student reaches into his pocket and pulls out a coin. The student
immediately begins flipping the coin and marking true or false to each
question depending on how the coin lands. The supervisor smirks to himself
at the obvious desperation strategy being used by the student. The student
soon finishes the exam, puts his coin back in his pocket and turns the paper
face down, this time with a smile on his face.

Eventually, the supervisor looks back at the student again and sees him
flipping the coin again but this time the supervisor is baffled. Finally,
the exam period ends and the student turns in his paper. The supervisor,
overwhelmed by curiousity asks for an explanation: "I understand why you
took out the coin the first time: you were desperate to find answers to all
of the questions. But why did you take it out a second time?"

The student replies, "Well, I had to check my answers didn't I?"
 
S

slippymississippi

On the other hand, it wouldn't have taken me very long at all to say "NO" to
their requests if it had been me encountering those requests; I certainly
wouldn't have spent several minutes reading the pages carefully and
considering their requests. I would have figured out what these requests
were within 10 seconds, immediately looked for the "no" checkbox, clicked on
the next page button, and moved on to the test.

I agree, but I was so shocked that I had to read the information just
to verify what I was seeing: one section was a request for Sun to send
information on other educational products to my email address (clicked
Yes and submit), another section was a request for Sun to distribute my
email address to other parties so that they could send me information
on other educational products (in the absence of a "HELL NO" button, I
simply clicked no and submit).

I was fairly outraged, but other people I know who have taken the exam
did not notice it. I think it was probably because they just clicked
"Yes" and "Submit" to the questions without reading. What's really
outrageous is that at the point where you're beginning the exam, Sun
has already asked you those exact same questions when you registered
and paid for the exam.
 
C

Chris Uppal

I think it was probably because they just clicked
"Yes" and "Submit" to the questions without reading.

Well, you know the advice for anyone taking an exam:
** always read the question **

But yes, I agree that this is exceptionally slimy. Taking advantage of
people's nerves and anxiety to gain permissions that they would normally not
even consider giving is reaching towards the bottom of the barrel.

Do Sun actually administer this process ? I know they are not perfect, but
this seems to go beyond that and into deliberate scumbaggery.

-- chris
 
S

slippymississippi

The test is administered by a Prometric subcontractor, but it's a Sun
application. I finally found another person in my office who noticed
that the exam clock was ticking when these questions popped up.

I would have expected better of Sun. I'm curious to see if the same
pages pop up during the SCWCD and SCBCD exam.
 
O

Oliver Wong

The test is administered by a Prometric subcontractor, but it's a Sun
application. I finally found another person in my office who noticed
that the exam clock was ticking when these questions popped up.

I would have expected better of Sun. I'm curious to see if the same
pages pop up during the SCWCD and SCBCD exam.

It'd be amusing (for me, but maybe not for the people taking the exam)
if clicking "yes" was required to actually run the software which
administrates the exam (thus implying that clicking "no" results in an
instant grade of zero.)

- Oliver
 
T

Thomas Hawtin

The test is administered by a Prometric subcontractor, but it's a Sun
application. I finally found another person in my office who noticed
that the exam clock was ticking when these questions popped up.

*me too*

I was actually doing the SCJP 5.0 beta which had a five hour time limit,
which wasn't so bad. Or at least wouldn't have been if I didn't start
wanting to use the little boys room from just after the start.

Top tip: Don't choose an assessment centre with test rooms directly
beneath light industrial machinery.

Tom Hawtin
 
R

Rhino

I agree, but I was so shocked that I had to read the information just
to verify what I was seeing: one section was a request for Sun to send
information on other educational products to my email address (clicked
Yes and submit), another section was a request for Sun to distribute my
email address to other parties so that they could send me information
on other educational products (in the absence of a "HELL NO" button, I
simply clicked no and submit).

I was fairly outraged, but other people I know who have taken the exam
did not notice it. I think it was probably because they just clicked
"Yes" and "Submit" to the questions without reading.

Perhaps I'm just getting too cynical but I suspect that is exactly what they
had in mind all along....
What's really
outrageous is that at the point where you're beginning the exam, Sun
has already asked you those exact same questions when you registered
and paid for the exam.
Now THAT makes the whole thing truly offensive! If you'd already answered
those questions, you should not have been asked them all again and the time
certainly should have been taken out of the time you had to do the exam.
That's just WRONG.

[Aside: I wonder what happens if the answers you gave during registration
differ from the answers you gave during the test? I'll bet they only pay
attention to the answers that are more favourable for them, i.e. the ones
that give you permission to spam them, even if your later response was "no
thanks". But, like I said, maybe I'm too cynical.]

I hope you can generate a groundswell of negative reactions and tell off Sun
and the testing company very firmly. I'd certainly be inclined to do that if
they'd pulled a stunt like that during a test I took.
 
O

Oliver Wong

Rhino said:
[Aside: I wonder what happens if the answers you gave during registration
differ from the answers you gave during the test? I'll bet they only pay
attention to the answers that are more favourable for them, i.e. the ones
that give you permission to spam them, even if your later response was "no
thanks". But, like I said, maybe I'm too cynical.]

As a former telemarketer, I have no doubt that they would use the "most
favourable" answer. We had a cyclic queue. I'd take someone from the front
of the queue, ask them if they were interested in the service, and if they
said "no", this would be interpreted as "no, for now" and they would be put
at the end of the queue, to be queried again some time in the future. Given
the size of the queue, how fast we would get through calls, and how many
people were working with me, it would usually be on the order of a couple of
years before we called them again, though.

The client had to specifically request to be removed from our calling
list for us to do so (and apparently we were required by law to remove them
from the queue if they requested), but unless they explicitly said this, we
would just add them to the back of the queue and ask them again some time
later.

- Oliver
 

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