Catching Exam Cheats With a Spectrum Analyzer

angry tapir writes "Police in Taiwan have used a set of spectrum analyzers to catch at least three people suspected of cheating on an exam by monitoring them for mobile phone signals. Officers used three FSH4 analyzers specially configured by the German manufacturer Rohde & Schwarz to monitor an exam in south Taiwan for prospective government workers."

Re:Expensive cheats

[h4rr4r]

Cell Jammers are normally illegal.

A far better idea is to make a test center room that is a faraday cage. Now you are blocking everything, not just cell phones.

Re:Exams in other cultures

[Anonymous Coward]

All very interesting, but what's your point?

By bringing it up, I assume you feel that the eastern philosophy of cheating on tests is superior to the west's philosophy of meritocracy?

Re:Good!

[SanityInAnarchy]

A lot of classes don't teach for understanding. They may try it but if you memorize it enough you can fake understanding by simply reciting everything.

It's true, you have to do a bit more work yourself, but a lot of classes cover things which can be understood in an integrated way. It's just that it sometimes takes a lot of random fact-memorizing to get to that point. You may think you understand integral calculus because you get the concepts, but you don't really understand it until you've been forced to memorize a dozen or so techniques of integration. You need to have them memorized and practiced because, if you don't, no formula sheet is going to help you identify which one is relevant to the given formula.

Now, whether classes do a good job of measuring understanding is another thing, and it could certainly be improved. But I've never let a bad class or a bad instructor get in the way of learning something I need to know.

Perhaps if failing didn't mean we students would have to change majors or drop out with nothing to show for our $50k in debt things might change.

So change majors, or don't fail. I don't really see what this has to do with the school, though. It sucks, but speaking from experience, it's far better than lowering standards.

I speak from experience. I wasn't really ready for college, and managed to fail all but one class my freshman year. I dropped out, and my parents made it very clear: They'd support me if I was getting an education, but if I wasn't, they wouldn't. I got a job and moved out.

A few years supporting myself in the Real World has given me a lot of perspective.

So when my last job evaporated (entire company went under, crushed by the economy), I collected unemployment for awhile, then decided I may as well be doing something useful while I collect unemployment, so I went to a local community college. I took a full term (trimester), participated in a competition and a club, had plenty of time to relax, and got straight A's.

Then I petitioned to get back into my original four-year university. It's much harder to get back if you've been dismissed for academic reasons than to get in the first time, but my awesome time at the community college probably said something. My first semester back, I was in four clubs, including a martial art (Hapkido). I moved from white belt to orange belt, and got straight A's.

That was last spring.

I had an internship last summer (still technically a freshman!), and last semester (also still technically a freshman!), I did pretty much all of the same things, plus I was a TA for a course I'd taken the semester before. Only two bad things happened: I got too busy for Hapkido for awhile, and I got one A-. The other three courses, I got A's. That brings me from a 0.6 GPA when I first came back to above 3.0.

I am loving every minute of it. I'm actually understanding stuff. I'm actually putting the work in. I'm being challenged, and I'm rising to the challenge. (I'm not really learning humility particularly well, at least not tonight...) I can actually appreciate what I'm being taught -- I can cut through the bullshit, I can do the tedious grunt work (and quickly!), and I can get at the heart of what I'm supposed to be learning, and it's beautiful.

If I had been allowed to pass with how badly I did? I'd have sat on my ass and played video games. I'd have coasted through as long as I could manage, then end up at some cushy sysadmin job, at least as long as those last. In fact, that's more or less the trajectory I was on throughout high school, but high school let me get away with it -- which is why I was so fucked up my first year of college.

As it is, I'm seriously considering grad school. Even if I don't, I'm setting myself up to have pretty much any tech job I want when I graduate -- and even the bad classes are fun while I'm here. It's not easy to describe how dramatically different my life is because

Re:Expensive cheats

[CaseyRM13]

Because they're competing with you for a job you both want? Doesn't need to be personal. Plenty of reasons to try and ruin someone.

Re:Exams in other cultures

[DNS-and-BIND]

superiority of Western culture? Where, exactly, did I say that? If you're witch-hunting, you'll probably find a witch. The only mention of superiority is in your own mind. I suppose actually living in the East for so many years has a different view. BTW, Mr. Cultural Blinders, the topic in this thread is tests for government employment so I'm not sure that T.A. experience really applies. Anti-Western hate seems appropriate for an academic, however.