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I somehow decided I needed to cheat to pass a certain exam because I was basically crap at memorizing stuff. So I used an analogue wireless headphone, an induct
by yholio 8y ago
I somehow decided I needed to cheat to pass a certain exam because I was basically crap at memorizing stuff. So I used an analogue wireless headphone, an induction loop around my neck and a mobile phone. Since I lacked an accomplice to dictate, I read aloud the hundreds of pages and recorded myself, careful to preserve and properly serialize things like complex formulas.
This was before the era of iPods and SDCard players, so I had my mobile phone in a setup where I would call back another phone connected to my Pentium MMX 233MHz at home, that ran a sort of audio directory that would playback a certain lecture recording I would select from the menu, using DTMF tones.
I had a small keyboard sewn into my sleeve that connected to the customized mobile phone via a DB9 plug and then to the numeric keyboard, allowing DTMF codes to be sent by gently and invisibly moving my fingers. The whole setup was hideous and had it's own dedicated jacket, with wires, phone, keyboard, audio amplifier, neckloop, the earphone... a complete cyborg for academic fraud.
Back on the PC side, I wrote a C++ application from scratch that would capture audio via the soundcard using Windows Wave API, decode the DTMF pulses using a couple of IIR filters then navigate the menu and playback the required file to the mobile phone connected to the soundcard. The C++ program and menu system was scripted using an .INI file that defined the structure with links to various ADPCM-compressed .wav files that represented the menu headings or the leaf content itself (a good structure was necessary to quickly access the correct lecture after receiving the exam subjects).
Work-wise, it was a lot more difficult then putting the effort in memorizing the stuff, but I rejected memorisation on principle, that's not what an university should be about. The whole thing turned out to be a massive learning project, but I obviously could not speak about it at interviews. It's the first time I mention it to anybody.
I used the setup for two exams that I aced, was never caught but it was nerve-wracking to use in close proximity to a teacher.
- grenoire 8y agoDamn, man. You're hired.
- steelframe 8y agoIn the workplace, no amount of technical ability can compensate for a lack of ethics.
- effie 8y agoCheating on an exam does not always mean one has 'lack of ethics'. It may mean the opposite - say, "my parents aren't paying out of their veins for me to waste time on this nonsense."
- softawre 8y agoIt's interesting to me that everyone here seems hellbent on ethics yet at the same time all of the big companies that we work for are some of the most unethical beasts in modern society.
- peteradio 8y agoI'm probably going to regret asking but how long did this take you? It is quite incredible.
- yholio 8y agoA few weeks in total, but it was a labor of love so it was quite fun. The hard part was reading all the lectures out loud, it took about a week during which my family, probably hearing my from my room, was impressed of my new found and never since matched learning zeal.
- nscalf 8y agoI would 100% talk about this in interviews depending on the interviewer. I can think of a couple interviews I had in SF that would probably be appreciative of this level of effort because you principally reject memorization.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoAdmitting to significant academic fraud during a job interview is a very, very bad idea. Furthermore, I would question the ethics and morality of any company that said "Wow, you solved an incredibly tough problem in order to commit fraud. Boy, are we the place for you!"
- Aeolun 8y agoThey wouldn’t actually say that of course. They would just think it.
- twtw 8y agoEh, probably some places (e.g. Uber) would love that kind of thing.
- mrleinad 8y agoHey, Kevin Mitnick still gets hired today, doesn't he?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wolco 8y agoAs a public speaker and author mostly. He doesn't get access to state secrets and hasn't been employed by any other company. He wouldn't get a call back from McDonalds if he applied.
- legohead 8y agoHe's hired as a pen tester and gains access to companies, their secrets, etc. I have a sysadmin friend whose company hired him to pentest, and they kept in contact.
- jv22222 8y agoA scriptwriter could make a movie out of that!
- copperx 8y agoTo work as a (commercial) movie, the stakes would have to be phenomenally high. I can't imagine the scene without the viewers saying "he did all that ... just to pass a test he objected to?".
- amp108 8y agoOne thing universities should teach is efficient problem solving. If it was more work to cheat than to memorize, I'd say you might want to re-evaluate whether "not memorizing things" is a principle you should cling so dogmatically to.
- jey 8y agoI'm sure he learned much more useful stuff by coding up that monstrosity, and in the real world he can just google to look up those formulas he didn't memorize. The fully elaborated version of the underlying principle is probably something like: "I have much better ways to spend my time than on memorizing formulas that I could easily look up later".
- twtw 8y agoIf an individual's philosophy is that you can always google stuff so you don't need to know anything, I don't see why that person should waste time in school.
- StavrosK 8y agoThere's more to learning than memorization.
- twtw 8y agoThere's more to exams than memorization too, and cheating because you don't like memorization is childish. If the exams really test only memorization, drop the class.
- max76 8y agoSome classes are on the critical path to graduation. I wouldn't suggest delaying an entire degree because one or two classes have bad exams. Cheating to avoid memorization is childish, but let's not forget that students are usually children, or still in the process of maturing into adults.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoThat's creative AF. IMO if you can get around a system that's as good as going through it. It usually takes a certain kind of ingenuity to be able to do, so I can't be mad at it.
- scottshapiro 8y agoHow did the teacher not notice the headphones and question you about it during the exams?
- ttoinou 8y agoPersonally for theses kind of things I used to use one earphone in my left hand, wearing a long sleeve shirt and laying my head over my left hand, covering the whole operation :)
- yholio 8y agoThe headphone was a very small analogue receiver that had it's own micro-battery, an inductor and amplifier - all about 4mm wide and 8mm long. You would place it deep inside the ear channel and it was invisible even to a person standing right next to you. The signal was induced by a coil you would wear around you neck and you would pipe raw audio into it. Similar systems are even now on sale: https://www.olx.ro/oferta/sistem-de-copiat-casca-invizibila-ceas-samsung-gear-foto-si-afisaj-IDbDVgN.html#250d9e18f4 https://www.olx.ro/oferta/sistem-de-copiat-casca-invizibila-...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sizzle 8y agoThis is one of the most interesting comments I've read in a while, thanks for sharing!
- jackconnor 8y agoThis is incredible, but seems more time consuming than studying. Cheers to you!
- zzo38computer 8y agoIf it is exam about computer programming, then I might say, that is very good and I will not disqualify you for cheating in that way that you have managed that (although still the answers must be given correctly, like any exam).
- newintellectual 8y agoIt might be a good test of a company to see if they were impressed and amused enough by this story to hire you because of it, rather than rejecting because of it.
- bpye 8y agoI was always tempted to modify a calculator to add Bluetooth, then I could stream over whatever data I wanted from a phone somewhere without any suspicion. Graphic calculators make this trivial as they often have a serial port, I just never got around to building it. I guess I didn't want to cheat that badly
- red75prime 8y agoThat's quite impressive setup. I've used programmable calculator with text storage capability for my chemistry exam. I was correct that I will not need chemistry knowledge in all my life.
- xiphias2 8y agoI was also cheating on my chemistry exam, but as your life is over yet I wouldn't be so sure. As I'm getting older it's getting more and more important for me to understand the biochemical processes that are going on (or going wrong) in my body.
- yesenadam 8y agoYou rejected ethical behaviour 'on principle', you even seem proud of that. Have you kept doing that in life? Do you feel like an impostor, presumably with your degree that you didn't think you could acquire without cheating, or couldn't be bothered? A surprising number of the replies to your comment also seem to think cheating like that at university is perfectly fine.
- brianpgordon 8y agoIt was undoubtedly unethical behavior. But it's like... well it's like the story of Toshihide Iguchi, who accumulated over a billion dollars of trading losses and hid them successfully for 12 years. Sure you throw the guy in prison, but you have to hand it to him that what he managed to do is pretty damn impressive. After his release, finance CCOs might even want to hire him to audit their traders. You can get off your high horse about not being able to acquire your degree without cheating, too. I never once cheated at any point in college, but if I had spent more time working on sick electronics projects and less time memorizing the years of significant 15th century battles, I'd be more qualified technically, not less. The ethics of it are problematic as I've said, but you seem to be going farther and implying something about his ability as well.
- quadcore 8y agoMy humble opinion. University is about learning (not, for example, status). Learning is something strictly personal. There is nothing fundamentally universally wrong to cheat at an exam beside the fact you may be harming yourself. Now since we need a little order for various secondary reasons, we promoted exam cheating to illegal and that's ok. We need order. But there is nothing someone should feel guilt for imho, assuming the person knows she may be harming herself.
- feanaro 8y agoI agree with this. I would further suggest that the modern conflation of two orthogonal functions (teaching and certification) in universities is rather misguided. These would be better served by two separate types of institution.
- dahart 8y agoThat is unbelievable! How did you index the audio? What did you have to do to access them during a test, and how long did it take? Did you find that you had accidentally memorized some of the lectures after having read them aloud? > I rejected memorisation on principle, that's not what an university should be about. The lengths you went to to avoid doing it the easy way are incredible. You’re not alone, but I have to say I think this idea - that university should not involve memorization - is a common misconception. If you think about it, a good education requires memorization. What we’re learning in all fields in large amounts - even in math - is some degree of human history, and some degree of human notation and convention, neither of which can be derived by logic. Think about language, becoming a fluent speaker, especially the first time, is almost entirely learn by rote.
- abecedarius 8y agoIf only the prof had said "Good news, everyone! I’ve decided to make this an open-book test."
- unimpressive 8y agoAmazing as this tale is, folks for anyone else who is sure that memorization is too hard don't do this. The real tip is: Spaced repetition. Load up Anki or Mnemosyne and stick the info in there. "Craig prepared for Jeopardy! by studying the online archive of past questions maintained on the J! Archive website. Using data-mining and text-clustering, he identified the topics most likely to occur in game questions,[9] then used the spaced repetition program Anki for memorization and tested himself using his own program.[10][11][12][13][14] Craig played quiz bowl as a student at both Virginia Tech and the University of Delaware.[15] Before his Jeopardy appearances, he played numerous Jeopardy scrimmage matches against his friends with quiz bowl experience.[14]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Craig_(Jeopardy!_contestant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Craig_(Jeopardy!_contest...
- rlonn 8y agoIf you'd told me this in an interview, I'd have hired you on the spot. The biggest issue with cheating, IMO, is that it can indicate laziness, but in your case it definitely doesn't - the story is great and says you're a highly creative person who gets things done and doesn't have to follow norms.
- 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y agoCrafty. Well done. Similar (kind of) trick depicted in 1965 Russian comedy movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDn174Mf9PY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDn174Mf9PY
- foldr 8y ago>I somehow decided I needed to cheat to pass a certain exam because I was basically crap at memorizing stuff. ... > but I rejected memorisation on principle