Braindumps (was Re: [lpi-discuss] how about LPIC-2 ?)

[Ross E. Brunson]

Evan Leibovitch wrote:

> I'm actually surprised to hear of instances where people even mention 
> using a braindump to an instructor; heck, I'm surprised to know that 
> people who buy braindumps are even in class. In the instances I've 
> heard of people using dumps, they were considered shortcuts which 
> bypassed the need for conventional training rather than augmented it.

Heh, that was always a problem in class for me at the Training Camp, but 
it was handled every time.

>
> It's important to note that there is a situation of relative ethics 
> going on here, and embarrassment is not necessarily a useful 
> punishment for someone who sees braindumps as a matter of "playing the 
> game" rather than cheating. This is especially true in some Asian 
> countries, where certification is not seen as a demonstration of 
> anything beyond your ability to obtain it, but it's certainly not 
> exclusive to that region. In these cases the onus is on the 
> certification body to protect the value of the cert, but don't expect 
> much co-operation or sympathy from the candidates who use dumps.

Right, it's part of the deal, you try to make a difference whereever you 
can, and sometimes it's a small difference, one or two people a class, 
but you make that connection and it's worth it.

>
> What is most ironic to me is that very few "genuine" brain dumps 
> really are. Many are just bunches of sample questions or dumps of old 
> exams. (If you thought you were buying a real current brain dump but 
> didn't get that, who are you going to complain to?) Unfortunately, 
> dumps that are genuine (verified by exam takers) spread quicker than 
> new Linux ISOs.

Dear God, don't I know it, some of my classroom question banks ended up 
in the Test Kings a few years ago, much to my dismay, and I tried 
desperately to get them taken out, but "Hans" from Pakistan who runs 
Test King basically told me to blow.

>
> I think that Sandy once said that if there was a critical mass of 
> somewhere just above 3,000 items that were regularly rotated, dumps 
> wouldn't be worthwhile. VUE and Prometric have the ability to create 
> exams on the fly picking items from the pool (of course keeping 
> minimum numbers of items per subject), but that costs a little money 
> and of course you need that big pool of items. The thinking is that 
> someone prepared to do (and capable of) memorization of many thousands 
> of items, probably *does* have at least a minimal grasp of the subject 
> matter :-).

If only we could have them redirect that energy to actually learning the 
topic...

Ross

>
> - Evan
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