Re: To cheat, or not to cheat?

Frisbee® wrote:
Apologies for mis-understanding your intentions. Usually, when someone posts something along the lines that you have, they are considering using br@indumps. For what it's worth, we get a lot of those kinds of posts, and usually I don't feel the need to take the time to even reply, at least not at length, but yours was intelligently composed, I thought, so it was worth my time to reply.

accepted ;)

allegedly(!) both testking and transcender somehow manage to compile practice tests that mirror the actual exams literally word-for-word on many questions. they often match both the questions and answers even to the extent of using the exact same names of the companies, servers, databases, etc used in the case studies! how could they possibly do that unless they used brain dumps or similar tactics that contravened the NDAs?

Obviously I can't vouch for all of Trancender's exams, since there's a lot of exams out there, and obviously even more study exams. All I can pass on is general consensus, and that consensus is that Trancender's are not br@in dumps. If you have other first-hand experience, then it would place this in doubt. I'm just surprised that a company with the brand name and presence of Trancenders would do something like that. They are an American-based company, and as such, would be much more accessible to Microsoft's legal teams than makers of exam simulations that are overseas.

suprised? i was knocked off my feet!

the thing is, the NDA only says its illegal to disclose what's in the exam, not that it's illegal for a company to trawl the web for brain dump type data and compile a practice test/Qs from it (as far as i know), or illegal to _use_ such practice tests to prepare.

i think this could even be taken as far as saying that the dedicated brain dump web sites are not illegal either (but i'm no legal expert)! surely the only lucidly illegal persons are those whom disclose what was in the exam in the first instance (eg disclosing to a brain dump web site after sitting an exam). if they _were_ illegal, i suggest we'd have heard by now of microsoft taking these brain dump site people to court, wouldn't we?

this (if true) would also go some way to explain why microsoft are conspicuously avoiding defining exactly what is legal and what isn't, or which material providers are illegal/legal, or why they're 'recommending' some providers over others. think about it ...if microsoft were to tell everyone that it's not actually illegal to use a brain dump (or practice tests that appear to be based on them), nobody would think twice about using them and the quality of the cert would be substantially reduced.

i also think that people 'in the know', eg those who actually work for microsoft, etc all know that the above is true and purposely avoid the contentious issue in fear of letting people know the truth, or upset their employer/peers.

of course, this is all speculation and hard to prove either way. and so it's left to continue unchallenged...

Sometimes I, and other MCNGP may be a bit over-zealous when we see these kinds of posts. Most of us do indeed try to give people the benefit of the doubt, some of us can be like pit bulls.

can you tell me a bit about this MCNGP thing? does it stand for "Mean Certified News Group Poster" as described in MCP Magazine article <http://www.mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=396>, which describes you guys and gals as follows:

"[...] a group of trolls claiming to hold the MCNGP (Mean Certified News Group Poster) certification have established their own little fiefdom. Woe to the individual who posts to that newsgroup unaware of the evils that lurk there -you will be flamed."

reading that, you'd be forgiven for thinking MCNGP is a new microsoft certification, yet i can't find any reference to it on microsoft.com!

mcngp.co.uk uses the "®" (or "(R)") character to claim a Registered Trade Mark is held (eg MCNGP®). do you know who owns this? or is it also a part of the general attempt at humour that seems to underly the group? is it all meant to be taken with humour, or are you MCNGPs honestly expecting people to take you seriously in these newsgroups?

i've visited the mcngp.com and mcngp.co.uk web sites, but suprisingly, the site's faq does not explain what the letters stand for (i found it to be empty).

i think it's quite shameful of microsoft to avoid such a poignant subject.

Again, after having talked to various MS employees myself, I better understand their position in this. In some ways, their hands are tied. It's not that they're doing nothing about it, they are. Unfortunately, it takes time, and clever legal strategies.

can you ellaborate further? exactly who (or what dept) did you talk to about it and what is this action you say they're doing?

By the way, there are no MVP's in certification, only Microsoft technologies and applications to my knowledge.

forgive me, for i don't understand what it is you're trying to say here.

I think your original post asked for an MVP to reply. I was merely commenting that their are no MVP's in certification, only in technologies like VB, Excel, etc. I mean, you might still value a reply from an MVP higher (like Mr. Bittman) but an MVP does not necessarily have any experience in certification. Joseph does, but that's not what his MVP is in. At the same time, I got my first certification (from MS, anyway) when Joseph was eleven years old, and I was a very late starter in certification.

interesting. so is it pretty meaningless to put "MVP" in your usenet name or signature w/out qualifying it w/ the subject it's for, eg "MVP-Excel"?

thank you for an interesting and useful conversation :)

regards,
mark
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