Think Utme is hard? Then u haven't heard of the gaokao

On average about 9.2 million Chinese high-school students take nine hours of tests that will determine where they go to university. Taxis will be ordered to be silent near testing centers and construction crews will be sent home. To prevent cheating via listening devices, schools in the northeast would have installed metal detectors and warned female students that even bras with metal clips will be confiscated.

China’s national college entrance exam, or the gaokao, is criticized for how much stress it causes. Nervous breakdowns and suicides aren’t uncommon—students have been in cram classes, often for more than 10 hours straight over the past year. But it’s even more stressful for students from rural parts of the country who need to score especially high to get into one of the top universities. China’s best schools like Peking University and Tsinghua in Beijing, or Fudan University in Shanghai, for example, give preference to students who have resident status in those cities and take the exam locally.

Taken across three consecutive days at the beginning of June, the gaokao covers three mandatory subjects—Chinese,Mathematics,and a foreign language, usually English—and three other topics drawn from a pool of electives: Physics, Chemistry and Biology for science track students,and History, Geography and Political Education for those on the humanities track.
Yes, you have to decide what track you're on before taking the gaokao, because its outcome will, quite literally, determine your fate: There are minimum gaokao levels required to attend each of China’s 2000 or so colleges,and only about two-thirds as many available admissions slots as test-takers.
Sliding into the lower third of marks means, at a minimum,losing a year and going through the whole horrible experience of cramming all over again. At worst, it means dropping the dream of college and taking a low-paying, dead-end manufacturing or service job, or turning to a junior college to learn basic vocational skills.
But for those who do well, the gaokao is life-altering. Being among the 8.5 percent of test-takers who score high enough to qualify for one of China’s yiben , or tier-one universities,means reasonable assurance of eventual high-paying white-collar employment,there by securing a stable financial future for generations above and below alike.
For the less than half a per cent that score well enough to qualify for “China’s Ivy League,”the schools dubbed the “C9” — led by Peking University and Tsinghua University(often called the “Harvard” and “Yale” of China, though you might just as well say that Harvard and Yale are the Beida and Tsinghua of America) — they’re virtually guaranteed a prime spot in government or a state-owned enterprise upon graduation. And that,in turn, offers a path not just to security, but to real wealth…by methods both legit and illicit.
All of this means that,for poor households,the 30 percent of China’s population living on less than $2 a day, the gaokao is like a lottery ticket — but one whose rewards come not by chance,but through blood, sweat,tears and toil. For them, gaokao doesn’t translate as “high exam,” it translates as “test you must pass so your life won’t suck.” It’s considered China's great equalizer, as can be seen from the motivational slogan posted in many high school classrooms:“Without gaokao, how can you beat the children of the rich?”
So students study for gaokao their entire senior year, learning nothing new and merely cramming on knowledge that's necessary for the test.
“For the whole year, your sole goal, ten hours a day, is to prepare for those three days of testing,” says Bai. “You’ll go to class,and your teachers will tell you to cross out whole sections of textbook content because it's not tested in gaokao. You don’t even learn that content.It’s not considered important.”
In the weeks leading up to the exam, students sometimes go without food or sleep; there are frequent reports of students using IVs for nutrition so they don’t have to stop cramming. Anything that might impair performances simply removed from reality: This year, a boy’s parents where in a car accident,killing his mother and critically injuring his father — and his relatives and teachers conspired to keep the news from him for nearly two weeks, until after he’d completed the gaokao. News reports also told of a girl in Changsha in Hunan province, whose mother was hit by a car an hour before the test; police and witnesses urged her to go to the exam, and she ended up not visiting her in the hospital until the next day. Both parents,and nota few online commentators, thought she did the right thing.
Here are a couple of questions.
Logic
List ‘pi’ up to as many decimal points as you can. [20 marks]
History
Celebrate any dynasty from the following (Han/Song/Ming), then explain how much better things are today. [60 marks]
Mathematics
Boss Li has four factories making electronic parts. He smokes 40 cigarettes a day but usually gifts a box of 400 Chunghwas to his local inspector when they meet every month to discuss safety standards. His wife has a taste for expensive French clothes and Boss Li has two daughters who intend to study overseas.
His workers are unhappy, however, over Corporate’s decision to send a dispute resolution ‘baseball team’ to the family of a worker needing compensation for the arms she lost in a mechanical accident last year.
With a strike looming, the local environment bureau is also asking awkward questions about why Boss Li didn’t consult them before dumping toxins at a local beauty spot and his favorite mistress is demanding a new Jeep Cherokee. How big is Boss Li’s stability maintenance fee this year? [10 marks]
Sociology:
A 70-year-old grandpa in a rural village would like to donate his house to a local developer, who has good friendship with the municipal boss, county vice-magistrate, and a regent at a university who is a Partycadre. How far away, in kilometers, from the city center can the grandpa expect his new home to be located? [20 marks]

China blocks encrypted version of Wikipedia ahead of June 4 Tiananmen anniversary

The Chinese government has effectively blocked the encrypted version of Wikipedia, cutting off easy access to the free online encyclopedia via its alternative HTTPS address which has been supported since October 2011. China’s move comes ahead of the anniversary of the sensitive and highly controversial Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese. Users could previously circumvent the Chinese government’s ban of hundreds of articles on the HTTP version of Wikipedia with the HTTPS web address, but according to Chinese web monitoring site GreatFire, the government has put an end to this starting May 31. The Great Firewall (as China’s censorship mechanism is commonly referred to) started banning access to the encrypted version of Wikipedia through port blocking – by blocking port 443 where HTTPS connections are typically established, users can only visit port 80 where HTTP connections are on. “The HTTPS version of Wikipedia is blocked while the HTTP version is not. This method forces users in China to use the unencrypted HTTP version, which is subject to keyword filtering,” says GreatFire in a report. The Great Firewall has taken nearly a year and a half to respond to the existence of Wikipedia’s encrypted version, which is likely because the site uses HTTP by default, GreatFire says. It is urging Wikipedia to now switch the default to HTTPS to force the Chinese government to have to make a decision on whether to fully block the site or leave Wikipedia alone. “Based on the existing evidence, it’s more likely that GFW would leave Wikipedia alone,” says the company, which closely monitors China’s censorship activity and other Internet issues in the country, citing examples of Gmail and Github when the government also ultimately left the sites alone. Earlier this year, social coding site Github had been blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Headline image via Thinkstock

Tweeters beware, employers check your social networks before employing

Employers check potential workers social networks

Little did Ashley Payne know that the festive photo of her holding both a pint of beer and a glass of red wine would lead to the loss of her high school teaching job.
The 24-year-old posted the image to her Facebook profile and after a parent complained, school officials told Payne she'd have to choose between resigning and suspension, according to IOL News. She resigned.
If those school officials were hiring new teachers and found a candidate with a similar photo on Facebook or another social media site, it's most likely that person wouldn't even get an interview.
Rejecting young people from jobs because of what they post on social media has become commonplace. According to a new report by On Device Research, one in ten people from the ages of 16 to 34 have been turned down for a new job because of photos or comments on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social networking sites.
"If getting a job wasn't hard enough in this tough economic climate, young people are getting rejected from employment because of their social media profiles and they are not concerned about it," On Device Research's marketing manager Sarah Quinn said in a statement.
While 10 percent of young people are knowingly rejected from jobs because of their social media profiles, 66 percent of young people don't seem to care that these profiles may affect their career prospects. In fact, the majority of young people cater their social media presence to friends rather than potential employers, according to On Device Research.
"Better education of the impact of social media is needed, to ensure young people across the world are not making it even harder for themselves to get on the career ladder," Quinn said.
Several U.S. states have created laws to protect employees from being fired because of what they post on social media. In January, six states officially made it illegal for employers to ask their workers for passwords to their social media accounts. It's unclear how many employers have actually demanded access to workers' online accounts, but some cases have surfaced publicly and inspired lively debate over the past year. In one instance last year, a teacher's aide in Michigan was suspended after refusing to provide access to her Facebook account following complaints over a picture she posted.
As for Payne, even though she ultimately resigned, she has since sued the school to get her job back or receive monetary damages, according to IOL News.
On Device Research surveyed 17,657 people from the ages of 16 to 34 in China, India, Nigeria, Brazil, the U.S., and U.K. to get its data about social media and employment.

Gold platted Iphone 5: worlds most expensive phone

From the British designer Stuart Hughes, who gave to the world an iPad with an embedded real T-Rex bone, now comes the most expensive phone in the world - a ten million pound sterling (about 15 million USD) iPhone 5 Black Diamond.

Custom-ordered by an unnamed Chinese businessman, the handset is dipped in 24 karat gold, a real black diamond has replaced the home key, and 600 "regular" diamonds have been encrusted in the chassis, 53 of which went to adorn the Apple logo itself. The screen protection has been replaced with sapphire glass, which is much tougher than Gorilla Glass, and it took the designer nine weeks to hand-make the unique phone.

That Chinese customer already owned the black diamond itself, so he's not paying list price, but if we were the Communist Party department in charge with corruption checks there, this phone extravagance would top the weekly report.

Site distributes pirated iOS apps, you don't need a jailbreak

Ios and their closed system, well a new way of installing pirated iOS apps on an iPhone or iPad without being jailbroken has just appeared! It turns out that a Chinese pirate site, called 7659, has found a way to do just that.

These smart fellows have achieved this by exploiting Apple's own bulk enterprise licensing tools. The tools are usually used by companies to distribute apps to their employees more easily, but it looks like it has fallen into the wrong hands. Utilizing the tools, the pirates are now offering paid apps for free through their site. The "service" is only available in China, but according to some reports, it's possible to take advantage of it if you use a proxy server.

Apparently, they "believe" that using the iTunes platform can prove to be a bit difficult for Chinese users, which is why they are offering a new way of getting applications. According to them, the percentage of jailbroken phones in China since the service's launch has dropped from 60% to around 30%, which, however, doesn't really matter that much, considering that those non-jailbroken users are still getting pirated content. It would certainly be interesting to see how Apple reacts, a new update just because of them or they'll just let sleeping dogs lie?

Here's the full message by site:

"First of all, we would like to thank all Apple users around the world and your support for Kuaiyong.

Statistics have shown that a significant amount of Apple users are Chinese based. However, the fact is that in China, a large number of Apple users are not very familiar with the iTunes system and how to effectively manage it.

In order for Chinese Apple fans to download applications securely, Kuaiyong developed its own method of giving users access to thousands of free apps without having to jailbreak their devices. Kuaiyong offers detailed descriptions of apps, free app download trial, IOS device management and visual and audio file backup system. IOS system backup and recovery features will also be released in the very near future.

Our goal has always been about bringing Chinese Apple users with quick, convenient and pleasant IOS experience. Since the introduce of Kuaiyong, the proportion of jailbreak in China has declined dramatically from 60% to around 30%. Kuaiyong will hold on to this goal in the future and we would like to see more support for Apple as well as Kuaiyong."