As solutions go, it is certainly radical: in order to thwart a mass epidemic of cheating by students taking their school leaving exams, Algeria shut down the internet for up to three hours a day this week – for everyone.
[... The public telephone operator Algérie Telecom] published a timetable of the shutdown schedule: three one-hour blackouts, coinciding with the first hour of each baccalaureate exam, on Wednesday, and two each on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
[...] Cheating among the more than 700,000 students who take Algeria's bac was so widespread in 2016 that the education ministry declared several exams void and using new question papers.
[...] Algeria is not, however, the only country to take such radical steps during exam season: Syria, Iraq, Mauritania, Uzbekistan and several Indian states reportedly block access to the internet. Ethiopia shuts down social media.
Algeria blocks internet to prevent students cheating during exams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @03:15AM (4 children)
Everyone wants to sit next to the smart kid so they can look at their exam paper...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @03:54AM (2 children)
So have a local cache to avoid hitting Télécom Algérie's network.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @01:13PM (1 child)
A local cache of Wikipedia? Looks like something over 12 GB, compressed -- but it might be pretty slow to search the compressed version? In that case you need uncompressed at something north of 10 TB.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
But that is just a fraction of the web... A local cache of Internet Archive Wayback Machine -- http://archive.org/web/petabox.php [archive.org] ...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 24 2018, @01:21PM
Uncompressed is only 10 TB if you include all edit histories. You do blow past 10 TB if you want the non-text content:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:15AM
...and answer the really hard question with "I don't know, either."
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Sunday June 24 2018, @03:29AM (1 child)
In all likelihood these shutdowns are just practice for dealing with civil unrest or even just political opposition.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:11AM
I can't help but believe this same paradigm is the underlying driver of Win10... the foundations are now being laid to facilitate updating any WIN10 system to a brick should someone deem it to be so.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:19AM
This does seem a bit excessive, also as pointed out it seems to happen in countries that tend to pull the off switch for the internet when the need arises -- even tho most nations could or would probably do that if needed. Wouldn't it just be easier to control the students, shield the room or put a jammer (depending on how it is organized this could be an issue to since it would require to many machines) there instead of turning the internet on and off for the entire country throughout the entire day for three hours. Just imagine that happening in a country where the internet is now a normal part of business, companies would go apeshit -- not to mention how the population would react to not getting their daily dosage of Google and the Facebook.
Perhaps turning off the internet is just the easiest or simplest solution to the problem ...
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:21AM (1 child)
We can do that?
.
Can we do that now?
(No, SN is *not* social media..more like anti-social media, if anything)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:31AM
I don't know.
What's that social media you talk about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday June 24 2018, @03:09PM
Otherwise known as texting. And texting isn't Internet, it's phone. The article doesn't say they blocked the texting, possibly students could text. And get an answer from someone smart, or someone in another Country where there's Internet. Except there were metal detectors. Believe me, when we need to shut down that Internet we won't forget about texting!!!!