All the exam papers are hand corrected and manually totaled. During the grading process, the graders tend to give marks which total to an even number. For example, say the total up until the previous question is 23. Then if the next question is for 6 marks, the grader might assign 5 marks for that answer to get the total so far to 28. Mental arithmetic of even numbers is easier and this saves the grader from going over two passes to obtain the total at the end. All of these several hundred thousand papers are manually graded between the end of exams in April and the declaration of results in June.

The graders only work with a roll number and school number so they have no information about the identity of the student when grading. This has nothing to do with the caste system as some people here are suggesting. The identity of the student is matched with the roll number *after* the papers are graded.

How many times has this been discussed already?
https://www.google.com/search?source=ig&rlz=&q=site%3Aslashdot.org+tech+bubble&oq=site%3Aslashdot.org+tech+bubble

The discussion on Slashdot has been in decline for some time now.

I'm from the region. FWIW that post had nothing to do with religion and Shiv Sena are a chauvinistic bunch of goons in the guise of politicians who are against everything and everyone who is not a native of their state irrespective of religion. They pander to the lowest common denominator and frequently vandalize all around the state and force city shutdowns with political clout and blatant violence. Unfortunately even the Central government has been responsible for similar arrests and attempts to curb free speech and expression in the recent past.

Good for the consumers and bad for competition, namely Google.

What did you do when you had to do stuff which was boring but you knew that it had to be done? Following from that question, did you run into periods of lack of motivation where you didn't get ideas or solutions easily? If so, how did you resolve these?

It will be interesting to see how network security is handled on automobiles as we'll soon be in an age of constantly connected automobiles. How long until someone remotely hacks into a car and takes control?

Look out of the window at the cars passing by. One in ten will be fidgeting with their smartphones with one or no hands on the wheel. Not only does this behavior increase accidents, it contributes to slowing flow and causes jams. And then we shift the onus of safety from us onto the vehicle and go buy a big SUV to be 'safe'.

In racing terms, DNF stands for 'Did Not Finish'.

We've experienced this with the iPhone 4. I've had the second generation iPhone which is the primary phone and the iPhone 4 which is on WiFi on all days except on the weekend. iPhone 2 with unlimited data plan didn't go over 200 Mb per month for two and a half years but the iPhone 4 transferred 65 Mb **when the phone was on WiFi**. And the data transfers were at odd hours. And this was with the phone on it's default settings, no apps and all notifications turned off. Sure enough we talked to AT&T about this who just told us to complain to Apple. We went ahead and filed a complaint with FCC.

A variation of the example and the above quote are from Andrew Tanenbaum's book on Computer Networks.

Oh yes. And the headline next day would be that he supports the terrorists.

Has there been an election or study where the voter has *one* vote which can be exercised either for *or* against a candidate? This would be a useful option when faced with the a bunch of candidates who are all unspectacular.

The current spec Formula 1 engines are 2.4 liter V8 engines which have a typical life of about 2500 km on the race track. The efficiency of the engines is much better than that of a Prius but it burns about 150 kg of race fuel per race, not including qualifying and practice sessions. The engine rules are set to change for 2013 though to employ technology which can be transferred to road cars. Another energy saving measure introduced last year was KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) which stored energy generated from braking which could be used as addition bhp during the race.

Unfortunately this is not limited to the US. American pop culture reaches more parts of the world through the media and the internet than any other culture. And somehow children all over the world take what they see happening in America to be cool and something they should follow. For example, reading and having an interest in classical music is considered nerdy and uncool in most parts of urban India.