The State Department's Foreign Service Exam

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: GLIGOR1 () aol com
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 15:39:39 -0400 (EDT)
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lynn () icann org, vcerf () mci net, lhl () cs wisc edu, kmk7 () cornell edu,
fuchs () mellon org, Dennis.Jennings () ucd ie
Subject: The State Department's Foreign Service Exam

Dear Dave,

Just for a lark, I took the exam today to see what it was all about.  Unlike
other standardized tests given in the USA, this one was free of charge and
is only given once a year.  (Although, exceptionally, it was offered twice
in the last two years because the State Department had a serious staff
shortage.)

There are 4 parts -- but this e-mail will only talk about the first part
which contains 90 questions on general information -- all multiple choice --
such as naming Tunisia's two neighboring countries.  Each question had 4
possible answers.

There were several questions on computers and the Internet though which made
me chuckle.

The first question was really tough.  They wanted to know what else you
needed to successfully login to your computer with besides your username.
Maybe a password?  Whaddya think?  <grin>

The second question was right up there with the first.  They wanted to know
what the full name of the symbol was that goes between the username and the
domain name in an e-mail address.

The third question demanded to know what the acronym ISP meant.  One of the
choices was Internet Senior Professional!  <chuckle>  That would be you, I
guess.  Although, I've always preferred when people refer to you (and
several select others) as "Mandarin."

They also had a challenging question asking us to identify the one item from
the list that was not a device for storing data.  The choices were Zip
Drive, Disk Drive, Hard Drive, and CPU.  Oh boy!

The next question asked us if we knew what "html" was.

Finally, the last question wanted to know if we understood the concept of
"bookmarking" a website.

So that was it -- 6 of 90 questions about high technology and internet --
and we wonder why the State Department is so far behind in technology
implementation!

Cheers,
---"G"



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