Computer Science Engineering, Without Internet Access
The fact that the engineering course is in much demand makes colleges treat students like shit. They conveniently forget that we are the customers paying them money. Here’s an example of how ridiculous things are when trying to access the Internet at college.
Me - Marc
LA - Lab Assistant
HOD - Head of the CSE Department
L - Lecturer
…
1st Year
Me: Hey, do you have Internet access here?
L: Yes, in the CSE block.
(In the first year we were put in the EEE block and then the ECE block.)
Me: So can I go there?
L: No.
Me: Why not?
L: You have classes. Go in the lunch break.
Me: When do I eat lunch then?
L: Don’t act smart.
2nd Year
Me: Hey I’d like to access the Internet.
LA: Did you ask the HOD?
Me: M’am, I need to access the Internet.
HOD: Why?
Me: To look up some stuff.
HOD: Did you pass all your monthly tests?
Me: No.
HOD: First you concentrate on your studies.
3rd Year
Me: I need to access the Internet.
LA: Internet connection is down. BSNL guys will come to fix it.
Me: BSNL?! So you mean no Internet for the rest of this year?
LA: Don’t worry. We called them up. They will come in a few days.
Later…
Me: I want to use the Internet.
LA: You must use it only for college related work.
Me: Fine. Wait… why is Gmail blocked?! Orkut and Yahoo Mail, understandable…
LA: You should do only college related work. Students are looking at forwards.
Me: Right, I’ll just use a proxy.
4th Year
Me: I’m going to use the Internet.
LA: All labs are full. Lab classes are going on.
…
The sad part is that every student pays for Internet access in the annual tuition fee. Even when we do have some computers available in the lab and time to use the Internet, everyone immediately loads up Orkut or email forwards with hundreds of pictures choking up the 1 Mbps connection completely. Some bastards even stream videos and put on song downloads while I sit there waiting for Gmail to load.
March 1st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
It’s a sad state of affairs. But how many people in your class or mine make productive use of Internet ? Everytime we are given net access, I see my classmates search for “Nayanthara Hot Pics” or something on those lines. Some people are decent, but watch Youtube videos even if it means they have to sit and wait for the whole period for the video to stream. Most other people are either on Orkut or wasting time reading forwards from gurlsgroups on their mail. Very few people make productive use of Internet.
I think the trouble is there are too many engineering colleges. Every tom, dick and harry who has no idea what engineering is ends up joining Engg. Then they come and do stuff like this. Spoils things for the others.
March 1st, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Marc, also, you haven’t tried using Internet form the EEE labs
I gave up on it.
March 1st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Ha ha! Its good to see that students from your college can actually watch streaming videos man! In my college, the Net Centre has a 512kbps connection shared over 19 computers! You can do nothing there actually! A one minute video at youtube will take atleast 15 mins to load fully. No wonder, most of the days, when I peep into my net centre, I see that guys use my college browsing centre only to play solitaire and minesweeper…
So, I guess, your college is far better. Our college also collects Rs. 550 per year! :O
March 1st, 2008 at 8:22 pm
dude, weren’t you the one who put torrents for download and left the lab?
March 1st, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Karthik, the lab was deserted when they banned Orkut but then everyone found out about proxies so it got crowded again.
And Internet in your lab is just the connection from our lab with added latency.
Praveen, we have a 1 Mbps connection shared over 60 computers plus the other departments and the library. Some days Gmail takes 5 minutes to load.
Suren, that was back when no one was using the lab.
March 1st, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Next time ques which is possible to be asked ,
1.do you have cell phone?
2.Get letter from HOD
3.Get the approval sign from principal & so on.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:54 am
a matter to be appreciated….all hail AIHT…especially the Cse dpt of AIHT..!!
March 2nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I don’t get it. The real problem is your classmates’ misuse of the connection, that’s what slows it down. However, they shouldn’t block sites. If the students are so irresponsible, and if the student body is not willing to self-regulate then so be it.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
I would say this a one of the best post of marc.
@ praveen
We pay Rs.1000 dude.
@ marc
Dude, why u din tell about the new net center which doesn’t even have proper power supply. They told it is specially for students doing project. may be for 2011-12 passout set.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:25 pm
@George, i do accept your point of students misusing the opportunity given. The onething students do is sign-in orkut acc. But just becoz one or two does they shouldn’t be blocking sites na.
@Hari, you know about our coll very well, then why asking a ques like that about the vetti lab man. But i doubt whether that will happen even in 2011-12.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
@George,
Totally agree. Buggers lack discipline
@Rachel,
If only one or two people are using Orkut (And I think that’s not the case), why should the rest be bothered even if it is blocked ?
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Ha Ha ha………..
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Marc, you have access to the net at home! You can’t go for 8 hours without checking your mail??
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Yeah i use to feel guilty for downloading in the lab when others cant even load Google. But i didn’t had internet those days and use to download anti-virus updates. That too i download once in a week. But the troublesome are those who download songs and softwares everyday :gren:
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
George, what if everyone used the connection ‘properly’? How would it become faster?
Anusha, that’s 17 hours.
Gowtham, antivirus updates are okay. But I don’t know what smiley you expected with ‘gren’.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Marc, 8 hours later you’re back at home.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
You are assuming I check for new mail in the morning. I don’t. I sleep at midnight and when I turn my PC on again it is 17 hours later.
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Wow! Your college has internet! Amazing! Mine doesn’t even have a working connection!!!
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
And 1 mbps! Wow! My college used to have a 512 **for the entire college** in 2nd year
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Still, one ought to be able to live without the net for just a little while.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Arun M, we know your college is much better than ours so drop your act of trying to pass off yours as worse. PSP used to stay back in college just to use the net. And we had 512 in the 2nd year too.
Anusha, you realise how hypocritical that sounds? Anyway, I live without the net for 17 hours a day.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Anusha, sure we can live without the net for a few hours per day. But then, why do they have a column called “Internet Charges” on the fees bill? Why do they charge for non-existent internet? We did have an internet center, (and I think we still do) but we are not encouraged to use it. On the few occasions that I tried, the guy would tell me to go away because some other class was scheduled to take place there. And on the extremely few occasions that I actually did get to sit in front of a computer there, I found that the guy who was in-charge was striking out entries in the visitor’s comments book.
It all boils down to narrow-mindedness on the part of the authorities. Like today I was “requested” by a guy to not stand around outside class and go back to my class 10 seconds after the klaxon sounding end of the interval had sounded. 10 seconds. Heavens.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:26 pm
uh… hmm….. oh yes!!!
my coll does hv net lab…. i guess i went there once in my first yr… they said “u are mech.. so come after 4.. u can work till 6..” i wud hv shown mech attitude and raised a mid finger… but some sense prevailed in me… an so am not yet suspended!!!!!!!
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:48 pm
@Sundar,
10 seconds and when you are in final year. Jeez, these people have no respect.
I say, Introduce Wi-fi in college. That way atleast people won’t watch inappropriate stuff on the college computer (people like privacy) and infect it with virus and stuff. Oh, wait, that won’t solve the speed problems though.
On the brighter side, we could play CS in the lunch interval or something. (Maybe even during class hours.)
@China,
So, you are in engineering too.
I was worried you might be doing something better. 
(P.S: I think SRM has wi-fi and people are allowed to bring notebooks)
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
1 Mbps is not sufficient for the lot of you? The worst you’d need is to look up some syntax or something. Contrary to what you may think, the college doesn’t provide you internet to download torrents.
My college is getting wireless
March 4th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Sundar, you should asked Arum M (the lab assistant).
china, if that’s supposed to be Mech attitude it does not say much about you.
Karthik, how many people have laptops to use this wifi service? VIT has campus wifi.
George, we pay for it and we should be able to do what the hell we want with it. The customer is always right.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Marc, why did that sound hypocritical? I can so be without a computer for quite some time, thankyouverymuch.
Sundar, don’t you remember paying for ‘breakages’ in the labs at school even if you broke nothing?
Karthik’s right, Wi-fi’s the best idea possible.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
@marc…. the fact that i dint show it speaks about me- dont it??
@ karthik…. yeah dude, am also one of those unfortunate nobody’s who took up engineering and gave up on the pursuit of knowledge once i got introduced to the excellent, challenging standards of examinations :((
March 5th, 2008 at 12:02 am
My school didn’t have anything of that sort. And I am opposed to that too. We could put up with stuff like that, we pay taxes for example. But it really rankles because you have to put up with a load of other really insane rules.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:19 am
I support Anusha… There’s a world beyond WWW
And my school had DSL Internet, only… it was in Germany, so I guess one can’t compare. And in every university in Germany they have wi-fi…
Roshan, it’s weird how they set up wi-fi in the college when Hall Students aren’t allowed the net connection (BECAUSE THEY COULD DOWNLOAD P**N … !!!)
March 5th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Isha, Germany is a developed country. India is an undeveloped place which I only reluctantly call ‘country’. So yeah it doesn’t compare at all.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
you have better internet facilities than our college. first of all half the computers in our net lab don’t work and the other half have some accessory broken. some of the mouses have been castrated even.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Thanks Isha, but see, you’ve got Marc started on his ‘I-hate-India’ rant.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Sorry *sniff*
No but seriously, there’s no need to get upset about not being able to access the net in college when you have it at home. If you don’t have it at home it’s a different issue altogether.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Yea, if you are not made to pay for it.(compulsorily) The real issue here is not internet itself. It’s engineering colleges fooling people and making money.
@Suren,
Suren, do you pay for internet ?
March 6th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Suren, you’re in Anna University. You have thousands of computers on the campus. I personally have visited a bunch of guys on your campus who were doing some M. Sc. course and they had a lab all to themselves with internet access! Plus your fees is so ridiculously low that you probably don’t even pay for net access and you still get it.
Isha, like Karthik says we’re paying for it.
March 7th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I agree with Isha. You have net @ home. We are so much better off than so many people who don’t have net access @ home
March 7th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Tangential. These other people don’t pay for net access at college only to have it denied.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Ha ha Marc, the customer is always right until he’s ready to bend over and take it, which is what engineering students are good at.
Isha, funny stuff no? It doesn’t make any sense what so ever.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
What you said doesn’t make sense, George.
March 12th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
it did make sense to me
March 13th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
You MCC people are from another dimension.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
We’re from Melmac… and you ain’t.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
The people from Melmac eat cats.