I have no idea if they actually took exam time while asking you for
permission to send you marketing propaganda - I've never taken any of their
certification exams - but, if they did, I agree that is a horrible misuse of
exam time.

On the other hand, it wouldn't have taken me very long at all to say "NO" to
their requests if it had been me encountering those requests; I certainly
wouldn't have spent several minutes reading the pages carefully and
considering their requests. I would have figured out what these requests
were within 10 seconds, immediately looked for the "no" checkbox, clicked on
the next page button, and moved on to the test. In other words, if you
wasted more than a few seconds on this during your exam period, you were
partially responsible for wasting your own time.

I think you're doing the right thing by verifying that exam time was used by
this shameless marketing on Sun's part and you're doing it at the right
time: AFTER the exam is over. I hope that if people confirm that they had
the same experience you take the bull by the horns and send an indignant
letter or email to Sun  and encourage everyone else to do the same.
Complaining doesn't always work but it certainly does _sometimes_.

Several years back, the biggest cable company in this area tried some
"negative option marketing": in other words, they sent you a notice with
your bill saying that they were upgrading you to a new, more expensive cable
package automatically unless you contacted them to say that you weren't
interested. Believe me, that caused a _heck_ of a stir and the public outcry
made the news with several stories over several days. The cable company
quickly backed away from that policy and the outcry got the attention of
every other company in the area: I haven't heard of anyone trying that
little dodge since.

If there's an outcry over test time being used to plug their products, Sun
is likely to stop pretty quickly. On the other hand, if people just shrug
and express indifference, you might find that Sun takes that as permission
to do it again and consume even more test time on future occasions.

--

Your post has reminded me of a joke about tests so I'm going to tell it,
just for the heck of it.

A guy goes into a final exam in an examination room with dozens of fellow
students. They all know that the exam has 100 true or false questions on it.
He turns the exam over, goes visibly pale, and immediately turns the exam
face down again and soon starts twiddling his thumbs. The guy supervising
the exam sees all this happen and immediately understands what is going on:
the student hadn't studied for the exam and, as soon as he saw the
questions, knew he didn't have a chance so he started twiddling just to kill
time until he could leave.

Twenty minutes later, the supervisor looks over and sees the student turn
the paper over and start looking at the questions again. He sees a
despondent look cross the student's face, then a "Eureka!" look as the
student reaches into his pocket and pulls out a coin. The student
immediately begins flipping the coin and marking true or false to each
question depending on how the coin lands. The supervisor smirks to himself
at the obvious desperation strategy being used by the student. The student
soon finishes the exam, puts his coin back in his pocket and turns the paper
face down, this time with a smile on his face.

Eventually, the supervisor looks back at the student again and sees him
flipping the coin again but this time the supervisor is baffled. Finally,
the exam period ends and the student turns in his paper. The supervisor,
overwhelmed by curiousity asks for an explanation: "I understand why you
took out the coin the first time: you were desperate to find answers to all
of the questions. But why did you take it out a second time?"

The student replies, "Well, I had to check my answers didn't I?"

--
Rhino