Warp 2008 Quiz Prelims – Held at DPS Mathura Road

Tech Quiz – The Next Question

By Karmanya Aggarwal

Date: 19 November 2008

1. While Napster hurt  the sales of many artists the most notable ones to raise their hands and call for mommy being Dr Dre and Metallica, it actually helped the sales of one band, when an album released by the band reached Napster 3 months before its official release and received over millions of downloads. In the October of 2000, the album in question captured the numero uno spot in the Billboard 200 sales chart in its debut-week. Name the band and the album.

Ans: Band – Radiohead, Album – Kid A

2. Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning round
Those three lines are part of the chorus of a song that reverberates through musical and technological history. Name the song or its relevance or its artist.

Ans: Fool On the Hill, by The Beatles – It was the first song to be played as a digital audio file

3. This audio codec can be referred to as MPEG-4 Part 3 It is the standard audio format for the Sony Playstation 3 and is supported by Sony’s Playstation Portable and the Wii. It can support over 48 channels and is one of Apple’s Favorites. Name the codec.

Ans: AAC

4.  Google Doodles, created by Dennis Hwang (Google’s International Webmaster) are some of the most famous graphics in the computer industry. What does this one signify?

Doodle

Ans: Invention of the first laser

5. On the 25th of September of this particular year, Apple Inc. released its OS X v10.1 (Puma). This was followed by the release of the iPod on the 23rd of October of the same year and Microsoft released its (then) latest Operating System 2 days later. Which year am I talking about?

Ans: 2001

6.  Identify.

Identify

Ans: The Konami Code

7. This one time patent attorney experimented with photoconductivity and while doing so, created a machine that revolutionized documents and printing. The first product of this machine was the words “10-22-38 Astoria”. Name the inventor.

Ans: Chester Carlson

8. Who Created-
1.    A-O – Grace Hopper
2.    B – Ken Thompson
3.    Colossus – Tommy Flowers, Allen Coombes
4.    Electric Pencil – Michael Shrayer
5.    GNOME – Miguel Icaza, Federico Menca
6.    Sketchpad – Ivan Sutherland
7.    SpaceWar! – Martin Graetz, Steven Russell
8.    The Audion – Lee De Forest
9.    The Optical Mouse – Steve Kirsh, Richard Lyon
10.    UNIMATE – George Devol

9. Ramanathan V. Guha is an Indian Computer Scientist. An IIT-Madras Graduate, he currently works for Google. In 1995, Guha at Apple Computers, helped create the Meta Content Framework. Later in 1999, he created the first version of something that today, is of immense importance to bloggers and blog readers everywhere. What did he create?

Ans: RSS

10. What does it mean to give a computer “The Finger”?

Ans: The Finger is actually a UNIX utility that returns a users real name, the user name, IP etc.

11. Who Was Shakey? (Be Specific)

Ans: First Robot to use Artificial Intelligence (AI)

12. In December 1982 John Warnock and Charles Geschke founded a company. In 2007 the company ranked as the 9th largest software company in the world and the 31st best company to work for in the US. This company has revolutionized the field of Graphics. Name the Company

Ans: Adobe

13. In the foundation series by Isaac Askimov, Hari Seldon was a genius. What field did he virtually create?

Ans: Psychohistory

14. Everyone knows of the Apple Advertisement in 1984 that announced the Macintosh to the world. The commercial, directed by Ridley Scott and written by Steve Hayden and Lee Clow, alluded to a novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” which described a dystopian future ruled by a television Big Brother. Who Wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four?

Ans: George Orwell

15. What is WINE?

Ans: Stands for Wine is not an emulator, basically it emulates Windows on Linux systems to run Windows apps.

16. This mythical Greek God, called Vulcan by the Romans, was personified by his anvil and tongs. Rumored to have created “Automatons” that resembled Modern Day Robots.
Who am I referring to?

Ans: Hephaestus

17. Hoarders may get piles of money,
That is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot help their neighbors;
That’s not good, hackers, that’s not good.
Recognize these lines?

Ans: The Free Software Song, By Richard Stallman

18. What are the memoirs of Lou Gerstner called?

Ans: Who said Elephants Can’t Dance?

19. Tag That Line-

  • Stronger Than Dirt – Ajax
  • We’re Moving Beyond Documents – Xerox
  • From Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia – Wikipedia
  • Solutions for a small Planet – IBM
  • Search, Ads & Apps – Google

20. Who is Commander Taco?

Ans: Rob Malda, The Founder of Slashdot

21. Who is the current CEO of Intel?

Ans: Paul S Otellini

22. Entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia co-founded Hotmail. He also founded a not so popular domain. What domain am I talking about?

Ans: Arzoo.com

23. The DivX codec is very well known in the P2P world today. DivX however also refers to Digital Video Express. This was created partly by Circuit city and an entertainment law firm to create an alternative to video rental in the United States. Name the firm.

Ans: Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca and Fischer

24. Who said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” ?

Ans: Arthur C Clarke

25. What does United Linux refer to?

Ans: It was a Consortium of Linux vendors, most prominent of its  members being SUSE. You can read more here

26. Who coined the term “Cyberspace”?

Ans: William Gibson

27. What is “Strange Brew”?

Ans: It was the First Java Virus

28. What does Minix or Freeix refer to?

Ans: MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture. Andrew S. Tanenbaum wrote the operating system to be used for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel. Its name derives from the words minimal and Unix.

29. Why was Moore Noyce Electronics changed to Intel?

Ans: Because it sounded like “more noise”

30. _____, We Cann, He Cann, She Cann, They Cann
Simply fill in the blanks.

Ans: ICANN

Some really interesting questions in this one, It also had questions from the world of music and literature, covered tech companies, taglines, and CEOs also. A very well-made paper. Thanks are due to Karmanya for sending in this one. The finals of this Quiz were very bad, and really disastrous, according to me, but we still managed to finish 3rd somehow. If there are any discrepancies/errors in the questions or answers, do point out as comments or write in to me.

Signing off,

Prateek