kenQuiz Tech Master Challenge Finals powered by Sasken - by Team Nexus - July 2011

1. Welcome to the Finals

3. 1 Life, the universe and everything else – what acronym?

4. 2 What’s blanked?

5. 3 What’s being referred to in the circled panel?

6. 4 Not really about waiters refusing to bring you food. What 4 word term?

7. 5 Coders should know what’s blanked out?

8. 6 What?

9. 7 A parody of David Bowie’s famous act with someone. Only first name should do!

10. 8 A legend that we might never see or hear from again. Who/what?

11. Exchange Sheets, Answers

12. 1 Life, the universe and everything else – what acronym?

13. answer...

14. LHC – Large Halidron Collider

15. 2 What’s blanked?

16. answer...

17. Cloud

18. 3 What’s being referred to in the circled panel?

19. answer...

20. FourSquare (checking into places online)

21. 4 Not really about waiters refusing to bring you food. What 4 word term?

22. answer...

23. Denial of Service Attacks

24. 5 Coders should know what’s blanked out?

25. answer...

26. Pointers

27. 6 What?

28. answer...

29. Wireless

30. 7 A parody of David Bowie’s famous act with someone. Only first name should do!

31. answer...

32. Bing (Bowie originally sang a Christmas special with Bing Crosby)

33. 8 A legend that we might never see or hear from again. Who/what?

34. answer...

35. Mars Rover – abandoned on Mars due to technical issues

37. 1 Connect the audio clip to a group that recently announced premature retirement after a 50-day fun spree, and explain

38. answer...

39. LulzSec – the hacker group that uses the theme from “The Love Boat”. They recently announced they would stop hacking sites after a 50 day period of havoc

40. 2 This 2-word technology, which was mandated in 1990 for all televisions 13 inches or larger in the US, takes its name from the fact that it is not open to viewers who do not choose to activate/decode this technology. What’s the two word phrase?

41. answer...

42. Closed Captioning

43. 3 In the semiconductor and electronics design industry, this term is used for the final result/stage of the design cycle for integrated circuits(ICs) and printed circuit boards (PCBs). The origins lie in the early days of PCB design when the ‘artwork’ for the PCB layout was manually embedded on PET film using adhesive elements and a material we most associate with recording media. What word?

44. answer...

45. Tape-Out

46. 4 The concept for it was first proposed in a 2008 design paper, following which V0.1 was announced and released in Jan, 2009 on a cryptography mailing list. In 2010, someone interested in a $25 pizza procured it successfully using this. As of 2011, Wikileaks, The Free Software Foundation, Freenet, PioneerOne all endorse this while various governments are looking at it without amusement. What?

47. answer...

48. BitCoin – virtual currency that has launched a parallel economy

49. 5 UCLA said “login” but it only got until “lo” at which point Stanford gave up. What was going on?

50. answer...

51. The first letters sent over the Arpanet – the UCLA to Stanford link crashed after the first 2 letters of “login” were typed

52. 6 Dave Fischer coined this term in 1994 to describe a 1993 tipping point in the (d)evolution of Usenet when various newbies flooded the group and completely disregarded the culture and the rules that the community had nurtured carefully till then. The term, which is now a meme, is typically used to describe the feeling when a small select community one was part of for long is opened up to ignorant newbies who soon begin changing the traditions of old. What term?

53. answer...

54. Eternal September from Sep 1993, when AOL opened up Usenet to its user base

55. 7 This particular on-screen instruction seen in many operating systems is an artifact from the days of computer programming when compiler output would scroll off screen and had to be paused to be viewed. However, it caused considerable confusion to early users who would call asking for where something was located. What instruction?

56. answer...

57. Press ‘Any’ Key to Continue

59. answer...

60. Red Pill, Blue Pill

61. 9 Gary Stock, a researcher of odd surfing habits, conceptualized, named and defined the rules of this game making it popular on his website. The game has often been called addictive with winning examples being phrases such as “italianate tablesides”, “drink bimillenially”, “yooper radioimmunoassays” and so on. One ironic consequence of the whole process is that a winning entry often ends up losing its distinction once its win is publicized. Name the game and what it is about?

62. answer...

63. Googlewhacks – coming up with 2 word search queries that throw up exactly 1 search result

64. 10 This iconic book, first published in 1967 is still considered among the most comprehensive historical treatises of a much lesser known field of communications. The author, a journalist, began writing it in 1961 and at one point was asked by the National Security Agency (NSA) to stop getting it published. The only criticism of the book would be that it contains no mention of Turing’s research or the Germans – both of which would become public knowledge only later. Name book and author

65. answer...

66. “ The Codebreakers” by David Kahn

67. 11 What hobby might this individual have?

68. answer...

69. Collecting AOL disks – these have become collectors’ items today after AOL discontinued its mail-ins

70. 12 What are these guys doing and why?

71. answer...

72. Atari’s ET game failed so miserably the company dumped 5M cartridges in a New Mexico landfill. Fans continue to visit the area to dig up cartridges.

73. 13 Connect to something in metallurgy

74. answer...

76. 14 In 2001, a book published discussed the role of a company Dehomag that did business with the Nazis in the 1930s leasing and supplying them with technological equipment that helped record and track Jewish exterminations . Dehomag was an acronym for De utsche _____ Ma schinen G esselschaft mbH. What did ‘H’ stand for and what technology did the Germans receive?

77. answer...

78. Herman Hollerith German-American inventor of the technology – Punched Cards

79. 15 Designed by Swissman Vestergaard Frandsen, this revolutionary device is only 31 cms long, costs around $5.50 and is 99.99% efficient. It was distributed widely during the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the Pakistan floods. Name it.

80. answer...

81. LifeStraw – a suction powered water filter

82. 16 When MS DOS was introduced, a certain character on the keyboard which until then was called X, had to be rechristened to Y. This was because most commands on MS DOS used another character Z that necessitated this change in X to avoid confusion. Identify X, Y and Z?

83. answer...

84. X – Slash (/) which became Y – Forward Slash Z – Backward Slash ( which is used to navigate the file structure in MS DOS

86. Audience Questions

87. A1 In 2003, Yoshi, a middle aged Tokyo resident, wrote “ Deep Love ” about a teenager who engages in subsidized dating in Tokyo and ends up contracting AIDS. What is his claim to fame?

88. answer...

89. The first Mobile Phone novel written via text messages– leading to the birth of a new genre of literature.

90. A2 The Able font typeface has become famous in literature ever since it was used famously in J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In which ubiquitous technology banner might you see this font being used?

91. answer...

94. +25, -10

95. +25, -10

96. +25, -10

97. +15, -10

98. +15, -10

99. +15, -10

100. +10, -5

101. +10, -5

102. +10, -5

103. +5, 0

104. +5, 0

105. +5, 0

110. answer...

113. answer...

116. answer...

119. answer...

122. answer...

125. answer...

128. 7

129. 7

130. answer...

133. answer...

136. answer...

139. answer...

142. answer...

145. answer...

148. answer...

151. answer...

154. answer...

157. answer...

161. Fill in the title of this 1996 book; the term was first used in a New York Times article in 1992 to define “ people highly skilled in the processing and manipulation of digital information; wealthy or scholarly techno-geeks.” +25, -10

162. In the Star Trek series, Dr. McCoy implants these devices into Kirk and Spock, for tracking purposes, before they beam down to the planet Ekos. It’s a wireless communications, monitoring, or control device that picks up and automatically responds to an incoming signal. What’s the good word? +25, -10

163. +15, -10 It is a web log written for soliciting gifts or donations, but in a more general sense, written for the sole purpose of asking for something desperately. What?

164. +15, -10 A speech in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln. After a research effort in 2004, analysts are unsure whether “it” was just a typo, a mistake, or was the reporter, transcriber or typesetter having a bit of sly fun. What is the topic of discussion?

165. +10, -5 They are classified as “lossy” – meaning the ones who lose some quality when the compression happens, and “lossless” – which are typically used for archiving data in a compressed form while retaining all of the information present in the original stream. What are we describing?

166. What is being explained? +10, -5

167. Vannevar Bush wrote an article in 1945 in The Atlantic Monthly titled, “As We May Think”. Bush envisioned a device in which an individual would compress and index all of their memories, books, records, and communications, "mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility". This concept influenced the development of early hypertext systems, eventually leading to the creation of the World Wide Web. What name did he give it? +5,0

168. +5,0 The mass production of these in the United States began as part of the SAGE air-defense system in 1958, connecting terminals at various airbases, radar sites, and command-and-control centers to the SAGE director centers scattered around the U.S. and Canada, over phone lines, and were certified by Bell Labs. What?

169. Exchange Sheets, Answers

170. Fill in the title of this 1996 book; the term was first used in a New York Times article in 1992 to define “ people highly skilled in the processing and manipulation of digital information; wealthy or scholarly techno-geeks.” +25, -10

171. answer...

173. In the Star Trek series, Dr. McCoy implants these devices into Kirk and Spock, for tracking purposes, before they beam down to the planet Ekos. It’s a wireless communications, monitoring, or control device that picks up and automatically responds to an incoming signal. What’s the good word? +25, -10

174. answer...

176. +15, -10 It is a web log written for soliciting gifts or donations, but in a more general sense, written for the sole purpose of asking for something desperately. What?

177. answer...

179. +15, -10 A speech in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln. After a research effort in 2004, analysts are unsure whether it was just a typo, a mistake, or was the reporter, transcriber or typesetter having a bit of sly fun. What is the topic of discussion?

180. answer...

182. +10, -5 They are classified as “lossy” – meaning the ones who lose some quality when the compression happens, and “lossless” – which are typically used for archiving data in a compressed form while retaining all of the information present in the original stream. What are we describing?

183. answer...

185. What is being explained? +10, -5

186. answer...

188. Vannevar Bush wrote an article in 1945 in The Atlantic Monthly titled, “As We May Think”. Bush envisioned a device in which an individual would compress and index all of their memories, books, records, and communications, "mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility". This concept influenced the development of early hypertext systems, eventually leading to the creation of the World Wide Web. What name did he give it? +5,0

189. answer...

191. +5,0 The mass production of these in the United States began as part of the SAGE air-defense system in 1958, connecting terminals at various airbases, radar sites, and command-and-control centers to the SAGE director centers scattered around the U.S. and Canada, over phone lines, and were certified by Bell Labs. What?

192. answer...

194. Audience, what’s the Theme?

195. Portmanteau Technology Terms