EXUN 2004 Senior Quiz - by Ankit Wadhwa and Manas Mittal

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|EXUN 2004 - SENIOR QUIZ - FINAL ROUND
|
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|QUIZ BY - Ankit Wadhwa <ankit@ankit.org>
(IIT, Delhi) |
|
Manas Mittal <manas1@hotmail.com> (NSIT, Delhi) |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
3. Which file system do Apple's Macs use?
HFS - Hierarchical File System :: Before Mac Plus - MFS (Mac File
Sys)
4. What is a dispatcher?
In superscalar CPU's (Processors that have some level of parallel
processing, for example say 2 physical adders), the
dispatcher decided which instruction is to run in parallel,
dispatching them to one of those 2 adders.
**5. What is the difference between multitasking and multithreading?
Multitasking running multiple program simultaneously. For eg,
when you are running Instant Messenger alongwith say a web
browser. So each program is coded seperately and has its own variable
space and its own stack / heap etc. (it is implemented
at the Operating System Level)
Multithreading - Is when simultaneous jobs have been coded into the
program, each job using the same variables & stacks. For
eg : If you give a print command in IE and it prints in the
background while you simultaneously continue to browse the web.
(It is implemented at the individual program level).

7. SJF and FCFS are process scheduling algorithms. What do these

terms stand for, and how do they work? (No marks for
incomplete answers)
SJF = Shortest Job First, FCFS = First Come First Serve

8. What exactly is a socket? What composes a complete socket

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description?
Socket: End-point for communication.
Comprises of : IP + concatenated with + Port
9. What is the most important difference between TCP and UDP? Explain
using examples (preferable)
TCP - transmission control protocol - Exchange Streams of Data
(Sequence of Bytes), The only thing that is guaranteed is that
all data sent will be received without any error and in the correct
order.
connection oriented : That is the sender and reciever both 'advertise
and negotiate data transfer' and the reciver will
always acknowlege. eg. FTP
UDP - Universal Datagram Protocol
UDP is connectionless. It means that a datagram can be sent at any
moment without prior advertising, negotiation or
preparation. Just send the datagram and hope the receiver is able to
handle it.
connectionless, unreliable, no sequencing, no flow control, one-shot
applications, no acks, no streams - eg. DNS request

11**. As senior Quizzers, you must be knowing about the seven layer
structire of the OSI reference model. What is the
structure for the TCP/IP reference model?
OSI
:: Physical - DataLink - Network - Transport - Session Presentation - Application
TCP/IP :: Host_to_network - Internet - Transport - Application

12. BUZZER QUESTION - L M Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba

togather formed a SIG (Special Interest Group) in the 1990s
to develop a standard. Which standard am I talking about.
Clue: The project was named after Harald Blaatand II (AD 940 - 981),
a Viking King who unified/conquered Denmark and Norway
(dont say this: conquered them without cables)
Answer : Bluetooth

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14. This security package is the brainchild of Phil Zimmermann, an
advocate by profession whose publically declared motto is
as follows:
"If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy"
Which package am I talking about?
Answer: PGP - Pretty Good Privacy
15. What is TTL? I need both, the fullform and its purpose.
Time to live (TTL) is an 8-bit field in the Internet Protocol (IP)
header that indicates how many more hops this packet
should be allowed to make before being discarded or returned. It is
the 9th octet of 20 in the IP header.
18. What does "pitch" refer to while measuring font sizes? (Guess
this one!)
Hint: for junior teams: If the threads of a screw are closer, it has
a greater pitch.
Ans: The number of letters that can fit in one inch.
20. What is "Thrashing" in computer terms?
Ans: When a program tries to use more that the available physical
memory, the computer goes into cycles of reading the disk
for virtual memory (making noise - hence thrashing) whie CPU usage
drops.
24. What is MPLS? What are its benefits? (part marking)
Answer: Multiprotocol Label Switching, Packets directed along
predefined routes in accordance with the required QoS. Label
contains info about the route along which the packet may travel.
Instead of a router algorithm that chooses.
1. What exactly is the 'kernel' of an operating system?
That program that is always running.
25. Who is a "polygon pusher" (Or "rectangle slinger")?
Answer: A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the
physical layout level (which requires drawing *lots* of
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multi-coloured polygons).
26. Unshielded Twisted Pair Cables (UTPs) are sold as Category 1, 2,
3, 4 or 5 (eg. Cat 5). What changes in the cables as we
move from Cat 1 to Cat 5 to higher Categories?
Answer: No og twists/turns per unit length increases, leading to
better noise cancellation. As a result, higer cat cable can
extend for a greater distance without a repeater.
27. Bash, csh, ksh are all shells on UNIX. What is a shell?
The shell of an operating system is a program that presents an
interface to various operating system functions and services.
The shell is so called because it is an outer layer of interface
between the user and the innards of the operating system.
28. What is Cherry OS?
An Emulator that allows Windows users to run Mac OS.
The virtual machine emulated by Cherry OS sports full network
capabilities and has complete access to the host computer's
hardware resources -- hard drive, CPU, RAM, FireWire, USB, PCI,
PCMCIA bus, Ethernet networking and modem. It purportedly
runs at about 80 percent of the performance of the host CPU,
29. So what is Skype and how is it different from say net2phone.
Skype is a voip P2P software
33. What is Podcasting
a crisp way to describe the technology used to push audio content
from websites down to consumers of that content, who
typically listen to it on their iPod (hence the "pod") or other audio
player that supports mp3 at their convenience
33. What is the semantic Web :
A project headed by Tim B Lee of making all pages web pages
machine readable thereby allowing machines to examine
content and draw conclusions.
he Semantic Web is a project that intends to create a universal
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medium for information exchange by giving meaning, in a
manner understandable by machines, to the content of documents on the
Web
36. Why is a blog called a blog
Peter Merholz, Web log --> Wee log --> Blog is not a log.
37. What is Half-Toning?
Hint: Used extensively in the printing industry, especially
newspapers.
Answer: Gray is made by making every alternate pixel black.
40. What is EPOC?
Answer: Electronic Piece Cheese, A family of OSes for handheld
devices (PDA/Phone).. Now it has given way to Symbian OS as
the standard.

43. HP which was the Largest Itanium based Server Vendor no longer
manufactures them...Itanium they say, is dying out. Give
me the major reason why is dying out.
It does not inherently have the x86 architecture and so new
software needs to be written to fully take advantage of
the Itanium. It emulates the x86 in software (hardcoded on the
processor) which is very slow.
44. Born to Joanne Simpson and an Egyptian Arab father (name unknown)
in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Steven Paul was adopted soon
after birth by Paul and Clara of Mountain View, Santa Clara County,
California. His biological sister is the novelist Mona
Simpson. Who am I talking About?
Answer: Steve Jobs
45. <Audience> Reality Distortion Field :
the term originated at Apple Computer in the 1980s to
describe his noted charisma
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Reality distortion field (RDF) is an expression used (usually
pejoratively) to describe the persuasive ability of
figures like Steve Jobs (). Those close to these managers become
passionately committed to projects, sometimes without regard
to the practicality of the implementation or competitive forces in
the marketplace.
46. What is RS in RS 232
RS : Radio Shack
50. How many pins are there in a RJ45 plug?
Answer: 8 pins
51. What is EFI?
Answer: EFI = Extensible Firmware Interface. bY iNTEL + mICROSOFT.
Its a preboot environment thaqt runs diagnostics, scan
for viruses etc. Comprises of data tables holding platform-related
information, as well as boot and runtime service calls
available to the OS and its loader. FASTER COMPUTER STARTUP ,
improving the ability to manage PCs and servers remotely.
SUPPORT FOR HIGH RES DISPLAYS. INBUILT NETWORKING. <replacement for
Bios>

53**. What is NAT? Where is it used?

Answer: Network Address Translation.
(Network Address Translation) The translation of an Internet
Protocol address (IP address) used within one network to a
different IP address known within another network. One network is
designated the internal network and the other is the
external. The internal network then appears as one entity to the
outside world.
55. What is Gopher?
Answer: The source of the name "Gopher" is claimed to be three-fold:
first, that it "goes-fer" information; second, that it
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does so through a web of menu items analogous to gopher holes; and
third, that the mascot of the University of Minnesota is
the Golden Gophers.
**Gopher's original design goal for sharing documents was similar in
scope to the World Wide Web, and as such has been almost
completely displaced by it. The Gopher protocol offered some features
not natively supported by the Web, imposing a much
stronger hierarchy on information stored in it, and many consider it
to have had the superior protocol for storing and
searching large repositories of information.
57. What are BBSes?
Answer: A bulletin board system or BBS is a computer system running
software that allows users to dial into the system over a
phone line and perform functions such as downloading software and
data, uploading data, reading news, and exchanging messages
with other users. During their heyday (from the late 1970s to the
early 1990s), many BBSes were run as a hobby by the "sysop"
(system operator), while other BBSes charged their users money.
58. What is RFID?
Answer: Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a method of remotely
storing and retrieving data using devices called RFID
tags. An RFID tag is a small object, such as an adhesive sticker,
that can be attached to or incorporated into a product.
RFID tags contain antennae to enable them to receive and respond to
radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver.
As of 2004, the smallest such devices commercially available measured
0.4 mm 0.4 mm, and thinner than a sheet of paper;
such devices are practically invisible. Passive tags have practical
read ranges that vary from about 10 mm up to about 5
metres.
61. How is EPROM read only, if it can be erased and programmed?
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Answer: It is programmed by an electronic device that supplies higher
voltages than those normally used in electronic
circuits. Once programmed, an EPROM can be erased only by exposing it
to strong ultraviolet light. EPROMs are easily
recognisable by the transparent window in the top of the package,
through which the silicon chip can be seen, and which
admits UV light during erasing.
Life: 10 - 20 years, read times - unlimited
63. In computer terms, what is bootstrapping?
Answer: Bootstrapping is generally a longer term for booting, or the
process of starting up any computer. "Bootstrap" most
commonly refers to the program that actually begins the
initialization of the computers operating system, like GRUB, lilo or
ntldr.
Bootstrapping alludes to a German legend about a man who was able to
fly by pulling himself up by his bootstraps.
64. Who created MINIX, a unix like OS, which was Linus R Torvalds'
development tool of choice?
Answer: Minix was written by Andrew S. Tanenbaum from Vrije
Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands as an example in the
textbook Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, ISBN
0-13-637331-3. It has an extremely compact kernel which could be
printed on mere 13 A4
An abridged 12,000 lines of source code of the kernel, memory
manager, and file system is printed in the book; it is mostly
written in C.
65. We have all heard of 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit and 64 bit
microprocessors, what exactly is the difference between them?
(physical difference - not qualitative)
Answer: 8-bit refers to the number of bits used in the data bus of a
computer. It is the number of bits of data transferred
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on each read or write of the memory, and the number of bits used
internally in the CPU to carry out processing.
66. This high-tech industry initiative championed by Microsoft and
others industry leaders is proposd as a technical solution
to help counter spoofing. The framework is designed to authenticate
mail senders and help eliminate spoofing and hence spam
to an extent. What is it called?
Answer: Sender-ID
67. What is common to Sourceforge, Slashdot, Thinkgeek and Linux.com?
Answer: OSDN - Open Source Developer Network / OSTG - Open Source
technology Group
69. This product was launched with the ad line boasting "You can't
buy a better computer at twice the price". It competed
directly with Texas Instruments' TI-99/4A leading to a major price
war and by the end of the process it had shipped somewhere
around 22 million units making it the best selling computer of all
time and in the process killed the TI-99, destroyed
Atari, bankrupted most smaller companies, and wiped out their own
savings. Jack Tramiel, the company's CEO's motto, "Business
is war," showed, and took its toll. Which company/product am I
talking about?
Answer: Commodore C64
71. In earlier versions of MSDOS, there used to be an important
system program called PARK.COM, what was it used for?
Answer: To bring the hard disk heads to a stand still in a safe
position for transport.
73. Microsoft has registered over 300 corporations in Nevada, Why?
Answer: Tax Saving Bastards :)

80. Which was the first company to manufacture CDs?

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Answer: Philips (1979)
81. Which was intel's first microprocessor?
Intel 4004

83. In DVD speeds, what is 1x ?

Answer: 1350 kB/s
88. What is so special about the information security company called
"Defensive Thinking"?
Answer: Founder is one of the most famous hackers of all times Kevin Mitnik - its not a security company providing
technology, but provides on-site consulting and through training
products and seminars which demonstrate how information loss
foccurs and how it can be stopped.
93. What is a fixed font?
A font in which each character will occupy the exact same amount of
space.
1.
This service was first announced on March 31' 2004. People
heard about it on 1st April and believed it to be a April
Fool Joke. They soon discovered that what the company was talking
about was no april fool joke. What am I talking about?
Ans : Google announced Gmail service.
2.
"Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions
at our lunar hosting and research center, opening late
in the spring of 2007" Google Copernicus Center is hiring
Despite the numerous applications nobody was eventually invited for
an interview. Why not?
Ans. This was an April fool joke by the folks at Google.
4.
David Bradley, one of the programmers at IBM is credited to
have invented a unique bail out mechanism of which he
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allegedly once said : "I may have invented it, but Bill made it
famous". So what am I talking about?
Ans. The CTRL-ALT-DELETE Keystroke.
Q5. This company is credited to have invented varied breakthrough
technologies like the "Scanning Tunneling Microscope", Risc
architecture, DRAM and the even the little Cursor"
Ans. IBM
Q7. The polynesian Island of Nieu is one of the early adopters of
technology. In the past given free email access in 1997,
dial-up access in 1999 and broadband last year in May. They have now
again made another step in making Nieu one of the most
tech savvy countries. What?
Free Nationwide Wi-Fi access in June 2003.
q8. What is a Flip Flop?
ans 8. One bit memory made using gates and is the building block of
SRAM.
78. Google Billboard. Visual
If any Silicon Valley drivers have found that traffic is moving more
slowly than usual these days on the southbound 101 right
around Ralston, you may have us to blame. Last week we unveiled a
billboard that's a bit unusual in that it promotes Google
only to one very narrow constituency: engineers who are geeky enough
to be annoyed at the very existence of a math problem
they haven't solved, and smart enough to rectify the situation.In
other words, the billboard (which offers problem-solvers
the URL to, sorry, a page containing an even harder problem), is a
recruiting campaign. We've always worked hard to hire the
smartest engineers we can find, and we thought this would be a cool
way to find a few more. Perhaps including you. If you're
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a math or computer whiz who doesn't happen to live within shouting
distance of Palo Alto -- good luck, and we're looking
forward to hearing from you.
79. Dennis Hwang has been decorating our searches on most special and
festive days with more than 150 of his creations. What
am I talking about? -- Visual
Answer: Google Doodles :) 1st doodle in 1999 - burning man festival by Larry and Sergey.
19. What do Eliza, Alice and Brian have in common?
Ans: All of them are Artificially Intelligent chatterbots on the web.
22. What is grep, and what does it stand for?
Answer: the unix tool used to extract matching strings, Global
regular expression search and print
34. What is ZD in ZDNET stand for.
William Ziff and Bernard Davis started this Publishing
company in 1927.
41. Why is the Linux community disappointed with Intel's Centrino
Mobile Technology?
Inherently it does not support Linux.

59.Which company has made the popular "Unreal Tournament" game?

Answer: EPIC Games (probably Atari too - check - if not checked,
then Atari is incorrect answer)

68. Wi-Fi, short for "Wireless Fidelity", is a set of standards for

wireless local area networks (WLAN) based on the IEEE
802.11 specifications. With 802.11a 802.11b and 802.11g being its
different flavours. What is the difference between the a,b
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and g variants?
**Answer: ( 802.11 b - 11Mbps, 802.11g - 54Mbps ) The 802.11b and
802.11g flavors of Wi-Fi use the 2.4 GHz spectrum, which is
crowded with other devices such as Bluetooth, microwave ovens,
cordless phones (900 MHz or 5.8 GHz are, therefore,
alternative phone frequencies one can use if one has a Wi-Fi
network), or video sender devices, among many others.
802.11g works in 5GHz band and gives a raw throughput of 54Mbps.
77. Which was the first Graphical Web Browser?
Answer: NCSA Mosaic was described as "the killer application of the
1990s" because it was the first program to provide a
slick multimedia graphical user interface to the Internet's
burgeoning wealth of distributed information services (formerly
mostly limited to FTP, Usenet and Gopher) at a time when access to
the Internet was expanding rapidly outside its previous
domain of academia and large industrial research institutions.
82. Originally the CD was supposed to be 60 minutes, but Sony
insisted on it being 74 minutes. Why?
Answer: so it could hold even the slowest versions of Beethoven's 9th
Symphony.
49. What is a Male and female connector.
Are often located at the end of cables and generally have
prongs or wires that fit into the holes of the female
connecter.
56. What is DMA or Direct Memory Access?
Answer : Answer: Direct memory access (DMA) allows certain hardware
subsystems within a computer to access system memory for
reading and/or writing without the supervision of the main CPU.
Examples of systems that use DMA: Hard Disk Controller, Disk
Drive Controller, Graphics Card, Soundcard.
89**. What is the unit of mouse movement?
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Mickey
91. Which company made the popular Nintendo arcade game called
CONTRA?
KONAMI
94.Cherry and Membrane are types of...?
Keyboards --- Cherry is that thak thak type, Membrane is the softer
one.
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