Trivial Net - Computer and Tech Trivia for Geeks

Whence bash?

Question: The Unix ‘bash’ shell is the Bourne Again Shell. Who’s Bourne?

• Steven Bourne, a software developer at Bell Labs
• Michael Bourne, a character in The Bourne Identity, a popular spy thriller by Robert Ludlum
• It’s a revivalist Christian name, actually, ‘born again’, with a slight spelling change to avoid controversy
• Suzanne Bourne, the lead programmers’ third grade teacher

Answer: Steven Bourne, a software developer at Bell Labs

Add comment May 31st, 2007

All this and $1

Question: What did Steve Jobs receive as a bonus in January 2000 for his performance as interim CEO of Apple Computer?

• A bright red Ferrari with the license APPLE-1
• A private jet plane
• A house in the Cupertino Hills
• A lifetime supply of black Polo turtlenecks

Answer: A private jet plane

The plane is the right answer (and it’s worth a cool $90 mil), but the turtlenecks must have been a close second, in our opinion!

Add comment May 30th, 2007

Vista goodies

Question: Which of the follow is NOT one of the new core Foundation technologies in the final release of Windows Vista?

• Windows Communication Foundation (Indigo)
• Windows Storage Foundation (WinFS)
• Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon)
• Windows Workflow Foundation (WinWF)

Answer: Windows Storage Foundation

WinFS was dropped form Longhorn/Vista and as a separate product

Source: MSDN blog posting

Add comment May 29th, 2007

To Infinity, And Beyond!

Question: What was the first fully computer-generated full-length feature film?


Answer: Toy Story

Released in 1995, the images in Toy Story required 800,000 hours of generation time on 87 dual-CPU SparcStation 20’s, 30 4-CPU Sparc-Station 20’s and a SparcServer 1000.

Add comment May 28th, 2007

Grok

Question: Where does ‘grok’, a commonly used hacker term, come from?

• Global Resource Ordering concatenation
• an Old English word meaning ‘I understand’
• the book ‘A Clockwork Orange’
• the book ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’

Answer: the book ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’

Add comment May 27th, 2007

Would you like fries with that?

Question: Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com predicted in InfoWorld magazine that the Internet would suffer a ‘catastrophic collapse.’ When did he expect doom to occur?

Answer: 1996

He had made the prediction in 1995. But the Internet didn’t collapse, so at the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference, Bob put the column in a blender and quite literally ate his words.

Add comment May 26th, 2007

The smartest guy in the room

Question: “Steve Jobs is 100 times smarter than Gil Amelio.” Who said it?

• Gil Amelio
• John Dvorak
• Bill Gates
• Steve Jobs

Answer: Bill Gates

Add comment May 25th, 2007

So stop already

Question: What is the one-line BSD UNIX man page description of the kill command?

• terminate a process with extreme prejudice
• terminate specified process or processes
• destroy process entry in processor table
• terminate a process

Answer: terminate a process with extreme prejudice

Add comment May 24th, 2007

Spam spam spam spam!

Question: In 1994, the Canter & Siegel law firm blanketed Usenet with thousands of commercial messages, the first widespread ’spamming’ of the Internet. What were Canter & Siegel advertising?

• information about joining a class action
• assistance in getting green cards
• copyright protection services
• a $250 cookie recipe

Answer: assistance in getting green cards

Add comment May 23rd, 2007

ASCII

Question: What does ASCII stand for?


Answer: American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Add comment May 22nd, 2007