DevSummit07:Nonprofit Geek Trivia Contest
The Story
In a quaint, claustrophic, retro banquet room in a diner on Broadway, set in the shadow of the Main Oakland Police Station, DevSummit geeks of all stripes gathered on Thursday evening to prove who possessed the greatest amount of pointless nonprofit technology trivia knowledge.
Fueled by an unholy mix of beer, sugar-based beverages and herbal tea, the participants waged intense intellectual battle through 4 rounds of arcane, irrelevant, and useless questions. Heckling and sincere disrespect were in no short supply, and at least 1 participant used profane language in earnest.
In the end, The Flying Luas's team outdistanced Turd-Filled Donut and B Team to claim bragging rights in a crowded field.
Following the contest, participants stumbled out into the parking lot and practiced looking sober as they started their vehicles while attempting to avoid the attention of Oakland's Finest.
"Data Loss" Haikus
The final bonus question (5 points!) was to write a haiku about data loss.
Video of the teams reading the haikus
The Questions
Round 1
- True or False: The genesis of the software term "bug" was literal
- Name the operating system on which Linus Torvalds first made his reputation before writing the GNU/Linux Kernel
- Name a major Brazilian GNU/Linux
- Name the now-defunct nonprofit organization that spawned the eBase application
- Name at least 2 of the creators of the C programming language, and for a bonus point name a third
- Name the creator of the Python programming language
- What does PHP stand for?
- What does GIMP stand for?
Round 2
- To the nearest power of 2, how many K was the ROM BIOS on the original Macintosh?
- Name a nonprofit software foundation that owns its for-profit counterpart
- In computer science, what does "Towers of Hanoi" refer to?
- Name an assembly language instruction of the 6502 microprocessor
- True or False: There is a web browser named "IceWeasel"
- 2-Parter: What was the original acronym for MS/DOS before Bill Gates bought it, and what did that acronym stand for?
- Name the original web browser created at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, and for a bonus point, name the engineer who got too much credit for creating it
Round 3
- What was the project name of Ted Nelson's original hypertext vision, and for a bonus point, what year did it finally ship?
- UNIX was most influenced by what other operating system?
- 2-Parter: Why was the original ASCII code 128 values, and what operating system popularized Extended ASCII?
- In the parlance of ICANN, what does IDN stand for?
- 2-Parter: How do you correctly spell "Google" (the measurement), and what is the definition
- In years, how old is the Electronic Frontier Foundation?
- What is the difference between HTTP error codes 301 and 302?
Round 4
- What are the 4 Freedoms?
- Name the now-defunct US branch of the Associate for Progressive Communications
- What were the keystrokes to save and exit in the original Wordstar?
- Name a programming language in which the command "pen up" is valid
- What is the difference between the GPL and BSD software licenses?
- What what Indymedia's domain name before it was indymedia.org?
- What nonprofit organization oversees the .org TLD, and for a bonus point, what does TLD stand for?
- Who hosted the first Circuit Rider Roundup (hint: he is on the Aspiration board)
- What is the default port for DNS?
- What does "TRS" stand for in TRS-80?
- What is a "link condom"?
- What is the difference between Resedit and Regedit?
- What is the original name for Java, and for a bonus point, where did it come from?
- Who invented the wiki, and for 2 bonus points, what language is the term taken from, and what does it mean?
- 2-Parter: The Dirk Award is given in recognition of what, and who was the first recipient of the Dirk Award?
- What is the ASCII code for
- What is the default answer in Slashdot polls?
- 5-point bonus question: write a Haiki about data loss, and for an additional bonus point, describe the Haiku open data standard