Toss-up 1: This company hired David Boies to defend it against a lawsuit by the RIAA. What is this company, which made Metallica even angrier than they normally are?

Toss-up 2: This computer pundit used the phrase “open sores” in his InfoWorld column. He was one of the architects of Ethernet and founded 3Com. Who is this bitter, bitter man?

Toss-up 3: It’s the look or overall style of an XUL file, and they’re created with cascading stylesheets and images. What is this four-letter word used by the Mozilla project to separate appearance from content?

Toss-up 4: This well-known piece of software got its name from the combination of two English words that, when spoken aloud, sound the same as a non-English word. One of the words derives from the word that’s used to apply a diff to source code. Name this web server.

Toss-up 5: VA Linux invested in this free database system, which now supports transactions and is used by Slashdot. The system wasn’t released recently, but it was recently changed to be under the GNU General Public License. What is this database system, which has one letter more than mSQL?

Toss-up 6: It takes a lot of input: audio, S-video, cable, antenna, and a phone line. It uses embedded Linux and MPEG II to store video for up to 30 hours. What is this four-letter consumer electronics device that lets you pause live TV?

Toss-up 7: It is “just too complex to ever be secure,” wrote Bruce Schneier, author of the CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter. “What happens when somebody uses modifier characters in an unexpected way, or someone uses UTF-8 or UTF-16 to encode a conventional character in a novel way to bypass validation checks, or we start attaching semantics to characters like delimiters and whitespace?” Name the international character set he’s describing.

Toss-up 8: In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it was an animal you inserted into your ear to understand alien languages. It’s also the name of an AltaVista service that translates between human languages, often with unintended humor. Name this fish.

Toss-up 9: This device is capable of transmitting speech over wires with low bandwidth, equivalent to about eight kilohertz, and with only one channel. Name this device, which in the U.S. used to be all black.

Toss-up 10: They own more trucks than any other entity in the United States, and they plan to provide an email address for every American, so we can have even more disgruntled postmasters. What is this quasi-private U.S. agency known for its eagle logo?

Toss-up 11: A procedural fraud, a technical failure, a basic misconception. Those are the subtitles of sections 2, 3, and 4 of a recently created document aimed at convincing people to reject a protocol. Name this protocol for the transmission of wireless data.

Toss-up 12: ICMP is the protocol used by this command to find out if a networked computer is alive. What is this command, which derives its name from sonar?

Toss-up 13: On “The Simpsons,” what recurring character has a PhD in computer science from MIT? Name this employee of the Kwik-E-Mart.

Toss-up 14: It piggybacks a DOM, or Document Object Model, onto HTTP so that it can penetrate firewalls. What is the name of this technology, which shares its name with something you can find in bars?

Toss-up 15: The Apache/Java Integration Project is named after what capital of Java?

Toss-up 16: There are two nybbles in each. What is this common computer word, most of which have eight bits?

Toss-up 17: This is a new programming language developed by Microsoft, and is included with Visual Studio.NET. What is this language, which shares its name with a musical note?

Toss-up 18: The name of his temple at Delphi is Pytho, which derives from the word Python. Who is this Greek sun god?

Toss-up 19: Give me the name of the potbellied penguin who is the mascot of Linux.

Toss-up 20: Bloomberg News said that they’re getting close to an IPO, which should make Linus Torvalds happy, since he works for this Bay Area company that makes power-saving CPUs. Name that company.

Toss-up 21: You hear about a bauble called the Amulet of Yendor rumored to be in the Valley of Gehennom deep within the Mazes of Menace. What is this descendant of Rogue and Hack, which saw a Version 3.2 release in April of 1996?

Toss-up 22: It has over six thousand projects and forty thousand registered users. What is this VA Linux–sponsored central resource and repository for open source development?

Toss-up 23: This may be the most popular Tcl program. What is this utility that enables preprogrammed interchanges with a network service?

Toss-up 24: This system is best known for its ci and co commands, which check files in and check files out of a repository. Name this three letter utility for controlling revisions.

Toss-up 25: This protocol is ideal for storing information that is read frequently and updated less frequently, for instance, company directories. Your web browser might use this protocol to make use of a de facto company address book. Name this four-letter protocol.

Toss-up 26: One of the great things about editing the Perl Conference Proceedings is that I finally got to learn what absolutely everything on a copyright page means. O’Reilly now uses Cataloguing in Publication data for its books, so that copies are shelved in the U.S. Library of Congress with a Library of Congress shelving number. What two letters will you find at the beginning of the Library of Congress numbers for nearly all computer books? The two letters also identify a group you’ll find in software companies, which audits programs and ensures that they’re bug free.

Toss-up 27: This field involves the application of computational techniques to biology. Name this discipline known primarily for its contributions to the Human Genome Project.

Toss-up 28: The half brother of Thor and scion of Odin, this god shares his name with a company that ported games to Linux, notably Railroad Tycoon and Civilization 3. Name this Norse god of mischief.

Toss-up 29: This API for XML is simpler than DOM. What is this three-letter acronym that is also an abbreviation for a musical instrument?

Toss-up 30: This network protocol is now specified in the IEEE standard 802.3, even though it’s been around longer than some programmers have been alive. It was originally developed at Xerox, and a typical LAN using this protocol uses coaxial cable or twisted pair. What is this technology, which often goes hand in hand with 10BASE-T?

Toss-up 31: In 1980, he took home the Olympic silver medal in archery. In a recent rant called “Systems Software Research is Irrelevant,” this system architect and writer lamented the dearth of innovation in operating system design, taking even Linux to task as not being interesting enough. He co-authored the software engineering treatise “The Practice of Programming” with Brian Kernighan, and is one of the creators of the Plan 9 operating system. Name this Bell Labs researcher.

Toss-up 32: This company hired private investigators to root through trash bins for dirt on Microsoft. What is this company known for its 8i database?

Toss-up 33: It’s the web crawler that AltaVista uses to collect the content of 3 million web pages per day, and shares its name with a vehicle that looks like a skateboard with a steering handle attached.

Toss-up 34: XSL lets you choose the style of numbering for things like ordered lists. For instance, you can use Roman numbering, Arabic numbering, Katakana numbering, and, if you use the attribute value &#x10D10, what style, which is also a style of calendar and a style of chant?

Toss-up 35: These programs work by spoofing an IP address with packets that contain an ICMP ping message addressed to an IP broadcast address. The echo responses to the ping message are sent back to the “victim” address. Enough pings and resultant echoes can flood the network, making it unusable for real traffic. What is the name of this denial of service attack, which shares its name with a village of stunted blue characters on a once-popular Saturday morning cartoon?

Toss-up 36: You can think of it as being HTML 5.0, although it’s not officially called that. What is the name of the reformulation of HTML 4 in XML?

Toss-up 37: “Hello” is “danzhon,” “duck” is “nachlele,” and “bear” is “shash.” I just gave you three words in this family of Indian languages. What is this language family, which shares its name with a web server we’re all familiar with?

Toss-up 38: The basic routing philosophy on the Internet is “best-effort,” which serves most users well enough but isn’t adequate for the continuous stream transmission required for video and audio programs over the Internet. With the __________ protocol, people who want to receive a stream of video or other high-bandwidth messages can reserve bandwidth in advance of the program and be able to receive it at a higher data rate than they’d normally be able to. It’s part of the Internet Integrated Service (IIS) model, which ensures both best-effort service and real-time service. Tell me the name of this protocol, which is four letters you might see on a party invitation.

Toss-up 39: Invented in 1960, the RS232 serial port comes in two common flavors: the DB-9 and DB-25 type connectors. On both, pin 2 is send, or transmit. What’s pin 3?

Toss-up 40: Andrew Tridgell is known for work developing Samba, the tool that allows Unix to mount and read various Microsoft filesystems and exports Unix filesystems to Windows clients. But before this bit of file transfer magic, he was better known for creating an open source utility that helped synchronize copies of files on various remote machines. What is the name of the utility?

Toss-up 41: It’s a set of programming interfaces you can use to build Mac OS X applications that also run on Mac OS 8 and 9. What is this technology, which shares its name with the sixth element of the periodic table?

Toss-up 42: This standard derives from PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selectivity, and the mysteriously named Dublin Core. It uses XML to describe a resource in terms of properties. What is this three-letter abbreviation of the Resource Description Framework?

Toss-up 43: According to the Los Angeles Times, a dotcom called Scour scans the Internet for unprotected _________________ access ports, opens a file connection, and indexes your hard drive for public access. Fill in the blank. It’s a three-letter word, and Samba got its name from it.

Toss-up 44: It’s versatile; you can tell by its middle initial. This medium can hold up to 17 gigabytes of information, and uses MPEG-2 to encode video. Consumers assume the V in its name stands for video, but it actually stands for versatile. What is the three-letter name of this popular movie medium?

Toss-up 45: XML, UML, XSL, DTD. Which of these has nothing to do with document markup?

Toss-up 46: I find Perl perfectly charming, but when you charm a python with music, it’s important to wave your hands back and forth. Which of the six senses do pythons lack?

Toss-up 47: His web site bears the likenesses of such innovative geniuses as Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Albert Einstein. He has posted a one million dollar reward for anyone who can “come up with a better health device” than his patented Immortality Rings. Even under fear of an FDA raid, he claims that he is not “one of those stupid moron [sic] who don’t know what I am doing.” He also explains black holes in his penetrating article “Black hole is no magic.” While explaining how to build a UFO, this inventor notes that a “UFO’s saucer-shaped body is actually a big gyroscope which rotates endlessly to keep the UFO balanced in the air.” Finally, his work became known to citizens of the U.S. in his seminal interview with Mo Rocca for Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” Name this Chinese inventor, whose last name is half of the sound a train makes.

Toss-up 48: This common Unix utility doesn’t generate art, but it’s an easy way to produce large signs composed out of ASCII letters. Name this utility.

Bonus 1: Rank the following protocols having to do with email, from oldest to newest: IMAP, SMTP, and POP.

Bonus 2: In his InfoWorld column, Bob Metcalfe referred to open source software as “open sores” software, S-O-R-E-S. So now we’ll test your knowledge about open sores. I’ll give you four definitions all at once, and you match them up with boil, lesion, cyst, and wart.

Now match them up: boil, lesion, cyst, and wart.

Bonus 3: I’ll give you three slogans; you tell me the company it’s associated with.

Bonus 4: Here it comes: the obligatory product placement for our sponsor, ActiveState. Yes, ActiveState, friend to you and me. ActiveState, helping to make the world a better place to live in, and bringing you tomorrow’s technology today. ActiveState, the dynamo powering the longest period of growth in the history of the U.S. economy. Even though they’re Canadian. Because the ActiveState revolution transcends national boundaries, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, ActiveState, hallowed be thy name. We thank you for your clothing <<<hold up ActiveState boxer shorts>>>, your eternal fountain of knowledge <<<hold up User Friendly book>>>, and your holy chalice <<<hold up ActiveState mug>>>.

Anyway, ActiveState’s motto is “Programming for the People.” Answer the following questions about these related phrases.

Thanks to Dick Hardt and Lori Pike for having a sense of humor about this, as well as the other ActiveState question later.

Bonus 5: There’s a new game console coming, and it will compete with Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft’s X-Box. It uses embedded Linux and a network connection to allow anyone to be a game designer and release games for free. Name this consumer console. [Editor’s Note: the console was never manufactured.]

Bonus 6: Kyle had to install a lot of memory in computers. I’ll give you three memory chips, and you tell me the number of pins each has.

Bonus 7: Every Perl programmer worth his salt knows that the world’s compendium of Perl programs is CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. Obviously the Python folks couldn’t call theirs the Comprehensive Python Archive Network. What did they call it?

Bonus 8: I’ll give you four descriptions. You give me the evil name of the thing I’m describing. For instance, if I said “A version of the Ultima game,” you’d say UNDERWORLD, because UNDERWORLD has to do with evil.

Bonus 9: In XML, you can define special marked sections of character data that XML processors won’t attempt to interpret as markup. You do it with this five-letter tag. What is it?

Bonus 10: I’ll give you four descriptions of types of DSL; you tell me their acronyms.

Bonus 11: Red Hat, Slackware, or Caldera. Which Linux distribution appeared first?

Bonus 12: The common phone jack you find on most phones is called an RJ11 jack. There are other RJ jacks. Which is the one commonly used for Ethernet connections?

Bonus 13: I’ll give you two acronyms related to computer sales, and you expand it.

Bonus 14: Closed-caption information is sent during this period between frames of a TV broadcast. In Europe, there are some channels that carry IP packets and others that carry MP3s. What is this three-word name for this interval, which you can actually see when your TV loses its vertical hold?

Bonus 15: What does BSD stand for? What was the first BSD project aimed at providing Unix on the Intel x86 architecture: FreeBSD, NetBSD, or 386BSD?

Bonus 16: Here’s another open sores question. A 17th century theory of physiology held that the state of health and mind depended among a balance of four elemental fluids, called the humors. I’ll describe each of the four humors, and you name it from the description.

Bonus 17: I’ll give you three catchphrases; you tell me the company it’s associated with.

Bonus 18: Penguins are the most diverse group of flightless birds in the world. There are currently 17 species of penguin. Tell me how many of those species live above the Arctic circle.

Bonus 19: Pencil and paper ready for a product placement bonus. I’m going to name six projects. ActiveState is doing three of them. You tell me which three.

Bonus 20: I’ll name three projects, you tell me the GUI toolkit most closely associated with it.

Bonus 21: Kyle worked in computer repair, and had to lift a lot of printers. I’ll give you three HP printers, and you rank them from lightest to heaviest. The three printers are the HP Color Laserjet 2100, the HP 4050, and the HP Laserjet 5si.

Bonus 22: In the “WAP Trap,” the author includes the following quote: “Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks.” This was first uttered by what founder of Sun Microsystems?

Bonus 23: In Mozilla, this word refers to the skin, content, and whatever localization and platform-specific files are necessary for a particular part of the application or window. Name this five-letter metallic word.

Bonus 24: The O’Reilly Smileys book lists 650 smiley faces, ranging from barbershop quartet singer to Charlie Chaplin to Bugs Bunny with a carrot to a drunk, devilish chef with a toupee in an updraft, a mustache, and a double chin. The traditional ASCII smiley face has a colon, a hyphen, and a right parenthesis. I’ll give you three descriptions of smileys, and you name another character it has. For instance, if I said ‘A sad smiley,’ you’d say ‘left parenthesis.’

Bonus 25: For the first time, the U.S. Census collected forms over the Internet. There are about 270 million people in the U.S. To the nearest power of ten, how many forms were received online, excluding duplicate submissions and I’m looking at you, Chris Nandor.

Bonus 26: In olden days, there were seven liberal arts recognized as being part of a classical liberal education. They were divided into a group of three and a group of four. The group of three are called the Trivium, and you can think of them as fields that prepare you for a job as a liberal arts professor. The group of four are called the Quadrivium, and you can think of them as fields that prepare you for a job at Starbucks. I’ll give you all but one of each grouping, and you give me the missing field.

Bonus 27: Slashcode, the code behind Slashdot, is used to run this site, which has as its slogan “All the Perl that’s Practical to Extract and Report.”

Bonus 28: Which HTTP header contains a misspelling?

Bonus 29: O’Reilly product placement time. I’ll give you seven books, you tell me what animal is on the cover. Programming Perl, Programming Python, Y2K in a Nutshell, ASP in a Nutshell, Sendmail, MP3: The Definitive Guide, Apache: The Definitive Guide.

Bonus 30: Answer these question about Plan 9.

Bonus 31: This was the year the computers came together, as we learned in the Terminator. It was also the year that HAL, from the movie 2001, was created, on January 12. What was this recent year?

Bonus 32: Every Apache web site includes three directories below the Apache root directory. Name them.

Bonus 33: JavaScript, Perl, PHP, and Python. Two of these languages support C and C++ style comments. Which two?

Bonus 34: Kyle had to study for the MCSE Exam, or Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. Poor Kyle. I looked at the O’Reilly MCSE books for the first time last week, and was actually surprised at how much good trivia it had. That makes sense, since standardized exams about computers really have to be about trivia. Here’s a question that you’re told to memorize the answer to for the TCP/IP test. You can tell the class of an IP address by looking at its first byte. Tell me what number between 0 and 255 separates addresses into class A and other addresses. You have to be within two.

Also, tell me what number between 127 and 255 separates class C addresses from Class A and B addresses. You have to be within one.

Bonus 35: The ISO 3764 standard for “timekeeping instruments—movements—types, dimensions and nomenclature” costs $35, and I find it pretty offensive that standards aren’t freely available. The standards for C, C++, Cobol, Common Lisp, and SQL all cost the same amount, and they’re all cheaper than $35. Tell me the price of these standards, which is the same as the price of two hours of Internet access at the Internet cafe near the conference in Monterrey, and is the price of one year of The Perl Journal for U.S. subscribers.

Bonus 36: President Clinton signed a bill that allows electronic signatures to be as valid as conventional paper signatures. To sign the bill, he used a magnetic card and his personal password. The commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States of America and leader of the free world used a plain five-letter word, all in lowercase, and it was the name of his dog. Guess the President’s password.

Bonus 37: It’s a penalty in American professional football, and it’s also the name of a process in graphics where parts of an image are occluded from view. Name this action.

Bonus 38: The country of Java has lots of volcanoes. When a volcano dies, a lake will sometimes form just below the mouth. What are such lakes called? They share their name with a distribution of Linux.

Bonus 39: I’m about to put one of these stickers on my car. Made by ThinkGeek, it makes it seem as though you come from the country of Perl. What three letters does the sticker have?

Bonus 40: I’ll give you five countries, you tell me the two-letter country code for it. For instance, if I said Canada, you’d say “ca.” Ireland, China, Switzerland, South Africa, Tuvalu.

Bonus 41: Most programming languages have an “elsif” construct. If “this,” do that, elsif “this other thing,” do something different. I’ll give you three languages, you tell me precisely how “elsif” is spelled in that language, including spaces if any. Perl, Tcl, Python, PHP, JavaScript.

Bonus 42: Let’s play guess that bogus patent! I’ll give you five patents, and you tell me whether the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted it.

Bonus 43: We all know that “bit” stands for “binary digit”: a value that can be either 0 or 1. There’s no reason you couldn’t build a computer system out of trinary digits, or “trits.” To represent seven-bit ASCII with bits, you obviously need seven bits. How many trits would you need? I’ll give you a little extra time.

Bonus 44: This company, bankrolled by Paul Allen, folded its doors in 2000, abandoning its goal of making computer games for girls. Name this company, founded by Brenda Laurel of Interval Research.