Tech-tonic

Tech-tonic
Tech Quiz Compilation

Sitter to start with
• The best-selling Playboy edition was the November 1972
edition, which sold 7,161,561 copies. One-quarter of all American
college men were buying the magazine every month.[32] On the cover
was model Pam Rawlings, photographed by Rowland Scherman.
• Perhaps coincidentally, a cropped image of the issue's centrefold
became its most important contribution to technology. What?

• Known primarily for his breakthrough invention. His other products include:
• Mouseless – an invisible computer mouse
• SPARSH – a novel way to copy-paste data between digital devices
• Quickies – intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, located and can
send reminders and messages
• Blinkbot - a gaze and blink controlled robot
• a pen that can draw in 3D
• and a public map that can act as Google of physical world

A new condition dubbed X is on the rise due to the
amount of time people spend hunched over their mobile
phone and tablet computer screens, chiropractors have
warned. The affliction, caused by flexing the neck for
extended periods of time, can be a forerunner of
permanent arthritic damage if it goes without treatment.
Cases of the repetitive strain injury are on the rise as
smart phones and tablet computers such as the iPad
become increasingly popular, experts said.
Identify X. ( 2 word answer)

• In the world of cyber security what is the significance of the message –
―Welcome to the dungeon © 1986 Brain and Amjads (pvt) Ltd…‖

The Brain virus
• It is considered to be the first virus for MS-DOS. It replaced the boot sector of a floppy with a
copy of the virus. The real boot sector is moved to another sector and marked as bad. Infected
disks usually have five kilobytes of bad sectors. The disk label is changed to ©Brain, and the
following text can be seen in infected boot sectors:
• Welcome to the Dungeon (c) 1986 Brain & Amjads (pvt) Ltd VIRUS_SHOE RECORD V9.0 Dedicated
to the dynamic memories of millions of viruses who are no longer with us today - Thanks
GOODNESS!! BEWARE OF THE er..VIRUS : this program is catching program follows after these
messages....$#@%$@!!
• The virus came complete with the brothers' address and three phone numbers, and a message that
told the user that their machine was infected and to call them for inoculation:
• Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Basit * Amjad (pvt) Ltd. BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES 730 NIZAM
BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN LAHORE-PAKISTAN PHONE: 430791,443248,280530. Beware of this
VIRUS.... Contact us for vaccination...

• This is the yacht that Steve Jobs and Philippe Starck collaborated on for 6 years, is
finally finished and unveiled in a shipyard in North Holland. The ship is called
Venus, and is designed with a distinctly Apple aesthetic. Its sleek and minimal, the
hull is made completely of aluminum, which makes it light and agile. The bow is
wrapped in structurally reinforced glass.
• As reported in his biography, Steve worked on the project until his death and had his
chief Apple Store engineer design a special glass that could be used as structural
support. As at an Apple store, the cabin windows were large panes, almost floor to
ceiling, and the main living area was designed to have walls of glass that were forty
feet long and ten feet high.
• A row of 27-inch iMacs control the ship.

Identify both guys.
• X (born 1972) is an Indian American computer engineer. He is the Senior
Vice President of Chrome, Google Apps and Android at Google Inc. X was
brought up in Tamil Nadu. He received a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of
Technology Kharagpur and was awarded an Institute Silver Medal. He holds
an M.S. from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton
School, where he was named a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar.
• X joined Google in 2004 where he led the product management and
innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including
Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for
Google Drive. He went on to oversee the development of different apps like
Gmail and Google Maps. On November 19, 2009, X gave a demonstration of
Chrome OS. On May 20, 2010, he announced the open-sourcing of the new
video codec VP8 by Google, and introduced the new video format WebM to
the public. He has been a Director of Jive Software, since April 2011. X is
married and has a daughter and a son.
• On March 13, 2013, Larry Page announced that X would add Android to the
list of Google products he oversees, including Chrome and Chrome OS.
Android was formerly managed by Y who will be co-lead with founder Larry
Page in ultra secretive Google X Labs.

X – Sundar Pichai, Y – Andy Rubin

What did they pioneer?
• theGlobe.com was an internet startup
founded in 1994 by Cornell students
Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman.
They made headlines by going public in
1998 and posting the largest first day gain
of any IPO in history up to that date. After
the dot-com-bubble burst, their stock price
plummeted finally ceasing operations in
2008.

• b2/cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2
or cafelog, was the precursor to X. b2/cafelog
was estimated to have been employed on
approximately 2,000 _____ as of May 2003. It
was written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel
Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to
X. Although X is the official successor, another
project, b2evolution, is also in active
development.
• From a dorm in the University of Houston, X first
appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt
Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2.
Christine Selleck Tremoulet, a friend of
Mullenweg, suggested the name X.

Adobe Photoshop
• John and Thomas Knoll were among the original creators of
Photoshop
• John Knoll is also a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and
Magic (ILM) where he has worked on Star Wars, Star
Trek, Pirates, Hugo and many more movies.
• He won an Oscar for Pirates: Dead man‘s chest

• The Vatican, surprisingly, has an astronomical department staffed with Jesuits and
runs one of the worlds largest telescopes,
• The ―Large Binocular Telescope Near-Infrared Utility with Camera and Integral Field
Unit for Extragalactic Research‖ is run by the Vatican Observatory Research Group
at the Mount Graham International Observatory in southeast Arizona.
• After more than a decade of design, manufacturing and testing, the telescope
provides a powerful tool to gain spectacular insights into the universe.
• What is the telescope known as?

• A particular everyday sighting is said to greatly boost range and efficiency of
flying birds over long migratory routes.
• All birds except the first fly in the upwash from the wingtip vertices of the bird
ahead. The upwash assists each bird in supporting its own weight in flight.
Each bird can achieve a reduction of induced drag by up to 65% and as a
result increase their range by 71%. The birds flying at the tips and at the front
are rotated in a timely cyclical fashion to spread flight fatigue equally among
flock members.
• What am I describing?

Sitter
• According to X, it‘ll be biggest disappointment of his life is mankind
doesn‘t make it to Mars by the time he dies.
• ―I‘d like to die on Mars, just not on impact‖, he said

Id the invention
• This was one of the few reliable methods of measuring time at sea. It has
been speculated that it was in use as far back as the 11th century, where it
would have complemented the magnetic compass as an aid to navigation.
• However, its earliest known evidence of existence was found in a painting by
Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1328. Written records from the same era also appear
in lists of ship stores.
• It was the job of a ship's page to turn the X and thus provide the time for the
ship's log. Noon was the reference time for navigation, which did not depend
on the glass, as the sun would be at its zenith.

What practise am I talking about?
• The original length of this period was 30 days and hence called, trentina
• This was later extended to 40 days, and called X
• The choice of this period is said to be based on the period that Christ and
Moses spent in isolation in the desert.
• In 1423, Venice set up its lazaretto, or X station, on an island near the city.
The Venetian system became the model for other European countries
thereafter.

Put funda
• In 1924, American battery manufacturers, the War Industries Board, and a
few government agencies got together to develop some nationally uniform
specifications for the size of battery cells, their arrangement in batteries, their
minimum performance criteria, and other standards.
• As battery technology improved, smaller batteries were using in the growing
consumer electronics industry. They also found use in the niche medium and
high-drain applications.
• Connect the event in the first para to the second para and weave a story
around it to explain a peculiar absence of a category of products.

Why there are no A and B size batteries
• The standard sizes of A,B,C and
D were introduced in 1924.
There was also a larger "No. 6"
battery which retained that name.
• As smaller batteries came
along, they were added as AA
and AAA size. The mid-size A
and B simply didn't have a
market and gradually went out of
production worldwide.

• Debates over the ethics of using the device X have already begun. A
Seattle-based bar has already banned X from their establishment.
• According to their Facebook post:
• ―For the record, the 5 point is the first Seattle business to ban in advance X. Ass-
kickings will be encouraged for violators.”
• Identify the device in question.

• How did this guy influence Linus Torvalds
while developing Linux?
• Specifically, the name of the brand led to
naming of something.

Mr Clean
• When you clean the kernel source tree, you type ‗make clean‘. If you
really really want to scrub it clean, you type ‗make mrproper‘. The guy
in the picture is Mr. Proper (Mr Clean in Americans)
• Mr Clean was a popular brand in Europe but went by the name Mr
Proper

• X is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information
processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In
the course of ordinary activities, someone "using" X engages many computational
devices and systems simultaneously, and may not necessarily even be aware that
they are doing so. This model is usually considered an advancement from the
desktop paradigm. More formally, X is defined as "machines that fit the human
environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs."
• This paradigm is also described as pervasive computing, ambient
intelligence, or, more recently, everyware, where each term emphasizes slightly
different aspects.
• What is X? Is it also in the news for a recent product announcement by a tech major.

Ubiquitous computing
• Apple watch gadget coming out this year end

Stop dreaming about electric sheep
• X is open-source software. It was originally written by Dan
Bornstein, who named it after the fishing village of X in
Eyjafjörður, Iceland, where some of his ancestors lived.

Simple. Patent for what? And by whom?

Long story about?
• The story dates back 130 years, to a period known as the Bone wars. Named after the bitter feud between Yale‘s
Marsh and Cope of Philadelphia.
• In 1877, Marsh discovered the partial skeleton of a long necked long tailed herbivorous dinosaur he dubbed
Apatosaurus. Since the fossil was missing a skull, in 1883 he borrowed a skull from a Camarasaurus in his
published reconstruction.
• A few years later he found a second skeleton believed to belong to a completely new dinosaur which he named
X. However this was in reality, a more complete adult version of Apatosaurus. In his rush to outdo Cope, he
carelessly mistook the dinosaur for something new.
• The mistake was spotted only in 1903, the name X lived on in pop culture and children literature everywhere.
• X means ‗thunder lizard‘ while Apatosaurus means ‗deceptive lizard‘.
• In 1989, US post office released a set of stamps featuring X instead of Apatosaurus. There was a lot of backlash
from the scientific community for fostering scientific illiteracy by promoting the obsolete X.

Etymological history of which element‘s
name?
• X is derived from the greek word for blue-green spar, which is derived
from Prakrit and pali terms for ‗to become pale‘ in reference to the pale
semi-precious gemstone Y
• The word is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit word vaidurya which
might come from the name of Belur.

Beryllium
• Route:
• Belur
• Vaidurya
• Vilar
• Veliru
• Veluriya
• Berullos
• Beryllos

• This started with an erroneous correction of the word medieval in Yahoo Mail
in 2001
• In 2001, Yahoo! Introduced an email filter which automatically replaced
Javascript-related strings with alternate versions, to prevent viruses in HTML
email. The filter would hyphenate the terms ‗JavaScript‘, ‗Jscript‘ and
replaced ‗mocha‘, ‗eval‘ and ‗statement‘ with similar terms.
• Some of the unintended errors of this were – evaluation ->
reviewuation, expressionist -> statementist, rendering them into near
gibberish.

The Medireview effect
• One unintended effect of this was that the word medieval became
medireview, in the body of Yahoo! email messages. Not all email
recipients recognised this as an error or may have even thought it was
intentional. As of 2012 there are still web pages seen which use
medireview instead of medieval.

Simple one
• Victims:
• Tyson Gay -> Tyson Homosexual
• Assassination -> Buttbuttination
• Classic -> clbuttic
• Hint: Made famous by Ian Botham

• In order to see the Easter egg, simply go to your Settings menu and
tap "About Phone." You'll see "Android Version" in that menu. Tap on
that part very fast a bunch of times, and eventually a reward will pop
onto your screen.

• One of his earliest known stories goes like this:
• While at school, a young X was tasked with writing a code for a
program that schedules classes.
• X altered the code to put himself in a class with mostly female
students.

Beatboxing
• Vella MIT researchers have conducted extensive MRI studies of the
vocal tract while beatboxing

Connect
1) Gytha or Nanny from Terry
Pratchett's Discworld series. She
is a witch and member of the
Lancre coven.
2) The head of the Quisition and
later the Cenobiarch of Omnia
from Pratchett‘s Small Gods. He's
a frightening character, bald by
design, with completely dark
eyes.

Ogg Vorbis
• Open source video container

2.Where?
• Simpler clue
next slide

Present day Kronisberg bridges
• The city is now named Kalingrad
• Two of the seven original bridges did not survive the bombing of Königsberg in World
War II. Two others were later demolished and replaced by a modern highway. The three
other bridges remain, although only two of them are from Euler's time (one was rebuilt in
1935). Thus, as of 2000, there are now five bridges in Kaliningrad.
• In terms of graph theory, two of the nodes now have degree 2, and the other two have
degree 3. Therefore, an Eulerian path is now possible, but since it must begin on one
island and end on the other, it is impractical for tourists.
• Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand, has incorporated a model of the
bridges into a grass area between the old Physical Sciences Library and the Erskine
Building, housing the Departments of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science.

• At 16, X saved pennies to buy materials for his chemistry experiments.
While still a teenager, he set his mind on developing a commercially
viable aluminum refining process. By age 25, X received a patent on
his revolutionary electrolytic process.

Charles Hall
• This process was also discovered at nearly the same time by the
Frenchman Paul Héroult, and it has come to be known as the Hall-
Héroult process.

• X, remembered as "the female Edison," received some 26 patents for
such diverse items as a window frame and sash, machinery for cutting
shoe soles, and improvements to internal combustion engines. Her
most significant patent was for machinery that would automatically fold
and glue paper bags to create square bottoms, an invention which
dramatically changed shopping habits. Workmen reportedly refused
her advice when first installing the equipment because, "after all, what
does a woman know about machines?"

8. Patent for?
• Patent for?

Cathode Ray Amusement Device
• The early-prototype for arcade games
• The first video game used a cathode ray tube, and was constructed of analog electronics. The patent application
submitted to the US patent office, describes a device that allows a player to use buttons and knobs to manipulate
a cathode ray tube beam in a manner that simulates firing at moving ‗airborne‘ targets. A transparent sheet of
printed squares including targets and airplanes images, was overlaid on the CRT screen and used to define the
targets users were aiming at.
• The patent application is signed by two people:
• Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann.
• Goldsmith, was an American professor of physics and known as one of the pioneers of American television.
• He was considered an innovator and has more many patents written to his name, including different innovations
in the development of television and several electronic testing patents.
• Not much is known on Estle Ray Mann, who was his partner in this invention.

• The X canals were a network of gullies and ravines that some 19th
century scientists erroneously thought to exist on X. First detected in
1877 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, modern telescopes
and imaging technology completely debunked the myth. The ―canals‖
were actually found to be a mere optical illusion.

• A small planet that was supposed to exist in an orbit between Mercury
and the Sun, French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier
coined the name ―X‖ while trying to explain the nature of Mercury‘s
orbit. No such planet was ever discovered, while the orbit of Mercury
was explained in detail by Albert Einstein‘s theory of general relativity.
• We know it though for an entirely different reason in the field of
entertainment and science fiction

• First postulated in 1667 by German physician Johann Joachim
Becher, X Theory is an obsolete scientific theory regarding the
existence of ―X‖, a fire-like element, which was contained within
combustible bodies and released during combustion. The theory tried
to explain burning processes such as combustion and the rusting of
metals, which are now jointly termed as ―oxidation‖.

• The X theory (or Tabula rasa), widely popularized by John Locke in
1689, proposed that individuals are born without built-in mental
content and that their knowledge comes from experience and
perception. Modern research suggests that genes and other family
traits inherited from birth, along with innate instincts of course, also
play a very important role.

• Now widely considered as a
pseudoscience, X was the study of the shape
of skull as indicative of the strengths of
different faculties. Modern scientific research
wiped it out by proving that personality traits
could not be traced to specific portions of the
brain.

Phrenology
• Most recently seen in Django Unchained

• Dennis Carter, while head the marketing team of a
technology company in 1991, came up with a
revolutionary slogan after a failed promotion. He
and his team studied successful consumer
marketing techniques and tactics used by well-
known companies supplying a ingredient of a
finished product, like NutraSweet™, Teflon™ and
Dolby™. Name the person, company and the
slogan.

• X is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation, first
introduced in 1937.
• The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery
meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore. Through a Monty Python
sketch, in which X is portrayed as ubiquitous and inescapable
• Y is a cured meat prepared from a pig. It is first cured using large quantities of
salt, either in a brine or in a dry packing; the result is fresh Y (also known as green
Y). Fresh bacon may then be further dried for weeks or months in cold air, boiled, or
smoked.

Spam and Bacon
• Bacn (pronounced like bacon), is email that has been subscribed to
and is therefore not unsolicited (like email spam is), but is often not
read by the recipient for a long period of time, if at all. Bacn has been
described as "email you want but not right now."

• Where would you find a floral symbol that, in Sweden, indicates a
noteworthy attraction in a campground. Alternately known as the
Gorgon loop, the splat, the infinite loop, and, in the Unicode
standard, a ―place of interest sign‖?

• According to Andy Hertzfeld of the original Mac development team. While
working with other team members to translate menu commands directly to
the keyboard, Hertzfeld and his team decided to add a special function key.
The idea was simple: When pressed in combination with other keys, this
―Apple key‖ would select the corresponding menu command. Jobs hated it –
or more precisely the symbol used to represent the button – which was yet
another picture of the Apple logo. Hertzfeld recalls his reaction: ―There are
too many Apples on the screen! It‘s ridiculous! We‘re taking the Apple logo in
vain!‖ A hasty redesign followed.

• A runic symbol that represents the initials of a king, who was a
connoisseur of blueberries.
• The first device for this technology had a ‗teeth-like‘ shape.

• This icon was drawn to resemble Neptune‘s Trident, the mighty
Dreizack. In lieu of the pointed triangles at the tip of the three-pronged
spear, the promoters decided to alter the shapes to a triangle, square
and circle.

• This was done to signify all the different peripherals that could be
attached using the standard.

• They first appeared as tape transport symbols on reel-to-reel tape
decks during the mid-1960s. The direction of the play arrow indicated
the direction the tape would move. Easy.

• It resembles the notation for an open connection on an electrical
schematic. Some say it is simply a stop symbol with a chunk carved
out of its center. We‘d put our money on a more classical origin: In
musical notation, the caesura indicates a X.

• This terror is known by many names: the hypnowheel of doom, the
spinning pizza, the pinwheel of death or more commonly as X. It is
actually an evolution of the wristwatch ―wait‖ cursor that the company
first used in early versions of the OS. While its design origins remain
mysterious, the watch was dropped as it reminded users of the time
passing as the program remained perpetually hung up.

SBBOD (Spinning Beach Ball of Death)

• X‘s law is the storage equivalent of Y‘s Law : Seagate's vice president
of research Mark X said back in 2005 that magnetic disk storage
density doubles approximately every 18 months.
• That also means the cost of storage halves every eighteen
months, enabling online services to give us more storage without
charging any more for it. It's worth mentioning that SSDs aren't subject
to X‘s Law: as they're solid state, Y‘s Law is more relevant.

Kryder‘s Law and Moore‘s Law

• Ever wondered why your seventy-three-core monster PC isn't
noticeably faster at everyday tasks than the PCs of ten years ago?
Niklaus X has, and in 1995 he observed that "software is getting
slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster." X‘s law has been
invoked by, and wrongly credited to, both Google's Larry Page and
Microsoft's Bill Gates.

• 3Com founder Bob X‘s Law originally described fax machines and
computers, but it applies equally to the internet and to internet services
such as Facebook: the value of a telecommunications network is
proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the
system. A social network with one user is completely useless; with a
billion, it becomes almost essential.

• "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions." The rule itself is believed
to come from the now-defunct online comic zoomout.co.uk, although
it's possible that the comic got it from an anonymous "rules of the
internet" copy-and-paste email. It has since been adapted to note that
if you can't find a X version of something, saying so online will
immediately cause what Urban Dictionary describes as "insane
Japanese hentai animation artists" to create it.

• "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure
is placed upon it for control purposes," professor Charlie X said in
1975: in other words, if you set targets to try and make something
good happen, people will find a way to hit the targets without
improving anything, rendering the whole exercise pointless.
• The best example of this in action is Google: when it used incoming
links in PageRank to make search more useful, spammers set up link
farms and spammy blogs to artificially inflate their sites' PageRank.

• X‘s Law is crucial to user interface
design, from touchscreen apps to the
buttons on a website. Paul X studied
human-computer interaction and found
that the time it takes to move and click
on something is a function of how far
away it is and how big it is.
• Smartphones are particularly good
places to see it in action - some sites'
navigation is effectively unusable on
small screens, while on-screen
keyboards in iOS invoke X‘s Law by
trying to predict what character you'll
go for next and making its tappable
area larger.

• The late Roy X was a scientist and president of the Institute for the
Future, a Californian think tank, and his Law encourages us to think
long term about new technology: "We tend to overestimate the effect
of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the
long run." The online reaction to Apple products tends to illustrate both
bits of X‘s Law beautifully.

• There are two different X‘s Laws: one says that "given enough
eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" - that is, throw enough smart people at
something and they'll work out how to fix it - but we prefer the one X
Torvalds described in his 2001 book, The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit
of the Information Age: the motivation for everything falls into three
categories, "survival", "social life" and "entertainment". It explains why
some people contribute to open source projects and why others join
Anonymous or do daft things for the "lulz".

• "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1". That's X‘s Law of Nazi
Analogies as defined by US attorney and author Mike X in 1990. It's
generally agreed that when a discussion thread has been ―X-ed" the
discussion is over, although that only applies if the Nazi or Hitler
reference is used in a non-ironic way. Although it's a funny idea, X had
a serious point to make: "I wanted folks who glibly compared someone
else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust," X
says.

• X‘s Law was a part of X‘s 1979 book Y.
• It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account X’s
Law.
• The law is a statement regarding the difficulty of accurately estimating the
time it will take to complete tasks of any substantial complexity. The
recursive nature of the law is a reflection of the universal experience of
difficulty experienced in estimating complex tasks despite all best
efforts, including knowing that the task is complex.

Douglas Hoffstader, Godel Escher
Bach, Hoffstader‘s Law
• The law was initially introduced in connection with a discussion of chess-
playing computers, whereas top-level players were continuously beating
machines, even though the machines outweighed the players in recursive
analysis. The intuition was that the players were able to focus on particular
positions instead of following every possible line of play to its conclusion.
Hofstadter wrote: ―In the early days of computer chess, people used to
estimate that it would be ten years until a computer (or program) was world
champion. But after ten years had passed, it seemed that the day a
computer would become world champion was still more than ten years
away‖. He then suggests that this was ―just one more piece of evidence for
the rather recursive Hofstadter‘s Law.‖

The ninety-ninety rule
• The first 90% of the code takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10%
takes the other 90% of the time.

Brook‘s Law
• Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

The Dilbert Principle, by Scott Adams
• The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place
where they can do the least damage: management.

Law of Demeter
• An object should only talk to its "neighbors" and not tell its neighbors
how to work or invoke methods on a neighbor's neighbor.
• In other words : Tell your dog to walk, not tell a dog's legs to walk.

There are no silver bullets, Frederick P.
Brooks, Jr
• There is no single development, in either technology or in
management technique, that by itself promises even one orderof-
magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.

Knuth‘s Optimization principle
• We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time:
premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Segal‘s Law
• A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is
never sure

Peter principle
• In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of
Incompetence.

• "Baby, Its Cold Outside" may have been the song running through 13 year
old Chester Greenwood's head one cold December day in 1873. To protect
his ears while ice skating, he found a piece of wire, and with his
grandmother's help, padded the ends. In the beginning, his friends laughed
at him. However, when they realized that he was able to stay outside skating
long after they had gone inside freezing, they stopped laughing. Instead, they
began to ask Chester to make X for them, too. At age 17 Chester applied for
a patent. For the next 60 years, Chester's factory made X, and X made
Chester rich.

Frisbees
• The term FRISBEE did not always refer to the familiar plastic disks we
visualize flying through the air. Over 100 years ago, in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, William Russell Frisbie owned the Frisbie Pie
Company and delivered his pies locally. All of his pies were baked in the
same type of 10" round tin with a raised edge, wide brim, six small holes in
the bottom, and "Frisbie Pies" on the bottom. Playing catch with the tins soon
became a popular local sport. However, the tins were slightly dangerous
when a toss was missed. It became the Yale custom to yell "Frisbie" when
throwing a pie tin. In the 40's when plastic emerged, the pie-tin game was
recognized as a manufacturable and marketable product. Note: FRISBEE ®
is a registered trademark of Wham-O Mfg. Co.

• Late one night in 1946, a very tired mother was faced with a
wet, crying baby yet again. Changing her second daughter's soaked
cloth diaper, clothing, and bed sheets, Marion O'Brien Donovan knew
there had to be a better way to keep babies dry. Soon after, she tore
down the shower curtain hanging in her bathroom, cut out a
section, and sat down at her sewing machine, determined to create a
diaper cover that would prevent leaks. That first shower-curtain
experiment eventually led to the creation of?

• One day in the 1930s, while sitting in his brother‘s fountain parlor, the Varsity
Sweet Shop, in San Francisco, Joseph B. Friedman (1900-1982) watched
his young daughter Judith at the counter struggling to drink a milkshake out
of a straight paper straw. Friedman, an inventor with a natural curiosity and
a creative instinct, took the straw and inserted a screw. He then wrapped
dental floss around the paper into the screw threads, creating corrugations.
After he removed the screw, the altered paper straw would bend
conveniently over the edge of the glass, allowing a small child to better reach
the beverage. U.S. patent number 2,094,268 was issued for this new
invention, under the title Drinking Tube

Brannock Device
• If you‘ve ever been fitted for a pair of shoes, you‘ve been in close contact
with a Brannock Device, though you may not recognize it by its name.
Charles F. Brannock‘s 1925 invention, which measured overall
length, width, and heel-to-ball length of the foot all at one time, was a great
improvement over previous measuring implements. By making possible more
accurate fitting of shoes, the instrument helped many people alleviate or
avoid foot problems, and its impact on the health and comfort of men and
women serving in World War II was particularly notable. The Brannock
Device quickly became the industry standard and is still used in shoe stores
all over the world.

• In 1879, Ira Remsen and Constantin Fahlberg, at work in a laboratory at
Johns Hopkins University, paused to eat. Fahlberg had neglected to wash his
hands before the meal — which usually leads to a quick death for most
chemists, but led to him noticing an odd flavour during his meal. They had
discovered X.
• The duo published their findings together, but it was only Fahlberg's name
that made it onto the (incredibly lucrative) patent, now found in pink packets
at tables everywhere. That is to say, Remsen got screwed—he later
remarked, "Fahlberg is a scoundrel. It nauseates me to hear my name
mentioned in the same breath with him."

Saccharin, Artificial sweetener

• In 1943, Navy engineer Richard James was trying to figure out how to
use springs to keep the sensitive instruments aboard ships from
rocking themselves to death, when he knocked one of his prototypes
over. Instead of crashing to the floor, it gracefully sprang
downward, and then righted itself. So pointless — so nimble — so X.
The spring became a goofy toy of many childhoods—that is before
every kid inevitably gets theirs all twisted up and ruins it. 300 million
sold worldwide!

• X was ironically created to be a cleaning product. The paste was first
marketed as a treatment for filthy wallpaper — before the company that
produced it began to go down the tubes. The discovery that saved Kutol
Products — headed for bankruptcy — wasn't that their wall cleaner worked
particularly well, but that schoolchildren were beginning to use it to create
Christmas ornaments as arts and crafts projects. By removing the
compound's cleanser and adding colors and a fresh scent, Kutol spun their
wallpaper saver into one of the most iconic products of all time — and
brought mega-success to a company headed for destruction.

• In what have been a very messy moment of discovery in 1942, Dr. Harry Coover of
Eastman-Kodak Laboratories found that a substance he created — cyanoacrylate —
was a miserable failure. It was not, to his dismay, at all suited for a new precision gun
sight as he had hoped — it infuriatingly stuck to everything it touched. So it was
forgotten. Six years later, while overseeing an experimental new design for airplane
canopies, Coover found himself stuck in the same gooey mess with a familiar foe —
cyanacrylate was proving useless as ever. But this time, Coover observed that the
stuff formed an incredibly strong bond without needing heat. Coover and his team
tinkered with sticking various objects in their lab together, and realized they had
finally stumbled upon a use for the maddening goop. Coover slapped a patent on his
discovery, and in 1958, a full 16 years after he first got stuck, cyanoacrylate was
being sold on shelves.

• Chemist Roy Plunkett had hoped to create a new variety of
chlorofluorocarbons (better known as universally-despised CFCs), when he
came back to check on his experiment in a refrigeration chamber. When he
inspected a canister that was supposed to be full of gas, he found that it
appeared to have vanished — leaving behind only a few white flakes.
Plunkett was intrigued by these mysterious chemical bits, and began at once
to experiment with their properties. The new substance proved to be a
fantastic lubricant with an extremely high melting point — perfect at first for
military gear, and now the stuff found finely applied across your non-stick
cookware.

• An assistant professor at the University of Buffalo thought he had
ruined his project. Instead of picking a 10,000-ohm resistor out of a
box to use on a heart-recording prototype, Wilson Greatbatch took the
1-megaohm variety. The resulting circuit produced a signal that
sounded for 1.8 milliseconds, and then paused for a second — a dead
ringer for the human heart. What resulted?

Pacemakers
• Greatbatch realized the precise current could regulate a
pulse, overriding the imperfect heartbeat of the ill. Before this
point, pacemakers were television-sized, cumbersome things that
were temporarily attached to patients from the outside. But now the
effect could be achieved with a small circuit, perfect to tuck into
someone's chest.

• Back in 1945, Arthur C. Clarke wrote an article for the
magazine Wireless World, outlining a new idea – which turned out to
be the X. So thanks to Clarke, we got long-distance phone calls and
satellite television. These days, X allow people in very remote areas
access broadband internet.
• The article was not considered serious at the time, but became a
reality nearly 20 years later with the launch of the first commercial X.

Geostationary satellite
• The geostationary orbit is now sometimes referred to as the Clarke
Orbit or the Clarke belt.

• Einstein wrote about it in 1917, but way back in 1898, science-fiction
author HG Wells described a familiar-sounding ‗heat-ray‘ in War Of
The Worlds. What‘s more, in 1925, Russian writer Mikhail
Bulgakov wrote, in Fatal Eggs, about an intense red light that
stimulated growth – long before the first experiments into X bio-
stimulation took place in the late 1960s.

• The first concept of X occurred on a little television series called Star
Trek. In fact, Martin Cooper, the inventor, has stated that his inspiration
came from watching Captain Kirk speak into his handheld
communicator on the series.

Mobiles
• In 1973, Cooper made history when he placed the first public
telephone call on a portable cellular device. Who did he call? His
competitors at AT&T's Bell Labs, phoning them from the streets of New
York City. Mobile phones have come a long way since then (the
original weighed in at 30 ounces!) and I believe we all owe Cooper a
debt of gratitude for being a Trek fan.

• X was initially a short story published by Robert A.
Heinlein in Astounding Magazine in 1942 under the
pseudonym Anson McDonald. The story is about a
mechanical genius, X, and his journey from a self-
imposed exile to a more normal existence. X was
born as a weakling, unable to lift up his head or use
his hands to drink or eat. X created a mechanical
hand that he used with a glove and harness.
Today, these mechanical arms, called Xs, are used
by the nuclear industry.

A remote manipulator, also known as a
telefactor, telemanipulator, or Waldo

Its lasting contribution to computers?

Computer virus
• This is probably not something we want to celebrate as an invention that
owes its existence thanks to science fiction, but it is inspired by sci-fi all the
same. In 1975, a novel by British author John Brunner, The Shockwave
Rider, described a self-replicating program that could spread across a
network. In 1982, John F. Shoch and John A. Hupp, Xerox
researchers, created the first computer worm, a small program that was
designed to identify idle CPU cycles but ended up growing beyond their
intentions. Fast forward to today, when many hackers still refer to The
Shockwave Rider as an influential book.

• Created in 1994, the X font was inspired
by Batman and Watchmen comic books.
• Comic Sans

• Near the event horizon of a black hole (the boundary in space time
surrounding said black hole), ―X" will occur, stretching matter into thin
strips.
• Spaghettification

• In algebraic geometry, a X may refer to any of several figure-eight or
∞-shaped curves. The word comes from the Latin word meaning
"decorated with ribbons", which in turn may come from the ancient
Greek island of Lemnos where ribbons were worn as decorations, or
alternatively may refer to the wool from which the ribbons were made.
• Lemniscate

Where will you find this? Funda?

• The Technische Universität München (TUM; University of Technology, Munich; Technical University
of Munich) is a research university with campuses in Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan. It is a
member of TU9, an incorporated society of the largest and most notable German institutes of
technology.
• Located inside the Faculty Building for Math and Computer Science are a pair of three storey slides
that descend to the first floor. Being a Math and Computer Science facility these are actually
―parabolic slides‖ (formula: z = y = h x²/d²). For those proclaiming this a waste of money: according
to German law, a certain fraction of the budget for erecting a state-owned building has to be spent
on ―architectural art‖ (German Kunst am Bau)—which, in the case of the FMI building, are the two
huge slides you can see in the picture above.
• The slides are open to visitors and are accompanied with sliding pads that are required for using
the slide. What a fun and quick way to get from the third floor to first! If you‘re ever in Munich, be
sure to take a ride down these! [Source: Wikipedia]

What is the popular name for this genus of
Cauliflower?

Fractal Cauliflower
• Romanesco broccoli, or Roman cauliflower, is an edible flower of the species Brassica oleracea, and a variant
form of cauliflower. First documented in Italy, it is light green in colour and approximates a natural fractal.
• Romanesco broccoli‘s inflorescence (the bud) has an approximate self-similar character, with the branched
meristems (plant tissue) making a logarithmic spiral. In this sense the broccoli‘s shape approximates a natural
fractal; each bud is composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic spiral. This self-
similar pattern continues at several smaller levels.The vegetable is rich in vitamin C, vitamin K, dietary fiber and
carotenoids.
• The head of Romanesco broccoli is a visually striking example of an approximate fractal in nature. The pattern is
only an approximate fractal since the pattern eventually terminates when the feature size becomes sufficiently
small. The number of spirals on the head of Romanesco broccoli is a Fibonacci number. In computer graphics, its
pattern has been modeled as a recursive helical arrangement of cones. [Source: Wikipedia]
•

• While it opened a while back, here's a rare look inside
China's X theme park, also known as Joyland World.
It's located in Changzhou, Jiangsu province and cost
200 million yuan (about $30 million USD) to build.
This theme park spans seven sections spread over
600,000 square meters. Continue reading for two
videos, more pictures, and additional information.
• In addition to the theme park sections, the company
"also built enormous gaming and technology R&D
facilities on the park premises, including the National
E-Sports Competition Center, International Anime-
and-Game Expo Pavilion, Anime-and-Game
Technology and Derivatives R&D Park, and a Digital
Technology High-end Professionals Training Center."

• This game essentially created a whole new genre – the first person shooter-
but its name is hardly original. The title roughly translates to X which was first
used in 1981, when Muse software released Castle X for the Apple IIe.
• Because 1992‘s X was heavily influenced by the original game, ID software
hoped to use the name if it wouldn‘t bee too expensive to license.
However, Muse software had gone out of Business in 1987, so the name
was no longer protected by copyright and was free to use.

• X is the princess that the hero Y is trying to save. According to the
game‘s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, the name was inspired by the wife
of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, simply because he liked the sound of it.
• As for Y, he was originally going to be named Christ or Christo after
Shigeru‘s godfather, but the name Y was ultimately chosen because
he is meant to be a ‗Y‘ between the player and the fantasy world of the
game.

• X is a photographic printing process that gives a cyan-blue print. The process was popular in
engineering circles well into the 20th century. The simple and low-cost process enabled them to
produce large-scale copies of their work, referred to as blueprints. Two chemicals are used in the
process - Ammonium iron(III) citrate and Potassium ferricyanide.
• The English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel discovered this procedure in 1842. Though
the process was developed by Herschel, he considered it as mainly a means of reproducing notes
and diagrams, as in blueprints. It was Anna Atkins who brought this to photography. She created a
limited series of X books that documented ferns and other plant life from her extensive seaweed
collection. Atkins placed specimens directly onto coated paper, allowing the action of light to create
a sillhouette effect. By using this photogram process, Anna Atkins is regarded as the first female
photographer.

Cyanotype
• Anna Atkins was one of the first
scientists to use the cyanotype to
record delicate specimens, as in
Himanthalia lorea, from her 1843 book
on algae.

Identify
• John Harington‘s 1596 invention.

Flush toilet
• The text accompanying Harington's diagram identified A as the
'Cesterne,' D as the 'seate boord,' H as the 'stoole pot,' and L as the
'sluce.' If used correctly, 'your worst privie may be as sweet as your
best chamber.'

What are these interfaces known as?

Skeumorphic design
• It has it‘s place, like in the various genres of punkery
(Steam, diesel, etc.)
But, it‘s distracting when not used in a common way across many
functions/programs/products.

Heliocentric Universe, Nicolaus Copernicus

• What was the revolutionary idea put forth
by Galileo is his Moon drawings that
changed astronomy forever

• Aided by his telescope, Galileo's drawings of the moon were a
revelation. Until these illustrations were published, the moon was
thought to be perfectly smooth and round. Galileo's sketches revealed
it to be mountainous and pitted with craters.

• Dutch researchers, in
2006, analyzing the anatomical
accuracy of Rembrandt‘s 1633
painting titled ‗The Anatomy
Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp‘

Kansas city is the first to get this. What?

Google fiber
• 1000Mbps net connection

FB
• Facebook employees painted a giant 42 foot giant QR code on the Facebook
Office roof so that it is visible from space, appears on Google maps and can
be scanned by QR code readers to visit target facebook sites on mobile
smartphones.
• It was part of the ―Space Hackathon‖ called by Mark Zuckerberg at
the new Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park. As Facebook staff eagerly
climbed on the roof and painted the QR code, they chose a short
url fbco.de so that the QR code could be made simpler and easily scannable
even is smaller sizes when viewable on maps!

What ‗unexpected‘ discovery are scientists
trying to reconstruct here?

• A scientist‘s reconstruction of the Homo Floriensis, colloquially called
‗The Hobbit‘

Which deal is being finalized here?

Bono and The Edge from U2 investing into
DropBox

This is a newly discovered species.
Where was it discovered?

On Flickr!
• One day in May of 2011, Shaun Winterton was looking at pictures of bugs on the Internet
when something unusual caught his eye.
• It was a close shot of a green lacewing — an insect he knew well — but on its wing was
an unfamiliar network of black lines and a few flecks of blue.
• "I sent the link to a few colleagues of mine," Winterton told The Picture Show. "They
hadn't seen it either. And I realized: This thing's new."
• The new species was dubbed Semachrysa jade — not after its pale green color, but after
Winterton's daughter. It was introduced to the world in the latest issue of ZooKeys, a
scientific journal focused on biodiversity. In keeping with the digital nature of their
discovery, Winterton, Guek and Brooks wrote the paper from three different continents
using a Google document.

Who was X
• A Russian chemist X found the perfect mix of Vodka to be 38%
alcohol. However, since spirits in his time were taxed on their
strength, the percentage was rounded up to 40% to simplify
calculations.
• Any less than this, drunk neat, Vodka can taste watery, while strengths
above 40% may give it more burn.

• X; one of the most well known compositions in the world, was
originally known as "Aboveground". It is one of the six themes
composed by Koji Kondo, however, only this one is renowned. The
music has a calypso rhythm and was originally played on the piano
accompanied by steel drums. Today, however, most of it is synthesized
to suit the purpose and is mostly found in 8-bit or 16-bit format.

What is the significance of the song ‗Daisy daisy‘
sung by HAL in its ending scene in 2001:A Space
Odeyssey?

• Composed by Harry Dacre in 1892.
• In 1961 an IBM 704 became the first computer to sing, in a demonstration of Bell
Labs' newly invented speech synthesis -- and the song was ―Daisy Daisy". Vocals
were programmed by John Kelly and Carol Lochbaum and the accompaniment was
programmed by Max Mathews.
• In the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey the intelligent HAL 9000 computer during its
deactivation loses its mind and degenerates to singing ―Daisy Daisy". The reason the
computer reverted to singing this song, according to the film, was because it was one
of the first things HAL learned when it was originally programmed. The author of the
story, Arthur C. Clarke, had seen the 1961 demo.

What is the epoch-making exhibit on
display here?

• Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity on display in its entirety
for the first time, at the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities
on Tuesday in Jerusalem, Israel.
• Einstein donated the complete original forty-six page handwritten
manuscript of his ground-breaking theory to The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem during its inauguration in 1925.

Weave a story around the faux-pas made by CERN.
People are now rallying to rename something in
Windows 8.

• Use of Comic Sans in CERN‘s presentation prompted users to rally for
renaming it as Comic Cerns

Cameras on Curiosity
• MARDI – 2 MP; Wide-Angle
• MastCams (34, 100) – 2 MP; for 3-D stereo and Panorama
• MAHLI – 2 MP; Macro lens
• HazCams – 1 MP b/w; to avoid running into obstacles
• NavCams – 1 MP; maneuver to interesting locations

Which company did he accidentally
rename?

• Prof. David Cheriton wrote a $100,000 check to Larry Page and
Sergey Brin in 1998. He wrote ‗Google‘ instead of ‗Googol‘. Today that
check is now worth more than $1 billion in Google shares

• This physicist X Y was known among his colleagues for his precise yet
taciturn nature. His colleagues in Cambridge jokingly defined a unit of
a Y, which was one word per hour.

• This system was invented by Cambridge mathematician W.A.H Rushton.
• Negative values also exist. -1 X is the amount of ugliness that can launch
one thousand ships the other way.
• David Goines describes 1 picoX as amount of beauty that can ‗Barbeque a
couple of Steaks and Toss an Inner Tube into the Pool‘
• X herself had a beauty rating of 1.186 X, capable of launching more than one
thousand ships

Helen (from Troy)
• Other interpretations of 1 X include, the quantity of beauty to be more
beautiful than 50 million women, the number of women estimation in
the 12 century B.C

• A X is unit that denotes the amount of international aid a country
receives when it becomes the cause celebre of a prominent celebrity.
• In 2005, International Rescue Committee calculated that Darfur
received $300 per capita in aid, while DRC received $11 per capita.
Hence, a X can be thought of as a 27x increase in aid receipt.

• The X is the amount of global attention W X commands across all
media over the space of a day.
• We might then think of the X as a unit of surplus attention, attention
not demanded by the leading news story of the day which could
theoretically be directed towards Somali famine or conflict in Sudan.

A plant with many uses. Prior to the use of hops in
the flavoring of beer, X1 was used for this purpose.

X2 is a city in Germany that is a producer of hops.

X3 is a city in Germany, and also a brand/distributor
of beer.

Andre X4 is a French winery. As such, both X3 and
X4 are distributors of alcoholic beverages.

X5 is a wine-producing region in France, as well as
a comic book character.

General X6 is a character in the DC Comics
universe, as well as an independent record label.

X7 is an independent record label, and also the
name of a movie.
Hint: Mountain Dew

X8 is the name of a movie about a dude who turns
into a X8. A X8 also has an adverse reaction
(death) when it comes into contact with silver.

X9 is an element that causes an adverse reaction
(tarnishing) when it contacts silver. In mythology, it
is an element used to drive away werewolves. X9 is
also a city in the United States.

X10 is a city in the United States, and was the
name of a ship in the United States Navy.

X11 was a ship in the United States Navy.

X12 is the name of Township in St. Joseph
County, Michigan in the United States, as well as a
name of a bay in the United Kingdom.

X12 Tsiolkovsky was a rocket scientist, and so was
Robert X13.

Robert H. X13 was a professor of physics, and so
was Robert X14.

X14 is a city in the state of Nevada (United
States), and so is X15.

James X15 is a futurologist, and so was Jules X16

X17 was suggested as a name, just like X16
It is also something that has never been observed.

X18 is something that has never been
observed, and may also therefore be considered as
a theoretical thought experiment.

X19 corresponds to a theoretical thought
experiment.

Yarrow
A plant with many uses. Prior to the use of hops in
the flavoring of beer, X1 was used for this purpose.

Tettnang
X2 is a city in Germany that is a producer of hops.

Heidelberg
X3 is a city in Germany, and also a brand/distributor
of beer.

Stentz
Andre X4 is a French winery. As such, both X3 and
X4 are distributors of alcoholic beverages.

Bordeaux
X5 is a wine-producing region in France, as well as
a comic book character.

Zod
General X6 is a character in the DC Comics
universe, as well as an independent record label.

Moonshine
X7 is an independent record label, and also the
name of a movie.
Hint: Mountain Dew

Werewolf
X8 is the name of a movie about a dude who turns
into a X8. A X8 also has an adverse reaction
(death) when it comes into contact with silver.

Sulphur
X9 is an element that causes an adverse reaction
(tarnishing) when it contacts silver. In mythology, it
is an element used to drive away werewolves. X9 is
also a city in the United States.

Cambridge
X10 is a city in the United States, and was the
name of a ship in the United States Navy.

Leonidas
X11 was a ship in the United States Navy.

Constantine
X12 is the name of Township in St. Joseph
County, Michigan in the United States, as well as a
name of a bay in the United Kingdom.

Goddard
X12 Tsiolkovsky was a rocket scientist, and so was
Robert X13.

Laughlin
Robert H. X13 was a professor of physics, and so
was Robert X14.

Lovelock
X14 is a city in the state of Nevada (United
States), and so is X15.

Verne
James X15 is a futurologist, and so was Jules X16

Beefy Miracle
X17 was suggested as a name, just like X16
It is also something that has never been observed.

Spherical Cow
X18 is something that has never been
observed, and may also therefore be considered as
a theoretical thought experiment.

Schrodinger‘s Cat
X19 corresponds to a theoretical thought
experiment.

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