Question - 660

Identify these people and a common position they have all held. (Not an exhaustive list)

Update: No hits so far. Maybe I should word the question better. I am looking for a common title that they all hold. A variant of this title is used in politics and is almost always dubious and unjustified. The 2nd and 4th guys should be recognizable - the second one is named for a Nobel winning chemist/a cartoon character. Note the attire of the fourth one.

Answer: Guido Van Rossum (python), Linus Torvalds (linux), Larry Wall (perl) and Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu)- they all hold the post of "Benevolent dictator for life" for their respective open source projects. Krishna, Paddy, Shrey Banga, Iam, Raghu and Avi got it. Well done.

Question - 621

A recreation (left) and a photograph (right) of the first few what of their kind?

Answer: These are the first few images transmitted on the television by John Logie Baird. Ameya, Iam, Divya Shankar, and Dinesh got it. Nicely done.

Question - 608

This is an illustration of which prevalent theory?

Answer: Hubbert peak theory or peak oil theory. Ameya, Sameer Gauria, KAMANASISH, Jamie, Sribharath, Saket, and Manix got it.

Question - 604

What is this? (via: Manix)

Answer: Internet traffic from Egypt during the January revolution. Sameer Gauria, Shyaps, Saket, arvind, and Jaggi got it. Well done.

Question - 588

What are they doing?

Answe: NORAD tracking Santa. Rajesh K, Dinesh, Iam, Manix, Hari, and mekie got it. Well done.

Question - 584

Who is the guy in the middle upending the table?

Question - 579

What does this map depict? (courtesy: Manix)

Answer: United States of Autocomplete. Google's autocomplete feature applied to the names of each state (as of Dec 3, 2010). AJ, Krithi, Dinesh, mekie, and jamie got it. Nicely cracked.

Question - 562

Connect to an engineering concept?

Answer: Van Eck Phreaking - a way to spy on electronic displays by detecting their electromagnetic radiation, popularized by Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. mekie, Krithi, Divya Shankar, and Dinesh got it. Awesome crack.

Question - 544

Identify.

Answer: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, along with Divya Narendra - co-founders of ConnectU and part of the Facebook-origins story. Srivats, mekie, Divya Shankar, and Hirak got it. Well done.

Question - 536

What are these? A particular combination of the engravings found in these (and other such) stones is very familiar to us in the modern technological world.

Answer: These are Jelling stones, stones erected by Harold Bluetooth in memory of his parents. Two of the runes present in these stones combine to give us the symbol for bluetooth technology. Two anons cracked it. Well done.

Question - 529

Identify the objects in the first two visuals. They are to be housed on top of the mountain shown in the third visual.

Answer: The clock of the long now and the Rosetta disk, both endeavors by the Long Now foundation that aspires to be a very very long term cultural institution (sort of like the foundation in Asimov's works). The clock is supposed to run for at least 10,000 years and is to be housed on the peak of Mt. Washington in Nevada. Jamie and Kamal Rathi got it. Well done.

Question - 480

Connect. (Hint: Hindi)

Answer: The elephant logo belongs to the HathiTrust, which is in an alliance of several universities that have a partnership with Google Book Search to digitize all their books. Hathi is the Hindi term for an elephant and was used because elephants can remember. Hotmanoj and Hirak got it. Great job.

Question - 460

These are the two most famous examples of what?

Answer: The answer I was looking for was Kill Screen - the name given to a level in a video game beyond which it is impossible for any player to proceed due to fundamental programming flaws or design oversights. They are most often found in the early arcade games (Pac-man and Donkey Kong shown here) where register overflow errors were the frequent culprits. The Pac-man kill screen is especially famous with even a $100,000 reward for a player who can get past this level. Mekie, Iam and Hari got the answer I had in mind while Adi and Schmetterling went with more generic connects. Well done.

Question - 400

The most persistent version of this urban legend connects a work of the man in the bottom right with one of the other 3 people shown. Which legend is this and what (really bad) reason does the QM have for asking this question?

Answer: Herbert Von Karajan, Akio Morita and Norio Ohga were all associated with the development of the CD. The run length of CDs being 74 minutes is attributed to one of these men's desire to include the entire 9th Symphony of Beethoven (which runs for 74 minutes in some renderings) in a CD. The story is almost surely false but has endured nonetheless. Karthik, Mihir, Raghu (no, not the reason I was looking for), Iam and Hirak got it. Well done.

Aside: No one got the (bad bad) reason for this question being the 400th. Keep trying, folks.

And the answer is: CD is roman for... (how awesome am I?)

Question - 364

This jacket is an accessory to enable what legendary item's use?

Update: Man in pic is connected with this.

Answer: Jacket for listening to the Sony Walkman. Among the many accessories that come out in the wake of the personal stereo

Answered by: Q, Anonymous and P.