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 - 629

Identify the man responsible for the artifacts on the top row. The two visuals at the bottom are more oblique clues that the same man was responsible for.

Answer: Claude "The GOD" Shannon. I maybe biased but this man deserves to be known in the same league of scientists as Einstein and Feynman for his contributions. His master's thesis paved the way for digital computers by proving the sufficiency of Boolean logic. He single-handedly created information theory, the theoretical framework of our generation's information revolution. He also was the first to initiate a theoretical study of cryptography. His PhD thesis on an algebra for biology is a little known gem. As if all this isn't awesome enough, he was an expert at juggling, machine learning, uni-cycling and card counting.

The pictures show some of his less famous inventions: He built a mouse called Theseus that could figure out a way out of a maze. He built a machine that could juggle 3 balls at a time (he also proved a theorem about juggling) and he built the "Ultimate machine" upon a suggestion from Marvin Minsky. He wrote the first paper on how one might program a computer to play chess and developed many card counting tricks that he personally used to great effect in Las Vegas.

Saket, Siddarth Pai, Iam, Divya Shankar, anon and Divya got it. Well done.

Question - 575

Identify the person and the object.

Answer: Maurice Wilkes, the pioneering British computer scientist who recently passed away, and EDSAC, the first practical stored-program computer. Anand, matti tapaninen, Manix, and Dinesh got it. Nice work.

Question - 511

Today's question is courtesy Anand. This is a picture taken in 1956. What is being loaded onto the plane?

Answer: This is the very first computer hard disk which had a massive 5 MB storage. Shravan, Raghu, Krithi, Aravind, Jamie, v.chandrashekar, Karthik, neuron.spike, Arvind, iamtheicebox, sumo_ftb, Renuka, Adi, Kaushik, Aaslesh, Akshay, Matti Tapaninen and Nihar got it. Well done.

Question - 503

What similar event is about to happen in the two visuals?

Answer: These are two occasions when unix time reached interesting landmarks - 1000000000 and 1234567890 respectively. Kaushik, Jamie and Adi got it. Well done.

Question - 296

Shown is a simple example of a particular algorithm. What is the algorithm?

Answer: This demonstrates Google's pagerank algorithm which calculates the search rank of a page based on the number of links into the page and the origin of the incoming links. raklodramA, Schmetterling, Iam, Rajesh and Srivats got it. Well done.

Question - 267

Connect the key rings to the equation in the right.

Answer: The equation is the expression for Brun's constant which is the sum of reciprocals of twin primes (primes p such that p+2 is a prime as well). This constant is often studied in relation to the conjecture that there are infinitely many twin primes (for ex., irrationality of the constant would prove the conjecture). Thomas Nicely, a math professor, was using a cluster of computers to evaluate the constant when he noted some inconsistencies which he ultimately traced down to the Intel pentium chipset. Due to some missing values in a look up table, the chip was returning erroneous outputs for very few operations. Intel's handling of the crisis was heavily criticized leading to the recall of all processors using the chip. Andy Grove, then CEO of intel, made a few of these chips into keychains as a memento. Rajeev, nice try, Avi and adityam got it. Well done.

Question - 257

What do these visuals represent?

Answer: These are the Acid tests for testing whether browsers render html correctly. Srivats, Iam, nice try and adityam got it. Well done.

Question - 239

Identify all the visuals and the common theme connecting them.

Answer: These are the standard images/3D objects used to benchmark and compare image processing and graphics algorithms. They are (from L to R) Lenna (the famous playboy centerfold), the Utah teapot, the Stanford bunny and the Cornell box. Srivats, Raghu, Ashwin, nice try, Rajeev, Iam and Avi got it. Well done.

Question - 92

The guy in the first visual invented something. He either named it after a legend surrounding the second visual or he himself invented the legend as well. There is also a less famous name for his invention that is named after the third visual. Identify all three visuals.

Answer: The person is the French mathematician Edouard Lucas who invented the "Tower of Hanoi" puzzle. The second visual is the tower at Hanoi, Vietnam after which the puzzle is named. The puzzle is also called the "Tower of Brahma" sometimes. Legend has it that Buddhist/Hindu monks have been moving 64 golden disks as per the rules of the puzzle and when they are done, the world will come to an end. Divya, Iam, Mekhala, QoD and Hirak got it. Well done.

Question - 83

Identify the visuals and their significance.

Answer: This is the Trojan room coffee pot at Cambridge. A bunch of computer scientists tired of walking to the coffee pot only to find it empty set up a camera that captured images of the pot every few seconds and made them available at the world wide web. Thus was born the world's first webcam. The second visual shows the final visual taken by the webcam before it was turned off in 2001. Hirak, Iam, QoD and an Anon got it. Well done.

Question - 81

What does the tattoo signify?

Answer: This is a configuration from Conway's "Game of Life" called the glider. This is the hacker emblem for the free software and open source community. Anirudh Patil and Iam got it. Well done.

Question - 48

Today's question is courtesy Mekhala. Identify the significance of the photo on the right and if possible the individuals as well. The visual on the left is a clue towards identifying them.

Answer: The people on the right were the so called "Traitorous Eight". They left Shockley semiconductors to form Fairchild semiconductors whose spinoff companies eventually created the Silicon valley (shown in the first visual). Rajeev, QoD, Ramji, Ashwin, Adi and Rajesh got it. Well done.

Question - 25

Blogger isn't letting me upload any images. So, today's question is dry. I have obfuscated it as much as I could to make it not too easy. If blogger lets me upload the visual, I will put a new question.

Question: In a 2002 poll, 61% believed the answer is no, 9% believed the answer is yes, 22% were undecided and 8% that it is undecidable. Some think analyzing minesweeper would give some insight into the question. What am I talking about?

Answer: The P vs. NP problem. The minesweeper connection is here. Divya and Raghu got it right. Well done.