Thursday, August 28, 2008

Quiz Qawwali #4-Trivia X

1.X was given as a grant to establish a trading post spread over three sq km of beach sand by the rulers to two Britons - Francis Day and Andrew Cogan.It is today the 34th largest city in the world.The first signs of industrial activity started with the formation of Parry & Co that later went into manufacture of finished leather goods supplied mainly to the British and American soldiers. Cotton textile was, however, the oldest manufactured good from this part of the world to be sold all over Europe. It recently celebrated its 369th birth anniversary.Identify X?

2.

Identify this duo who developed something which has been a pain in the neck for microsoft for quite sometime now...

3.X (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), was an American comedian and film star. He is famed as a master of wit. He made fifteen feature films with his siblings, the Y, and also had a successful solo career, most notably as the host of the radio and television game show You Bet Your Life.He had a distinctive image, which included a heavy greasepaint moustache and eyebrows and glasses.X had a successful performing career even after the brothers stopped making films though. He performed constantly, doing a one-man show at Carnegie Hall when he was 82!He's the one to have said these witty remarks which became immortal: 'A black cat crossing your path signifies the animal is going somewhere'; 'Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot'; and 'Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.'
Identify X & Y?

4.

Identify this legendary statesman...

5.Despite studying criminal justice, X first began his career as a pilot, was shot down on a bombing mission during World War II, and won a medal in the process. He had a second crash while flying a commercial airplane,left aviation industry & became a police officer.The money offered by the television industry soon tempted him to try his luck there and he made Y in 1966.X died on October 24, 1991, and became one of the first people to be buried in space.
Identify X&Y?

6.

Identify this very beautiful lady...

7.

He lends his name to the english lexicon.A 2000 movie based on him and starring Kate Winslet, Geoffrey Rush and Joaquin Phoenix was nominated for 3 oscars.
Identify him.Bonus 5 points for naming the movie.

8.

Identify this,recently in news, sportsperson who did something that even Fidel Castro could not.

9.X is a character created by F.Scott Fitzerald.The story begins in 1860 with the birth of the protagonist, X. X is born with the body of a seventy-year-old man, and when his father first visits him mere hours after his birth he is already able to speak. To avoid embarrassment,X's father forces him to shave his beard and dye his hair in order to look younger.

As the story progresses it soon becomes apparent to the X's family that X is aging backwards. At the age of eighteen he attempts to enroll at Yale University, but the officials at Yale send him away believing that he is a fifty-year-old man.
Many tragi-comedic incidents happen to X & finally, at the end of his life, X ceases to exist.
A movie based on X and directed by David Fincher is slated for a 2008 release.
Identify X.

10.

Identify this person who is one of the founding fathers of the internet revolution...

Attention!!!
This quiz is open for a fortnight or till the answers stop pouring in ,whichever is earlier...
Mail me the answers at sid17_4all@yahoo.co.in or post them as comments to this post.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Quiz Qawwali #3 - Trivia X -Answers

1.Y is"Benihana Steak House" and X is Hiroaki (Rocky) Aoki.After he received his degree in restaurant management from New York City Community College in 1964, Rocky Aoki used the $10,000 he had saved from an ice cream business to convince his father to co-invest in the first Benihana, a four-table teppanyaki restaurant on West 56th Street. "Benihana", taken from the Japanese name for safflower, was suggested by Aoki's father. According to family legend, Aoki's father was walking through the bombed-out ruins of post-war Tokyo when he happened across a single red safflower growing in the rubble.
2.Falun Gong or Falun Dafa(X) was founded by Li Hongzhi(Y) in 1992.As Falun Gong has no membership or rosters, the number of practitioners is unknown. In 1998, the Chinese government published a figure of 70 million practitioners in China.Clearwisdom.net, a Falun Gong website, claims 100 million practitioners in more than 80 countries.
3
.

The top-left picture is that of Sid Vicious or John Simon Ritchie the infamous bassist of Sex Pistols,a British punk band.The top-right picture is of Heath Ledger , the actor who played the role of The Joker in the movie,"The Dark Knight".Heath Ledger stated that he based the character of Joker on the behaviour and mannerisms of Sid Vicious.The bottom-left picture is of Jack Nicholson who portrayed Joker in the movie made by Tim Burton.
The connect is of course Joker.
4.A Darwin Award(X) is tongue-in-cheek "honor" named after evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin. Awards have been given for people who "do a service to Humanity by removing themselves from the Gene pool", i.e., lose the ability to reproduce either by death or sterilization in a stupid fashion. According to the Darwin Award books: "The Awards honor people who ensure the long-term survival of the human race by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion."
Wendy Northcutt(Y) runs the well known website darwinawards.com started in 1994.She has also written several books on the Darwin Awards.
5.Larrabee(X) is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) chip that Intel is developing separately from its current line of integrated graphics accelerators. The video card containing Larrabee is expected to compete with GeForce and Radeon products from NVIDIA and AMD/ATI respectively. Larrabee will also compete in the GPGPU and high-performance computing markets. Intel plans to have engineering samples of Larrabee ready by the end of 2008, with a video card hitting shelves in late 2009 or 2010.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Quiz Qawwali #3 - Trivia X

1.Borrowing the name from his parents' coffee shop in Japan , X founded the first Y in New York City in 1964 , incorporating his homeland's teppanyaki style of cooking that called on chefs to perform with a flourish in front of the guests.While X's company later grew to nearly 100 restaurants worldwide X's ambition wasn't limited only to restaurants.A man with diverse interests ,X was once a member of Japan's Olympic Wrestling Team , a driver in the notorious ( and illegal ) cross-country cannonball run and one of the few people to traverse the pacific in a hot air balloon.
Identify X & Y.
2.X is a spiritual practice founded Y in 1992.It has five sets of meditation exercises and seeks to develop practitioners' hearts and character according to the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.The teachings deal with issues such as "cultivation of virtue and character", "moral standards for different levels", and "salvation of all sentient beings."
Since 1999, reports of torture,illegal imprisonment,beatings, forced labour, and psychiatric abuses of X's practitioners have been widespread. 66% of all reported torture cases in China concern X's practitioners, who are also estimated to comprise at least half of China's labour camp population, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, and the US Department of State respectively.In 2006, two high-profile Canadian lawyers published an investigative report concluding that since 1999, the Chinese authorities have systematically executed X's practitioners to harvest their organs for the burgeoning transplant trade.
Identify X and Y.
3.

A Sitter....Connect.......
4.X have been circulated since 1985 as emails and Usenet group discussions; the Google Usenet archive records two early mentions of X, 7 August 1985 Vending Machine Tipover and 7 December 1990 JATO Rocket Car urban legend. The JATO legend was widely distributed via emails from 1995–97. Several anonymously authored email lists titled (for example) 1999 "X" have appeared annually since 1991.There are several websites that record "X" — a well-known one started in 1994 run by Y, who has also written several books on X.
Y has stated five requirements for her X which are - "Inability to reproduce","Excellence" , "Self-selection" , "Maturity" & "Veracity".
Identify X & Y.
5.X is the codename for a discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) chip that was invented by the Pentagon through the negotiation of military applications solution.X will differ from other GPUs currently on the market such as the GeForce 200 Series and the Radeon 4000 series in that it will use the popular x86 instruction set for its shader cores instead of a proprietary graphics-focused instruction set, and will feature cache coherency across all its cores like a multi-core CPU (unlike current GPUs).X is thus expected to be more flexible than current GPUs.X is being worked on by Intel's Hillsboro, Oregon design team, whose last major design was the Pentium 4.
Identify X.
Attention!!!
Answers & results in a week's time.Mail me the answers at sid17_4all@yahoo.co.in

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Quiz Qawwali#2 - Trivia X - Answers
1.



















He is Nicholas Negroponte Greek-American architect and computer scientist best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also known as the founder of The One Laptop per Child association (OLPC). OLPC recently partnered with Reliance ADA Group to bring computers to India's primary school kids .

2.The site is www.4chan.org which was launched by "moot" ("Christopher Poole").

3.


Barack Obama....Who else

4.Colours , Standards , Pendants And Burgees are all different varieties and types of flags.

5.


The picture on the left is that of "Ajax The Lesser" , Greek mythological hero.He was the leader of the Locrian contingent during the Trojan War. He is a significant figure in Homer's Iliad and is also mentioned in the Odyssey. Ajax was killed by Poseidon,the God of sea.
The picture on the right is that of Jesse James Garrett , an experience designer, known for having coined the term Ajax(asynchronous JavaScript and XML).
The connect is of course AJAX, which is a group of interrelated web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications or rich Internet applications . AJAX has become the web tool of choice with the advent of web2.0.