[nycbug-talk] UNIX quiz

George Rosamond george at ceetonetechnology.com
Tue Jan 20 12:52:15 EST 2009


Isaac Levy wrote:
> On Jan 20, 2009, at 8:51 AM, George Rosamond wrote:
> 
>> Caught this on Shining Silence. . . the DFly BSD blog: UNIX quiz from 
>> 1984.
>>
>> http://spiffy.ci.uiuc.edu/~kline/Stuff/unixquiz.html
>>
>> And some of the answers:
>>
>> http://chneukirchen.org/trivium/2009-01-18
>>
>> Cool stuff.
>>
>> I'll ping a source for the ;login: issue with the answers.
>>
>> g
> 
> YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!  Excellent post...
> 
> I'm already crafting the UNIX Trivial Pursuit Cards to stuff in the deck...
> 

Errr. . . FYI. . . just got the PDF of the issue of ;login: with answers

Various character translation problems i due to troff . . copied and 
pasted from a PDF.

Thanks BER!

g

       Below are the answers to last the trivia quiz that appeared in 
the last issue of ;login: . The syntax for the
answers is:
           left to right precedence
           a|b is a or b
           a&b is a and b (any order)
           a!b is a and not b
  1. The source code motel: your source code checks in, but it never 
checks out. What is it?
                                      sccs
  2. Who wrote the rst UNIX screen editor?
                                      irons
Volume 9, Number 4                               September 1984 
                                           7
                                                        ;login:
  3. Using TSO is like kicking a [what?] down the beach?
              dead whale
  4. What is the lename created by the original dsw (1)?
              core
  5. Which edition of UNIX rst had pipes?
              third|3
  6. What is -=O=-?
              empire
  7. Which Stephen R. Bourne wrote the shell?
              software|1138|regis
  8. Adam Buchsbaum’s original login was sjb. Who is sjb?
              sol&buchsbaum
  9. What was the original processor in the Teletype DMD-5620?
              mac&32
10. What was the telephone extension of the author of mpx (2)?
              7775
11. Which machine resulted in the naming of the “NUXI problem”?
              series 1|series one
12. What customs threat is dangerous only when dropped from an airplane?
              belle|chess machine
13. Who wrote the Bourne shell?
              bourne
14. What operator in the Mashey shell was replaced by “here documents”?
              pump
15. What names appear on the title page of the 3.0 manual?
              dolotta&petrucelli&olsson
16. Sort the following into chronological order: a) PWB 1.2, b) V7, c) 
Whirlwind, e) System V, f) 4.2BSD, g)
     MERT.
              cagbef|c a g b e f
17. The CRAY-2 will be so fast it [what?] in 6 seconds?
              innite|np-complete|p=np
18. How many lights are on the front panel of the original 11/70?
              52
19. What does FUBAR mean?
              failed unibus address register
20. What does “joff” stand for?
              jerq obscure feature nder
21. What is “Blit” an acronym of?
              nothing
22. Who was rabbit!bimmler?
              rob
23. Into how many pieces did Ken Thompson’s deer disintegrate?
              three|3
24. What name is most common at USENIX conferences?
              joy|pike
8                                                 September 1984 
                   Volume 9, Number 4
                                                          ;login:
25. What is the US patent number for the setuid bit?
              4135240
26. What is the patent number that appears in UNIX documentation?
              2089603
27. Who satisied the patent ofce of the viability of the setuid bit 
patent?
              faulkner
28. How many UNIX systems existed when the Second Edition manual was 
printed?
              10|ten
29. Which Bell Labs location is HL?
              short hills
30. Who mailed out the Sixth Edition tapes?
              biren|irma
31. Which university stole UNIX by phone?
              waterloo
32. Who received the rst rubber chicken award?
              mumaugh
33. Name a feature of C not in Kernighan and Ritchie.
              enum|structure assignment|void
34. What company did cbosg!ccf work for?
              weco|western
35. What does Bnews do?
              suck|gulp buckets
36. Who said “SEX, DRUGS and UNIX”?
              tilson
37. What law rm distributed Empire?
              dpw|davis&polk&wardwell
38. What computer was requested by Ken Thompson, but refused by management?
              pdp-10|pdp10
39. Who is the most obsessed private pilot in USENIX?
              goble|ghg
40. What operating system runs on the 3B-20D?
              dmert|unix/rtr
41. Who wrote find (1)?
              haight
42. In what year did Bell Labs organization charts become proprietary?
              83
43. What is the UNIX epoch in Cleveland?
              1969&dec&31&19:00
44. What language preceded C?
              nb
45. What language preceded B?
              bon|fortran
46. What letter is mispunched by bcd (6)?
              r
Volume 9, Number 4                                 September 1984 
       9
                                                       ;login:
47. What terminal does the Blit emulate?
              jerq
48. What does “trb” stand for (it’s Andy Tannenbaum’s login)?
              tribble
49. allegra!honey is no what?
              lady
50. What is the one-line description in vs.c?
              screw works interface
51. What is the TU10 tape boot for the PDP-11/70 starting at location 
100000 (in octal)?
              012700 172526 010040 012740 060003 105710 012376 005007
52. What company owns the trademark on Writer’s Workbenchtm Software?
              at&t communications
53. Who designed Belle?
              condon|jhc
54. Who coined the name “UNIX”?
              kernighan|bwk
55. What manual page mentioned Urdu?
              typo
56. What politician is mentioned in the UNIX documentation?
              nixon
57. What program was compat (1) written to support?
              zork|adventure
58. Who is “mctesq”?
              michael&toy&esquire
59. What was “ubl”?
              rogue|under bell labs
60. Who bought the rst commercial UNIX license?
              rand
61. Who bought the rst UNIX license?
              columbia
62. Who signed the Sixth Edition licenses?
              shahpazian
63. What color is the front console on the PDP-11/45 (exactly)?
              puce
64. How many different meanings does UNIX assign to ‘.’?
              lots|many|countless|myriad|thousands
65. Who said, “Smooth rotation butters no parsnips”?
              john&tukey
66. What was the original name for cd (1)?
              ch!dir
67. Which was the rst edition of the manual to be typeset?
              4|four
68. Which was the rst edition of UNIX to have standard error/diagnostic 
output?
              5|ve
  10                                               September 1984 
                   Volume 9, Number 4
                                                          ;login:
69. Who ran the rst UNIX Support Group?
              maranzano
70. Whose Ph.D. thesis concerned UNIX paging?
              ozalp&babaoglu
71. Who (other than the obvious) designed the original UNIX le system?
              canaday
72. Who wrote the PWB shell?
              mashey
73. Who invented uucp ?
              lesk
74. Who thought of PWB?
              evan ivie
75. What does grep stand for?
              global regular expression print|g/re/p|g/regular expression/p
76. What hardware device does “dsw” refer to?
              console&7
77. What was the old name of the “sys” directory?
              ken
78. What was the old name of the “dev” directory?
              dmr
79. Who has written many random number generators, but never one that 
worked?
              ken|thompson
80. Where was the rst UNIX system outside 127?
              patent
81. What was the rst UNIX network?
              spider
82. What was the original syntax for “ls -l|pr -h”?
              ls -l>"pr -h">|<"ls -l"<pr -h
83. Why is there a comment in the shell source “/* Must not be a 
register variable */”?
              registers&longjmp
84. What is it you’re not expected to understand?
              6|5&process

g



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