Games, Diversions & Perl Culture

Chapter 34. The Fourth Perl/Internet Quiz Show

Jon Orwant

Here are the toss-ups and bonus questions from the Fourth Internet Quiz Show, held in the summer of 2001 at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. Answers are at the end of the article.

Five questions in the quiz show were “British restitution” questions. At the previous year’s quiz show, the championship came down to the very last question. The London team had to answer Bonus 36 from Chapter 33 correctly—a question requiring knowledge of the name of then-President Clinton’s dog. Most Americans probably wouldn’t have known the answer; it was doubly unfair for a team full of Brits. So I peppered the 2001 quiz show with a few questions that would give British players an edge.

As usual, you can keep score using the ranks at the beginning of Chapter 31: count one point per question. For bonus questions, a half-correct answer merits the entire point.

Toss-up Questions

Toss-up 1: Russian law requires that software permit the purchaser to make at least one legal copy. According to Alexander Katalov, the president of Elcomsoft, this makes it illegal to distribute Adobe’s eBook software in Russia. That provides little comfort for this man, jailed in Las Vegas for distributing software designed to circumvent Adobe copyright protection measures. Who is this unfortunate hacker?

Toss-up 2: According to Nielsen/Netratings study, workers spend more time online on this weekday than any other. Name that day.

Toss-up 3: “It reflects the lifestyle of ...