Wednesday 12 October 2011

On mid-terms

Hi guys. So we have mid-terms tomorrow and I thought I'd share my answers for the questions provided. Please have a look, and if you spot any errors lemme know (in particular some answers are marked "check" and I'm not quite sure of those). Bon appetit:

MCQ (15 questions; 10 from below, 5 unannounced. 2 points each for total of 30 points)
·        What was Napster and when was it launched? Peer to peer file sharing site (focused on audio files); started in 1999.
·        Where did he come up with the name Project Xanadu? Place name in Mongolia. Taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kublai Khan".
·        The first real network to run on packet switching technology: Arpanet.
·        What was the very first webpage about? Information on the WWW Project.
·        What is the first webmail service launched in 1996? Hotmail (but not the first ONE OF the first).
·        Which year was As We May Think released in the Atlantic Monthly? July 1945.
·        What is the popular file format to share songs and albums via the Internet? Mp3.
·        When was Wikipedia launched? 2001.
·        Facebook’s original name and target in 2004? The Facebook; Harvard students.
·        What is the Twitter Fail Whale? The image (character) displayed when Twitter experiences an outage or error.
·        What is Derp? A meme used to indicate something silly, dumb or stupid.
·        What does www stand for? World wide web.
·        Besides the mouse, what other devices did Engelbert consider for interfacing with the computer? Touchscreens and light pens.
·        Tim-Berners Lee created the www. True or False? True (with Robert Cailliau).
·        Does flickr allow you to upload photos from your phone? Yes.
·        Name 3 things Engelbart invented. Mouse, shared-screen teleconferencing, windows (more available).
·        Who coined terms such as hypertext and hypermedia? Ted Nelson.
·        When was the first computer mouse prototype released? 1963.
·        Mentally compare and contrast Facebook and Twitter and give 1 example of a difference. (open question; own opinion supported by evidence)
·        If the hashtag number for Daily Shoot is 665, how would you tag this to Twitter? @dailyshoot #ds665 (optional: Photo description) shortened link to photo.
·        When was the year that brought the first unsolicited commercial email message (spam)? 1978.
·        You can message someone on Twitter by putting what before their username? @.
·        Who created the idea of the Memex? Vannevar Bush.
·        Which is the first modern emoticon in 1982? X-).
·        In 1971 Ray Tomlinson first developed what? Email on Arpanet.
·        Google went live in which year? 1997 (domain name registered. Check).
·        Who had the first video conference? Doug Engelbart (check).
·        What does NLS mean? oN-Line System.
·        Who allegedly claimed to have invented the Internet but obviously didn’t? Me (bad question; anyone known is technically a right answer).
·        Who designed the first automatic computing engine? Alan Turing.
·        Which words make up the name Memex? Memory and Index.
·        Ted Nelson’s first attempt (Project Xanadu) on implementation began and was successfully released to the world in 1960. True or False? False.
·        Anyone can suggest their idea for Daily Shoot assignments on Daily Shoot. True or False? True (check).
·        What was Twitter originally going to be called? twttr (this is not one of the provided answers; I believe the choices have a typo).
·        What is the top of the Memex? Transparent platen (check).


BLOG POST (20 points):
·        Embed YouTube video via html (not Blogger’s shortcut method).
·        CC licensed (“share alike”) Flickr image with attribution.
·        Link to 3 other related blogs.
·        2 or 3 paragraphs on topic.
·        Topic provided during exam.

Also, it's dangerous to go alone so you can refer to Justin and Rimi's posts on a similar topic. Good luck. :)

12 comments:

  1. And it helps a lot since the subject concerning the blog post was not visibly available until now. (i missed last week's class) :) Thank you!

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  2. Tell it again! lol

    Your the man bro! Your dedication to the class is unrivaled.

    But about project Xanadu's name origin:

    http://xanadu.com/HISTORY/

    "ABOUT THE NAME

    About the name: No, we did not get it from Olivia Newton-John. It is an actual place in Mongolia which is described in a poem considered by many the most romantic poem in the English language-- "Kubla Khan" by Coleridge. The poem begins,
    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately Pleasure Dome decree, ...
    and goes on to describe that eerie and beautiful palace with innuendos of sensuality and madness. This poem's tradition also associates the name "Xanadu" with memory and lost work, because Coleridge said he lost part of the poem due to a mundane interruption. We chose the name "Xanadu", with all these connotations, to represent a magic place of literary memory and freedom, where nothing would be forgotten.

    The "freedom" part applies even today: the ruins of of Kublai Khan's actual palace at Xanadu have been placed off limits to Mongolians by the Chinese government, because of its symbolism of Mongolian independence. (See "Xanadu Remains Closed, Controversial" at http://www.taklamakan.org/smongol-l/archive/scmp053198.html.)"

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  3. Shit, *You're the man.

    ...man, how very embarrassing! I'm usually a grammar Nazi and now I keep making all these typos! :'( What a shame....

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  4. OH, MAN!! You're such a ネ申 !!

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  5. Avalos: Aaahh see that makes sense! I read it as where was the guy physically when he came up with the name! Did find it a strange question.. :P I actually studied the poem before too. Former lit student

    Morita: lol

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  6. Yeah, actually Stephanie Hughes pointed that perspective to me, and I thought, "now I've done put my foot in my mouth...again." But I then told her that the originality of the name is much more beautiful and substantial than where he actually was...[Harvard's graduate toilet seat, as an extreme end of the spectrum] and figured you'll understand where I'm coming from!

    As for the poem, had never heard of it before this class, so I spent some time with my friend wikipedia reading up on Mongolian history and all :)

    @Morita...what does that mean? All I see is that katakana "ne" kanji character, lol :P

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. "Who allegedly claimed to have invented the Internet but obviously didn’t? Me (bad question; anyone known is technically a right answer)."

    Al Gore?

    It is not really obvious, since he was a big promoter of the creation of the internet. Also he never actually said he invented the internet. The actual quote is "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

    In a way he was a part of it's creation.

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  9. Hoepe it's not too late, here is the right answer!

    "he named his project Xanadu, in honour of the poem "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge."

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  10. Thanks for the edits guys. Hope people who were referencing this got them in time.

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