Quiz - History of the Internet

1. The first domain name registered was Symbolics.com. It was registered on March 15, 1985. (Link: 100 Oldest Domain Names (whoisd.com))
2. Father of the World Wide Web (WWW): Tim Bernes-Lee. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, along with Robert Cailliau, wrote the first Internet client (a
browser-editor running under NeXTStep) and the first WWW server along with most of the communications software, defining Uniform
Resource Locators (URLs), Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). Links: CERN Article: History of
the WWW, Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal in 1989
3. The term hypertext was the contribution of Ted Nelson in his paper "Literary Machines" to the ACM in 1965. Link: LivingInternet.com: Ted
Nelson
4. The first Smiley or Emoticon was used by Scott E. Fahlman on a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Bulletin Board on September 19, 1982.
He suggested the use of :-) to mark posts which were jokes. Fahlman's original post, which was considered lost for ever, was retrieved by
CMU facility staff member Jeff Baird on 10 September 2002 as part of an effort started by Microsoft Researcher Mike Jones in February 2002.
Links: Original Bboard Thread in which :-) was proposed, The First Smiley :-) by Mike Jones, Smiley Lore :-) by Scott Fahlman.
5. The popular GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) for web images was developed by CompuServe.
6. E-mail was invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1971 (Then there were only 23 computers on the Internet). The @ sign in e-mail addresses was
also his contribution in 1972.
7. The first RFC (Request For Comments) titled "Host Software", was submitted by Steve Crocker in 1969.
8. William Gibson is called the father of cyberspace. It was he who coined the name in his 1982 novel "Neuromancer".
9. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was developed by Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn.
10. The first graphical browser was NCSA Mosaic written by Marc Andreesen.
11. ICQ, the chat program, stands for I Seek You.

Quiz - Domains and Websites

1. Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, two Ph. D. students at Stanford University. The name is an acronym for "Yet
Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", and it started as a tiny directory of their personal interests on the then nascent Web. The first name
that they gave to it was "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web". Current CEO is Terry Samuel. Links: www.yahoo.com, A brief history of
Yahoo!, Yahoo Executives.
2. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. Current CEO: Dr. Eric E. Schmidt. Links: www.google.com, History of Google,
The Google Timeline, Google's Yahoo Moment, Early Google History.
3. Jeff Bezos: Founded Amazon.com, which pioneered successful e-tailing. Links: The Seattle Times Article: Momentous moments at
Amazon.com.
4. Hotmail, the first Web based E-mail, was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. Hotmail was online on July 4, 1996 and had 100 users
within an hour. Microsoft bought Hotmail in 1997 for $400m worth of Microsoft stocks, when it had around a billion subscribers. It suffered a
major fiasco on August 30, 1999 when any user could enter the account of any other user. Links: hotmail.com, Wired Article: HotMale (On
Sabeer Bhatia and Hotmail).
5. Napster was founded by Shawn Fanning in May 1999. It offered peer-to-peer file sharing, allowing users to share their personal MP3 files
with anyone on the Web.
6. The ZD in ZD-Net stands for Ziff-Davis.

Quiz - History of Computers

1. VAX minicomputers: The VAX range of minicomputers was released by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) on October 25, 1977. It was
the first commercially available 32-bit machine and was intended to replace the older PDP-11 series. The letters VAX stand for Virtual Address
eXtension. VAX machines used the VMS (later called OpenVMS) operation system. VAX Links: vaxarchive.org; VAX History at
WilliamBader.com; VAX History at webmythology.com.
2. Random Access Memory (RAM) was invented by Robert Dennard. Intel's 1103, released in 1970, was the world's first available dynamic
RAM chip.
3. The Winchester Drive, and the floppy disk drive were invented at IBM.
4. Ethernet was invented by Dr. Robert (Bob) Metcalfe at Xerox PARC. In 1981, Xerox introduced the Ethernet LAN in the form of Star
Ethernet Series. The first Ethernet card was the 'Etherlink' released by 3Com, which Bob founded.
5. Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron, is considered the world's first programmer. She worked with Charles Babbage on his
Analytical Engine.
6. The IBM PC, which featured the 16-bit Intel 8088 microprocessor, came in 1981.
7. The Xerox Star 8010, developed by Xerox in 1981, featured the mouse and a desktop with icons. This was the first computer with a graphical
user interface (GUI). The GUI was first developed by Xerox in 1973 for Alto, an experimental predecessor to the Xerox Star.
8. Apple Computers: formed on April 1, 1976 by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Apple I, developed by Steve Wosniak, was based on the
MOS Technologies 6502 chip. Apple II came in 1977. The operating system for Apple III, which came out in 1980, was called SOS! The Lisa,
which was the first PC with a graphical user interface (GUI), was released in 1983. The Macintosh (Mac), which used the 16-bit 68000
processor from Motorola, was debuted on Jan 9, 1984.
9. Jack Kilby invented the transistor in 1958 at Texas Instruments.
10. The TRS-80 computer was brought out by Tandy.
11. Other than the GUI and the ethernet, Xerox is responsible for the invention of the notebook computer and the bit-mapped display.
 12. In 1969, Honeywell released the H316 Kitchen Computer, the first home computer. The computer could plan menus and take care of other
household businesses.
13. John Vincent Atanasoff invented the world's first electronic digital computer in 1942. It was called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). It
was built by Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937-42. It incorporated several major innovations in computing
including the use of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions. The
patent on the ENIAC, developed by Mauchly and Eckert, was invalidated by the US Federal Court in Oct 19, 1973.
14. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) has its root at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and the Xerox Star computer. Then they
found their way into the Apple Macintosh in 1984.
15. George Shannon is regarded as the father of Information Theory. He proposed that all information could be reduced to ones and zeroes.
16. The first personal computer was the MITS Altair brought out in 1975. It used the Intel 8080 chip. MITS is short for Micro Instrumentation and
Telemetry Systems. The Altair was designed by Ed Roberts.
17. The first electronic computer was the Electronic Numerical and Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC) formally dedicated on 15 February,
1946, at the Moore School of Engineering of the University of Pennysylvania led by John Eckert and John Mauchly.
18. The first automatic computer was the IBM-Harward Mark I developed under Howard Heiken at the Howard University, Cambridge,
Massachussets in 1944,. It was also called the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.
19. The first Multimedia PC was the Amiga in 1985 by Commodore. Commodore was founded by Jack Tramiel.
20. Cards with holes (the idea of punched cards) were first used by Joseph Jacquard.
21. Charles Babbage is considered the Father of Computing, as he proposed the idea in 1812.
22. Abacus: was used by the Babylonians in around 3000 BC.
23. The Mouse: Original design on the mouse dates back to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and the wooden prototype by Douglas
Engelbart in 1963. The first commercially available mouse was for the IBM PC in 1982 by Mouse Systems.
24. The first Word Processor for microcomputers was the Electric Pencil written by Michael Shrayer.
25. The Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) was the first one to adopt the binary equation system.
26. The 1977 Trinity: The 3 companies that came out with ready to run PCs in the year 1977. They were Apple, Tandy (Of RadioShack) and
Commodore.
27. The first fully transistorized supercomputer was the CDC 1604.
28. Calculi: also called counting pebbles were used by the Romans.

Quiz - Operating Systems

1. Microsoft code-names. Blink.nu: Code names, phm.lu: Windows codenames and Bitsenbytes.com forum all have a good collection of code-
names related to Windows OS and other Microsoft products.
2. Microsoft Product Code-Names
Code-name Final Name Comments
Lonestar Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 OS for Microsoft Tablet PC
Whidbey Visual Studio 2005 Will ship with Longhorn
3. Whistler was the code name for Windows XP. XP stands for eXPerience. XP shared the Whistler code-name with Windows 2003 Server.
4. History of DOS gives a brief timeline of MS-DOS with features. There was also a MS-DOS 4.0, which (and not OS/2) was Microsoft's first non-
Unix multitasking operating system.
5. Longhorn: Microsoft's upcoming version of Windows XP, which features a new 3D user interface code-named Avalon, security based on
Palladium and a database code-named Yukon and based on SQL Server 2003. The name comes from the name of a saloon at the foot of the
Whistler mountain. Whistler was the code-name for Windows XP. Links: Windows "Longhorn" FAQ, which will tell you all that you want to know
about Longhorn.
6. Longhorn code names: Longhorn is the code-name for the next release of Windows. Here are some code-names related to Longhorn. Avalon
is the code name for the graphics presentation technologies in Longhorn; ClickOnce is the technology in Longhorn designed to speed and
simplify deployment of applications; Indigo is the .NET communications technologies; SuperFetch is the technology designed to help
applications launch more quickly; Whidbey is the next generation of the Microsoft Visual Studio system of software-development tools; WinFS
is the search and data storage system that provides a unified storage model for applications running on Longhorn; WinFXTM is the
programming model for applications in Longhorn and Yukon is the next generation of Microsoft SQL Server database software on which the
Longhorn file-system is expected to be based. Lot of code-names there! Links: See sidebox in this Microsoft PressPass.
7. Linux: The Linux kernel, which was written by Linus Torwalds in 1991, and the GNU software together makes the Linux OS, more correctly
called the GNU/Linux system. Linus first announced his new OS, then unnamed, on August 25, 1991. The name Linux was coined by Ari
Lemmke, who first made GNU/Linux available for download using FTP. [Links: History of Linux; linux.org]
8. Windows for Mobile: Windows CE (CE for Consumer Electronics) has roots in the Pegasus project at Microsoft. WinCE began to be called
Pocket PC OS, when Microsoft came out with their own mobile device which was named Pocket PC. The latest version of WinCE is called
Windows Mobile 2003 (code-named Ozone) was released on June 23, 2003. Links: Microsoft Windows Mobile Home Page, A personal look at
Windows CE's history by Jason Dunn, History of Windows at the PCMuseum.
9. Blackcomb: Next release of Windows Server 2003, expected after 2005. Blackcomb will be preceded by a version of Windows XP called
Longhorn.
10. UNIX: developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Bell Labs on a PDP-7 machine in 1969. It was first called UNICS (UNIplexed
operating and Computing System), a pun on its predecessor MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service).
11. Puma: The code name for Mac OS X 10.1.
 12. Windows NT was the first network operating system from Microsoft. NT stands for New Technology. Its successor Windows 2000 (NT version
5.0) was launched on February 17, 2000.
13. Linux was started in 1992 by Linus Torwalds, a Swedish hacker.
14. Warp is a version of OS/2, IBM's operating system.
15. Windows 3.0 was announced in 1983 and it was finally released in 1990. Windows 3.1 was released in 1992.
16. 'Project Chicago' was the code name for Windows 95 development.
17. Windows 1.0 was shipped in 1985.
18. Novel Netware, the network OS, was first released as 'Sharenet' in 1981.
19. The first two letters in any EXE program that runs on DOS, OS2 or Windows NT are "MZ". These are the initials of a Mark Zbikowski, a
Microsoft programmer.
20. Gary Kindall wrote CP/M (Control Program/Monitor) in 1974. His company Intergalactic became Digital Research in 1976.
21. GNU was developed by the Free Software Foundation started by Richard Stallman.
22. Windows 95 was released on August 24, 1995.
23. The concept of desktop was introduced in the Apple Macintosh.
24. The X11 GUI library for UNIX was developed at MIT.
25. Tim Patterson is associated with QDOS, owned by Seattle Computer Products. Microsoft purchased the rights to QDOS for $50,000 and
renamed it as PCDOS 1.0. The first IBM PC, the ACORN, was released with PCDOS 1.0 on August 12, 1982.
26. ntoskrnl.exe is the core file for the Windows NT Kernel.

Quiz - Software Products and Applications

1. Bob Scheifler wrote the X Window system, a windowing system for Unix.
2. History of GNU: GNU (GNU's Not Unix) is a complete free Unix-like software system which was conceived by Richard Stallman in 1983.
GNU, along with the Linux kernel is the base for all the Linux-based operating systems like Slackware, Debian and Red Hat. GNOME (GNU
Network Object Model Environment) is the desktop environment for GNU/Linux.
3. GNOME, the GNU Network Object Model Environment, is GNU's desktop project and was started in 1997 by Miguel de Icaza. It is GNU's
replacement for free desktop libraries like Motiff and Qt and environments like CDE and KDE. Harmony is a compatible replacement library,
designed to make it possible to run KDE software without using Qt.
4. Brian Fox: Wrote the BASH (Bourne Again Shell), which is most popular shell on GNU/Linux systems.
5. Roland McGrath: wrote the GNU C Library.
6. Richard M. Stallman: Started work on GNU in 1984; wrote Emacs; founded Free Software Foundation in 1985.
7. MP3 is short for MPEG Audio Layer 3 -- where MPEG stands for Motion Picture Experts Group -- and it is a compression format for digital
audio files. MP3 is the result of the work of Karlheinz Brandenburg at the Frauenhofer Institute in Erlangen, Germany in joint co-operation with
Prof. Dieter Seitzer of University of Erlangen. The MP3 patent was awarded to Frauenhofer Institute in 1989. In 1997 Tomislav Uzelac, a
developer at Advanced Multimedia Products, created the AMP Playback Engine for MP3. Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev added a
Windows GUI to the AMP engine and created Winamp, which was offered as a free MP3 player. Links: MP3 Overview (lycos.com); Fraunhofer
Institute website: History of MP3; Karlheinz Brandenburg and The Secret History of MP3 (bbc.co.uk); MP3 history with timeline by Yu-Chin
Chang; Interview with Karlheinz Brandenburg (intel.com); Karlheinz Brandenburg speaks out (BBC News).
8. TeX, the text formatter, and METAFOND was written by Donald Knuth. He also authored the book "The Art of Computer Programming,"
considered a must read for any Computer Science student. [Links: Donald Knuth, a portrait]
9. The Apache Web Server: Apache is a widely-used free HTTP server. It was originally developed on top of the NCSA httpd server as a series
of patches; hence came to be called "a patchy server", which later became the name "Apache." The first public release of Apache (version
0.6.2) came out in April 1995. Version 0.8.8 release, based on the new server architecture, codenamed Shambhala and designed by Robert
Thau, was also released in 1995. Websites: Apache Software Foundation, Apache History - Timeline.
10. Jaguar is the code name for Apple's operating system Mac OS X v10.2. The code name for Max OS X v10.0 was Cheetah and for v10.1 was
Puma.
11. WordStar was originally written by Seymour Rubenstein. He formed MicroPro International Inc. in 1978. WordStar for CP/M was released by
MicroPro in 1979. It was later ported to MS/PC DOS by Jim Fox.
12. Opera, the popular and fast Web browser: Jon S. von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy started writing this browser in 1994 while working for
Norwegian telecom Telenor. The company Opera Software ASA was founded in Oslo, Norway in 1995. The first public release was Opera 2.1
in 1996. Version 3 came in 1998, Version 4 in 2000 and Versions 5 and 6 in 2001.
13. Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) was code named as 'Denali' during development.
14. Winamp, the popular MP3 player for Windows is developed by Nullsoft. The development of Winamp was started in 1997 by Justin Frankel in
1997. Nullsoft is now owned by AOL.
15. The first computer graphics application was the Sketchpad designed by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 on a TX-2 computer at Massachussets
Institute of Technology (MIT).
16. A computer game Pong was written by Nolan Bushnell in 1971.
17. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) was developed by Philip Zimmerman. It uses the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) algorithm for encryption.
18. Microsoft Powerpoint, the presentation software, was a product of Forethought, California. It was originally named as 'Presenter' and was
designed for Windows 2.0. Two developers worked on a Lisa machine for 16 months to complete the first version PowerPoint 1, which was
released in April 1987. Microsoft acquired Forethought in August 1987.
19. VERONICA stands for Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Netwide Index to Computerized Archives. It was one of the first search application on the
primitive Internet.
 20. Bill Joy: Wrote ed (editor for mortals), the UNIX text editor in 1975 and vi in 1978. In 1976, he wrote a Pascal compiler for UNIX. He also
wrote the utilities rsh, rcp, rlogin and the first BSD (Berkeley Software Development) release of utilities.
21. HotJava, a Java-based web browser, was developed by Patrick Naughton and Jonathan Payne (a Sun engineer) in 1994. It was initially
named WebRunner.
22. Visicalc was the first spreadsheet application (Microsoft Excel is a popular example of spreadsheet software). It was written in 1979 first for
the Apple II by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston and sold by Software Arts which the authors founded. VisiCalc was soon sold to Lotus
Development Corporation, where it was developed into the Lotus 1-2-3.
23. PostScript, Photoshop, PageMill, Aldus PageMaker and Acrobat are all from Adobe.

Quiz - Programming Languages

1. Smalltalk: The first version of Smalltalk is deployed at Xerox PARC in 1971. Smalltalk is the first object- oriented programming language with
an integrated user interface, overlapping windows, integrated documents, and cut & paste editor.
2. Javascript was released by Sun and Netscape in December 1995. It is a scripting language for browsers based on the Java language. It was
originally called LiveScript.
3. Perl was developed by Larry Wall in 1987 because the Unix sed and awk tools (used for text manipulation) were no longer strong enough to
support his needs. Perl is an acronym for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language. Geeks expand it as Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish
Lister.
4. Forth was introduced by Charles Moore in the early 1970s. It was used to control the submersible sled that located the wreck of the Titanic in
1985.
5. Pascal was written by Niklaus Wirth. Work began in 1968. Wirth also developed Modula (1977), which was intended as a successor to
Pascal, and then Modula-2 (1980), and Oberon (1988), which was a successor to Modula-2.
6. Work on LOGO began at Bolt, Beranek, & Newman (BBN) in 1966. The development team was headed by Wally Fuerzig and included
Seymour Papert. Logo was best known for its 'turtle graphics'.
7. Java was written by James Gosling, Patrick Naughton, Chris Warth, Ed Frank and Mike Sheridan at Sun Microsystems. They took 18 months
for the first working version. It was called Oak at first and then renamed Java, after a brew, in 1995, when it was publicly announced.
8. C++, originally called 'C with classes' was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979 at Bell Labs.
9. C was invented and first implemented by Dennis Ritchie on a DEC PDP-11 running UNIX in 1970. The predecessors of C were the BCPL
(Basic Combined Programming Language) by Martin Richards and then the B written by Ken Thompson. C was standardised in December
1989 by American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
10. LISP, which is short for LISt Processing, was developed by John McCarthy at MIT. It was released in 1959. LISP 2 appeared in 1966.
11. ALGOL 60 was the first block-structured language. It was introduced in 1960.
12. Kenneth Iverson is responsible for the language APL (A Programming Language), which was released in 1962. It used a specialized
character set that required APL-compatible devices.
13. SNOBOL (StriNgent Oriented symBOlic Language) was released in 1962. FASBOL was a compiler for SNOBOL (1971), and SPITBOL (1971)
was a SPeedy ImplemenTation of snoBOL. SNOBOL3 was released in 1965 and SNOBOL4 in 1967.
14. BASIC stands for Beginners' All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It was invented in 1964 by Thomas E. Kurtz and John G. Kemeny. The
first BASIC program was run on May 1, 1964.
15. APL\360 came out in 1964. In 1969, 500 people attended an APL conference at the IBM headquarters in Armonk, New York. This event is
sometimes referred to as "The March on Armonk".
16. ALTRAN is a FORTRAN variant which appeared in 1968.
17. COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was defined by the Conference on Data Systems and Languages (CODASYL) in 1959. An
ANSI standard for COBOL was introduced in 1968.
18. Work on PL/1 (Programming Language 1) began in 1963 and it was released in 1964.
19. FORTRAN, acronym for FORmula TRANslating system, came in 1957. It was developed by an IBM team headed by John Backus from 1954
onwards. John Backus was later involved in the development of the language ALGOL and also the Backus-Naur Form (BNF), which is a
formal notation used to describe the syntax of a given language. FORTRAN II came in 1958. FORTRAN III also came out in 1958, but it was
never released to the public. FORTRAN IV was released in 1961. FORTRAN 66, which was a result of standardization by the ASA was
released in 1966.
20. A rudimentary compiler called Autocode was developed by Alick E.Glennie in 1952 at the University of Manchester.
21. The first computer language actually used on an electronic computing device was Short Code, which appeared in 1949. It had to be compiled
by hand!
22. The language Plankalkul was developed by Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, when he was alone hiding out in the Bavarian Alps. Chess
was one area the language was used for.
23. Grace Murray Hopper developed A0 in 1951, which could translate programming code into binary code. Remington Rand, for whom she
worked, released it in 1957 as Math-matic.

Quiz - Chips and Processors

1. Niagara: Code-name for Sun's next generation UltraSPARC microprocessor. Expected in late 2005 or early 2006, it incorporates a concept
that Sun calls chip multithreading, designed to vastly speed up Web content delivery by embedding eight UltraSPARC II-like cores on a single
die. It will have a high-end successor called "Rock," which combines multithreading with virtual cores that can be dedicated to application-
specific functions. The Niagara design was acquired by Sun along with the startup Afara Websystems Inc. in 2002. Links: eWeek Article: Sun
Completes 'Niagara' Design.
 2. Not a quiz item but I couldn't resist giving this useful link here. The Geek.com ChipGeek Processor Specs has plenty of information on
microprocessor chips and chipsets.
3. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is the biggest competitor to Intel in the processor space. AMD processors include the K5, which was
positioned against Intel's Pentium I; K6 which competed against Pentium II and Pentium MMX; Athlon or K7; Duron (originally code-named
Athlon Select, then Spitfire), which is the low end of AMD's Athlon line, ClawHammer and Opteron.
4. Crusoe: This low-power microprocessor ideal for mobile computing was released by Transmeta Corporation on January 19th, 2000. Links:
Transmeta Corporation; Geek.com article on Crusoe.
5. Intel - CEO is Craig Barrett. Chips include x86, Pentium and Xeon. Itanium is the first 64-bit microprocessor from Intel. McKinley is the
successor version of Itanium.
6. PowerPC Alliance was IBM, Apple, and Motorola.
7. The name Pentium was selected during a contest among Intel employees in 1993. The first Pentium came out in 1994.

Quiz - Peripheral Devices

1. The floppy was invented by IBM engineers led by Alan Shugart in 1971. The nickname "floppy" came from its flexibility. The first floppies were
of 8" diameter and were designed for loading microcodes into the controller of the Merlin (IBM 3330) disk pack file (a 100 MB storage device).
The 5 1/4" floppy was developed by Alan Shugart in 1976 for Wang Laboratories. The 3 1/2" floppy drives and diskettes were introduced by
Sony in 1981. (Data from About.com)
2. DVD or Digital Versatile Disc was mainly developed by the company Matshusita and it was announced in November 1995. There is no one
person who can be called the inventor of DVD.
3. The Compact Disk (CD) was invented by James Russell in 1965. Russell holds 22 patents for different aspects of the technology.
4. Haptics is the science of applying touch (tactile) sensation and control to interaction with computer applications. The Wingman Force
Feedback Mouse (WFFM) from Logitech is an example of a haptic device.

Quiz - Computer Viruses

1. Mydoom, also known as Novarg or Shimgapi: E-mail worm discovered in January 2004, got activated during February 2004. Inside the virus
code, the author had mispelled "my domain" as "my doomain" and thus the name Mydoom. The virus mail comes with extensions like .exe,
.bat, .cmd, .pif, .scr or .zip. Mydoom.A was programmed to start a denial of service (DoS) attack on the SCO website www.sco.com from 1st
February 2004. The virus also had a trigger to stop spreading on 12th February 2004. SCO had to temporarily take off their www.sco.com site
and use www.thescogroup.com during the period of the attack. MyDoom.B was coded to attack the Microsoft website.
2. The Mydoom e-mail worm, also called Novarg, is programmed to start a denial of service attack on 1st February 2004. The virus infested e-
mail comes with extensions like .exe, .bat, .cmd, .pif, .scr or .zip. The virus also has a trigger to stop spreading on 12th February 2004. Link:
Symantec page on Mydoom.
3. The first virus: Fred Cohen, a PhD student at University of South California, demonstrated the first documented computer virus on November
10, 1983 as an experiment in computer security. The name 'virus' was given by Len Adleman, Fred's seminar advisor. The virus was added to
a graphics program called VD that ran on a VAX mini computer. Links: History of Viruses at cknow.com.
4. Slammer or Sapphire is a worm (or a virus) program that attacks Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 and MSDE 2000 - Microsoft Data Engine. It
appeared in the early hours on 25th January 2003, although there are reports of it existing since 20th January. Links: Description of the
Slammer worm at F-Secure website, Initial report of the Slammer or Sapphire Worm, at securityfocus.com.
5. Prisilla is a PRI and Melissa variant.

Quiz - Software Companies and Organisations

1. Project Hudson: Made up of Intel, Nokia, Samsung, Toshiba and Matsushita formed to fight piracy.
2. Oracle Corporation: In 1977, Lawrence J. (Larry) Ellison, Robert N. (Bob) Miner and Ed Oates formed a company called Software
Development Laboratories (SDL) and bid successfully on a top-secret contract code-named Oracle for the CIA. The project died and in 1978,
SDL developed the first version of Oracle for the DEC PDP-11, which was never publicly released. In the same year (1978), SDL became
Relational Software Incorporated (RSI) and in 1979, Oracle v2 for the PDP-11 was publicly released. It was the first ever Relational Database
Management System (RDBMS) based on the relational database model published by Dr. E F Codd (and sponsored by IBM) in 1970. In 1983,
RSI changed its name (possibly due to general confusion associated with a competitor company called RTI) to Oracle Systems Corporation,
which was later shortened to Oracle Corporation. Sources and links: oracle.com: History of Oracle, FAQ about Oracle Corporation
(orafaq.org), Article at informit.com on Oracle History.
3. History of Texas Instruments (TI): Founded on May 16, 1930 as Geophysical Service by J. Clarence "Doc" Karcher and Eugene McDermott
as a specialist in siesmological exploration of oil and incorporated in New Jersey as Geophysical Service Inc. (GSI) on December 23, 1938
with Eugene McDermott as Chairman and Erik Jonsson as President. The name changed to Coronado Corporation in 1939, with GSI as a
subsidiary. The company started work in electronics for US Army and Navy in 1942, and in January 1951, the company name was changed to
General Instruments Incorporated, and GSI became a wholly owned subsidiary. In the same year, it was renamed Texas Instruments Inc. with
Eugene McDermott as Chairman and Erik Jonsson as President. Early innovations include the first commercial silicon transistor in 1954, first
commercial transistor radio, Regency in 1954 and first integrated circuit (IC) by Jack Kilby in 1958. Links: Changing the Name to Texas
Instruments; Key Innovations at TI; About TI, at ti.com.
4. The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which opened on July 1, 1970, is one of the temples of computing advances. The GUI and
related concepts like menus and icons, Object Oriented Programming, laser printers, Ethernet and client-server computing are just of the few
technologies that were invented here. PARC became an independent company PARC Inc. on January 4, 2002. Links: www.parc.com, History
of PARC.
5. Netscape: Founded in March 1994 by Marc Andreesen (who wrote Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser) along with SGI founder Jim Clark
and Erin Bina (also on the Mosaic team). It was first named as "Mosaic Communications Corporation." Link: History of Netscape
6. America Online (AOL): AOL was founded as Quantum Computer Services by Steve Case in 1985. It got the new name in 1989. Links:
www.aol.com, History of AOL.
7. Adobe: Adobe was founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, employees of Xerox PARC where they were developing a page
description language (PDL) called InterPress which Xerox was very reluctant to commercialise. The name Adobe came from Adobe Creek that
ran behind the house of Warnock in Los Altos, California. Adobe released PostScript, a powerful and flexible PDL in 1984. Adobe's wide range
of products include the Portable Document Format (PDF) along with Distiller and Acrobat, Photoshop & Imageready, PageMaker (originally
developed by Aldus), Illustrator, FrameMaker. For more info see Jones Encyclopedia page on Adobe Systems, Adobe Inc. Company Profile.
8. History of IBM: The Tabulating Machines Company was founded in 1896 by Herman Hollerith, an US Statistician, who is also credited with
the invention of punched cards. In 1911, TMC merged with the International Times Recording Company, Dayton Seale Company and Bundy
Manufacturing Company to form the Computing, Tabulating and Recording Company (C-T-R). C-T-R was renamed as International
Business Machines (IBM) on February 14, 1924.
9. Cisco: Founded in 1984 by Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack, both from Stanford University. Legend has it that they stumbled upon the
need to invent routers because they could not otherwise send love letters via email across the different computer networks in their respective
departments. Current President and CEO: John Chambers.
10. 3Com: Founded by Bob Metcalfe, the father of Ethernet technology in 1979. The name 3Com represents computers, communication and
compatibility.
11. Motorola: founded by Paul V. Galvin as the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928. The name Motorola was given in 1947. The name was
first used as a brand name for car radios which the company marketed in 1930s.
12. Compaq: Compaq Computer Corporation was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, three senior managers
who left Texas Instruments. The first product was a portable personal computer, which was able to run all software then available for the IBM
PC.
13. NeXT: Started by Steve Jobs 1985, when he left Apple. The company produced UNIX workstations.
14. Seagate: Manufactures Hard disks. Originated the concept of SCSI (Small Computer System Interface).
15. Hewlett Packard (HP): Founded on January 1, 1939 by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, electrical engineers from Stanford University. The
company's name was decided with a coin toss! HP's first product was the resistance-capacity audio oscillator (HP 200A), an electronic
instrument used to test sound equipment. HP introduced the HP 9100A, the world's first desktop scientific calculator, in 1969. The HP-35,
released in 1972, was the world's first scientific handheld calculator. Current Chairman and CEO: Carleton (Carly) S. Fiorina.
16. Sun Microsystems: Sun was originally an acronym for Stanford University Network! The company was incorporated in February 1982 with
four employees. The four were Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, Andreas Bechtolsheim (all three from Stanford University) and Bill Joy.
17. Microsoft: Started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1977. It was first named Micro-soft. The hyphen was later dropped. One of the first
applications that they wrote was the BASIC interpreter for the ALTAIR.
18. DEC was started by Ken Olsen.
19. Autodesk: Founded in 1982 by John Walker and 12 of his associates. Brought CAD to the PCs.