Pop quiz
May 6, 2009 by cynthia
OK. I’m giving up on mystery photos with you people; I’m switching to trivia instead.
If you’re not already sloshing in beverage from all the drinks I owe you the next time you’re in glassland, try answering the questions below. First one to post the correct answer on this blog (comment), wins the coveted beverage-with-Cynthia:
(drumroll)
What is the first published use of the word “nerd?”
(the drums increase to a fever pitch)
What was the first commercially-available personal computer to offer a built-in WYSIWYG interface and a document management system?
(BRRRRBANG! the drums reach a heady climax with SPROINGGGG! wildly crashing symbols)
What was wrong with that last sound effect?
Ha! Try that one!
No related posts.
1: If I Ran The Zoo Seuss 1951
2: Alto 1974
3: drums don’t go sproing.
2) altoS (note the “s”)
3) Well, actually they DO if you have the drum head tensioned wrong and you hit it just so…
2) i actually used one of these in 1975, doing an experiment with sri labs (between california and the pentagon) using a metal mouse that could only do horizontal/vertical movements because it had 2 steel wheels mounted on the bottom at a 90 degree angle to each other and a 6 key chord keyboard. the experiment was to do timings for cross country text editing over the newly developed ARPAnet. the modem/router of the time (called a tip) was the size of a large fridge, and there were only a handful of sites on the arpanet at that time.
2: there was an altos, but that was not this. the altos came after the alto (ca 1979).
this was the alto.
http://www.maniacworld.com/alto-computer-video.html
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/archives/Kay/07_Alto.html
2: alto is not altos, although both of them existed. the alto preceded the altos by about 5 years or so.
http://www.maniacworld.com/alto-computer-video.html
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/archives/Kay/07_Alto.html
“6 key chord keyboard”. Remember the funky keyboards that came out that you could also use your feet with? (Hey… do you remember PLATO?)
Uhm, guys? The Alto was never commercially available. And, sound effects aside, there’s a more fundamental problem with the last quiz entry…
maybe it was 5 key chord keyboards. the mouse had 3 buttons on it, and with the 5 keys, one could type 8 bit ascii using the 3 mouse buttons as 3 different shift keys. you had to use 2 hands to do that, but you could get pretty fast at it with enough practice.
a local wag glued a small piece of leather shoelace on it, but i’m taking who it was to the grave. the base commander didn’t appreciate it at the time.
yes, i remember plato. remember those weird ray trace crt tubes that were round and orange? i disremember what machine they were on, but we had a couple that we developed some of the first ray tracing graphics packages. we used them to display data for the joint chiefs of staff when they were doing worldwide manpower allocation graphs (this was way way pre-powerpoint).
we also had a pdp-11, which we loaded up unix site license #7 on. that was in 1975 or 76. of course, we had multics license #3, 4, and 5 there too.
btw: alto came before the altos, which was a different machine.
*sigh* Thee Leetle Grey Cellsssss…. They are going Fizzzzzzllleee….
Aww… sheesh. “CYMBOLS” not “SYMBOLS”. Duh!
cymbals, not cymbols
Like I said… Leetle Grey (or is that Gray?) cellllllllsssss…..
gcb
What on earth are you guys talking about??? You lost me with all this nerdy stuff. Wasn’t that the question??
Hey, Robin. They’re discussing how nerds used to catch mice, and it involved a lot of wheels, or finally picking up a great big hunk of iron and bashing the poor little thing over the head (which was usually my choice).
You guys know that Altos (with an S) is still around, right? They’re doing Unix boxes for Acer. That ain’t it, either. (heehee)
Me, I’m just baskin’ in the glory of finally stumping somebody on one of my silly quizzes.
Well, it’s obvious that you totally stumped me…