Tynan on Tech

(This quiz appears in a groovy interactive format on Infoworld’s web site.)

by Dan Tynan

Between putting the squeeze on Yahoo, recalling its Vista service pack, and vowing yet again to play nicely with others, Microsoft is all over this week’s quiz. Along the way we also touch on Amazon’s cloudy future, HD-DVD’s demise, and what it takes to decommission a satellite at 17,000 mph. Correct answers are worth 10 points, and some are trickier than they look. Ready? Then get crack-a-lackin’.

1. It’s been three weeks since Microsoft made its bid for Yahoo, and so far nothing substantial has changed. What is Microsoft’s next likely move if Yahoo refuses to capitulate?

a. Wage a proxy battle for control of Yahoo’s board
b. Raise its offer to $40 a share
c. Sabotage negotiations between Yahoo and News Corp.
d. Release nude photos of Jerry Yang

2. “[We] will work with any company that is ready to make it much more difficult for children to be exposed, even inadvertently, to material intended only for adults. This is not about First Amendment rights, it is about protecting children.” Who’s the “we” in that statement?

a. Dr. James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family
b. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
c. Steve Hirsch, co-founder of Vivid Entertainment
d. Mark Foley, former congressman (R-Florida)

3. Amazon’s Simple Storage Service got lost in the clouds for about three hours last Friday, taking several prominent customers with it. Which of the following sites was NOT affected by the outage?

a. Twitter
b. NYTimes.com
c. SmugMug
d. SnapSeeker

4. Complete the following sentence: HD-DVD is to Blu ray as _______ is to _______.

a. Eight tracks are to cassettes
b. Replay DVRs are to TiVo
c. Sony Betamax is to VHS
d. Britney Spears is to Lindsay Lohan

5. Microsoft wants your kids to stop swapping files online. So it’s created a boss groovy nifty keen bitchin’ smokin’ nakedly contrived site to school them in intellectual property rights. What’s the site’s name?

a. MyBytes
b. MicrosoftBytes
c. Windows Music Theft Live Ultimate Home Edition
d. GatesBook

6. Whistle-blower site WikiLeaks.org got a vault full of free publicity this week when a Cayman Islands bank tried unsuccessfully to withdraw it from the Net. What was the name of the bank?

a. Bank Julius Baer
b. Bank Junius Bear
c. Bank Yogius Bear
d. Bank Orange Julius

7. Microsoft recently pulled Vista Service Pack 1 from distribution. What did SP1 do to deserve this fate?

a. Caused endless reboot cycle for some users
b. Kept some machines from booting up at all
c. Broke a dozen third-party applications
d. All of the above

8. Quick, what does it take to shoot a broken spy satellite out of the sky?

a. Three warships, three anti-ballistic missiles, and $60 million
b. Six warships, two high-intensity lasers, and $100 million
c. Two military satellites equipped with parabolic solar death rays
d. Bruce Willis

9. In a “significant company announcement,” Microsoft vowed to adhere to four key interoperability principles. Which of the following is NOT one of those principles?

a. Maintain open connections to Microsoft products
b. Support relevant standards for interoperability
c. Enable data portability to non-Microsoft products
d. Stop spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt over Linux

10. Are you ready for multiplication rock? Take the number of songs played by Linkin Park in its midnight concert outside the Apple Store in New York’s SoHo district, and multiply that by how many times the word “significant” appears in the press release accompanying Microsoft’s interoperability announcement. Now multiply that number by the cost of one Aegis SM3 satellite-killing missile. Watch for falling debris. What do you get?

a. 24 million
b. 240 million
c. 2.4 billion
d. Bruce Willis

(Answers after the jump)
Question 1. What is Microsoft likely to do next in its battle to swallow Yahoo?

a. Wage a proxy battle for control of Yahoo’s board
Reports suggest Microsoft’s next move will be wage to convince shareholders to elect merger-friendly members to Yahoo’s board. With board elections not slated to happen until May, we may be in for another three months of this, Gates help us.

Question 2. Who’s big on protecting the world’s children from smut?

c. Steve Hirsch, co-founder of Vivid Entertainment

In an address to MBA candidates at Yale, the crown prince of porn urged search engines and ISPs to “erect stronger barriers” against the content his company churns out, and added how important it is for Vivid “to stay on top of all new technologies.” Consider us engorged with irony.

Question 3. Whose site was not clouded over by Amazon’s S3 outage?

c. SmugMug

This was a bit of a trick question. SmugMug does use S3, but according to comments posted on TechCrunch by CEO Don MacAskill, it wasn’t affected by Amazon’s disappearing act. Parts of Twitter, the New York Times archive, and SnapSeeker were taken off line by the outage, but all three plan to keep their heads and data in the clouds, at least for now.

Question 4. HD-DVD is to Blu ray as which is to what?

c. Sony Betamax is to VHS

Now that Toshiba finally pulled the plug on its Hi-Def disc format, HD-DVD is ready to join the Betamax, the eight track, and the Replay in the dustbin of technological history. The difference? Only Betamax and VHS competed head-to-head for the hearts and minds of content providers. And unlike with Britney and Lindsay, there will be no rehab.

Question 5. Where can kids learn to share the Microsoft way?

a. MyBytes

MyBytes invites teens to mix their own 20-second tunes using cheesy sound samples, post them on the site in return for payment (in “credits”), then lets other MyBytes users download the mixes by paying whatever they feel like — or nothing at all. See how you like it when people steal your stuff? Not so funny now, huh? Luzer.

Question 6. Which Caribbean money laundry got caught in its own spin cycle?

a. Bank Julius Baer

The Cayman Islands branch of the Zürich-based bank managed to get the WikiLeaks.org domain delisted, but the site itself lives on at other domains, buoyed by surge of news coverage over Baer’s ham-handed attempt to censor it. Baer is suing WikiLeaks for publishing confidential documents alleging the bank is a haven for tax-evading money launderers – a claim Baer has yet to dispute.

Question 7. What’s caused Microsoft to give Vista SP1 the boot?

d. All of the above

Microsoft says the boot problems only affect “a small number of customers in unique circumstances” and has identified the culprit as a pair of ‘prerequisite’ files sent via Windows Update before users could install SP1. The service pack also keeps at least a dozen programs (mostly security apps) from running as intended. No word on whether MSFT plans to release a service pack for its service pack.

Question 8. What did it take to bring down one busted satellite?

a. Three warships, three anti-ballistic missiles, and $60 million

The errant spy satellite was brought in from the cold by a modified Aegis SM3 missile fired from the cruiser Lake Erie. Two other ships accompanied the cruiser, each with its own missile at the ready. Total cost of the operation is estimated at $30 to $60 million, though we’re pretty sure Bruce would have done it for free if anyone asked.

Question 9. What did Microsoft not vow to do, interoperability-wise?

d. Stop spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt over Linux

The “significant” announcement precedes next week’s meeting of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on whether to declare Microsoft’s Open Office XML format an industry standard. Purely a coincidence, of course.

Question 10. What’s Linkin Park times Microsoft’s ’significance’ times missiles?

b. 240 million

Linkin’ Park played six tunes outside Apple’s SoHo store. The word “significant” appears four times in Microsoft’s release (and was used seven more times in the press conference). The modified missiles cost $10 million a piece (though we understand volume discounts are available). So 6 x 4 x 10 million = 240 million. Is it too late to drop tech journalism and get into the missile biz? Check back next week for another explosive quiz.

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