Thursday, March 1, 2007

Tartarus 2.0

Given below are five clues pointing to five different movies...but all having something in common....

Gimme the answers to all da five questions and also the connect...



Clue for the connect
All da clues have something in common with this guy
(the connection is very precise.......and not general...)

Clue 1: This is the official poster of a 1988 film based on a controversial novel (of the same name) written by Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis.





The central thesis of the movie was that although the
protagonist was free from sin, he was subject to doubt, depression, reluctance and lust. This results in the book and film depicting the protagonist imagining himself engaged in sexual activities, a notion that has caused outrage from certain religious communities......













Clue 2 : This movie is about the Lucchese crime family (gangsters) of the blue-collar, predominantly
Italian New York City neighborhood of Brooklyn. Based on New York crime reporter Nicholas
Pileggi's book Wiseguy, the movie deals with billion dollar cargo heists from the lufthansa and
ari france terminals of the JFK airport conducted by a wannabe gangster and a close associate of
the Lucchese mob capo.




The movie ends dramatically with the firing of a bullet directly into the camera.







Clue 3 : This is one of those popular sports movies of the 1980s. It stars Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta, a temperamental and paranoid but tenacious boxer who alienates
himself from his friends and family.

By the end of the 1980s, this movie had cemented its reputation as a modern classic, and also gave Robert DeNiro an oscar for the best actor in a leading role.


Clue 4: This movie is about the conflict between the "native" criminal underworld and the immigrant gangs .The film opens in 1846, but most of the action takes place in the early 1860s, when the two principal controversies were the great wave of Irish immigration to the city and the federal government's
prosecution of the American Civil War. The story follows the careers of two persons who rise from crime bosses to political kingmakers.



Clue 5: This famous film which tracks the story of an eccentric movie buff/economic mogul (who made talkies like Scarface and The Outlaw), begins with a nine year old boy being bathed by his mother, who warns him of disease. The movie also details the mogul's romances with Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn, obsession with hollywood movies and obviously the spruce goose.







Tartarus 1.0

Q.1) The phrase A has been used as a metasyntactic variable by hackers and as a marker in program sources for known-incorrect or incomplete code.
The A Awards are presented annually to notable works of interactive fiction.
A is also a cheat for some versions of the Microsoft game Minesweeper
A is used to enable cheats in Road Rash.
A is the default password for Apple Computer's Network Assistant. It was also the name of a user interface (client) on the VMS operating system for the EARN/BITNET Relay chat system (the forerunner of IRC). On Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-11/44 processor, the full (but undocumented) form of the console processor's "X" command is A
On Data General's AOS/VS operating system if you type in the command A you would get back the response "Nothing Happens". On AOS/VS II it returns "Twice as much happens".
The phrase A is now internatonally identified with the computer hacker/geek......one who loves plaing dungeons and dragons............
What is the word A ?

Q.2)Arthur Wynne (1862 - 1945), born Liverpool, England, was a British editor and puzzle constructor in his home country and the United States of America. He invented something famous in 1913.
He worked for the New York World, then one day was asked to invent a new game for the paper. Wynne thought of a game he had played in his childhood called Magic Squares, and soon came up with this, which was first issued in the December 21st, 1913 issue of the World. What did he invent?

Q.3) The motto of the international organization X is In varietate Concordia. Established under the Maastricht Treaty, X’s official anthem was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. X is estimated to have an annual GDP of 13.4 trillion USD.. If X were to be considered as a separate country it would rank first in the GDP rankings and 22nd on the HDI.
What is X?

Q.4) ‘X’is a very famous work(s) of fiction written by Y. X first appeared in the Le Vingtième Siècle and after that it became a huge success. Released at the time of the Bolshevik uprising in Russia, the Second World War, X ’s plot(s) straddles a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy; mysteries; political thrillers; and science fiction, engulfed in political satire and slapstick humor.
Although Y was believed to be the next charles dickens as his characters were as good as those of dickens, he/she had been criticized for the dirty portrayal of the Africans.
One of the major characters of X, Archibald(one of protagonist’s best friend) owns the Moulinsart Mansion, always favours the Loch Lomond brand of whisky, and is popularly associated with phrases like “troglodytes", "bashi-bazouk", "kleptomaniac", "anacoluthon", and "pockmark".
The other famous characters include Professeur Tryphon Tournesol, Dupont et Dupondand and Milou.
In music, X has been the inspiration to a number of bands and musicians. Stephen Duffy, a former member of Duran Duran, performed the minor hit single "Kiss Me" under the name X; he had to drop the name under pressure of a copyright infringement suit. The protagonist (on whose name the work is based)appeard in the national postage stamp of one country in 1979, in another country in 1999 and in another country in 2002.
On June 1, 2006, the Dalai Lama bestowed the International Campaign for Tibet's Light of Truth award upon the character of X, along with South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The famous president Charles de Gaulle once said "My only international rival is X”.
Name X and Y.



Hint for Q.1) A is taught by math teachers the world around as a mnemonic device to remember how to do cross products. If A = BC, where A, B, and C are the vectors (Ax, Ay, Az),(Bx, By, Bz) and (Cx, Cy, Cz), then: Notice that the second and third equations can be obtained from the first by simply rotating the subscripts, x -> y -> z -> x. The problem, of course, is how to remember the first equation…….

Hint for Q.2) Go and chk out ur newspaper.......

Hint for Q.3) The number 12 has something to do with X ’s flag.....

Hint for Q.4) The author's original name is Georges Remi.....he is a Belgian....