A CIO walks a tightrope bridging that chasm between the businessfolks and the technical folks. It is arguably the best job intodays business world. You get to work with the most interestingpeople in your company (techies) while still keeping touch witheveryone else. You are a truly unique individuala geek who knowswhat your company sells and why. Getting along with the businesspeople is easyyou can have the board of directors salivating likePavlovs dogs if you say ROI three times in one paragraph. In thebusiness world image is king. Not so in the tech trenches.Maintaining respect from your programmers and network guys is alittle more difficult. It really helps to have some superiortechnical knowledge to flash around. Hence, our little bimonthlyquiz just to keep you on your toes.

1. Which one of these guys is not one of Hollywoods ThreeAmigos?
a. Steve Martin
b. Martin Short
c. Grady Booch
d. Chevy Chase

The correct answer is c. Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh, and IvarJacobson are all employees of Rational Software (now owned by IBM).These three gentlemen brought together and standardized the UnifiedModeling Language (UML). They are commonly referred to as the ThreeAmigos. The UML is the industry-standard language for specifying,visualizing, constructing, and documenting the artifacts ofsoftware systems.

2. What is a BAUD rate?
Part 2At what BAUD rate can the worlds fastest typist type?
a. 56k
b. 300
c. 141
d. 9600

Technically, BAUD rate is the number of times per second thecarrier signal value changes state. This is not how many bits persecond the modem can transmit because there may be more than twostates to the signal.
Part 2OK, for the sake of this question we will stipulate the BAUDrate is bits per second. That means the correct answer is c.Barbara Blackburn can type 212 words a minute.
212 x 5 (average letters per word) = 1,060 chars per minute.

3. What is a Poisson distribution, and what does it have to dowith insurance?

The Poisson distribution: If the average number of randomoccurrences per interval = m, the probability P of (a) occurrencesin the interval is:

Poisson distributions are useful in predicting the number ofclaims in a defined region per time period. The most interestingphenomenon regarding Poisson distributions is related to the Battleof Britain. In the autumn of 1944, nearly 10,000 V1 flying bombswere launched against British towns. After the war, it wasdetermined the pattern of those bombs that descended on Londoncould have been modeled by a Poisson distribution.

4. Which will we run out of first: Social Security numbers orMAC addresses?
As a practical matter, we usually refer to a MAC (Media AccessControl) address as the unique serial number assigned to yournetwork card, even though the formal definition entails more thanthat. MAC addresses are 12-digit hexadecimal numbers (48 bits inlength). Social Security numbers are nine-digit decimal numbers. Dothe math. We wont need to start recycling MAC addresses for a longtime. The Social Security Administration claims that since thereare theoretically 1 x 109-1 Social Security numbers available(999,999,999), we wont need to reuse them for a long time,either.

5. What should be your first step in diagnosing and repairing anonfunctional network card?
a. Grab a VOM, and measure the resistance between pins 2 and25.
b. Grab an oscilloscope, and run diagnostics with a loop backconnector plugged in.
c. Contact the manufacturer, and order a network card rebuildkit.
d. Drive to Best Buy, and buy a new card!

Lets see: One network guy, three hours of diagnosing andtroubleshooting. Duh! Just replace the darn thing.

Hmm did our test provide some small challenges here? I hopeso. CYAL8R.