Computer Awareness Mixed Quiz: Set 27

The correct answer is B, any number of characters. Searching for star dot docx lists every Word document in the folder, and searching for rep star lists every name beginning with those three letters, because the asterisk stands for any sequence of characters including none at all. A is wrong because the character that stands for exactly one character is the question mark, so note question mark dot txt matches note1 dot txt and noteA dot txt but not note12 dot txt; mixing up the two wildcards is the standard trap in this question. C is wrong because no wildcard is reserved for a space; a space is simply typed. D is wrong because Windows search has no wildcard restricted to digits, although full regular expressions, used by programmers, do provide one.

The correct answer is B, the sum of the complements. De Morgan's second theorem states that NOT of A AND B equals NOT A OR NOT B. The working rule is to break the bar and change the sign, so a dot under a complement becomes a plus once the complement is distributed over the variables. A is wrong because the product of the complements is the result of the first theorem, which applies to the complement of a sum, not of a product; swapping the two theorems is the standard error in this question. C is wrong because complementing an expression must change it unless the expression is a constant, and the product of A and B is not its own complement. D is wrong because the value depends on the inputs: when A is 1 and B is 1 the expression is 0, so it cannot always be 1. Both theorems together make NAND-only and NOR-only design possible.

The correct answer is C, Bcc. Bcc stands for blind carbon copy. Everyone listed in Bcc receives the message, but their addresses are hidden from the people in the To and Cc fields and from one another, which is why it is used for circulars sent to a long list. Option A, the To field, carries the main recipients and their addresses are visible to all. Option B, Cc, stands for carbon copy and sends a visible copy to people who should be kept informed; every recipient can see those addresses. Option D, Reply To, is not an address field for sending a copy; it is a setting that tells the recipient's program which address a reply should go to. A connected fact asked often is that a message waiting to be sent sits in the Outbox and moves to Sent Items once it has left the computer.

The correct answer is C, Graphics. In multimedia, graphics is the broad word for every kind of visual element a computer can store and show, so drawings, photographs, movies and simulations all sit inside it. The usual list of multimedia elements is text, graphics, audio, video and animation, and in that list graphics covers both pictures made by hand on the screen and pictures captured from the real world. Graphics are stored either as bitmaps, made of pixels, as in a JPEG or BMP photograph, or as vectors, made of lines and curves described by equations, as in a drawing or a CAD file. A is wrong because animation is only one kind of visual, a sequence of frames shown fast enough to look like movement. B is wrong because an image is a single still picture, so it is narrower than the four things listed. D is wrong because text is made of characters and carries no picture. Exam tip: multimedia elements are text, graphics, audio, video and animation; bitmap graphics use pixels, vector graphics use equations.

The correct answer is B, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The two were research students at Stanford University in the United States, and the ranking method they built, PageRank, is named after Larry Page rather than after web pages, a point papers like to test. Option A, Jerry Yang and David Filo, founded Yahoo! in 1994, four years before Google, and Yahoo began life as a hand-made directory of websites rather than a crawler-based engine. Option C, Gabriel Weinberg, started DuckDuckGo in 2008, the engine known for not keeping a profile of its users. Option D, Robin Li and Eric Xu, founded Baidu in China in 2000, which is the leading search engine of that country. Remember the four pairs with their years and countries, because questions are set by swapping one founder for another.

The correct answer is C, Blaise Pascal. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal built the Pascaline in 1642 to help his father with tax calculations; it worked with toothed wheels and could add and subtract, and the programming language Pascal is named in his honour. Option A is wrong because Gottfried Leibniz built the Stepped Reckoner in 1673, an improvement that could also multiply and divide, and he gave the binary number system. Option B is wrong because John Napier published logarithms in 1614 and devised the calculating rods called Napier’s bones. Option D is wrong because Joseph Marie Jacquard built a punched card loom in 1801; his cards influenced computing but his machine wove cloth rather than doing arithmetic. Pascal was only nineteen when he built the machine, and its wheels carried a tooth that passed the carry on to the next digit.

The correct answer is B, Task Manager. Task Manager lists the running applications and background processes with the processor, memory and disk they are using, and it is the tool used to end a program that has stopped responding. A is wrong because Control Panel, the older settings window, is opened from the Start menu or by typing control in the Run box. C is wrong because Device Manager, which lists the hardware attached to the computer and the state of its drivers, is reached through Control Panel or by typing devmgmt dot msc in the Run box. D is wrong because Disk Cleanup, which removes temporary and unnecessary files to free space, is a separate maintenance utility. Candidates should also remember the older combination Ctrl with Alt and Delete, which now opens a security screen from which Task Manager can be chosen.

The correct answer is B, Point to Point Protocol. PPP is a data-link layer protocol that carries data directly between two nodes over a single link, such as a telephone line, a leased line or a serial cable. It became familiar through dial-up internet access, where a home computer used PPP to reach its service provider, and it survives in broadband as PPPoE, that is PPP over Ethernet. PPP does three jobs: it frames the data, it can authenticate the user through PAP or CHAP, and it can carry several network protocols over the same link. It replaced the older SLIP, which offered neither error checking nor authentication. Option A is wrong because the first word of the name is Point, not Packet. Option C is wrong because the second word is also Point, so packet appears nowhere in the name. Option D is wrong because it replaces both words and is not a protocol name at all. Exam tip: PPP joins exactly two points at the data-link layer, and PPPoE is its broadband form.

The correct answer is A, .pst. The letters stand for personal storage table, and this single file holds the messages, calendar entries, contacts, tasks and notes of an Outlook account on the computer, which is why backing up the .pst file backs up the whole mailbox. A related file, with the extension .ost, is the offline cached copy of a mailbox that lives on a server, and one message saved on its own takes the extension .msg. Option B, .ppt, is the old PowerPoint presentation format. Option C, .pdf, is the portable document format of Adobe, used for fixed-layout documents that look the same everywhere. Option D, .pub, is the file format of MS Publisher. Keep the three Outlook extensions together in memory, since questions move between .pst, .ost and .msg from one paper to the next.

The correct answer is C, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code. EBCDIC is an 8-bit character encoding scheme developed by IBM in 1963 for its mainframe and midrange computers. Because it uses 8 bits for each character it can represent 256 different characters, twice as many as the 7-bit ASCII code, which handles 128. EBCDIC grew out of the older Binary Coded Decimal system and is still found on IBM mainframes, while ASCII became the standard for personal computers and Unicode now covers the scripts of the world, including Devanagari. A is wrong because the third word is Coded, not Control. B is wrong on two counts: the first word is Extended and the third is Coded. D is wrong because the expansion ends with Decimal Interchange Code, not Data Integration Code. Exam tip: EBCDIC is 8-bit and 256 characters, ASCII is 7-bit and 128 characters, Unicode is 16-bit and covers all scripts.

The correct answer is C, Safari. Apple released Safari in 2003 and ships it with its computers, tablets and phones; it runs on Apple's own WebKit engine. Option A, Google Chrome, released in 2008, is the browser most used worldwide and can certainly be installed on a Mac, but it is not the one supplied with the system, and the question asks for the default. Option B, Microsoft Edge, released in 2015, is the default browser of current versions of Windows, replacing Internet Explorer there, so it is the right answer only if the question names Windows. Option D, Mozilla Firefox, released in 2004 by the Mozilla Foundation, is free and open-source and is the browser bundled with several Linux distributions, but again it must be installed separately on a Mac. Match each operating system with its own browser: Windows with Edge, macOS with Safari.

The correct answer is D, the input tag with its type attribute set to checkbox. HTML has no separate checkbox element at all. Every simple form control is written with the single input tag, and the type attribute decides what the browser draws, whether that is text, password, radio, checkbox, submit, file or hidden. So a checkbox is made by writing input and setting type to checkbox, while the name and value attributes tell the server which boxes were ticked. Several checkboxes may share one name, which lets a user pick more than one answer; radio buttons that share a name allow only one choice. Option A is wrong because checkbox is written there as a bare word instead of as the value of the type attribute. Option B is wrong because no checkbox element exists in HTML. Option C is wrong because the equals sign is placed straight after the tag name rather than inside a proper attribute. Exam tip: one input tag, many controls, and the type attribute is what changes.

The correct answer is B, FAT32. FAT32 records the size of a file in a thirty-two bit field, so the largest single file it can hold is one byte short of four gigabytes; a large film or disk image therefore cannot be copied to a FAT32 drive even when free space is plenty. A is wrong because NTFS, the New Technology File System used for Windows hard disks, supports files far larger than four gigabytes along with permissions, encryption and journaling. C is wrong because exFAT was designed precisely to remove this limit on flash drives and memory cards while remaining usable on more than one operating system. D is wrong because ext4 is the common file system of Linux and also supports very large files; it is placed here as the distractor for candidates who recall only that it is not a Windows file system.

The correct answer is C, B2C. Flipkart, Alibaba and Amazon run online marketplaces whose storefronts sell goods to individual shoppers, and a business selling to a consumer is business-to-consumer, or B2C. In this model a firm lists its products on a website or an app, the customer orders and pays online, and the goods reach the home, so the shop, the salesman and the cash counter are all replaced by software. B2C is the commonest face of e-commerce and the one ordinary buyers meet every day. A is wrong because consumer-to-business, C2B, is the reverse case, where an individual offers a service or product to a firm, as a freelance designer or a blogger selling advertising space does. B is wrong because consumer-to-consumer, C2C, means one individual selling to another through a platform such as OLX. D is wrong because business-to-business, B2B, covers a firm selling to another firm, as IndiaMART does. Exam tip: Amazon and Flipkart are B2C, OLX is C2C and IndiaMART is B2B.

The correct answer is C, SMTP. SMTP, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, is the protocol that carries a message out of the sender's program and between mail servers until it reaches the recipient's mailbox. Option A, POP3, the Post Office Protocol version 3, is a receiving protocol: it downloads messages to one device and by default removes them from the server. Option B, IMAP, the Internet Message Access Protocol, is the other receiving protocol and it keeps messages on the server so that a phone and a computer show the same mailbox with the same read and unread marks. Option D, FTP, the File Transfer Protocol, moves files between a client and a server and has nothing to do with mail. The one-line rule for the exam hall is that SMTP sends while POP3 and IMAP receive, and that IMAP is the one that synchronises across devices.

The correct answer is C, Bell Laboratories. John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley demonstrated the transistor there in 1947, and the three shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for it. Because a transistor did the work of a vacuum tube while being far smaller, cooler and more reliable, it became the defining component of the second generation of computers.

Option A, Texas Instruments, is where Jack Kilby built the first integrated circuit in 1958, which belongs to the third generation, so it is the classic trap in this question. Option B, Intel Corporation, was founded much later and released the Intel 4004 microprocessor in 1971, opening the fourth generation. Option D, IBM Research, produced important second and third generation machines such as the IBM 1401 and the System 360, but it did not invent the transistor. Keep the pairs fixed: transistor with Bell Labs, integrated circuit with Texas Instruments, microprocessor with Intel.

The correct answer is C, 443. HTTPS is the HyperText Transfer Protocol wrapped in SSL or TLS encryption, so that what passes between the browser and the server cannot be read on the way; the padlock shown in the address bar means the page came over HTTPS. Option A, 21, is the port of FTP, the File Transfer Protocol used to move files to and from a server, and it is a common distractor because it also belongs to the internet family. Option B, 80, is the port of plain HTTP, the unencrypted form of the same protocol, and it is the trap in this question for candidates who remember only one web port. Option D, 25, belongs to SMTP, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol that sends outgoing email. Learn the set together: FTP 21, SMTP 25, HTTP 80, POP3 110 and HTTPS 443.

The correct answer is B, MS Publisher. Publisher is built around page layout rather than around text flow: the user places text boxes, images and shapes exactly where they are wanted on the page, which suits brochures, greeting cards, certificates, labels and newsletters, and its files carry the extension .pub. Option A, MS Visio, is for diagrams such as flowcharts, organisation charts, floor plans and network diagrams, and it writes .vsdx. Option C, MS Project, is for planning a project: it holds tasks, durations, dependencies and resources and draws the Gantt chart, writing .mpp files. Option D, MS Access, is the relational database of the suite. The distinction examiners test is between Word and Publisher: Word is a word processor for documents whose text runs from page to page, while Publisher is a layout program for designed pages.

The correct answer is B, cookie. A cookie holds a few lines of text, such as a session number or a chosen language, and the browser sends it back to the same site on the next visit, which is how a shopping cart or a logged-in session survives from one page to the next. Option A, the cache, is also a store kept by the browser, but it holds copies of images, style files and pages already downloaded so that they need not be fetched again; it speeds up the site, it does not identify the visitor. Option C, a bookmark, is simply an address the user chooses to save, called a favourite in Edge, and the website has no part in creating it. Option D, a cursor, is the mark on the screen showing where typing or clicking will take effect, and has nothing to do with storage.

The correct answer is A, MS Project. Project is the project management program of the Microsoft family. The user enters tasks with their durations and the dependencies between them, assigns people and costs, and the program draws the Gantt chart, a bar chart of time against task, and works out the critical path and the resource loading. Option B, MS Excel, can be made to draw a bar chart that looks like a Gantt chart, but it does not handle task dependencies or critical path calculation by itself, so it is not the program meant for the purpose. Option C, MS OneNote, is a digital notebook for notes and clippings. Option D, MS Teams, is for chat, meetings and file sharing within a group. Remember the pairing Project with .mpp and with the Gantt chart, since both halves are asked.