The Alliance has signed a treaty with the pirates, but, soon enough, they were betrayed! These clips from a famous game cutscene illustrate the story:

The betrayed hero:

A first-hand view of the betrayal (notice the explosions):

And, finally, the evil villain pirate:

Identify the game and the reason for its popularity (identify all the pics, if you so wish)

Answered by: devadutta, udupendra, bs and Atul Mathew.

devadutta, udupendra, bs and Atul Mathew

Identify and connect 1 and 2 .

Cracked by: srikanth , udupendra(cracks the cryptic title too) , bs , Biki , rajeshvj , Sharath , Gammafunction , Sharath , Naresh , Ganesh Prasad , Preetish , Abhishek , alephnull , yaksha , uma , prasanth , shyam , Prasad*(what is the secret of your energy?) *and Tathagata Chatterjee. **

1. Slackware’s mascot. Tux with a pipe and cool hairdo.

2. J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, the diety of the “Church of the sub-genius”

Patrick Volkerding, who created Slackware Linux named it based on the term “Slack”, a very important concept of the church of the sub-genius. Slackware’s mascot Tux is smoking a pipe as a direct reference to Bob.

srikanth, udupendra, bs, Biki, rajeshvj, Sharath, Gammafunction, Sharath, Naresh, Ganesh Prasad, Preetish, Abhishek, alephnull, yaksha, uma, prasanth, shyam, Prasad and Tathagata Chatterjee

What arose from this cartoon?

Gammafunction , udupendra , devadutta , uma , ramsaravana , Ganesh Prasad , Abhishek , Prasad , alephnull , Tathagata Chatterjee , yaksha , Archana , Shashank , asha, (bs, sharath, Non Descript)* and Biki got it right.

*They posted their answers as a comment on the image.

Gammafunction, udupendra, devadutta, uma, ramsaravana, Ganesh Prasad, Abhishek, Prasad, alephnull, Tathagata Chatterjee, yaksha, Archana, Shashank, asha and Biki

1 is known for inventing 2, and for his research using what you see on the table in 1.

Who is he? What is 2.

Everyone recognised 1, but we will give full points only to udupendra , rajeshvj , Vinod , ramsaravana , Sharath , Gammafunction , shyam , yaksha , Tathagata Chatterjee , srikanth , Abhishek , prasanth and asha who named the instrument in 2.

Update: Preetish gets it too. I blame R2D2 for the goof up :)

1. Jagadis Chandra Bose. Check this site http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/~demerson/bose/bose.html which describes his work on wireless in detail.

2. Crescograph – http://www.edsanders.com/bose/ for an in-depth coverage

This dude was indeed a genius!!

udupendra, rajeshvj, Vinod, ramsaravana, Sharath, Gammafunction, shyam, yaksha, Tathagata Chatterjee, Preetish, Abhishek, prasanth and asha

Identify and connect the two images below:

Cracked by: udupendra , Sharath and Praveen. Take a bow guys, you’re the only ones who cracked the 42nd Q on this site :-)

udupendra, Sharath and Praveen

Connect

Many apologies for the comment rejection mess. Special thanks to “Prasad the spam bot” for posting multiple comments, which lead us to the root of the problem.

Cracked by: srikanth , udupendra , Poornima , 2ndratequizzer , pratap , ramsaravana , uma , Sharath , Prasad , piezocake , Abhishek , prasanth , alephnull , Shashank , yaksha

1. Is a painting by William Blake. Its called Newton.
2. Dispersion of white light through a prism. One of the many things Newton discovered.
3. Apple’s Newton PDA/message pad. Its name is a tribute to Sir Issac Newton.

So, like all of you have guessed, the connect is Sir Issac Newton.

srikanth, udupendra, Poornima, 2ndratequizzer, pratap, ramsaravana, uma, Sharath, Prasad, piezocake, Abhishek, prasanth, alephnull, Shashank and yaksha

This activity was once a very popular pastime of the poor and the nerdy.

Some who did it became famous,

while some became infamous:

In fact, it became quite a significant cultural phenomenon, managing to get references in Hollywood:

What activity is this that became a “classic” pastime? Who’re all these guys? (The pictures are full of clues )

Partially cracked by: Biki , srichand , Goutham , Mighty Anon , jayanth , shivani , Poornima , and Gammafunction. I’m feeling generous again.

The complete answer I was looking for:

1. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. They spent their formative years making Blue Boxes (see link).
2. Kevin Mitnick - The infamous “homeless hacker” started his hacking career through Phreaking.
3. Scene from the movie “Sneakers” where the character called Whistler is seen holding a Cap’n crunch box. Toy whistles found in Cap’n crunch boxes were used to generate the 2600 Hz tone (see question title) to phreak Ma bell’s phone networks. No one seemed to identify the movie.

The connect: Phreaking.

Biki, srichand, Goutham, Mighty Anon, ganesh, jayanth, Tathagata Chatterjee, shivani, Poornima, Gammafunction and Shashank

This question is inspired by a suggestion from Nihit.

What is 1’s demo of 2 popularly known as? And identify 1 and 2 please.

Cracked by: srikanth , Sharath , udupendra , uma , jayanth , yaksha , alephnull , Poornima , Shashank.

Many others got very close.

1. Douglas Engelbart
2. NLS - the first system which used video conferencing, hypertext, computer mouses (mice?) and all the other extremely brilliant things Engelbart and team came up with

This demo was so brilliant that people started referring to it as “The Mother of all Demos “

srikanth, Sharath, udupendra, uma, jayanth, yaksha, alephnull, Poornima and Shashank

First featured on screen in 1, popularly shown in 2 and claimed to have been shown in 3.
What?

1. 

2. ``

3. 

Hint: Look closely in 2 :)

Prasad , bs , ramsaravana , Abhishek , Sharath , uma , Tathagata Chatterjee , udupendra , piezocake , Mahesh Herle , Gammafunction , yaksha , Shashank “hacked” the answer. :)

2ndratequizzer got close.

The answer is nmap, a port scanning tool which can be downloaded from insecure.org. Typically, it is used by hackers (ethical or otherwise) to first find out which ports on a target machine are open.

1. Featured the Source code of nmap

2. Trinity in Matrix Reloaded using nmap to port scan and attack the “Grid System” using a well known attack called SSH1-CRC to gain access. This was even featured in a BBC news article. This is also the first Hollywood movie to show a proper hacking scene.

3. Many people claim to have seen nmap in action in this movie. Screen shots are available all around the net.

Prasad, bs, ramsaravana, Abhishek, Sharath, uma, Tathagata Chatterjee, udupendra, piezocake, Mahesh Herle, Gammafunction, yaksha and Shashank

What is this? And what is its claim to fame?

this may help a bit more

Unearthed by: Abhishek , ramsaravana , nihit , Gammafunction , Vinod , uma , Sharath , Swetha , Arjun June , Tathagata Chatterjee , shivani , yaksha , srichand.

This is the famous root(2) tablet, pretty much the first known reference to an irrational number. See Abhishek or Yaksha’s comment for more details :)

Abhishek, ramsaravana, nihit, Gammafunction, Vinod, uma, Sharath, Swetha, Arjun June, Tathagata Chatterjee, shivani, yaksha and srichand