Episode 3: “One of these things…”

By Jacob Kaplan-Moss | November 29, 2006 | Web Developer Quiz

This week’s question is a bit more straightforward that the previous ones. There’s less of a “point” to these questions; they’re more of a trivia contest. I think they’re fun — and tricky — so let’s see how it goes.

In “one of these things is not like the other” style, for each group below tell me which item doesn’t belong, and (more importantly) why:

1. Specifications:

2. HTTP methods:

GET
PUT
POST
HEAD

3. MD5 hashes:

f97c5d29941bfb1b2fdab0874906ab82
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
35d6d33467aae9a2e3dccb4b6b027878
0495651fa03c897470784990f33d86cd

4. Programming languages:

5. HTML 4 elements:

<Q>


<A>

As usual, tune in this weekend for the answers.

Got a question of your own?

If you’ve got a question, puzzle, or challenge that you think would make a good question for this quiz, email me at jacob -at- jacobian.org. If I use your question in a future quiz, I’ll even send you a nice little present…

Written By:

Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Jacob is the lead developer for the online division of the Lawrence Journal-World, and one of the lead authors of Django. In other words, that makes him a full-time web geek. When he's not in front of a computer, he's usually in front of a stove or oven.

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{ 15 comments }

ubernostrum December 4, 2006 at 8:44 pm: I *told* you some of these were ambiguous ;)
Stormrider November 30, 2006 at 7:33 am: Whoops!! Didn’t realise HTML was on in this :)
Again:
For question 5…
<q> – not supported properly in all browsers (*COUGH* Internet Explorer *COUGH*)
 — only one that is deprecated
<a> – behavioral as well as presentational, the others are presentational only
So, give the above, I reckon is the odd one out, being the only one not to have a reason for being the odd one out :D:D:D
Stormrider November 30, 2006 at 7:31 am: For question 5…
– not supported properly in all browsers (*COUGH* Internet Explorer *COUGH*)
– only one that is deprecated
could be the odd one out because it is behavioral as well as presentational, the others are presentational only
So, give the above, I reckon is the odd one out, being the only one not to have a reason for being the odd one out :D:D:D
xhtmlcoder November 30, 2006 at 12:31 am: Question 5: they are all available in HTML 4 and are inline elements (the question never mentioned XHTML)
Q: is not correctly rendered by MSIE as visual user agents must ensure that the content of the Q element is rendered with delimiting quotation marks.
U: a presentational element was deprecated in favour of CSS due to usability issues.
I: basically presentational in most senses and usually CSS can be used in place of.
A: is the odd one out. As it can’t be substituted and performs a hyperlink function plus it cannot be nested unlike the other three.
There you have it the Anchor.
HardCoded November 29, 2006 at 11:13 pm: 1. B: APP is not XML (Atom is)
2. A: GET is the only one a browser can send without using a form.
3. B: Mindaugas got it: empty string
4. D: Python is interpreted
5. D: A is the only element that has a default behaviour (as opposed to default presentation).
Phil M November 29, 2006 at 8:59 pm: If B were deprecated, then I think you would need to apply the same logic to C and I think you are supposed to use EM over I and STRONG over B.
I’d just like to mention that  and  are both valid xhtml1.1 strict. They serve a different purpose to  and  being used for basic presentation rather than semantic purposes.
Mindaugas November 29, 2006 at 8:37 pm: Q3: B is MD5 hash of empty string.
kasimir November 29, 2006 at 7:35 pm: Q1: B, non w3c
Q2; C, POST is not idempotent
mmj November 29, 2006 at 11:28 am: Q1: B
Atom is the only format not to have been submitted to the W3C. (not sure about this one)
Q2: D
HEAD is the only method that will never result in a message body being returned.
Q5: B
 is the only tag not valid in HTML 4.01 strict.
For Q3 I’ll have to go with mrssmiley’s answer and for Q4 I’ll have to go with Rick O’s.
Kevin Yank November 29, 2006 at 9:51 am: This is my favourite of the quiz questions so far, Jacob. So much fun!
Rick O November 29, 2006 at 9:14 am: For #2, I would say that B (PUT) is the odd-man-out, as all of the others are HTTP/1.0, while PUT is HTTP/1.1. (Yes, some 1.0 clients implemented it, and it is mentioned briefly in the spec, but it wasn’t official.)
For #4, I would say that B (Ada) is the answer. Ada uses a Pascal/C-like syntax and is procedural, while the others are Python-like and functional.
-R
mrsmiley November 29, 2006 at 8:40 am: The thing about 5 I can remember is that there a few people around complaining that IE still doesn’t have support for the Q element even with the v7 release. If B were deprecated, then I think you would need to apply the same logic to C and I think you are supposed to use EM over I and STRONG over B.
Still, regardless of the reason, it’s a bit of light hearted fun.
boomsb November 29, 2006 at 7:33 am: I was thinking
5. B—It’s depreciated
mrsmiley November 29, 2006 at 7:14 am: 3. D – You cant find it on Google
mrsmiley November 29, 2006 at 7:10 am: 1. D – Its not a publishing format
2. D – Its not a valid value as a form ACTION attribute (ie HTTP request method)
3. Still working on this one
4. D – People still use Python and you are more likely to find it on a shared host :)
5. A – Q isn’t supported by all browsers, the other tags are