Most recent blog entries

Today, thirty years ago, Charlie Chaplin died. We all knew him as great actor and screen writer. A few days ago german public television showed the last film where his "Tramp" character appeared, Modern Times. He was not only the director, producer and screen writer of his movie, but composed the score, too. "Smile", a famous song from that movie, was covered numerous times. The best version is supposed to be from Nat King Cole.

It's strange that he never won an oscar for his work as an actor or director. His only competitive academy award was for the score of "Limelight". (He later got two honory awards).

Everybody knows the famous "Terry's Theme" from Limelight, but not many people know that Chaplin wrote it.

...

Read More »

From Ian's posting in the forum you might have noticed that Morten and I do not have many hairs populating our fabulous heads. Clearly speaking: we are getting bald !

But we are in good company. Many great men have been or still are bald as well. One of my favourite actors is bald as well, so lets listen to what he is saying about baldness (and he is also able to talk about it in the 24th century):

Patrick Stewart on "Baldness"

The Swyx Forum Team, that is me (Tom) and Morten wishes all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Thanks for all your support here in the community and lets make sure it will grow even stronger and larger in 2008 !

Remember ? The other day I linked two videos here in my blog that could lead to the conclusion that education is not one of the strongest attributes of the US. The first video showed a blond girl in a TV show assuming that Europe is a country. The second video showed a guy playing around with statistics on how clever americans are (or not). Well, especially the last one could have been biased as it was just the voice of one strange guy.

So, is it true what he said ? Are americans dumb as hell ?

Americans are NOT stupid

It's amazing, I didn't assumed that "Europe is a country" could get worse... (poor Australians!)

If you ever thought about buying a Mac, because it has such a nice design and because it is so much more secure than this Microsoft crap look at some numbers first:

Total number of critical vulnerabilities in XP and Vista in 2007: 27
Total number of critical vulnerabilities in Max OS X in 2007: 234

Source with more details:http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=758

It's a little late for a friday afternoon blog entry :-) But take this as a fresh start into a new week. The following quote is from a very famous sketch:

"I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead. That's what's wrong with it."

It aired 38 years ago on December 7th, 1969. If you don't recognize it, click here.

From time to time I get asked if we scandinavians do understand each others languages. They are quite similiar, even if we of course have a lot of different words.

But to answer this question once and for all, I would like you all to watch this video. It explains very well how the situation is.

It is subtitled in Norwegian so that our Danish friends will also understand

Help, we need help... Part 1  / Part 2

Today, 14th of december 1972, Eugene Cernan was the last person to walk on the moon. He achived that on the Apollo 17 mission.

Just so you know, walking on the moon is sooooooooo 70's

100% ...

This is a strictly mathematical viewpoint... it goes like this: What makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wondered about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?

Here'sa little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions: If A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 then H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K 8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98% and K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E 11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96% but A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100% and

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T 2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103% and, look how far ass kissing will take you: A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G 1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 127%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while hard work and knowledge will...

Read More »

Online storage is offered by many sites, but usually the data is stored centrally on a server or a server farm. Today, while surfing the net I read about Wuala. Wuala is online storage realized as a peer-to-peer network. It's not meant to increase your harddisk space, but to change the quality of the storage. It available everywhere anytime. Wuala is not open for everybody yet (invitation only) and I therefore couldn't try it.

I started thinking about how they ensure availability of files. Typical peer to peer networks are good when files are popular, i.e. when a lot of nodes download a file and offer the already downloaded parts to other  nodes at the same time. But in comparison to any soon-to-be-released blockbuster movie, which is downloaded by thousands, my data should only be available for myself and maybe some friends. That would not work obviously.

The wuala website does not tell how they ensure a sufficient availability of stored files. Just increasing...

Read More »

(Sorry, the following is in german language available only!)

Die Kinderhilfe Afghanistan, welche durch Teile der bisher eingenommenen Sponsoren Gelder durch Swyx Forum unterstützt wird, hat eine Zusammenfassung ihrer Aktivitäten im Jahr 2007 zur Verfügung gestellt:

Jahresrundbrief der Kinderhilfe Afghanistan

... you find this on your desk in the morning: 

Some kind of ignorance of knowledge can't be related to certain countries of the word, allthough it most definately looks like...

But listening to youngsters in a bus or underground (in the USA, in Germany, in the UK, in France, ...) really get's you scared of the upcoming generation and what they will be with the world ! Stupidity is not related to a certain country but is a result of the way we are living today, of the mass media, the gaming industry, MTV, or what ever.

The following is a really nice example. Maybe there are some relations between "not knowing" (not to say "stupidity") and the color of the hair ... 



 

Well, and this a some statistical information on education in the USA. But I am pretty sure this is valid for other countries as well ! 



...

Read More »