Music Quiz 1

I thought I’ll publish a few quiz questions from the world of music – at irregular intervals, and if there are any participants… (There’s nothing to win except my praise, though. ;) )

So let’s get right to the first question:

What are the next lines after

“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word…”

and what’s the name of the song and the singer or band?

Of course the solution should be found without using any search engines… so go ahead, what’s your guess/solution?

:aufgehts:

Update 2 Nov: :clap: Congratulations to Sam who got the first solution, this English nursery rhyme:

“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word
Mama/Papa’s gonna buy you a mocking bird
If that mocking bird don’t sing
Mama/Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring”

(more – incl. variants – in the Wikipedia), and to Julia who (after a little hint) found solution #2 Metallica: “Enter Sandman”:

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It’s just the beasts under your bed
In your closet, in your head”

La ola

And thanks for participating!

Browser statistics and more

Now that Webtrekk GmbH published its current statistics about browser & co in Germany for the 3rd quarter (see also Golem) – IE 6 is still used most (41,15%), then Firefox/Mozilla (27,08%) and IE 7 (25,23%); Windows XP clearly dominates (79,56%) in front of the rest (more in the official PDF) – I thought I’d publish my blog’s statistics, too.

My numbers were collected by Blogcounter.de since late August – with the advantage that they do not count my own visits, so that doesn’t blur the data.

Browsers:

IE (all versions put together) dominate here too, but the share of Firefox/Mozilla is higher than in the Webtrekk statistics (“sonstige” = other):

Stats: Browsers

Operating System:

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Is Microsoft living in the past?

A letter from Microsoft arrived today, kindly reminding me that my “Open License”
of Visual Studio/MSDN Professional (or whatever its current name is) will expire soon. On page 2, it says (translation and underline by me):

Upgrade assurance of the licenses: With Open Value, thanks to Software Assurance, you secure for you already today future product versions like those coming in 2006: Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft “Office 12”.
[…]
Extended Software Assurance Services: starting March 2006, you have also available…”

Maybe someone at Microsoft should occasionally read through these standard texts…

Oh, and their 01805 phone number costs no longer 12, but 14 cents – when will the first official warning letter arrive? :tongue:

The Martians attack!

War of the Worlds - Tripod Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our blog program to bring you a special news bulletin.

At twenty minutes before eight, Professor Farrell of the Munich university observatory reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity.

Now, nearer home, comes a special bulletin from Rosenheim. It is reported that at 9:50 A.M. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Prien at the Chiemsee, 9 miles from Rosenheim.

The flash in the sky was visible within a radius of several hundred miles and the noise of the impact was heard as far north as Ingolstadt. Our reporter:

“Well, I… hardly know where to begin. I just got here. I guess that’s the thing, directly in front of me, half buried in a vast pit. Must have struck with terrific force. What I can see of the object itself doesn’t look very much like a meteor, at least not the meteors I’ve seen. It looks more like a huge cylinder, with a diameter of… about thirty yards.

She’s off! The top’s loose! Look out there! Stand back!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed… Wait a minute! Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top. Someone or… something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks — are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be…

A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What’s that? There’s a jet of flame springing from that mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord, they’re turning into flame!


Would that be a reason to panic – hearing it only on radio, without television or internet?

At least that is an (adapted and shortened) excerpt from the beginning of Orson Welles’ radio drama based on H.G.Wells’ “War of the Worlds” which aired 69 years ago today, on 30 October 1938, in the USA and apparently caused some panic mainly in New York and New Jersey where the main plot has been moved to…

You can get an original recording e.g. at the Internet Archive, and a transcript here.

Quote of the Day (6)

Read on “Cruelty’s Blog” (German) which I found via Yigg.de:

“Layer-Ads is […] just a simple layer that moves into view with a little animation.
Thus, the user is not irritated and quickly finds the Close button, if he doesn’t wish the ad.”

(Emphasis and translation mine. And dear Cruelty, I don’t want to attack you personally, I just want to tell my opinion on such ads.)

Yigg screenshot of the blog Hmm… does anyone know anyone who doesn’t mind an ad thingy of about 750×500 pixels covering the page content? (Except those making money from it, of course…) Even if it disappears after viewing and closing once for all future (what I doubt; at least, it seems to work that way temporarily), that could alienate one visitor or another – and if even the Yigg screenshot consists almost completely of an 1&1 ad, one could think: ‘Oh, that blog with that ads, no, don’t need to go there.’

By the way, Layer-Ads.de says (my translation):

“Even visitors with pop-up blockers will see a layer.
The webmaster won’t lose a single compensated visitor.”

My Firefox–Proxomitron combination worked anyway, I had to dig up the unfiltered IE to get an impression of these ads. :mrgreen: