Swobodin’s Blog

It seems that many friends liked the game which consists of listening a movie track and guessing about the speaker.
Here’s again! The following great speech was spoken by a great actor, in the role of a great personality, within a great movie directed by a great producer. You may use all the methods to find the solution, including watching the movie
I extracted the track with MPlayer and edited it with audacity. Windows users can use Winamp to hear it. It doesn’t contain offensive words.
By the way, last time’s solution was Al Pacino in “Angels in America”.
Good luck!
Click here to download the track

What did Famous People say before dying?

• Jvlivs Cæser:
  Tu quoque, Brute, fili mihi
  (You too, Brutus my son?)
• Alexander the Great:
  To the strongest!
• Hannibal:
  Liberemus diuturna cura populum Romanum, quando mortem senis exspectare longum censent.
  (Let us ease the Roman people of their continual care, who think it long to await the death of an old man.)
• Tomas Edison:
  It’s very beautiful over there.
• Tomas Edison:
  It’s very beautiful over there.
• Tomas Edison:
  Mehr Licht!
  (More Light!)
• Che Guevara:
  I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, you are only going to kill a man.
• Winston Churchill:
  I’m bored with it all.
• Winston Churchill:
  I’m bored with it all.
• George Washington:
  I am just going. Have me decently buried and do not let my body be into a vault in less than two days after I am dead. Do you understand me? [”Yes,” replied Tobias Lear, his secretary.] ‘Tis well.
• William Wallace:
  Freedom!
• George Bernard Shaw:
  Dying is easy, comedy is hard.

Beaucoup d’amis m’accuse de “francophobie” lorsque j’évite d’écrire en français, soit dans les blogs (y compris le mien), dans les forums de discussion, les listes de diffusion ou dans les chats.
Paradoxalement, ce n’est pas la haine envers la langue française qui me pousse à ne pas l’utiliser, mais c’est par respect envers cette langue ! Si je choisis l’anglais, c’est, à part de sa souplesse au niveau des termes techniques, parce qu’il est facile à utiliser : pas de conjugaisons complexes, pas d’accord d’adjectif, etc. En revanche, je crains, qu’en écrivant en français, de commettre des erreurs d’orthographe, de conjugaison ou de grammaire ; ces erreurs qui, pour moi, sont intolérables.
N’importe qui, en apprenant du vocabulaire anglais, des règles grammaticales de base, … est capable de faire un montage des mots et ainsi construire une phrase compréhensible pour le lecteur, on peut cependant facilement faire la différence entre une personne dont l’anglais est une langue native, et une autre qui, comme moi, a appris l’anglais sans bases réelles et qu’elle l’utilise pour seulement communiquer, et non pas pour mettre en valeur la grandeur de la langue.
Remarquez le peu de mots que l’on peut utiliser en anglais pour exprimer ce que l’on veut dire ou faire ; certes, il est possible d’ainsi procéder en français et faire des abréviations, mais ceci dégraderait de la splendeur de la langue, alors que le français est une langue de prestige.
Personnellement, je vois que la crédibilité d’un auteur repose sur la maîtrise de la langue avec laquelle il écrit, et sa capacité d’éviter les erreurs, mieux encore, s’il ne commet aucune. Malheureusement, le phénomène du je-m’enfoutisme-quant-aux-fautes est en vigueur en ce moment, et il est bien dommage de voir que non seulement des professeurs commettre des erreurs évidentes, mais aussi que des Français eux-mêmes ne maîtrisant plus leur langue, et que des “étrangers” possèdent un vocabulaire et une maîtrise de la grammaire et de l’orthographe mieux que la plupart des Français.
Je me souviens à ce propos d’un dialogue en chat avec une personne du Brésil. Cette personne m’a dit erronément “não fala assim” (Ne parle pas ainsi) ; j’ai répondu comme un bon élève (traduction) : “Si je ne me trompe pas, lorsque l’on utilise avec la deuxième personne du singulier l’impératif avec le négatif, le verbe ne prend plus la forme de l’indicatif, mais plutôt du subjonctif. Ainsi on ne dit pas ‘não fala’, mais plutôt ‘não fales’”. Sa réponse était ferme : “Estas regras grammaticais são feitas pra vcs, estrangeiros, aqui, a gente fala como quer” (Ces règles grammaticales sont faites pour vous, étrangers, ici, on parle comme on veut).
Peut-être que je suis extrêmement intransigeant lorsqu’il s’agit de respect de la langue, mais prendriez-vous en considération un journaliste ou un écrivain qui commet des fautes dans sa langue natale ? À quoi donc servent les milliers de règles ayant pour objectif de “normaliser” la langue. Si c’est pour faire la différence entre les “bons” et les “mauvais”, alors je préfère être parmi les bons (pas toujours)
Quant à l’arabe, outre que je ne suis pas rapide à la saisie, je préfère encore de l’éviter quand je ne suis pas “à l’aise” : Y commettre des erreurs serait une humiliation à ma langue !

We know exactly what you have been searching for Google

 Full of contradictions, the Austrian eagle, symblyzing the Coat of Arms of Austria, has a crown, and takes a hammer and a sickle.
At first glaze, too many questions and answers suddently occure. Here were my propositions:
The crown means a royal state; that certainly means it has been set since the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Sickle and hammer, it might have been imposed by the “Liberator”, the USSR.
Well, there are chains, means a liberation from communism?
A reliable answer can only be found at The Free Encyclopaedia. I looked for the answer and I got this . Now everyhing is clear:

The Coat of Arms of Austria has been used since the end of World War I to symbolize Austria. The double headed eagle, symbolizing the old Austro-Hungarian Empire was replaced with a single headed eagle.
 
On the chest of the eagle is located the old shield of the Duchy of Austria, this same design forms the basis for the flag of Austria. The eagle’s claws hold a golden sickle and a golden hammer. While at first sight this might lead to an association with communist symbols the golden mural crown on the head of the eagle makes it clear, that these three merely represent the unity of the three “classes” (workers, peasants and bourgeoisie) in the republic - not quite class war.
 
The broken iron chain between the two claws indicates liberation from fascism and was added after World War II.

By the way, AEIOU was Austria’s slogan, which means

• Austria est imperio optime unita
• Austria erit in orbe ultima - “Austria will be forever”
• Austriae est imperare orbi universo - “It is Austria’s destiny to rule the world”
• Alles Erdreich ist Österreich untertan - (16th/17th century) “The world is subject of Austria’s rule” Both these versions refer not to the small Austria of today, but the huge Habsburg empire where “the sun did not set”.

In 1951, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy suggested the interpretation: Austria Europae Imago, Onus, Unio - “Austria is Europe’s spitting image, burden and unification”.
 
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.E.I.O.U.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Austria

Volando voy, volando vengo
Volando voy, volando vengo
por el camino yo me entretengo
por el camino yo me entretengo.
 
Enamorado de la vida
cabeza clara
Enamorado de la vida
cabeza clara
Si tengo frío
busco candela
Si tengo frío
busco candela
 
Y volando vengo, volando vengo y voy
volando vengo
por el camino yo me entretengo
por el camino yo me entretengo.
 
Señoras y señores sepan ustedes
Señoras y señores sepan ustedes
que la flor de la noche
pa’ quien la merece
que la flor de la noche
pa’ quien la merece
 
Volando vengo, volando vengo y voy
volando vengo
por el camino yo me entretengo
por el camino yo me entretengo.
 
Volando voy, volando vengo
Volando voy, volando vengo
por el camino yo me entretengo
por el camino yo me entretengo.

I was playing several chess games (16 exactly), and won them all. Well, I’m not going to talk about won or loss, but about something I always avoid and I don’t want it to be in my character.
Almost all the games were won with sadism, indifference, agressivity and superiority. If I were in my oponent’s shoes, I would not accept such a torment.
Last match, my oponent was about winning me, just one move and he (or she) would have defeated me, within some “automatic” moves, I have taken his Queen, Rook and Bishop, and so broken all his plans, without caring about his thoughts. After I analyzed, I told that if someone has defeated me in that way, I would not play chess for days.
I’m afraid this would have an impact on my character, I become a butcher. I closed eboard and I came back programming…

… why should you waste a single moment of *your* life seeming to be something you don’t want to be? Lord, that’s so simple. If you hate your job, quit it. If your friends are tedious, go out and find new friends. You are queer, you lucky fool, and that makes you one of life’s buccaneers, free from the clutter of 2000 years of Judeo-Christian sermonizing. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and start raising your sails. You haven’t a moment to lose.

Download PDF version
 

جبران خليل جبران - النبي
 
 
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
 
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
 

 
Download PDF version

I personally hate soccer; not as a game, but for what did people do of it.
It became a business machine, a political game (Berlusconi, Bernard Tapie and others), a people everyday’s talk, a religion.
But what I hate the most, is that soccer comes to divide people, to enhance racism and to favor violence!
A scandaleous act is what happened last Sunday, where fanatic supporters fought against each other, with all kinds of white weapons, for which cause? For the goddamn fucking soccer! The result: one victim, a little girl who is still at hospital, seriously wonded, as I heard about yesterday.
What have she done? Nothing, just being in the wrong place, within a dirty war between fanatics whose the belief is the soccer, and who don’t care of using rocks, bottles and knives with other people who just like other teams.
Shame on you, assholes! You only show how aweful is your intellectual level and make your country deacrese!

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Many people think that the continent name ‘Africa’ comes from Ifriqia, the old name of Tunisia which also means ‘The separator’, because it separates the orient from the Magreb. However, Romans used to call Tunisia ‘Africa’ too; so what’s wrong?
Something is sure, is that the name is “Tunisian”, but it’s not Arabic. Here’s the Wikipedia’s theory:

The Afri were a tribe — possibly Berber — who dwelt in North Africa in the Carthage area. The origin of Afer may be connected with Phoenician `afar, dust (also found in most other Semitic languages). Some other etymologies that have been postulated for the ancient name ‘Africa’ that are much more debatable include:

• the Latin word aprica, meaning “sunny”;
• the Greek word aphrike, meaning “without cold” (see also List of traditional Greek place names). The historian Leo Africanus (1495-1554) attributed the origin to the Greek word phrike (meaning “cold and horror”), combined with the negating prefix a-, so meaning a land free of cold and horror. However, the change of sound from ph to f in Greek is datable to about the Xth century, so this is unlikely to be the origin.

Today seems to be Tom’s day in my blog!
Tom asked me some days ago whether I can contribute to the first Tunisian OpenSource project QCM-Gen 0.1, something I cannot refuse; however, I spent my free time watching Jackass the movie and playing chess. Finally I decided yesterday to work on it seriously (well, not really) and I made some changes.
The 0.1 version has a cool interface and compounds many features. Nevertheless, the project can’t be professional for the serious security holes, non compatibility with some browsers and with some PHP configurations. In fact, you don’t need to be an expert cracker to find out that you can access to administration interface by simply pointing your browser to qcmgen.php?who=0 !
As says the Chinese proverb:

One who has time to complain has time to submit patches

Anyway, here are the small changes I made (I spent time on writing this post more than writing code )
Changed the authentication system: the new one is cookies based and relatively more secure than the former.
Modified database structure: passwords on table users are MD5 encrypted.
The login form (index.php) is now XHTML compliant; damn, I spent more than one hour to fix the some 30 errors! (DreamWeaver sucks)
 
As you can see, I did not do something great; however, I hope it’s the first step to (re-)promote OpenSource projects in Tunisia.
I beg all Tunisians who use PHP and OpenSource softwares for living: PHP and OpenSource help you, please be grateful to their developers and contribute to some projects. Even if you don’t code, your documentation, design, mirroring, comments, suggestions and ideas are welcome. Just dare it!
TODO:
Too much stuff, more than you expect
 
Regarding the patch, you may download it from here.
Usage:
unzip /path/to/QCMGen.0.1.zip
cd QCMGen.0.1/
bunzip2 -c /path/to/patch-QCMGen.bz2 | patch -p1
Have fun!

If you are looking for arguments to disapprove wars and promote peace, I would suggest you watch Lord of War.
When I found the movie at the catalogue, I remembered a Tom’s post and decided to take it.
Yuri (Nicolas Cage) is a Ukrainian emigree who lives in New York and who decided to sell guns with his brother (братья по оружя — Brothers for arms) to every kind of fighters around the world, not caring of lost lives, buying every kind of weapons from Ukrainians and selling to rebels and goverments, only wanting to spread his influence.
 
Selling guns is like selling vacuum cleaners. You make calls, pound the pavement, take orders. I was an equal opportunity merchant of death. I supplied every army but the Salvation Army. I sold Israeli-made Uzi’s to Muslims. I sold communist-made bullets to fascists. I even shipped cargo to Afghanistan when they were fighting my fellow Soviets.
 
I liked the movie, not only for the topic and the point of view, but also for the artistic side. Nice pictures, very expressive; excellent music; the shocking images are correct and have a deep meaning; let’s not talk of casting: they used a jocker called Nicolas Cage. However, I only wonder how did Yuri call his wife from Odessa at night, while she was sleeping in New York, at night too. Well, this small mistake doesn’t affect the greatness of the movie.

I have a feeling it wasn’t exactly what comrade Lenin had in mind when he advocated the redistribution of wealth. But I wasn’t the only one offering a crash course in capitalism.
Capture made with MPlayer and Gimp

 
My rate: 9/10
 
Some quotes
 
- You think I just sell guns, don’t you? I don’t. I take sides.
- But in the Iran-Iraq war, you sold guns to both sides.
- Did you ever consider that I wanted both sides to lose? Bullets change governments far surer than votes. You’re in the wrong place, my young friend. This is no place for amateurs.
 
- Always remember, son, there’s something above you.
- Sure, Dad. A $40,000 crystal chandelier.
 
The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people’s greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar and suicidal novelists.
 
Monrovia itself was like being on another planet. Planet Monrovia. From the temperature, it was obviously a planet close to the sun. I rarely saw another white man and I never left town alone. Outside town was the edge of hell. I didn’t want to even gaze into it.
 
Some revolutions blow over before the guns even get there. There’s nothing more expensive for an arms dealer than peace.
 
There are only two tragedies in life: One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it.
 
I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of those man are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year, sometimes it’s embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can’t be seen supplying. So, call me evil. But unfortunately for you, I’m necessary evil.

As an extra addled service, I am going to put this column in the Spilling Checker, where I tryst it will sale through with flying colons. In this modern ear, itis simply inexplicable to ask readers to expose themselves to misspelled swords when they have bitter things to do.
And with all the other timesaving features on my new work processor, it is in realty very easy to pit together a colon like this one and get it tight.
For instants, if there is a work that is wrong, I just put the curse on it,
press Delete and its Well sometimes it deletes to the end of the lion or worst yet the whole rage. Four bigger problems, there is the Cat and Paste option. If there is some test that is somewhere were you wish it where somewhere else you jest put the curse at both ends and wash it disappear.
Where you want it to reappear simply bring four quarts of water to a rotting boil and throw in 112 pounds of dazed chicken. Sometimes it brings in the Cat that was Pasted yesterday.
But usually it comes out as you planned, or better. And if it doesn’t, there are lots of other easy to lose options…

 
Source: GNU Fun archive