Nokia

60’2022 (2022-03-01) – Hidden secrets

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned about:

Over a decade ago, the leading manufacturer of mobile phones in the world was a Finnish company, Nokia. At that time, they made a worldwide survey asking people one simple question: You are out in town having fun and when you leave the bar you forget to take one of the following things with you: your wallet or your mobile phone. Which one can you not afford to lose? Already at that time, the big majority of respondents said that they would opt for the mobile phone. And if the same survey was conducted today, I have no doubt that the outcome would be the same, but in even bigger majority for the phone.

I remembered that survey some months ago when I watched a movie on Netflix, a French film named Le jeu (“The game”), in which three married couples and a bachelor friend of theirs meet for dinner during a total eclipse of the Moon, when strange things are said to happen. The central objects during this dinner are, you guessed it, the seven mobile phones belonging to each one of the participants. They start to play a game where all phones are placed in the middle of the dinner table, and when a call or message enters, everyone is allowed to listen in on the contents, because supposedly, no one has anything to hide, right? I will not spoil what happens next, but urge you to look at it yourself, see reference #1 below. It is well worth your while!

Then in January, while listening to Radio Sweden, their news correspondent in the Middle East, Cecilia Uddén, reported about a film with a similar story. This time it was making a big scandal with its contents in Egypt and there was even a parlamentary member who wanted to forbid Netflix to act in Egypt. One detail that made him furious was the lack of a particular item of female clothing, can you guess which? See also references # 2 and 3 below.

In her report, Cecilia also mentions that the film was an Arabic remake of an originally Italian film from 2016, named Perfetti Sconosciuti, which made a big success and won the Italian counterpart to the Oscar, David di Donatello, for the best Italian film of the year. You can read more about and of its 18 remakes in different languages which was inserted in the Guinness Book of Records in 2019 as being the film with the largest quantity of remakes, in reference #4 below.

Now I got really curious, so I asked a friend of mine, a real cinephile, about it. Of course, he did not only know it, but also had his own copy on DVD, something that I had searched for in vain over to the internet. Here is a photo from the Italian version:

A picture of the seven actors in Perfetti Sconosciuti, originally published by IMDB, taking a selfie while out on the balcony in Rome, watching the Eclipse of the Moon. Then suddenly something unexpected happens, can you guess what?

Then I also found a Spanish version from 2017 on Netflix, reference #5.

Unfortunately I have only seen these four versions, but I must say that I enjoyed all of them very much, being very similar in almost everything, but adapted to local names, types of food etc. But If I had to vote for only one of them, I would definitely go with the original, Italian version, which seems more genuine and complete. What do you think? Please leave a comment and I will tally the answers and let you know in a future post.

Today’s photo, sent to me by a faithful follower, shows Plaça de Catalunya i Barcelona, Spain, the city’s biggest square and a natural meeting place in the center. Thank you for your contribution once more!

Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. Photo taken on 68’2022 (2022-03-09).

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: Le jeu

2: Egyptisk parlamentsledamot vill förbjuda Netflix

3: Perfect strangers

4: Perfetti Sconosciuti

5: Perfectos desconocidos

*: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-10-08 (Saturday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

The United Arab Emirates, especially through the emirate Dubai, continues to expands its offerings for tourism in this interesting part of the world. In my post of 2016-06-21, I wrote about the technological advances in Dubai, and now I learned that further to the earlier 16 languages, their Ministry of Tourism has now also added Swedish as a language to a complete subsite, see reference # 1 below. The photo below, courtesy of my friend Chiara Anzalone, shows the Arabian Gulf at Dubai, with Burj Al Arab Jumeirah, considered the world’s must luxurious hotel in the foreground, and the artificial Palm Jumeirah islands towards the horizon. How about meeting me there?

chiara3

Photo from Dubai, taken by Chiara Anzalone, showing the Arabian Gulf, with Burj Al Arab Jumeirah, considered the world’s must luxurious hotel in the foreground, and the Palm Jumeirah islands towards the horizon.

The past week revealed the laureates of the scientific Nobel Prizes 2016, where among other things we learned that the term ‘topology’ means totally different things in physics and chemistry. Radio Sweden made a fantastic job to compress the reasons for awarding exactly these scientists into three 1-minute video clips. References #2, #3, #4 below carry the links. The language is Swedish, but who knows besides learning more about medicine, physics, and chemistry, you may also pick up some words in the “language of honor and heroes”?

I had planned to discuss the advancement of machines into our lives today, but since it is a subject that cannot be dealt with on a coffee break, I will return to it any day soon. Instead, I would like to show how one of the world’s technology giants are once more dismantling their acquired heritage. The company is called Microsoft, and after turning Nokia and Skype into dust, now it seems that LinkedIn will be their next victim. I received this e-mail the other day:

desempregado

The once excellent social business network LinkedIn was recently bought by Microsoft. Looking at this network update, how they want me to congratulate a friend who recently got unemployed (“Desempregado”) is just one more sign of their continuing “King Midas in reverse”. (Name and image have been altered for security reasons.) See and listen also to reference # 5 below.

And, there is one more thing …

temers

Brazil’s First Lady, Marcela Temer, presents the new social program Criança feliz (“Happy child”), with her husband, president Michel Temer, behind her, on 2016-10-05, photo by Pedro Ladeira/Folhapress. The same newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo, published today 2016-10-08 a cartoon by Montanaro, in which an admirer says “My, does Marcela speak well!” and Michel responds “Of course, who do you think taught her to speak her first words?” (This kind of political gossip is common due to the large age difference between the two, 76 vs. 33 years.)

… That’s what I learned in school !

byran

Do you need to TRANSLATE DOCUMENTS between ENGLISH, BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE, and the SCANDINAVIAN (SWEDISH / DANISH / NORWEGIAN) languages? Contact “Byrån / The Taskforce” here !!!

Refs.:

1: Besök Dubai – Upptäck Dubais alla möjligheter!

2: Nobelpriset i medicin 2016

3: Nobelpriset i fysik 2016

4: Nobelpriset i kemi 2016

5: The Hollies “King Midas In Reverse”

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-02-27 (Saturday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

The interest for solving riddles is big among my readers, and the first correct solution to The pill roulette was submitted by Barbara and her colleagues at Torpaskolan in Gothenburg, Sweden. Congratulations to all you clever people! And here comes the …

Solution to The pill roulette, posted on 2016-02-21

  • Divide the eight pills into three different piles, two having three pills each and one with two pills.
  • Place one pile with three pills on the left pan of the balance scale and the other pile of three pills on the right pan.
  • If the weighing results in equality, then we know that all those six pills are also equal and none is poisonous. A second weighing of the remaining two pills indicates which pill is the poisonous one, since it is a little heavier.
  • However, if the first weighing results in that the total mass (“weight”) of one pile with three pills is heavier than the other pile of three, then we know that both the lighter pile of three and the sided two pills are all normal pills without any poision. Thus concentrate on the heaviest pile of three, one of the pills in it is the poisonous one. Take any two of those three pills and place one each on either pan of the balance scale. If this second weighing results in equality, both of the two pills are OK, and the sided third pill is the poisonous one. But if one of the two pills on the scale is heavier than the other one, it is the poisionous one!

A new riddle can be found at the end of today’s blog.

The Internet of Things

Last week was a busy one in Barcelona, Spain, where the Mobile World Congress gathered many people to learn and spread the word about the current state of affairs. Today, I will restrict the field to the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), which is the increasing number of appliances, gadgets, vehicles, etc. that connect and interchange information. Radio Sweden’s weekly financial update was entirely dedicated to IoT, giving specialists from Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, and Oracle a chance to share their thoughts. For the complete program, listen to reference # 1 below, but if you do not cope very well with the Swedish language, I will give you some of what was discussed here:

  • IoT has been around for quite a while, although in a unorganized manner, through all the sensors that have reported various parameter values to centralized locations, which evolved to machine-to-machine communication (M2M) and now IoT.
  • Built-in sensors in our homes will warn us when all is not the way it should be, e.g. if there are leaks of water, gas, etc., and instead of us having to call for someone to come and help us during normal business hours, we will receive a message telling us about the current situation and asking us about when that someone would be welcome to come to our home and solve the problem.
  • The self-driving cars will be upon us soon.
  • Provided that we can guarantee that the communications are resistant to hacker attacks, people are willing to share the biomedical data remotely. And the 5G networks that soon will be available are said to offer so much more security than today’s technologies, because already from the start 5G has been created to serve IoT well, and not be just another broadband communication technology.
  • A test with connected garbage cans in Germany, where the garbage only was collected when the cans called and informed that they were full, showed a 50 % reduction in costs in relation to the traditional scheduled garbage collections.
  • If we compare the development of applications for IoT between USA and Western Europe, then there is an interesting remark. Whereas the American development is more concentrated to big corporations, in Western Europe there are many small companies involved and their flexibility and speed can result in launches of new products well ahead of their American competitors. Furthermore, we can already see a trend where small European companies win over their Asian competitors in providing products in smaller volumes tailored to their customers’ needs.
  • I already talked about 5G in my post on 2016-01-24, citing applications that demand the high speed of a 5G network to function adequately. Look at references #2 and #3 below, where it is explicitly shown in text, photos and videos from Barcelona.
  • Our pets will inform us where they are, how they are, if they are hungry, etc.

hidog

Connected dog, sending messages from a display on the collar or via Internet of Things

Riddle # 3 (The fast mover)
What can go from there to here by disappearing and then go from here to there by appearing? A solution to this riddle will be published next Saturday, 2016-03-05. The first person that comes across the correct solution and sends it to medieborgaren@sjson.com will receive an honorary mention.

Slutligen, Ordalaget har gjort det igen! Igår gav de oss ett nyord för en falsk ID-handling, en s.k. legimitation.

Svenskt körkort

Bonusfråga: Även om texten “SPECIMEN” inte funnes, så vore detta ett utmärkt exempel på en legimitation. Kan du lista ut varför? (Svar kommer tillsammans med lösningen på gåta nummer 3 ovan 2016-03-05)

… That’s what I learned in school ! … Slut för idag, tack för idag !

Refs.:

1: Sakernas internet och framtiden

2: 5G was the real star of Mobile World Congress

3: A true 5G demo

4: Legimitation

+: What did you learn in school today ?