I never knew that the song 'Happy Birthday to You' is protected by copyright. This story however, describes the history of the song and the copyright transfers.

For private use you don't have to pay royalties but for commercial use you do. The song generates about $2 million in royalties annually.

From the article:
The next time you hear "Happy Birthday" in a movie -- and now that you’re listening, it won’t be long -- stay for the credits at the end of the movie.

NRC Handelsblad made a focus group of 25 people watch the last TV debate and measured their reactions using a perception analyser.The article describes what the reactions of these viewers are on statements of the party leaders.

This kind of tools were also described in the book I read on last years campaign of the Labour party (PvdA).

On the Urban Legends Page I found a reference to somebody putting an teapot for sale online with a rather unfortunate picture...

I've found the old version of my website! You can find it here.

It's the first website I had ever made; it dates from 1999. That was just after I came back from Bulgaria and two years before I registered 'guusbosman.nl'.


It is so nice to see some pictures of Florijn again.

We went to the Chess New Year's party yesterday, in Zeist. Sasha and I got a ride from Mark and Saskia. It was uncertain till the very last moment if we would be on time... but we made it! Well, at least for the main course of the dinner.

After a long dinner we saw the newest James Bond movie, 'Die Another Day'. It was surprisingly good, I really enjoyed it. Perhaps one of the best Bond films I've ever seen.

On Slashdot I found an interesting article about the computer problems that caused the American national TV stations to be so wrong in their predictions of who would be president.

"There was not enough collaboration between the networks and the IT people. And, worse, there was nothing we could do about it. You can't postpone an election."

When I wanted to use the iron a big explosion occured.

I decided to take the power plug of the extension-cable out of the wall. Just before I did that there was another big bang and the lights went off.

There was a small flame on the plug, instinctively I blew it out.

The result:

Dick Bruna doesn't like the postcards with drawings of party leaders in his style.

I was curious what kind of drawings they were and found them at King Jay's website.

Today above Haarlem: 'Heb lef, stem LPF'...

'Be brave, vote LPF'... I suppose you must be very brave to vote for these guys again...

Ha! Just found out where our teachers get our examination questions...

From the Computer Science Question Generator!


"You have 7 matrices and 4 graphs. Which one has normal form. Use flowcharts. Be
sure to refer to Quantum Theory in your answer."