Opera CEO Prepares to Swim across the Atlantic 432
rRogta writes "Previously reported on slashdot here, Opera CEO boldly promises to swim across the Atlantic should the new Opera browser be downloaded a million times in the first four days after it's release. Well, they reached their goal and in this press release it says he's now preparing for the long swim."
How the heck? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How the heck? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How the heck? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How the heck? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How the heck? (Score:5, Informative)
From this surface temperature map [wunderground.com] it would appear that if he swam at a latitude of 30 degrees North, the temperature is around 70 Fahrenheit or 21 Centigrade all the way to Spain. From Spain to South America it's even warmer (85 Fahrenheit/28 Centigrade). Up beside Norway, it's only 55 Fahreheit (12 Centigrade), so he would probably need a survival suit.
Re:How the heck? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How the heck? (Score:3, Interesting)
60 degrees can kill you pretty quickly (Score:4, Informative)
Temperature Fahrenheit | Exhaustion/Unconscious | Expected Survival
32.5 | <15 min. | 10 to 45 min.
32.5 - 40 | 15 - 30 min. | 39 to 90 min.
40 - 50 | 30 - 60 min. | 1 to 3 Hours
50 - 60 | 1 - 2 Hours | 1 to 6 Hours
60 -70 | 2 - 7 Hours | 2 to 40 Hours
70 -80 | 3 - 12 Hours | 3 to Indefinitely
Over 80 | Indefinitely | Indefinitely
From: http://www.walrus.com/~belov/hypothermia.html
Re:60 degrees can kill you pretty quickly (Score:3, Funny)
80-95 | Indefinitely | Indefinitely
95-105 | 2-7 Hours | 2-10 Hours
400-410 | 5-10 sec. | 30 to 60 sec.
etc.
Re:How the heck? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not sure about that (Score:3, Informative)
That's part of one of the reasons, but there are others a bit more important:
The most important reason is the huge heat capacity of water: you can shove a little bit of heat into a given mass of air, and it'll warm up a huge amount, very quickly, to the point that it's often very very near the temperature of whatever it's in contact with (and no more heat, on average, will flow into it once it's at the same temp
Re:not sure about that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:not sure about that (Score:5, Funny)
Even so -- I regularly stick my hand into a 450 degree oven when things need moving around in there. It ain't comfy, but I can take 20 seconds of it. I'll assume for the sake of argument that the outside air has cooled things down to a balmy 350 degrees (it hasnt, but my point will still be made)
Now stick your hand into water boiling at a "mere" 212 degrees for just 10 seconds. You've just learned a painful lesson about heat transfer.
Re:Why cant some other CEOs try it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How the heck? (Score:3, Funny)
They're planning on a loooong trip (Score:5, Insightful)
The next update on the remarkable and heroic journey will be available here on Tuesday, April 25, at 10:00 am CET (04:00 am EST).
Tuesday April 25 is a year from today!
Re:They're planning on a loooong trip (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I noticed that as well the first time I read through the article.
However, when I went to go post this, I noticed your post. When I double checked the article, to be sure that we weren't mistaken, here is what it had been updated to:
Re:North Atlantic current does the "swimming" forw (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How the heck? (Score:3, Insightful)
What about sales? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about sales? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, he should have offered to have the sales director forced to swim across the Atlantic, rather than himself.
Re:What about sales? (Score:3, Funny)
If we reach one million downloads, I will swim across the Atlantic. If we do NOT reach one million sales, the sales director will swim across the Atlantic.
Re:What about sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about sales? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about sales? (Score:2, Interesting)
In the last 30-40 years everything has become about the "brand" and how many people are aware of it.
Sales follow suit through natural course of action.
-SJ53
I think Opera is just trying to make sure Firefox doesn't chew away at it's marketspace as an IE alternative regardless of the fact that the full version of Firefox is free and Opera is not.
Re:What about sales? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
In a word, no. That would make a horrible salespitch. I'm not going to fork over money for a product I would not otherwise buy just to vote yes to the swim!
On the other hand, a download is not big deal. And once I download the product, I might be like "Hey! Cool!" and decide to buy it. Even if not, at least the product is getting some good exposure.
Deriving sales from stunts like this is rarely straight forward.
don't you think.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two Words of Advice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Two Words of Advice (Score:2)
Re:Two Words of Advice (Score:2, Funny)
And two final words: Luxury Cruise.
Re:Two (other) Words of Advice (Score:4, Funny)
( or maybe "dont doit" for those nerds who will attempt to point out that don't is not a single word... )
Re:Two (other) Words of Advice (Score:3, Funny)
Is this a reference to trying to make money off the publicity?
Re:Two Words of Advice (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Two Words of Advice (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, IIADS (I Am A Distance Swimmer).
Re:Two Words of Advice (Score:4, Funny)
No, YAABA (You Are A Bad Acronymizer)
Re:Two Words of Advice (Score:5, Funny)
(I Sure Am).
Seems fishy to me (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Seems fishy to me (Score:2, Informative)
Fishy? It is absolutely impossible that he could swim across the Atlantic, a stop in Iceland or not. This is so over the top that it's amazing that anyone doesn't get the joke. Quite apart from the cold, and the giant waves, there's the little problem of the massive distance [google.com].
Obviously it's a marketing ploy (albeit all he managed to do was jack up their bandwidth bill - most of those Slashdot downloads went to
Re:Seems fishy to me (Score:3, Informative)
Sometimes you have to think outside the box!http://people.opera.com/nicolasm/opera_ch05.sv gz [opera.com]
Re:HOLY CRAP (Score:5, Funny)
"HOLY CARP"
download it (Score:5, Interesting)
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free
Re:download it (Score:2)
Re:download it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:download it (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.opera.com/company/ [opera.com]
http://www.trolltech.com/contact/index.html [trolltech.com]
Hats off (Score:5, Funny)
I guess he could also get a Krusty burger at one of those abandoned shore oil platforms
Tragedy in the making (Score:2, Informative)
Without even considering the difficulties posed by currents like the Gulf Stream, the water exposure will dehydrate him severely and the constant cold temperatures will push him to hypothermia.
I wouldn't want to be him. At least unless I was swimming in a pool aboard a luxury liner.
Re:Tragedy in the making (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe a hot tub?
All kidding aside I have to wonder how much money they make on there add supported software.
Re:Tragedy in the making (Score:5, Funny)
this can't be all that more difficult
Re:Tragedy in the making (Score:5, Funny)
After swimming in that cold water, I would hate to see the size of his cluster.
Re:Tragedy in the making (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Tragedy in the making (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a lake in the middle of the rift valley (the shores of which the original Icelandic Parliament used to meet on) http://www.randburg.com/is/thingvellir.html [randburg.com]
He could have just pulled a fast one and swam across the lake
Re:Tragedy in the making (Score:4, Insightful)
Or months. Have you any idea how big the Atlantic Ocean is?
Re:Tragedy in the making (Score:2)
Re:Tragedy in the making (Score:4, Informative)
If he can swim 2 miles per hour for 12 hours every 24 hours (12 hours per day), it'd take him 125 days.
Long-distance Swimmer Tammy Van Wisse holds the World Record (fastest person) to swim 1515 mile length of the Murray River in Australia. It took from 5 November 2000 - 18 February 2001: 106 days, and she's a professional, and it was a river, not a cold and turbulent ocean.
Re:wetsuits drysuits (Score:3, Informative)
things to keep in mind:
how he'll pull this off (Score:5, Interesting)
nice PR stunt!
Re:how he'll pull this off (Score:5, Funny)
I would hardly consider a hot tub with 3 hot flight attendents "swimming". But maybe that's how he got the idea past the wife.
At the same time, at Microsoft HQ... (Score:5, Funny)
I call shenanigans! (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
The author busted his cheek with his tongue, I think.
Bitter Ex-Wife (Score:5, Funny)
How He'll Do It (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How He'll Do It (Score:5, Informative)
No it's not. Read the spec [w3.org], and you'll find that this is completely correct.
The MIME type for SVG is "image/svg+xml" (always). And the extension for gzip compressed SVG files is ".svgz". And gzip is the only compression type which the spec allows for.
Re:How He'll Do It (Score:3, Funny)
I see now that I got it bass-ackwards. Looks like mod_deflate *compresses* files then sends them on through. And "BrowserMatch" means that for browsers not happy with the compressed file, they can get it uncompressed.
So, actually mod_deflate is exactly what you want: keeps it whole on the server, compresses it for transfer, then sends it
I hope he has thermal underwear... (Score:2)
Re:I hope he has thermal underwear... (Score:3, Informative)
Hella lotta reading, but essentially it does exist.
http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/Sisneros/Sisn
Must be some kind of trick... (Score:2)
Good for him... (Score:5, Funny)
Ummm... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.didyouknow.cd/aroundtheworld/swimmin
Possibly the greatest triumph of endurance is Benoit Lecomte swimming across the Atlantic ocean.
Lecomte, born 1967, immigrated from France to Austin, Texas, at age 23. When his father died of colon cancer in 1992, it spurred him to do something extraordinary to raise awareness of and money for cancer research. With the help of Edward Coyle, director of UT Austin's Human Performance Lab, and dieticians, Lecomte trained to build his endurance, swimming and cycling 3 to 5 hours a day, six days a week for two years. On 16 July 1998 he set out from Cape Cod with 8 wet suits, a snorkel and some flippers into turning weather.
Navigated through the 40th and 50th latitude by two French sailors on a 12m (40 foot) sailboat and protected by an electronic force field, Lecomte swam 6 to 8 hours a day at two-hour intervals. He mainly used the crawl stroke, switching occasionally to a mono fin and using an undulating dolphin kick to carry him over the 5 600km (3 736 nautical miles) of relentless waves. 72 days later, on 28 September, he swam ashore exhausted but heroic at Quiberon, France.
Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ummm... (Score:4, Funny)
2. Where can I get one?
Don't even bother. It doesn't stop laser beams. Worthless.
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's an impressive feat to be sure, but it seems it would be most accurate to say he swam a lot while floating across the Atlantic in a boat. Most of his distance would have been covered while in the boat.
Is this really frontpage stuff for /.? (Score:2, Funny)
I wonder how many more downloads
Now, if MS would do the same, at least we could hope for sharks...
In other news (Score:2, Funny)
Murderers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Murderers (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, don't blame me, I use konqueror.
one timer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:one timer (Score:2)
Once is better than never.
A Bet for all of you... (Score:3, Funny)
RTFA! Its a joke! (Score:5, Informative)
Jeez. It's a joke.
He's not really going to do it; he's figuring out a way to honorably get out of it.
Re:RTFA! Its a joke! (Score:5, Informative)
I blatantly admit that my promise was based more on joy and enthusiasm than my swimming abilities and physical health, I will do my very best to keep it
Headline should read (Score:5, Funny)
Something tells me.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Something tells me.. (Score:3, Insightful)
He had better start training now. Something like 2 hours/day in the pool, and one day a week make that 8. (But he should have a professional design the training program, not someone like me who doesn't know how to design such a thing)
And he needs to spend a few hours a day getting supplies planned. He will want to eat along the way. I presume that row-boat will hold a few days supplies, and every few days someone will come along (how?) to give them more.
Considering the length of the trip he needs t
Re:Something tells me.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, if he started from Cape Cod, he could FLOAT across in a couple months given enough food and hot water.
Going on public record... (Score:3, Funny)
For REAL adventure see THIS... (Score:3, Interesting)
He wrote a series of letters that were sent back and published in newspapers and all of them are being republished in their entirety on his web site right now.
Ironically he also ended up having a Japanese businessman to name a whole line of sporting goods after him.
Easy to explain--bad google seach results (Score:3, Funny)
Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a dupe!! (Score:3, Funny)
My Resume (Score:5, Funny)
After viewing the pictures [opera.com] on your website, I would like to apply for the newly opened positions of CEO and PR Manager at your company. I feel I have the necessary qualifications, such as "not-drowned" and "not-reported-lost-in-the-northern-Atlantic".
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Re:Isn't this lots and lots of miles? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Isn't this lots and lots of miles? (Score:4, Funny)
Nice... (Score:5, Funny)
But you would have known that I would have responded to your post, so I clearly cannot mod the comment in front of me.
Re:Nice... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nice... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Isn't this lots and lots of miles? (Score:5, Funny)
Not at all.
Those stories about explorers dying while crossing the Atlantic are all ploys to keep real-estate values high in Conneticut. If people found out that they could commute to Manhattan faster from France than from New Jersey, the friends of countless politicians would lose their shirts in the market collapse.
Re:From the "Mysterious Future" (Score:3, Funny)
At least that's how I would do it.