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Opera CEO Prepares to Swim across the Atlantic

Posted by Hemos on from the stop-submitting-this-stupid-story dept.

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."

15 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. How the heck? by beatdown · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not sure it is possible to pull this off. Isn't the north Atlantic cold at this time of year?

    1. Re:How the heck? by Freexe · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think you will need opera to see this one, but it doesn;'t look too hard to pull off

      --
      "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
    2. Re:How the heck? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      What about water and food?

    3. Re:How the heck? by nelsonal · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're right for competitive swimming, but even the long endurance runs take about an hour or so. If you are swimming long distances, you have to be in warmer water to ensure that you don't lose heat too rapidly over the course of the next several weeks.

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    4. Re:How the heck? by Nutty_Irishman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There used to be a navy dive tank at the subbase in Groton, CT that they would train on. I can't remember the exact conditions, but they used to keep the tank at about 92 degrees F for training purposes. After around 4 hours or so of training in the tank, they had to take a break to warm up. Water syphons heat away from the body much faster than air does-- I'm not sure there's any spot where he could swim across at where he wouldn't need some kind of wetsuit for.

  2. download it by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well...despite of being closed software, I must admited Opera knows how to support linux - if you go to their download page they have packages for the main distros, ej: they've separated packages for debain woody, sarge and sid, different versions of fedora, etc...in fact I'm a a debian user (in case you haven't noticed) and I've the following line in my sources.list:

    deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free

  3. how he'll pull this off by keithmoore · · Score: 4, Interesting

    charter an aircraft big enough to put a large water tank inside, and swim in the tank while the aircraft is flying to Iceland and thence to North America.

    nice PR stunt!

  4. Re:What about sales? by MoonFog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You realise this was said during an internal meeting and was released by the Opera people more or less without his concent. I suspect they did it as a joke rather than a publicity stunt even though it has turned into something like that now.

  5. Beware of... by dbleoslow · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Hypothermia http://www.threebrain.com/songs/hypo.html

  6. Re:What about sales? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would say this is a marketing decision to expose the Opera branding and increase product awareness in the marketplace.

    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.

  7. Re:Ummm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    protected by an electronic force field

    1. What's that about?
    2. Where can I get one?

  8. Re:What about sales? by kpwoodr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Google did something similar to this when Chad rode his bike across the country, and look how well that worked out for them...

    --
    This sig has been removed pending an investigation.
  9. For REAL adventure see THIS... by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Steven Newman's site theworldwalker.com. He is listed as the first man to WALK around the world. It took him 4 years and his book "Worldwalk" is a GREAT read (Order it and he'll autograph it and send it back to you).

    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.

  10. Re:Tragedy in the making by stiggle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But the North American and European plates meet at Iceland (his homeland).
    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

    He could have just pulled a fast one and swam across the lake :-)

  11. Re:Ummm... by ckaminski · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You've got the Gulf stream propelling you along. NO ONE goes human power east to west in the North Atlantic. It's a losing battle.