Month: September 2012

Human population on Mars

In the world where plenty of projections are done for today and project deadlines set for yesterday, it’s nice to once in a while read about someone who thinks a bit further than that.

British billionaire Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic company is backing the development of SpaceShip Two, has told CBS News he is ‘determined to start a population on Mars.’ He said, ‘I think over the next 20 years, we will take literally hundreds of thousands of people to space and that will give us the financial resources to do even bigger things. That will give us the resources then to put satellites into space at a fraction of the price, which can be incredibly useful for thousands of different reasons.’ Branson isn’t the only billionaire interested in the Red Planet. Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), wants to put humans on Mars in the next 12 to 15 years.

Via Slashdot, of course.

If you have the data, use it!

Spending quit a bit of time on the web, I’ve boosted my tolerance levels to bad design, horrible user interfaces, and twisted logic.  However, there are still things that annoy the crap out of me.  Among the two most frequent are these:

  1. Google throwing me into Greek language.  Yes, I do live in Cyprus, where Greek is an official language.  However, Google knows damn well, that I don’t speak it.  Every single time I was given a choice, I’ve switched back to English. I have automatic translation of Greek to English set in Gmail, Google Reader, Google Chrome and Google Nexus, all of which are linked and synced to my one Gmail account.  Why do I still see Greek as the default language every other week?  This is getting retarded.
  2. Facebook can’t figure out the gender-specific language.  Even though it knows the gender of the user to be female, it still sends me notifications like “Olga commented on his Wall post”.  English is not even my native language and I am getting annoyed by this.  How you guys can look at this every single time and not catch is beyond me.

The steam is out, I feel better now.

Russian for a president in Cyprus, really?

Cyprus Mail is a lot of fun today.

CHIEF Returning Officer Demetris Demetriou yesterday confirmed that a Russian businessman had shown an interest in running for February’s presidential elections.

“Yes, an interest has been shown, but we can’t release any details as the application for candidacy has not yet been made officially,” Demetriou told the Cyprus Mail.

He said the businessman’s lawyer contacted his department to enquire about how to apply. It was reported on Tuesday that the Russian in question had acquired Cypriot citizenship. Only Cypriot citizens over 35 years of age can stand in the presidential elections.

… because Russians are doing so well in Russia now, that they should be running for presidents all over the world.  WORLD DOMINATION!!! Mua-ha-ha-ha.