Short Enough for Twitter…

I wonder if The Simpsons will ever die, or if it will live a zombie-like existence to satisfy the needs of the long-tail* consumers…

* I keep using this term, I’m not sure it means what I think it means.

Losing My Virginity

I bet that title got your attention, eh?

So for whatever reason I decided the other day to get 2 books by Richard Branson, his auto-biography Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way, and the summary of it, Screw It, Let’s Do It (it basically compressed the story of the first book into 106 pages of large type, readable in 2 hours and spoiling the thicker book).

Laying in bed trying to fall asleep after reading a quarter of the real book, I thought, “Man, this guy was sure great, but I think he could have done it better – if he had known what he was doing, he’d be number one e.g. in the airline business, instead of playing second fiddle to British Airways [I don't know if that's the real case, in my mind anyway the BA brand is more prestigious]. He failed a lot too during his record company years, struggling to stay in business, signing bad bands and missing to sign the ones that would be successful.” Then I had to laugh at my thoughts. This guy is about to be the first guy to launch a space-tourism business with Virgin Galactic (which, BTW, is the most freaking awesome name IMO) in 2 years, he owns his own private island and he was already running several record stores and a recording studio at age 20, how can I be calling him a failure?

I suppose that’s when I realized how true that old wisdom is, to succeed, you have to fail a lot, and only when you keep on going and keep on trying will you be successful.

Next Vacation Destination

Petropavlovsk (Map)…

The EU Needs to Teach Its Children Esperanto!

Yes, the EU should teach its children Esperanto.

How did I come up with this idea?

Well, I was lying in bed not feeling motivated to do my project when I noticed my collection of Euro-coins, which is basically a jar where I put all the foreign coins I happen to run into, or which happen to land in my hand.

“Hmm, I remember having a coin with a specific Schleswig-Holstein [a German federal state] motive. I wonder if it’s still on my table or if I accidentally spent it.
“I wonder what’s the rule on making your own coin motives is.
“I wonder if the Åland islands, Finland’s new sovereign province, can have its own Eurocoins.
“That place is almost its own nation, but it probably depends on Finland for things like armed forces protection.
“I think the EU should have its EU-wide armed forces anyway.
“But then there’d be language diffculties, you’d have soldiers from different nations living together but not being able to communicate properly.
“Maybe they should all speak English. But then that smacks of imperialism.
“Wasn’t there an article about the difficulty of getting enough translators to work at the Parliament in Brussels? If you had 12 official languages, you can have 144 translation-combinations. That’s a lot of documents to translate and re-translate.
“I know, why not make them speak Esperanto!”

But you know how it is to get politicians to learn anything…

So I think it’d be easier if they just start teaching Esperanto at school. The kids will grow up with the language and when they get into the EU government, they’ll be able to speak it already.

Well Google says my idea isn’t original, and that there are 23 official languages, but people think it should be introduced to the running administration, which I don’t think would work because politicians wouldn’t have time to learn a language with their busy schedule and all. If the politicians came into the EU already speaking Esperanto, it might just be the language chosen while trying to find a common language to talk to a colleague. And that way the language can enter the system, IMO.

I wondered as well if it was a European who invented Esperanto, because I think they have an “not-invented here” syndrome. Maybe they can legislate the creation of a new language, which I wouldn’t put past them, crazy bureaucrats.

Idea of a Semi-Effective Way to Guard Access to Mature Content

Just as I try to watch an episode from the recently launched Fark TV, the site stopped me and told me I have to be over 18 to do so and asked me for my birthdate. Ok, no biggie, entered some fake date (gotta be careful of identity theft these days) and I got to the content.

Obviously, it’s basically legalese to protect their own ass, an 11 year old can calculate a date that would make him/her 18. But then I had a A-ha idea. What if you surprise them after the first form, and ask them to enter that birthdate again? Someone faking the date would just choose one randomly and not remember it when asked again. If they put something different the second time, ban their IP and prevent them from accessing the content.

Kinda clever, huh? Of course, it’s still easy to circumvent. Hitting the back button on some browsers gets you to the previous page with the date you enter still being there. Some people might still remember the date they put in the first time, they definitely would when they realize what’s going on. I’d say it would block 0.01% of all access attempts. Perhaps even higher, because it would catch out legitimate adults who put in fake dates and don’t know how to circumvent it. And in the end, the content provider would prefer that more people have access to the content, instead of less, anyway, not caring if they’re underage or not.

An idea not worth implementing…