2014

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The Chinese tennis player Na Li won the Grand Slam Australian Open tournament 2014 defeating Dominika Cibulkova in the final 7-6 (3) 6-0. For the Chinese it’s the first title at the Australian Open, her second in the Grand Slam after the Roland Garros won in 2011.

The Mars Rover Opportunity's route on Mars (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NMMNHS)

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At 5:05 UTC on January 25, 2004, the Mars Rover Opportunity landed on Mars. Therefore, it’s been 10 Earth years since this extraordinary robot started its 3-month mission. Two years ago, when I wrote an article celebrating the eighth anniversary of its landing, Opportunity was already the holder of the record for longevity for missions one the surface of Mars, today it’s also the robot that holds the record for the distance traveled on the surface of another world with 38.7 km (24 miles), more than the 37 km (23 miles) traveled by the Soviet Lunokhod 2 robot on the Moon.

David Gerrold at DragonCon 2010

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Jerrold David Friedman, that’s his real name, was born on January 24, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. David Gerrold started his career as a screenwriter for the original “Star Trek” series. Later, he started writing sci-fi literature as well and is particularly famous for his series of the War Agains the Chtorr.

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After last year’s failed attempt and the recent rumors of interest from other potential buyers such as Dell and Fujitsu, an agreement was reached between IBM and Lenovo to purchase IBM x86 server division for a total of about $2,3 billion. Of these, about $2 billion will be paid in cash and the rest in Lenovo shares. The company headed by Virginia Rometti will keep on developing its own both Windows and Linux software for those servers.