We have got one more week before the end of the world, according to the japanese men in white group . They previously announced that May 15th should be the end for all of us, but eventually decided that the apocalypse was postponed one week (next Thursday). Cool, isn't it?

What will you do during your last days?

Two months after suing IBM for $1,000,000 (saying that IBM included Unix technology into Linux source code) SCO sent a warning letter to the top 1,500 companies. More links are available here.

This letter explains that there is a risk in using Linux, because of Intellectual Property issues.

Some private comments:

They did not show any portion of the source code (when know, if any, it will be so easy to remove!).

SCO was anyway going to die, and their IBM suit did not have the expected results (many claim that they wanted IBM to buy them). Today, it is obviously too late! By the way, in the worst case, IBM could always buy SCO, and dismantle it!

SCO web site is itself running Linux. Did they receive the letter too? Will they sue themself?

After several accidents and scandals linked to Japanese nuclear industry in the recent years, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) stopped the last of its 17 reactors yesterday for security checks.
Apparently they will need at least 10 reactors up and running this summer to cover Tokyo needs (when all air-conditioners will be up). Alternative power sources should not be enough.

A chronology of the most serious accident (Tokaimura, Sept 1999) can be found here, and here. The Open Directory Project has also a list of articles about this incident.

It is really scary...

The good point is that we could have a 2 months holidays this summer ;-)

Ten years ago, in April 1993, the first release of Mosaic was released. It was developed at the NCSA, at the University of Illinois.
All current browsers take their roots in Mosaic. Even IE has licensed code from this university!

If you consider that NCSA also created a web server (curiously called NCSA!), which was used as a starting point to create the Apache server, and that Netscape was created by some developers coming from the NCSA team, we can surely credit this university for the current development of the WWW.

Air France and British Airways announced simultaneously today that they would stop using the Concorde. The last flight will be during this Autumn.

Economic reasons (only 16 seats were reserved on Air France today, out of which 4 were no-show; there are nearly 100 seats available), and maintenance costs (this plane is being used for 27 years) are the reasons invoked.

Apparently, the Concorde did not survive the fatal July 2000 accident, the technical problems, Sept 11th, and the current issues (weak economy, Irak war, SARS virus).

People who wish to have a try still have 6 months: Less than 3 hours and a half from Europe to America is worth a try, no? AF & BA will surely offer some special prices for the last months of Concorde life!
British Airways is starting the promotions with a £ 1,999 London to New-York Concorde flight, and a regular return flight.

Anyway I feel sad, it is the best plane made ever. The only remaining choice will be those Boeing 747 turtles :-(

I completely missed this information, one month ago.

On Feb 6, 2003, Heidi, an English Sheepdog, received from Oracle Corp Japan's chief executive Masaaki Shintaku, a certificate of thanks and a one-year supply of beef jerky as her retirement pay.

"I want to thank you for helping staff and customers relax," said Shintaku.

She worked at Oracle Japan for 11 years, as the official company pet. Her job was to come to the office twice a week, in order to help everybody to relax ;-)

She will be replaced by Wendy, a dog of the same breed.

Photo: Heidi kissing Masaaki Shintaku during the ceremony.

Netcraft announced in January that they found a Windows 2000 server up and running for more than two years on the internet.
First, this information was funny itself: One unique server worldwide with a good uptime seems worth a notice when it is Windows :-)

The hilarous part of this story is that this nice uptime went to a tragic end just a few days after this announce. As a coincidence, this was exactly when the SQL Slammer worm came to life, end of January.

See you again in two years? LOL ;-)

According to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), 2.4 bil. Yen (EUR 18,500,000) of cash was found in Tokyo in 2002, down 1.2% from previous year.

Also, the lost-and-found center got (in 2002) some 330,000 umbrellas, and 90,000 mobile phones (250 per day!!).

Maybe you never heard about Tama-chan, especially if you don't live in Japan.
This is a seal who was spotted recently along the Katabiragawa river, near Yokohama.
Its nickname, Tama-chan, was given when it was first seen on Tama River, about 6 months ago.

Tama-chan will be registered as Yokohama resident next week, by Nishi Ward in Yokohama. On its resident card, the following information will appear:
Tamao Nishi (aka Tama-chan)
Banks of the Katabiragawa river
Nishi-hiranumacho, Nishi Ward
Yokohama

Sugoi, ne!

She was 42, her name was Kalpana Chawla, she was beautiful.

She died yesterday, in Columbia shuttle, with six other people...

She was the symbol of one fifth of the mankind, and her name was not even prononced on Radio France Internationale.

Instead we had a 5-10 minutes about one of the other seven casualties, coming from a small country, apparently more important than India...

I would like to know about her instead...

I am sad for all of them, and their families...