A new Google bomb was targeting our President.

Just a few hours ago, it was sill working: By searching "magouilleur" (some kind of cheater in French) on Google the #1 result was the French President's web site .

Maybe because this news appeared on first TV channel site in France, TF1, this bombing just disappeared one hour ago from the search engine, both from US and French versions.
Did we get a new magouille there, where some people did ask Google to suppress these links?

Hehehe...

News.com has a funny story about Apple selling silent songs (for 99 cents, as other songs)!

They have many versions of silence, by various authors. The most funny is the last part of the article:

John Cage created a 4'33" silent song in 1952 (it was even played by the BBC Symphony orchestra this year!), and won a copyright in 2002, as Mike Batt created also a silent song.

Batt's defence ("Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds.") did not work apparently!

Google has a new calculator. It even knows the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!

Just get the result here. Cool, isn'it?

More seriously, the calculator works well, and kuro5hin has an interesting article about it.

Do you remember the January SQL slammer worm? One of the consequences of this worm was that Continental Airlines had to cancel flights, because their admins failed to protect their systems.

But, on Tech Web, Nathan Hanks, managing director at Continental Airlines, said:

All the guys hacking Windows are Linux guys. Continental was hit hard by SQL Slammer and our CEO said we'd failed.

[...]

Having one vendor throat to choke is helpful in crisis situations. An IT pro can't go to the CEO and say that a server is down, "and hopefully some guy in Amsterdam" will get to a fix when he gets back from the "dope house".

He also said that he was impressed with Microsoft's response to the problems.

These sayings brought of course a lot of reactions.

The guy who miserably failed to protect his systems, and caused Continental problems is a funny one: He defends his own technical choices by the fact that Linux developers are all dopesmokers!
What is sure, is that these dopesmokers could not do a lot for him, if he went to change his systems for Linux ones: Maybe he would need to wait a couple of hours for answers (when the dope effect is over!), but, as in that case he forgot to install a patch available 6 months before the worm, this delay would not matter anyway ;-)

Just for the fun, Continental problems maybe started the day Nathan Hanks asked people how to successfully install SQL Server. He eventually got a very responsive answer, two days later, by a Microsoft guy ;-)

SCO changed its mind and, instead of asking $1 billion to IBM, prefers now to get $3 billions (!!).
But that is not all! They also claim to have rights on most of operating systems (yours is probably there!).
And of course that IBM helps the terrorists and gives North Korea a way to build super computers.

And what will come next? Here is a a possible follow-up, found on slashdot:

SCO ups damages to 6 billion - citing IBM's illegal use of 'international business machines' acroynm which they thought up first.

Damages go up to 15 trillion when SCO discovers that gravity and other basic laws of the Universe which IBM has been using to build servers formed a basis for SCO's machines first.

Finally, SCO ups damages to (quoting here) "forty bazillion-kabillion" for "having a successful business," which is what SCO was planning to do but couldn't because of IBM.

It should be noted that this last figure was given just before the Executive board collectively passed out after coming down dangerously from a hallucenagic high caused by dry-erase markers, non-dairy creamer, pez, and possibly other office-related recreational drugs.

Maybe the IBM answer could simply be (another /. post):
I see your 3 billion and raise you two more. Show your cards...

This article , and this one (and so many others, hehehe!), explain how Microsoft could:

First, two weeks ago, announce that they will build Windows-powered public toilets, with broadband internet access, good audio system, etc...

Then, this monday (two days ago) announce that it was a hoax. A Fools Day Joke made one month too late (but calendars were never their strong point, anyway).

Eventually, yesterday, change their mind again, and decide that it was a real project that was killed by the management...

Whaooo... I already knew the W$ toilet paper, but this real story is even better. Where do you want to go today?

Xpaire Malheureusement de trop nombreux webmasters se satisfont de la situation actuelle. On croise bien trop souvent des abrutis pour qui "si ça marche avec IE, c'est bon". C'est d'autant plus pathetique que ces meme personnes sont persuadees d'avoir affaire au meilleur browser web...
houplaboom Meme pas puique IE gere pas la transparence des png.
fifiz Et gnangnan gere pas les png et gnangnan Kro$oft et gnangnan ...
frenzy Pas le meilleur mais le plus utilise!
glandium Plusieurs milliards de mouches ne peuvent pas se tromper, mangeons de la merde.
YupYup Nivellement par le bas, ca a commence avec les emissions de Lagaff', et Microsoft continue le boulot sur Internet.

(forum.hardware.fr, Jan 2002)

Finally, our main motivation was the modern solution they proposed to us: Non-proprietary, since it was Microsoft.
Jean-Paul Bezie, CIO, explaining the restructuration of the French Red-Cross Intranet.

Enfin, ce qui nous a motive le plus etait la solution moderne qu'ils nous ont proposee: Non proprietaire, puisqu'il s'agissait de Microsoft.
Jean-Paul Bezie, directeur des systemes d'informations, expliquant la refonte de l'intranet de la Croix-Rouge Francaise.

(fr.news.yahoo.com, Jan 30, 2002)

11:23 Ca me rappelle la théorie de l'observateur qui modifie le résultat d'une expérience par le fait de regarder
11:27 11:23 Principe d'incertitude d'Heisenberg.
11:29 11:23 Voui, il s'est aperçu que dès qu'il avait le dos tourné, les photons se mettait à foutre le bordel. Pour ça, il a utilisé un chat, qui, comme tout le monde le sait, ne dort que d'un oeil, ce qui a bluffé les photons.
11:39 Les fotons, c'est des cons.

(linuxfr.org, Jun 2001)

14:31:46 comment faire quand on efface sans faire expres /dev sur une debian ?
14:40:31 14:31:46 Je suis en train de te zipper /dev/zero. Quand c'est fini, je te l'envoie par mail si tu veux.
14:48 14:40:31 ok, c'est cool, mon mail taron@xxx

(linuxfr.org, Feb 2001)