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I heard this when I was working in BT's data mining group back in 1997 or something. It turns out to be not true I think: http://web.onetel.net.uk/~hibou/Beer%20and%20Nappies.html (plus other cites off snopes)

Here's a link on the legend: http://web.onetel.net.uk/~hibou/Beer%20and%20Nappi es.html/

Edsger Dijkstra on Java (Trouw, 18 Oct 2000)
Interviewer : There is some progress? There are new programming langugages that make everything easier, even ordinary internet users have heard of Java.

Dijkstra : It's embarrassing. Because it is so bad. The only reason Java has been accepted is because it is a product of a company, SUN, that has made enormous advertisement for it. Beautiful programming languages exist, and a good language, like a tool, is just a joy. But industry doesn't want that. Probably because decisions are made by technically incompetent people.

Steven T. Abell on Java (formerly Java Technology evangelist at Netscape)
I came to Java from a different world of programming, the Smalltalk world. For people who program in Smalltalk, Java is a 30-year step back.

Alan Kay on Java (OOPSLA '97)
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.

Donald Knuth on Java
I get secret satisfaction when bad ideas take hold and suck a lot of people in ... like Java (Just teasing.)

Johnny Castaway (1993) from Sierra On-Line was an entertaining screensaver. While it wasn't really a game (no user input), people found it quite addictive to watch. The free version does install on Win98SE, haven't tried XP.

Bacteriophage appears to be an alternative to antibiotics for fighting bacteria. An article (you have to pay to access it) in Discover Magazine by Peter Radetsky about bacteriophage was published in November, 1996. It was mentioned by a man named Caisey Harlingten in a Horizon documentary on the BBC, and seems to have been an important publication that set things into motion. What isn't mentioned in the transcript is that right at the end of the documentary, text appears that says the deal between the American company called Georgia Research, Inc. set up by Harlingten and the Eliava Institute fell apart.

Wired wrote a follow up article on the story. One of the disputes involved another man, Alexander Sulakvelidze, opposing the seemingly pointless aim to genetically engineering phages, which Harlingten wanted to do. This possibly has something to do with the fact that genetically engineered products are protected by patents and can be regulated by intellectual property laws, whereas natural phages are not. This is what Harlingten is up to now. He is trying to apply phage therapy to multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis . And this is what Sulakvelidze is up to now, applying phage therapy to livestock.

Evergreen State College and the Rowland Institute at Harvard have pages about bacteriophage. Phage therapy may have some side effects, however. Some types of phage carry genes that can actually make bacteria pathogenic (briefly mentioned at end of page). This has been observed in E. Coli as a response to antibiotics.

The author Iain M. Banks has discussed this issue throughout his "Culture" series of books. He suggests that perhaps there are galazy spanning civilisations out there, but that they are evolved enough to leave us alone until we reach a level as a species where we can be considered for inclusion in the galactic community.

Why would they need to do anything as unsubtle as establishing moonbases when they could have invisible ships 30 kms long able to control every single tv screen on this planet from outside the orbit of Jupitor? :)

In fact, one of his short stories from the collection The State of the Art is about what happens when the Culture use Earth as part of a control group. An excellent read.

Of course this is sci-fi but you get the drift. If anyone is interested I would go as far as saying that for thought provoking Sci-Fi, Iain M. Banks is the man to beat at the moment.

Here he is in an interview at scifi.com talking about his writing. And here is the man with a few introductory notes on the Culture for the unitiated - I just picked this site from the top of google so I hope they don't mind me posting here :P

Actually, I'm not too sure about Vinge yet, having only just discovered him, but so far he's incredible.

HTH!

Not a charity, but One Tel Net UK is a free ISP that only costs 1p per minute to dial into, any time of day, and works absolutely fine with Linux.
Better throughput than another 'free' ISP (local call rates, which is a lot more than 1p per minute!).

You also get discounted phone calls as you sign up with One Tel phone co. [no, I have no affiliation to them].

Jeremy.