January 20, 2004

Russia space engineers and companies are reportedly eager to take part in US President George W. Bush’s plans for missions to the moon and later Mars. A report notes that Russia has the most experience in long duration space missions, and has developed rockets such as the giant Energiya booster with a 110 lifting capacity, mothballed for lack of money and mission following two successful launches in the late 1980s. Using the Energiya rocket could save the development costs for a heavy lift booster that critics of the plan have been claiming would run in the tens of billions of dollars. There - $40 billion saved already. 11:34:51 PM

Wired Magazine has awarded Duke Nukem Forever a Lifetime Achievement Award in its Annual Vaporware of the Year contest as the long delayed computer game enters its sixth year of development with no release date in site. Half-Life 2 wins the annual prize as hordes of gamers eagerly await any word that Value Software remembers how to complete a game and release it to the public. Also in the running at 4th place is Value’s Team Fortress 2, which was to be available "shortly" – in 1998. At this point people may ask why doesn't 3D Realms, the developers of Duke Nukem Forever scrap the project, start again and outsource the entire design and development to a company like BioWare, developers of the hit game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. BioWare couldn't do any worse in getting the game out. 11:23:56 PM

SCO Group continues in its quest to become the most hated software company in the world as it sued Novell today, accusing it of slander. SCO also seeks an order that would require Novell to assign to SCO all Unix-related copyrights and to withdraw any statements claiming ownership of Unix. A News.com report provides some background: Novell bought Unix from AT&T in the 1980s and sold at least some rights to a predecessor of SCO in 1995. Novell claims that it retained some rights to Unix and related works; SCO claims that it bought all rights to Unix and that any Unix-related copyrights granted to Novell are therefore invalid 11:18:51 PM