It was a disappointing week for NASA, and for anyone interested in the science and technology of space exploration. NASA said the last realistic chance of contacting the lander failed on Tuesday. And it acknowledged that the spacecraft, which has been silent since it approached the Martian surface, probably never will be heard from. Sometime early next month, the Federal Election Commission is expected to take up a petition to grant matching funds for contributions made via check online. Bruce Dickens, with lawyer William Cray, says he's exercising his rights by asking big companies to pay for using a Y2K fix that he says he came up with in 1995 while driving to work.
Some experts say the method has been around for decades.
Drinking water and sewage facilities are threatened by the looming Y2K computer glitch, according to a study released this week by two watchdog agencies that blames government and industry for lax oversight. Other CEOs say they will be reachable by phone, but most are confident they won't be disturbed because of their companies' exhaustive Y2K preparations. Separately, a programmer who claims he came up with a popularly-used Y2K fix while driving to work in 1995 wants companies to pay him for using the technique. When downloaded, the file infects a computer and waits for the user to log onto the Internet. It then contacts a Web server in Japan that the virus' creator can program to download new files onto the infected computer.