Speaking about fairy tales (which are in vogue nowadays, thanks to Maltesh and Anya), would the news of discovery of sprites and elves dancing on thunder clouds, interest you?!

If yes, then read this report which announces that Sprites and Elves dancing on thunder clouds have been captured by cameras on the space shuttle Columbia.

The report however quashes any hopes of finding these fantasy creatures, when it describes further, “The sprites, which are red flashes of electricity shooting up from thunderclouds 13 miles (20 km) into the ionosphere, and elves, which are glowing red doughnut shapes radiating 190 miles (300 km), were photographed Sunday by astronaut Dave Brown on the sprite hunt’s first orbit.”

*LOL* … so much for fairy tales!! ;-)

[via Slashdot]. According to a news story published in a South African news site BusinessDay, South African government has decided to adopt open source software and develop support programs with local research institutes and universities. The CIO of the State IT Agency says: “The logic for open-source is so compelling that after a year of debates we decided to stop talking and declare government an open- source zone.“

This came after the simmering resentment, towards incessant expense of buying software licences for hundreds of thousands of staff spread across government departments, finally boiled over after Microsoft’s decision last year that it was introducing a new license model for its software.

I think the trend of Governments migrating to Open Source for their IT needs, is spreadign right across the world. When Bill Gates was here in India, a month or so back, his primary aim was to influence the various Indian state governments to desist from crossing over from Microsoft to Open Source. So, are we going to see a Gates trip to South Africa?? ;-)