XKCD: Large Hadron Collider

I know one guy who got an offer from Google but chose to stay in CERN, so obviously he must like it. On the other hand, some of the stories he tells are not very reassuring. For example, someone recently decided that CERN would be a Microsoft-only shop, to the extent that the NNTP server news.cern.ch has been shut down because MS doesn't sell NNTP servers. However--this is sweet--the department where my friend works writes software that actually operates the detectors in the colliders, so it has to work so their department is exempt and they're still using Unix (Linux and LynxOS.) Another guy I know had to implement web applications using Oracle cartridges. Also, some say there's a lot of nasty politics going on there, my friend's wife quit CERN because of that. My guess is this also depends on the department.

I believe it is still on for sometime in May 2008.

It would be cool if they did it on December 21, 2012 or another popular date of Armageddon, just to freak people out.

Every new xkcd gets posted and voted up here... even the bad ones. Maybe s/he doesn't like the hero worship and voted down the comments because there's no way to vote down the post. Kinda cheap, but there you go.