Whew! The doom prophets apparently misinterpreted the Mayan calendar, and the apocalypse has been rescheduled for 2020, according to a SlashDot article. That article describes the mistake briefly, but gives a link to a detailed Dutch article on the Mayan apocalypse, in NWT magazine, which is translated by Google. So even if you're not interested in the explanation, it is interesting to see the state of automatic language translation. The translated article is readable, but still a bit wonky.

Here's the teaser quote from the Dutch article as translated by Google:

In the 2012 film that will premiere this month, killed the cities and continents in droves, as the world decays. Yet just a pity that research has shown that the "end times" of December 21, 2012 probably more than two centuries two.

There is no word yet whether the movie distribution company for 2012 is going to recall all their prints of the film to correct the errors.