Well, here we are at yet another Halloween, and we don't mind telling you, the whole thing's gotten pretty old. Call us jaded, but really, in this day and age, can anything be really scary anymore? Seriously, over the years we've faced-- and survived-- such horrifying demons as Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian, Steve Jobs in a suit, and (lord help us all) Steve Ballmer on PCP. At this point, legions of putrescent zombies could assault the AtAT compound with room-temperature head cheese, hairless cats, and episodes of "Full House" on VHS and it just wouldn't faze us a bit.

But, of course, the prospect of Dell selling iPods is gut-wrenchingly horrifying enough to give us a screaming case of the heebie-jeebies.

And yet it's true! Faithful viewer Jeff Wiley was the first of some eighty-blajillion horrorstruck casualties to inform us of the news; according to CNET, you can now purchase a Windows iPod direct from Dell via phone, and the devices are expected to show up on the company's web site "soon." Reportedly Dell has admitted that some of its customers "had been asking them to carry the iPod" because-- will wonders never cease-- apparently at least some people with so little regard for design and innovation as to be buying a Dell in the first place still paradoxically realize that the iPod kicks major booty over the other MP3 players offered on Dell's site.

Apple, for its part, seems to have jumped at the chance to enlist Dell as an iPod reseller, seeing as the move fits so perfectly with the whole "World Takeover One iPod At A Time" initiative. (Yesterday Apple also issued a press release confirming what Think Secret had originally reported last week: yes, the iPod is now available at 1,148 Target stores nationwide. Hubba hubba.) Between Dell, Target, and Best Buy, distribution channels for the iPod have multiplied at ridiculous rates over the past six weeks. Soon iPods will be everywhere; you won't be able to walk down the street without tripping over half a dozen of 'em. And that's when they'll hatch and everyone on the planet will soon feel an alien life form attaching itself to his or her central nervous system. (What, you never wondered why those things are called "iPods"?)

Of course, we're awaiting the inevitable conversion of the world's population into 'Pod People with aplomb. The real problem, here, is that we now live in constant fear that someday we'll be flipping channels and we'll accidentally see a Dell commercial in which either the Dude or one of the new Lobotomized Interns utters the word "iPod," at which point our heads will surely explode with an unpleasant moist popping sound and money will have to be deducted from our estate to get the walls cleaned before the AtAT compound goes up for sale. Whoever knew that life would become so complicated?

Speaking of scary stuff, imagine a world in which access to PowerBooks and iBooks was suddenly restricted. What if you decided you wanted to buy a new Apple portable and suddenly found you'd have to wait, say, a whopping three to five days before getting your hands on the goods? Why, surely you'd start looking behind bushes for Rod Serling, because poignant injustices of that magnitude certainly never occur outside of the Twilight Zone.

Well, don't freak, but faithful viewer Sledgehammer Smythe tells us that this preposterous development has indeed come to pass: according to a report at PowerBookCentral, the online Apple Store is reporting estimated ship times of "3-5 days" on all PowerBooks and iBooks-- a fact we confirmed by loading up our cart with all sorts of nifty gear we can't afford. Sure enough, whereas eMacs, iMacs, and Power Macs are all tagged with "1-2 days" ship times, the portable products are delayed for three to five instead. Outrageous!

So is there a new statute regulating who's allowed to carry a concealed Mac now? If so, perhaps this three-to-five-day delay is a handgun-esque waiting period while Apple performs the necessary background check on its customers. The conventional wisdom, however, interprets the delay as a good thing-- a signal that iBooks and PowerBooks are due for an upgrade any day now, maybe on November 5th, which rumormongers such as MacPlus and the under-new-management AppleInsider have been tossing around as the probable launch date for new portables and new displays.

One note of dissent: Mac OS Rumors asserts that a PowerBook refresh could wait as long as January, and joins AppleInsider in casting doubt on the SuperDrive aspect of a potential next-week PowerBook. According to MOSR, Apple has decided to wait for slot-loading SuperDrives to become available in a couple of months instead of trying to shoehorn an existing (but decidedly less sexy) tray-loading model into the PowerBook now. Assuming that any of this is even moderately true, that would imply that next week's alleged PowerBook won't boast much more than a speed bump, more RAM and storage, and maybe integrated Bluetooth support.

If that indeed comes to pass, we imagine that there will be at least a moderate amount of wailing and teeth-gnashing among the fans, but remember, folks, another SuperDriveless PowerBook isn't the end of the world. Now, the Buffy cartoon being permanently shelved and Amber Benson not returning to the show this season as planned-- that's the end of the world. And cheer up; even if next Tuesday brings us an underwhelming PowerBook or no PowerBook at all, at least there's a new Buffy on tap. So let's keep a little perspective, here.

Last and almost certainly least on our Halloween line-up of frightful fun, what could be scarier than the security flaws overflowing in pretty much any Microsoft product release? Answer: one of those products being "certified as secure" by the government. As faithful viewer breH pointed out, a Reuters article notes that, after three years and "many millions of dollars," Windows 2000 has received the Common Criteria certification-- "the highest level of security evaluation of any commercial operating system." ("Windows" and "highest level of security" both being used in the same context? Hey, funny stuff-- these guys should write for Leno!)

Still trying to wrap your head around how a Microsoft operating system managed to get certified as the most secure OS available? Well, this might make the whole thing a little easier to digest: it didn't. Despite Microsoft's marketingspeak, according to Gartner analyst John Pescatore, the Common Criteria certification process "isn't testing for flaws," but rather for "whether we can believe the claims the operating system is making for the security functions it provides." Or, to put it another way (as, indeed, Alan Paller of the System Administration, Networking and Security Institute did), "it doesn't mean anything for the users... they still deliver the software misconfigured and with flaws."

So don't worry, the sky isn't falling; apparently Windows isn't any more secure now than it was before getting the certification. What it does mean is that Microsoft now gets to sell Windows 2000 to government agencies without having to pass any extra security testing or needing to get waivers from the NSA-- which means that the U.S. government might end up even more Windows-centric than it already is. And that, ladles and gentlemints, is the spooky sort of Halloween thought that should keep you awake in bed tonight. AaaawwwOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!