Okay, who's pumped for this summer's Macworld Expo? Sure, we know Apple isn't, since the company apparently equates the show's move from New York back to its original Boston the equivalent of jumping into a vat of raw sewage and then drying itself off with a plague blanket, and has accordingly declined to attend, but that's no reason to think the show won't be one jammin' hootenanny. C'mon, it'll be just like the Expos of a few years back-- only in Boston, with no Stevenote, no Apple booth, and far fewer exhibitors because no vendor wants to pay money for a booth at a show nobody will actually bother to attend. But that doesn't mean it won't still be fun, right?

That's what IDG World Expo is saying, at any rate; according to Macworld UK, the show's organizer claims that July's Expo is "shaping up to be a very strong show." Details are scarce on just what it means by "strong," and IDG has been known to spin like mad in the past-- remember when it said that the "retargeted" Expo (meaning, the Expo "without a Stevenote") would be a "big success" if it drew half of its previous year's attendance? The existing Boston Expo page clearly tries to paint the show primarily as a learning experience (the Pro, Users, and Power Tools conferences, the Hands-on MacLabs, etc.) while downplaying the whole "show floor" side of the event, which is only mentioned as an afterthought. But for whatever it's worth, IDG claims that it's "prepared to make a long-term investment in the show" and "with its return to Boston in July, Macworld Conference and Expo is writing another exciting chapter in its 20-year history"-- presumably an exciting chapter titled "The Appleless Years."

Indeed, if the show is so freakin' strong, how come it might share its venue with another conference? The Boston Globe recently reported that the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority have struck a "tentative agreement" to host SAP Worldwide at the center during the same week as Macworld Expo. If the deal goes through, Mac fiends will occupy "most of the exhibit floor" and 25 meeting rooms, while the SAP conference would take place in 50 of the remaining meeting rooms. (Interestingly, SAP is the enterprise resource planning software that Apple uses to run its business, so while the company might skip exhibiting at the Expo, it might wind up next door anyway as an attendee. We sense the possibility of violence.)

Meanwhile, for those of you for whom the Expo is all about the keynote, IDG promises "more information about the event's keynote presentation in a future announcement 'soon.'" For the record, though, no, Jack hasn't been approached to do the honors, despite your touching enthusiasm to witness such a public speaking debacle, which would surely be the single most terrifying disaster in Boston's history since the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. Rumors are flying that IDG has instead opted for a speaker less likely to cause a tragic loss of life. CarrotTopnote, anyone? His calendar says he's free that week...

Given that the advent of the iTunes Music Store sort of turned Apple into the poster company for "doing what's right" and paying for music, you'd think the company would play it pretty straight and narrow when it comes to paying licensing fees and royalties and all that other legal hoo-haa, right? But maybe not; the evidence in that Eminem case looks almost airtight and indicates that Apple used a song in a commercial without licensing it first, and its argument in the Beatles lawsuit that the iTMS doesn't constitute "being in the music business" because it's just "data transmission" sounds a little thin. And now it sounds like Apple is facing the ire of a whole foreign government over unpaid royalties.

[ALERT: Cheap joke imminent!]

Relax, though; it's only France.

[ALERT ends. We apologize to the French.]

Yes, folks, French site Ratiatum appears to be claiming that Apple owes over eighteen months' worth of back royalties on iPod sales. Since our French is only about as good as our genetic engineering (we attempted to become gods by creating an inconquerable race of atomic supermen and wound up with a wide-mouth bass that quacks underwater), we relied heavily on Babelfish's auto-translation to figure out what's what; apparently in France there's a tariff on MP3 devices that scales based on storage capacity, and any iPod sold in the country is subject to a € 10 royalty payable by Apple to be "redistributed between the artists and the producers of music." Given the iPod's market share, fees on a year and a half's worth of French iPod sales probably comes to a hefty total, or, as Babelfish puts it, the check Apple owes France "must be salted and difficult to sign." We're not sure where the salt enters into it, but whatever.

As of yet there seems to be no word from Apple on why it refuses to pay the fees imposed by "Members of the Commission brown-bush, as unanimously of the whole of the 24 members, except notable UFC-That-Choosing it for the consumers." (Brown-bush? Actually, forget we asked.) It might be a simple oversight, it might be some philosophical objection to the nature of the fee, or it might be that Steve just told CFO Fred Anderson to shred the bill, because "What are they gonna do about it? They're the French." Only time will tell. Maybe.

By the way, if you're wondering what Steve's saying in the caricature, it's nothing dirty. (Darn.) Sherlock translates it as "Yes I will sign it this check! Let me find my pen initially!" Must be an old Jerry Lewis gag or something. It does get funnier, however, if you translate it back into French, and then again into English: "Yes I will sign it this check! Let find my pencil reader at the beginning to me!"

But we still weren't satisfied, so we translated it into Japanese and then back into English: "It is and I this check sign to that! To in the discovery my beginning which is authorized the reader of my pencil!"

Now that's more like it. Meanwhile, we're two for two so far on linking to French articles this week; suppose it'll turn into a regular thing? Maybe-- but only if those guys keep digging up the dirt. As long as it's drama, the language is irrelevant. Want proof? Just watch those soaps on the international channels. Creepy.

If you thought it was a slow news day, you're right-- unless, of course, you happen to work at Slave Labor Graphics, in which case not only would you be wrong, but you should also probably spend some time working on your observing skills, since you apparently didn't notice that your office got plowed into by a Honda. Not that we're familiar with the housekeeping skills (or lack thereof) typically in evidence down at the SLG studios, but we just have to assume that when a couple thousand pounds of metal and glass smashes through the wall of your place of business, you should probably be able to tell the difference between the BEFORE and AFTER shots. (The AtAT compound, on the other hand, is normally such a pile of wreckage that one time a full week had passed before we noticed that a small aircraft had crash-landed through the roof-- and then only because a survivor finally came out of his coma and asked us where the bathroom was.)

Okay, technically the carnage all happened on Saturday, but still; faithful viewer Edward Liu informed us that the offices of SLG, best known to us as the publishers of our personal comic heroes Milk & Cheese ("Dairy Products Gone Bad"-- think Steve Jobs, only in comic form and without the turtleneck or Reality Distortion Field but with a penchant for hard liquor and swift and blinding violence), had a little run-in with a drunk driver the other night. As in, a drunk driver managed to plant her Honda squarely within the confines of the SLG office without so much as a knock on the door-- and a courteous knock was the least she could have done, considering that her car took out "part of the store and [the] editorial and production department." Luckily, no one was crazy enough to be at work at 1 AM on a Saturday morning, so no one was hurt. See, kids? A work ethic can get you killed.

So why are we mentioning this, aside from the fact that for anyone not employed by SLG it was such a slow news day that most of you have taken to seeing if you could identify playing cards while blindfolded solely by licking them? Well, while no people were injured in the wreck, a Mirrored Drive Door G4 got knocked clear across the room; younger and more sensitive viewers should exercise discretion when considering whether or not to view the photos of the aftermath. (Yes, the G4 on the table looks fine, as does the iMac next to it. But look at the one on the floor. There's a close-up of the G4's damage on page 2.)

Good news, though; the Power Mac may have been scuffed and cracked when the speeding Honda said a forceful "howdy," but it's apparently fully operational: "Amazingly, the scanner seems to have survived, as did Jennifer's computer and all the juicy data it contains, against all expectations." While we cringe at the thought of something as beautiful as a Power Mac getting rammed by an out-of-control vehicle, it's nice to know that if such a horrible situation ever occurs again, the Mac may well pull through. "SLG Prez Dan Vado was that sure the hit the computer took was a killing blow, but it seems the Mac G4 is tougher than anyone all thought."

Well, maybe not tougher than anyone all thought, since longtime viewers will recall more than one instance of Power Macs surviving fires and suffering little more than massive cosmetic damage while Wintels all around died horrible fiery deaths, but it's nice to know that Apple's long-used Yosemite-style Power Mac enclosure wasn't just fire-resistant, but Honda-proof as well. No wonder the engineers at Apple stuck with the design for four and a half years; they couldn't kill it if they tried. We find ourselves wondering how the G5's new aluminum enclosure would stand up to blazing heat and/or the impact of a speeding car-- but not quite enough to go find out.