You know, if there's one day a year on which you probably shouldn't believe everything you read, this would be it. If you were the especially gullible type and you forgot to tear a page off the calendar this morning, you might have found yourself actually believing that Apple has jumped ship to Intel processors, Inside Mac Games is giving away a real rocket launcher, and Apple is gearing up to ship an iTiVo with an enclosure apparently made out of cardboard. Helpful tip: if you found yourself on the receiving end of a "ha ha, made you look" (virtual or otherwise) more than, say, three or four times this lovely April Fool's Day, we hear there's a simple medical procedure by which you can reduce your own credulity level by up to 30%. Best of all, it's so easy and painful, you can avoid those pesky doctor's bills by doing it yourself! All you need is an acetylene torch, a sharp garden spade, and a couple of cans of Bactine.

Nah, just kidding. But see how completely hopeless you are? Yeesh, if you don't wise up soon, you're going to wake up one morning and realize that nefarious con men have taken you for everything you had, and you might even have to sell your precious deed to the Brooklyn Bridge just to make the payments on your valuable swampland in Florida. But fear not, because we're here to help; right now you may be an April Fool, but by the time we're through with you, you'll be wondrously transformed into a street-savvy, no-nonsense April Not-Foolish-Guy. All we need from you is three credit card numbers and a signed blank check, and we'll begin right away.

No, no, no!! See, this is exactly what we're talking about, here. Put your checkbook away or set fire to it or something, or you'll go broke before we even get started. Look, how about we start slowly, with how to identify an April Fool's news story? We'll start with a really easy one: faithful viewer Brian Freeman tipped us off to a CNET article about how Microsoft and Unisys teamed up to launch a web site devoted to convincing people that running UNIX (you know, that wonky stuff that sits at the heart of Mac OS X) in a business environment "makes you feel boxed in," "ties you to an inflexible system," "requires you to pay for expensive experts," and "makes you struggle daily." Microsoft's solution, predictably enough, is that everyone should be running Windows instead (presumably because it boxes you in tighter and makes you struggle hourly, which is far better than UNIX can claim).

The idea that Microsoft would engage in such a strategy is totally believable, of course, and even predictable. But CNET goes on to report that this UNIX-bashing web site is "itself powered by UNIX software," as it's hosted on a FreeBSD box running Apache (the UNIX-based web server software that now serves as Mac OS X's Web Sharing engine) instead of Microsoft's own IIS under Windows. Now, here's where the lesson comes in; think about this for a second or two, and it's clear that even without the April 1st datestamp, anyone with even the most rudimentary capacity for critical thinking would immediately recognize this as a whimsical CNET hoax. Because even Microsoft couldn't possibly be both shameless and brick-stupid enough to launch a high-profile anti-UNIX site and then serve the thing from a UNIX system, when it's a trivial matter for anyone to check and see what kind of software a given web server is running.

Wait, what do you mean, "it's real"? WeHaveTheWayOut.com really exists? And it's provably running FreeBSD and Apache? Oh. Um... Never mind. Evidently the depths of Microsoft's stupidity transcend even the limits of our own skepticism. Maybe we should be a little more open-minded about that rocket launcher giveaway...

Remember two months ago, when we told you how every school-supplied iBook in Henrico County, Virginia was being confiscated by school officials to undergo a thorough de-funning process? See, it seems that the high school students had been using their iBooks for such "distracting" extracurricular activities as illegally swapping music and movies, instant messaging and playing games during class, hacking into the teachers' files, and, of course, downloading enough porn to make Larry Flynt blush and consider going into another line of work. The county apparently decided that they could prevent the students from using their iBooks for, ahem, "unsanctioned tasks" by rigidly controlling access via specific login accounts-- a strategy which we figured was doomed to fail.

Well, as we fully expected, it was a simple matter of "when," not "if." At the time, we chose February 23rd in the pool-- way too early, but it turns out we failed to account for how long it might take before the students actually got their iBooks back and had a chance to take a shot at circumventing those new security measures. Now we know; faithful viewer Kent Love pointed out a Richmond Times-Dispatch article which states that the students only just had their Macs returned to them "during the past month"; in the short time since then, some sixty or so students had found a way around the new restricted logins, were once again up to their old tricks, and have even been caught and suspended. All that in just a few short weeks? My, those student are industrious. Who says the work ethic is dead?

Interestingly enough, blame is flying all over the place. Despite the fact that all students had to sign agreements signifying that they understood the penalties involved for misusing the equipment, some of the parents are calling the potential ten-day suspensions "too harsh." Says one parent, "It's almost as if the situation has been set up to tempt [students]. It's the forbidden fruit. There it is, but don't touch it." Says another, whose child faces possible expulsion for what we can only assume was a particularly egregious infraction, "You don't tell [a person] they can't use the car and then leave it in the driveway and give them the keys." Ah, of course-- it's all the so clear now: the entire iBook program in Henrico County was actually an elaborate plan to entrap as many kids as possible into getting suspended or expelled. Why didn't we see it before?

Meanwhile, the county is pointing fingers at Cupertino. Brookland District Supervisor Richard W. Glover insists that it's up to Apple to provide iBooks that can't be used for playing games or downloading nudie pics. "If there are still indications that this is uncontrollable, Apple... has the responsibility to make this a safe environment for our children to learn." So there you have it, folks-- it's not the students' responsibility to choose not to break the rules, nor is it the parents' responsibility to raise kids that understand the consequences of their actions. It's not even up to the schools to introduce technology programs with the teensiest amount of consideration of the social challenges they might present. Instead, it's all about Apple inventing a porn-proof computer. Note to Steve: make sure you get right on that.

Here at AtAT we have, on occasion, linked to some particularly horrific-looking PC enclosures over the years, for a few reasons. First of all, we think it's healthy to "cleanse the palate," as it were; Mac users spend their days steeped in excellent industrial design, and after a while it's easy to get a little jaded and forget just how good we have it. Taking a gander at a truly mind-numbingly offensive example of some of the stuff that's out there on the other side of the fence is a nice way to remind ourselves how lucky we are to have St. Ive smiling upon us. Another reason why we do it is because sometimes it's really funny to see what passes for "good-looking" among the Wintel set. But mostly we do it because we enjoy grossing people out. (Hey, c'mon-- we did put together that Flower Power flavor theme over in the Preferences, right?)

Anyway, it's that time again; faithful viewer rjung posted a link over in the Officially Unofficial AtAT Forums that should be treated with extreme caution, because it depicts what may well be the single ugliest PC ever to poison this material plane with its very existence. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have weak constitutions, we beg you-- proceed no further, as the management cannot be held responsible for injury or staining caused by extreme retching. That said, we present to you: the NHP 200NC.

As its creator describes it, the NHP 200NC is "a lightweight caseless PC the world has never seen before"-- and the world probably would have liked to keep it that way. Basically, this guy decided that it'd be really neat to build a computer without an actual case, so he took a whole slew of old parts, plugged them into each other, and then held them all together with that crazy expanding quick-hardening polyurethane foam you occasionally see when you wander down to the shipping department in a major manufacturing center. The result? A fifteen-pound Pentium system with a handle-- one that floats on water and strikes terror and loathing into all who set eyes upon it.

For what it's worth, ugly though it may be, somehow we're not nearly as offended by the NHP 200NC as we are by lots of the nastier "cool" enclosures we've seen polluting the Wintel aisles. After all, the 200 NC doesn't attempt to look nice; it was designed purely as a clever (and successful) experiment to create a cheap, lightweight, functional computer-- looks be damned. It is unrepentantly yeccch; it actually revels in its sheer deformity, and for that we salute it. As the twisted individual who made this thing says, "you gotta love that computer that looks like a hybrid between a sheep and a Meringue." Well, "love" might be too strong a word, but we certainly respect it.

Say, is anyone else craving Marshmallow Fluff right about now?