You're not tuning in for last-minute Stevenote predictions, are you? Because if you are, you're going to be sorely disappointed; sure, we've since come into some insider information from an unimpeachable source that lays out every single facet of Steve's presentation for Monday morning, including exactly what will be introduced (pricing, part numbers, and complete specifications), the precise hour, minute, and second each introduction will occur, and the terms of Steve's ultimatum concerning the title of Supreme Overlord of Earth and the details of exactly what kind of alien death ray he'll use to obliterate the human race if the world's leaders fail to accept them-- but we're shelving all that profoundly dull and tedious subject matter so that we can instead devote a full scene to the fascinating world of iPods in crime. Dunt dunt dunt dunnnnnnnnn!

Yes, iPods in crime; faithful viewer David Poves forwarded us a gritty BBC News article which describes how an identity theft and car swindling ring operating in London will likely be locked away for a good long time thanks largely to "a mass of incriminating evidence stored on an iPod." Reportedly the gang had a pretty sweet little scam going; members would "hijack" someone's identity by forging driver's licenses, bank statements, and utility bills, carry the bundle into a car dealership, and drive off with a newly-financed Mercedes, Jaguar, BMW, etc.-- which they'd then sell "for up to £20,000 pure profit." Allegedly the proceeds from this interesting arrangement totalled half a million pounds before a cop got suspicious seeing different swanky new cars always parked outside of the same southeast London apartment and the Vehicle Fraud Unit subsequently raided the joint. Among the evidence that was scooped up was an iPod containing "templates for false documents, letters that could be forged, details of false identities, and credit card numbers," as well as "an array of forged letters to claim the vehicles were fully paid for."

Now, we know what you're thinking: this report makes it sound like the iPod was collaborating with the gang and facilitating the whole car theft process. Indeed, it's not the first time that iPods have been implicated at least tangentially in shady dealings; a few weeks ago silicon.com reported on a "deluge of complaints" from customers of Appleimports.co.uk, which purports to be a service reselling imported U.S.-purchased miniPods so that Europeans don't have to wait until they ship worldwide in July. Apparently scads of people have paid their money and haven't received the goods, and while the jury's still out on whether this is a scam or just the result of a severely constrained miniPod supply here in the States, it's not hard to imagine a few scar-faced 'Pods laughing all the way to the bank.

That is, unless you know what the 'Pods are really all about. Our sources assure us that the iPod involved in the car thieving ring, at least, was not actually in on the crimes, but was, in fact, working undercover with Scotland Yard. "Let me store all the incriminating evidence, boss," it'd say to the ringleader; "I've got this nice, big hard drive just waiting to be filled with all sorts of stuff that, I mention completely hypothetically and for no reason whatsoever, could get this entire gang sent up for decades." Indeed, it selflessly put itself in a potentially very dangerous situation to build an airtight case against a hardened crew of violent identity thieves who would surely have progressed to harder crimes like armed robbery, murder, and back-alley cat juggling.

And the story doesn't end there, as the crimefighting prowess of iPods worldwide occasionally leads to the toppling of influential drug cartels and white slavery rings. Closer to home, organized squads of bereted "Guardian iPods" patrol the streets and subways of several major cities, while unconfirmed reports of isolated acts of iPod vigilantism continue to pour in, with some pummelled criminals in Gotham City claiming that they had been assaulted while fleeing from the scene of the crime by a first-generation iPod dressed as a bat. More as we hear it, but one thing's for sure: the iPods are on the side of Right. Evildoers beware!

After skipping the occasion last week out of respect for International Panic Day (what do you mean, you missed it? OH NO!!!!), we knew that we'd have to celebrate our traditional end o' the week Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day today or else we'd be responsible for the deaths of literally thousands of viewers deprived of their life-sustaining dose of anti-Redmond vitriol for two weeks running. Usually the question for this segment isn't "What do we write about?" but rather "What don't we write about?" This week, though, there was a surprising dearth of highly-visible "Microsoft did something stupid and/or incompetent and/or evil but people keep buying their stuff anyway" stories in the popular press, and for a while we thought we'd have to resort to trying to work something up around faithful viewer MrP having notified us that, as reported by Ars Technica, the Redmond Scourge has managed to secure a patent for a "method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body."

Yes, Microsoft has patented a system of powering and communicating with wearable computing devices (like smart watches, etc.) by sending electricity coursing across human flesh "by coupling a power source to the human body via a set of electrodes"-- which, since it sounds like a method of torture long since outlawed in most civilized nations, is indeed potentially alarming enough to be decent Microsoft-bashing fodder. That is, it would be, if only-- torture associations aside-- it didn't sound so freakin' cool.

Luckily, we don't have to pretend that Microsoft's strap-a-car-battery-to-your-kiester-to-power-your-watch patent isn't all that and a bag of chips, because faithful viewer Craig Riha came through in the clutch with an Associated Press story about that old standby, the Rampant Windows Virus Thingy™. It seems there's yet another new one spreading holiday cheer as of last night, which "appears to take advantage of three separate flaws with Microsoft Corp. products," one of which hasn't actually been fixed yet. This virus is particularly juicy because it spreads from Windows server to Windows server, silently infecting Microsoft's web server software and secretly modifying web pages "so visitors get a piece of code that's designed to retrieve from a Russian site software that records a person's keystrokes and can send data back."

Think about that for a second. Remember last month when your Windows-using acquaintances were all crackin' wise 'bout yo mama because someone had finally found a Mac OS X security flaw that was actually worth worrying about? Well, whereas that flaw only made Mac users vulnerable to attack if they loaded a web page specifically constructed by a bad guy to exploit the hole, this latest virus means that Windows users can visit a regular trusted site they visit all the time and still wind up unknowingly sending all their passwords and credit card information to the Russian mafia. In other words, other people get infected, and your Visa bill shows up with seventy-two pages of charges to Sharper Image. We're no experts, of course, but it sounds to us like if that Mac OS X hole was a bad case of the flu, then this latest Windows virus is roughly equivalent to an infection by a mutant strain of bubonic plague crossed with flesh-eating bacteria and some cosmic variant of Space Leprosy. Now that's a security breach, officers.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's recommendation to users is to patch the flaws for which fixes are available and then, since one hole can't yet be plugged, "turn up security settings on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsers to the highest levels." Notice that they don't actually say that it'll help, which is presumably one reason why security bigwigs are offering a rather different bit of advice: switch to "alternate browsers such as Mozilla and Opera." Yeah, we bet that'll happen in droves.

Oh, and as if we actually had to say it, security experts note that-- all together, now!-- "the infection does not affect Macintosh versions of Internet Explorer." Why, you could have knocked us over with a feather...

And heck, since the Mac world is holding its collective breath waiting to see what Monday's Stevenote will bring, no one will mind if we make it Slightly On-Topic Napster-Bashing Day as well, right? Not that we harbor any specific ill will towards the service, mind you, at least not the way we held a grudge against BuyMusic.com. Now there was an iTunes Music Store competitor (we use the term very loosely) fully deserving of every ounce of bile we virtually spat at it, since it sought to pimp off the iTMS's success while simultaneously badmouthing it in its very marketing campaign, and we couldn't be more pleased that it faded from irrelevance into total invisibility in less time that it takes founder Scott "We'll Sell A Million Songs A Day" Blum to count all six of his brain cells by twos. (Yes, okay, so we're full of rage. But at least this is marginally cheaper than therapy.)

So here's the latest on the Napster front: as faithful viewer JoeHD40 pointed out, the beleaguered service has a new strategy to stem the bleeding of millions of dollars each quarter, which is to toss another $10 million (in Roxio stock; you didn't seriously think that Napster still has any actual cash left, did you?) at mega-retailer Best Buy as a bribe promotional fee so that Best Buy will promote Napster as its "leading digital music service" with "in-store marketing activities," "extensive broadcast, print, and online advertising," and even a co-branded version of the Napster software posted to the Best Buy web site. Says Best Buy's veep of digital entertainment, "Best Buy believes that the strength of the Napster brand, together with the experience of Napster's subscription service, makes this an ideal digital music solution for our customers." He utterly failed to add, "But that's not going to stop us from selling iPods like freakin' gangbusters, despite the fact that they're completely incompatible with Napster's service."

Now, what's very interesting about this situation is that while we see the Best Buy deal as a flailing last-ditch attempt by a dying service to stay afloat until someone tosses it a rope (c'mon, you can't smell the 180-proof desperation wafting off that "let's give away free MP3 players" move?), others seem to be touting the arrangement as nothing more than a routine but savvy business alliance. Following the announcement, Fool.com opined that "Roxio rocks," while The Register notes that the deal ought to provide "the kind of marketing Napster needs." And Wall Street showed its approval by sending Roxio shares up 20%.

From our perspective, though, no matter how effective the deal turns out to be, it serves as proof that Napster's entire business plan was dog food to begin with. Wasn't Napster supposed to conquer the market solely on the strength of its brand? That was its whole song and dance; over and over again, that's all we've been fed-- the "strength of Napster's brand." It's even still being parroted by Best Buy veeps in press release verbiage. Napster's spiel was that it would succeed and Apple would fail because everyone on the planet already knew the Napster name and knew that it meant downloadable music. So, uh, how come Napster has to spend another $10 million it doesn't have on a marketing promotion with Best Buy to get its name out there?

When your one-trick pony's one trick turns out to be a dud, jump back Loretta, because things are only going to get uglier. Any bets on how long it'll be before Napster takes a permanent dirt nap? Because right now we're figuring its only shot at profitability will come if people suddenly decide that they really do like the idea of renting their music, and that's an "if" we wouldn't want to hang many hopes on...