Just think: barely ten months ago, there was no such thing as a Mac-based supercomputer (Apple's old G4 marketing claims notwithstanding), and none but a select few übergeeks at Virginia Tech had even detected the approach of a vague blobby thing on the Mac Supercomputer Radar Screen. And yet, a month later said geeks had built one; a month after that the cluster was ranked the third-fastest supercomputer on the planet. As a result, just a couple of weeks ago the U.S. Army commissioned an even larger G5 cluster-- and once there are two, who knows how quickly they'll spawn?

Well, Apple, at least, seems to think that the offspring will come fast and furious; faithful viewer Mike Scherer noted a Macworld UK article which reports that Apple's director of server and storage hardware happened to mention at the Worldwide Developers Conference last week that the company "anticipates a number of large clusters to be built" and that "an impressive 40 per cent of Xserve sales are destined for use in such clusters-- particularly in universities."

Two out of every five Xserves going into clusters? That's sort of good news, we guess-- it depends on whether you'd consider the fact that Apple's hey-let-us-into-the-enterprise-market-please-please-please server product is only marginally more popular as a server than as a cluster node. Also, the "forty percent" thing is only good news if there are lots more clusters coming than we know about; otherwise that stat would indicate that Apple has sold only about 4,500 Xserve G5s on the whole and that Xserves are therefore selling about as well as lifejackets in the Sahara.

But not to worry, because Apple was apparently correct about little clusterlings joining the happy family before long: though Virginia Tech's cluster is offline pending upgrades and the Army's cluster hasn't even been built yet, the two of them still managed to procreate somehow. Think Secret reports that a baby cluster of 256 Xserves is already under construction at UCLA's Plasma Physics Lab. If the performance of this "Dawson Project" scales linearly with that of Big Momma "Big Mac," it might even rank in the top 60 or 70 supercomputers when it's up and running-- a feat made all the more impressive by Dawson's sticker price: a cool million smackers. That's right, just one of them. Sheesh, talk about your bargain basement supervalues. You can hardly even get a case of Fanta for that price anymore.

As their first-born, Dawson will no doubt always hold a special place in its parents' hearts, but if Apple has anything to say about the situation, before long Dawson will have plenty of younger siblings to keep it company. Want your own G5 cluster popping up soon in your backyard? Try dimming the lights out back and piping a little Barry White out there. We bet you won't be waiting long...

Red alert! Red alert! iPods can destroy your business if you let your employees so much as set foot onto the premises while carrying one! Worse yet, they can spread SARS, diphtheria, and the Ebola virus, thus sending your employee health costs through the roof, and extended use can turn your personnel into mindless zombie slaves bereft of reason and humanity that unquestioningly serve only the dark whims of Steve Jobs himself-- and we're told that sort of thing can be really bad for morale! Run! RUN NOW!!!

Whew. We just blew our entire quarter's exclamation point budget on a single paragraph. Here's hoping nothing exciting happens until October, because otherwise we're going to seem a lot less interested than we really are.

Anyway, here's what we're on about: faithful viewer Andy Van Buren noted the existence of a new Gartner report which warns businesses that "the unauthorized and uncontrolled use of portable storage devices" including "disk-based MP3 players, such as Apple's iPod" can lead to all sort of havoc-- such as employees inadvertently bringing viruses in by sneakernet, which the corporate firewall and mailserver can't do a thing about. Gartner also raises the possibility that evil employees can use these devices to swipe massive amounts of "sensitive and valuable data," presumably for the subsequent sale to the highest-bidding competitor. And even if non-evil employees are carrying sensitive info home on an iPod, said iPod might even get lost or stolen.

These are all valid (and, we would have thought, blindingly obvious) points, but even though we can understand Gartner's suggestion that businesses "should forbid the use of uncontrolled, privately owned devices with corporate PCs," we're a little concerned with the possibility that paranoid middle managers who are far too important and "busy" to do anything but skim might simply see "iPods are security risks" and ban their use outright. For most people, having a day job is only about three degrees from intolerable as it is; imagine if you couldn't even bring your iPod into the office. (We'd scream here for effect, but, you know, the exclamation point thing.)

Indeed, the "skimming middle manager" is scads more likely to overreact with a sweeping policy decision now that news services everywhere are reporting on the Gartner thingy with big, scary headlines like "Analyst: iPods a network security risk" and "Does Your IPod Pose a Security Risk? Businesses should consider banning the devices, new study suggests." What's particularly irksome is that Gartner never specifically targets the iPod in its report, since the firm also warns that "any kind of pocket-sized portable FireWire hard drive," USB hard drive or keychain drive," or "digital cameras with smart media cards, memory sticks, compact flash, and other memory media" are equally dangerous.

But hey, stick "iPod" in an article title, especially a title that implies that iPods are anything less than the perfect and divine creations they are, and you just know people are going to come read. Unless they only skim. But either way, it's ratings gold, baby.

Not that we'd ever stoop to such a thing, of course.

Speaking of potential threats to this iPodular paradise on earth which we lucky 21st-century mortals enjoy so much, we know we're supposed to be worrying about the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act that's allegedly poised to expose Apple to lawsuits that could cost the company billions of dollars in damages per iPod, but we just can't focus what with the more immediate trouble facing the company. Granted, this legislation is a sticky situation; should the bill become law, it's so broadly-worded that the RIAA could theoretically sue Apple on the grounds that selling iPods is "inducing" customers to pirate music, and according to a lawyer quoted in USA Today, such an action could conceivably end in fines for Apple of up to "$150,000 per song." Since a 40 GB iPod can hold 10,000 pirated songs, the law could "make Apple potentially liable for $1.5 billion per iPod."

That would, indeed, be kindasorta a problem. And we definitely think you might want to check out SaveTheiPod.com to see how you can pester your Congressional reps about voting against this poorly-constructed piece of legislation while it's just a bill, yes it's only a bill, and it's sitting there on Capitol Hill. (Just fill out a quick online form and they'll take care of sending an honest-to-goshness fax for you, which is just what we were hoping for: activism for the inherently slothful. Nice.)

But like we said, we're having trouble getting too worked up about the Inducing act while Apple faces a far greater threat-- namely, its apparently pathetic hockey skills. Faithful viewer ToddAC pointed out a Mercury News article which mentions briefly that Apple's annual JavaOne hockey match against Sun ended with Apple losing 7 to 1. Yes, 7 to 1. Ouch.

Before this, we figured the two companies were fairly evenly matched (Apple won last year, but lost in 2002), but a 7-1 loss strongly implies otherwise. It's true that Steve Jobs wasn't present to help out with a Reality Distortion Field blast from the stands, but even so, this wasn't even close-- we didn't see the game, but the score speaks for itself. This was a blowout, plain and simple.

So here's what bugging us about this whole hockey thing: Given Apple's poor showing this time around, does anyone see a connection between a 7-1 hockey loss and the company's failure thus far to introduce retail stores or the iTunes Music Store to our stick-swingin' neighbors to the north? We're trying to determine the direction of causality, here. On the one hand, Apple may simply be so indifferent to all things Canadian that its slow retail and musical expansion across the border are symptoms of the same disinterest that leads to crushing hockey defeats. The other possibility, though, is that Apple's frustration at lacking skills on the ice has triggered an antipathy to Canada, which has in turn led to the company's dragging its feet on getting retail and music stores into the Great White North. Chicken? Egg? Back bacon?

Or we suppose it could all just be a total coincidence. But really, when does that ever happen?