You know, if there's one big drawback to pretty much never sleeping it's that, if you happen to get a hankering for a new iPod at 3:30 in the morning, there really isn't any place to go buy one. Well, actually, maybe in New York there is-- it is the city that never sleeps, after all-- but here in Massachusetts, forget about it. Geez, until just a decade ago we still had all sorts of crazy Puritan-era "blue laws" on the books making it illegal for stores to stay open past 2:41 PM on any day that ends in "y," so consumer electronics shopping in the wee hours has never really been an option. Many's the night when we were up at ungodly hours thinking, "Gee, it sure would be nice to run out and pick up a new PowerBook or two right about now. And maybe a cherry Slurpee." But could we ever act on that perfectly reasonable and healthy impulse? Noooooooo.

But this Friday night, all that changes-- for a day, at least. When we were first tipped off to this development by faithful viewer Scott a few days ago, we figured he had to have been yanking our chain; an Apple retail store staying open for 24 hours in this state? And to take advantage of an alleged day without sales tax-- here in Taxachusetts? Shyeah, right.

Except that a day or two later we got confirmation from Apple itself, in the form of an emailed invitation to "shop tax free for 24 hours at the Apple Store, Chestnut Hill, the Apple Store, Northshore, and the Apple Store, CambridgeSide." Apparently Massachusetts has done the trendy thing and declared this Saturday to be the state's first ever tax holiday, during which consumers can buy just about anything (under $2500 and for personal use only) without paying our customary 5% sales tax. For stores like Apple's, where even the cheapest Mac purchase gets padded by at least forty clams for taxes, that could really bring in some serious customers-- and so Apple plans to make the most of it by keeping its Massachusetts store open for the entire duration of the tax break.

The upshot, of course, is that bleary-eyed nocturnal beasties like Yours Truly who just happen to live in the vicinity can spend one glorious night shopping for Macs during those wacky hours when every channel's showing infomercials for the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet and you can't get a pizza delivered to save your life. And we're really hoping to be there, because we're very curious to see just what type of shoppers Apple will witness during those hours; will it just be the insomniacs and workaholics, or will there be a steady stream of plastered clubgoers once the clock strikes two?

See, here in Boston, all the bars shut down at 2 AM (about an hour after the subway stops running-- brilliant), so right then, the streets suddenly fill up with drunk people wandering around looking for someplace to buy more beer. One of us worked the overnight shift at the city's only 24-hour coffeehouse a number of years back, and without fail, once 2 AM rolled around there'd be a sudden influx of customers hoping that "coffee" was a code word for "vodka." Granted, none of the Massachusetts Apple stores is exactly in a plenty-o'-bars location, but we're still curious.

Anyway, the vague plan right now is for an AtAT representative to hit one of the local Apple retail stores-- probably CambridgeSide because it's closest, although Northshore has a simpler parking situation-- at some truly unholy hour this Friday night/Saturday morning, just because we can. We're not expecting to see anyone else there except for hypercaffeinated store staff, but we'll keep you posted about the planned time and location on the off-chance that there's someone out there as sleep-deprived and Apple-obsessive as we happen to be.

Now, what do you suppose it is about Jon Lech Johansen that he just can't seem to leave Apple alone these days? For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Johansen is also known as "DVD Jon," because a few years back he was the lil' Norwegian fella who cracked the CSS encryption used on commercial DVDs, and he's been fending off the incessant legal attacks of endless Hollywood ninja lawyers ever since. However, the exuberance of youth is an irrepressible thing (Jon's only 20 years old now), so he still makes time to mess with copy protection systems whenever he can-- a fact which has boosted Rolaids consumption within the walls of One Infinite Loop by an impressive 13%.

See, in recent months, DVD Jon has turned his attention to the FairPlay digital rights management technology Apple uses in every song sold from the iTunes Music Store. Last November he published a wee bit o' code called QTFairUse that could strip the copy protection right out of iTMS songs, yielding the identical AAC file but with all that icky DRM stuff scrubbed off. While his code was rough, it was used as the basis of PlayFair, which was eventually renamed "hymn," and which, despite having been chased off of U.S. servers and forced to take refuge in India, continues to be a thorn in Apple's side to this day.

Well, the fun doesn't stop there. The latest from DVD Jon is a tool called "JustePort," which "lets you stream MPEG4 Apple Lossless files to your AirPort Express" (presumably sans iTunes, because otherwise it's not much of a trick). You may recall that when AirPort Express came out, Steve mentioned that, in order to keep the music labels happy, AirTunes encrypts the music stream between iTunes and the AirPort Express, presumably to prevent evildoers from intercepting the wireless signal inflight and committing the heinous act of (gasp!) listening to songs sent through the airwaves-- for free. (Of course, why they would drive up to your house with a wireless laptop to tap into your AirPort Express stream of Ace of Base's Greatest Hits instead of just turning on the radio is beyond us, but they have their reasons. They're evildoers, after all.)

But wait-- what's this? While the code used in hymn can certainly be used to distribute illegal copies of songs, this JustePort thingy seems to be more of a way to unlock the usefulness of the AirPort Express itself. See, as a side effect of that encrypted streaming that the record labels apparently insisted that Apple use, the Express can't stream sound from anything other than iTunes itself, which sort of limits the appeal of the device; what if you want to stream, say, your unfinished GarageBand song to your living room speakers while you're working on it? Or send the sound from your PowerBook's DVD Player to your bedroom's sound system while you're watching a movie in bed? Sure, there are workarounds to do this sort of thing now, but they're clunky and introduce a delay.

Well, now that Jon has extracted the public encryption key used in the Express, he's paved the way for third party developers to add AirTunes sound output to their applications, which actually strikes us as sort of a cool thing. Apple will almost certainly disagree; sure, it could mean increased AirPort Express sales, but technically, this isn't much different from Real opening up the iPod without Apple's consent-- and Apple didn't exactly jump and down with joy when that happened, either. We'll have to wait and see if Apple Legal springs into action. (Maybe they already have; at broadcast time, DVD Jon's website wasn't responding.)

What we've always hoped, actually, is that by the time Mac OS X Tiger finally ships, any local AirPort Express units will just show up as plain ol' audio outputs in the Sound panel of System Preferences. It seems like an obvious feature to us, but we'll see. In the meantime, we're curious to see what, if anything, comes out of this JustePort development-- even if it's just a news story about DVD Jon's mysterious disappearance in the night, the only clue a shuriken lodged in his bedpost...

We're just going to mention this quickly, because we've been getting a ton of mail about it for days, now: remember when Virginia Tech's "System X" G5-based cluster, formerly ranked the third-fastest supercomputer on the planet, dropped off the charts completely while the system was offline pending the completion of an upgrade from 1,100 Power Macs to 1,100 Xserves? Said upgrade took longer than expected (the school originally predicted that it'd be "complete by May"), what with Apple's Xserve shipping delay, but as a truckload of faithful viewers has kindly pointed out this week, Virginia Tech's Terascale Computing Facility notes that assembly is finally "completed" and stabilization and benchmarking are "in process." So System X will be back on the charts when the new list comes out in a few months' time, and before long we'll get to hear whether the new Xserves yield a speed boost over the original Power Macs, in addition to the space and energy savings they promise.

And yet, none of this is why eleventy-bajillion AtAT viewers felt compelled to tell us about it. Instead, they all focused on the Upgrade Gallery, which includes a couple of dozen photos of Xserves as far as the eye can see-- a beautiful sight, to be sure, but even that wasn't why everyone was writing in. No, they were all telling us about the wardrobe choice of the assembly team. See, a couple of the snapshots show one of the assemblers (a gent named Sam) clad in a very stylish AtAT t-shirt, which is, of course, essential attire for anyone who wants to stand next to scores of gorgeous Xserves without looking like a completely unkempt and ratty slob by comparison. (A tux might work, too, but those are a bit more expensive.)

Anyway, we were aware of these photos-- probably before any of you were, since Sam is, of course, a faithful AtAT viewer, and he sent us a full-resolution copy of one of those snapshots way back on July 8th, long before they were posted. It's just that we didn't feel the news was all that worth crowing about, since what Mac fan doesn't own an AtAT t-shirt by now? The garments have been available for over four years now, so even the sorriest excuse for a Mac user on Earth (you know, like that guy with the Performa 410 who keeps complaining to his Wintel-using coworkers that "Macs are so slow") has long since added at least two or three of these things to his closet. Heck, most people are well into the double digits in terms of shirts ordered, because they've worn out their first dozen or so due to incessant use; some people wear up to six at a time. So if Sam down at Virginia Tech happens to be wearing one in a photo or two of the System X upgrade, what's the surprise?

So the only reason we're mentioning any of this, of course, is just to let you know that System X is back in one piece and that you should keep an eye peeled for benchmarks soon. A purely hypothetical secondary purpose might be to remind any Mac users with fewer than three or four AtAT t-shirts in their closet that, for now, at least, all sizes are still in stock-- and mock turtlenecks and stickers count toward your coolness quotient, too, while the AtAT Karmic InvisiShirt™ even guarantees you coolness in future lifetimes. Sure, you might not wind up quite as cool as the System X team, but you'll be as cool as you can be without having 1,100 Xserves at your beck and call.