Wow, not since people grossly misinterpreted last June's infamous "AtAT is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of MSN" satire have we endured such an avalanche of mail; the next day we had to issue a "just a joke, folks!" explanation just to keep our mail server from exploding, but this time around the mailbombing isn't even our fault. Blame it on Mac OS Rumors, whose sudden "disappearance" from the 'net prompted eleventy-kajillion people to ask us what happened, for some reason. Heck, folks, maybe you have this mental image of the MOSR staff and the AtAT staff getting together for pancakes and beach volleyball once a week, but the truth is, we don't know them and they don't know us. There's no Mac Web Illuminati, no consortium of web site proprietors who make up secret handshakes and plot to take over the world. (Yet. Or if there is, no one invited us.) So when http://www.macosrumors.com/ started spitting out "unable to locate host" errors, we were just as puzzled as you.

Perhaps people are emailing us about MOSR in hopes that we'll bring back the old "Apple's ninjas sabotaging Mac web sites" plot twist. Ha! Forget it, kids; we learned our lesson on that one when we had to issue another retraction once AtAT fans started bombarding the owners of MOSR and Reality (now AppleInsider) with mail asking if Apple really did force the sites to shut down. (We're pretty sure that was, in fact, our first retraction. Ahhh, memories...)

Anyway, just to stem the tidal wave of email that threatens to overwhelm us, we took it upon ourselves to do a little digging. First stop? The public WHOIS server at Network Solutions, those domain name registration guys. A quick check on "macosrumors.com" yields some pretty informative results: "Record expires on 16-Jul-2000." Now, we may not know what day it is half the time, but we're pretty sure that we know what month we're in. (October, right?) So basically, the problem over at Mac OS Rumors would seem to be a simple matter of either nonpayment of the registration fee, or a paperwork screw-up at Network Solutions. If we had to guess, we'd choose the former, since we recall MOSR's "parent company" Black Light Media recently announcing that it was selling off several of its domain names; sounds like those folks are shedding some dead weight.

In any case, mosr.com is still active, and won't expire until at least this November, so Mac OS Rumors is actually still alive and serving up the dirt. Curiously enough, the following message appears at the site: "Some readers, including some of the contributing writers, appear to be experiencing problems with the macosrumors.com domain. MOSR.com continues to work, and we are investigating the problem." Ah, so it wasn't an intentional move to drop the longer domain name. "The DNS servers are unaltered and appear to continue to be correctly configured, suggesting a problem elsewhere in the DNS system; any debugging data or insights into what may be wrong would be very much appreciated..." Pssst... Hey, guys... WHOIS is your friend. Hope you kept the cancelled check.

Speaking of Mac OS Rumors, while the site has certainly "relaxed" its posting frequency lately, the new stuff that's up there is far too good to pass up. Buried under four feet of disclaimers about how apocryphal this information is, the site goes on to paint a fascinating picture of your friend and ours, the long-rumored and very tardy Apple handheld. That's right; if you thought the Apple PDA rumors were dead and buried, then MOSR just grabbed a shovel and dug 'em up again. And we are positively thrilled that our pet phantom Apple product has made an unexpected reappearance, moldy though it may be.

If you believe MOSR, "nearly a hundred independent sightings" over the course of the past month describe a device "about the same size as a Palm V" with an "uncolored translucent plastic enclosure," a "small, thick antenna" running up one side, and a "small color screen." Assuming this thing exists, we'd have to assume that it's not a Palm derivative, since there's "no apparent stylus or other input device." Input? Who needs input? This rumor corroborates several reports from our own sources that Steve's really burnt out on the whole "input" thing, and has since mandated a far more "Zen" direction: output-only Macs, with no mouse or keyboard. Why not a Zen handheld, too?

But let's wander farther into the Land of Diminishing Credibility, shall we? The most intriguing thing about this alleged Apple handheld is that it's wirelessly tethered to a "master" Mac via AirPort. That's right; get out of AirPort's range and the Apple handheld becomes truly Zen, i.e. a small translucent paperweight. Reportedly the AirPort connection isn't for the synchronization of data, but actually required for the operation of the handheld at all. So if you're in the market for a PDA that only works within 150 feet of your desktop Mac, it sounds like you're in luck!

Others may be wondering why anyone would buy a handheld that can't be used more than "a short distance away from at least one Mac that is AirPort-capable." Shame on you! You lack vision. Why, MOSR itself states that "the possibilities are fascinating," and we have to agree. Why, you could use one to... er... hmm. Or maybe... Huh. Well, trust us-- the possibilities are fascinating, and we'll prove it just as soon as we can think of one.

Well, it's never nice to start off a weekend on a down note, but sometimes life kicks you in the head-- or, if you happen to be an iMac, in the screen. You've probably all seen representations of graphic violence before-- photos of animal testing, people chewing glass on Guinness World Records, those "real crash footage" films from driver's ed class-- but nothing will prepare you for the carnage that faithful viewer Dan Catalano stumbled across in the St. Petersburg Times. It seems that vandals went on a rampage at Sand Pine Elementary School, wrecking some $100,000 worth of equipment... including several poor, defenseless iMacs. Warning: the photo is not for the weak of heart.

The local school district is offering a $1000 reward "for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators." Well, that's all well and good, but frankly, we're surprised Steve Jobs hasn't publicly announced a million-dollar reward for anyone who brings him the vandals' heads on sticks. Well, okay... maybe not a million. That amount's more suited to the guy pumping an iMac full of lead to turn an Epinions commercial into an iMac snuff film. But at least a hundred large for the vandals, right? Surely someone with Steve's money and influence can see to it that these criminals are "punished"-- in the big, scary, vigilante sense of the word.

Dan has his own ideas about what happened, though: "the perpetrators were described as 'a couple of shaggy-haired, bespectacled young men' who left behind graffiti reading 'Billy G. & Mikey D. rule the computer pool!'" Oh, what confused, twisted individuals this sick society is capable of churning out. We weep for the death of the spirit and the soul...