This afternoon, Webintosh had posted that CNBC technology correspondent Bruce Francis reported that Apple has halted their CEO search. (We were unable to find a related article on CNBC's site.)

Reportedly, Apple has dropped their search for a sucker to take the hotseat until Steve Jobs, interim CEO, returns from his Hawaiian vacation on Monday, at which point he will apparently deliver his decision as to whether or not he will take the permanent CEO position.

As soon as the news is available on Monday, we'll broadcast the decision in a News Flash. Coincidentally, our survey on whether or not viewers would like to see Steve take the position is open until Monday evening. So go vote. (So far, public opinion among AtAT viewers gives Steve a >80% approval rating.)

Rumors continue to spread about the Berkeley Mac Users Group's possible financial strife. Macintouch has been following the issue most closely; a few days ago they reported that many people had sent in membership payments and never received anything in return. Meanwhile, BMUG Boston appears to have splintered off into its own faction, the Boston BBS; whether this is indicative of a move to distance themselves from ongoing financial trouble is anyone's guess. The latest news is that BMUG's board will meet on Monday night to discuss "restructuring" the users group and will report its decision on Tuesday. Meanwhile, apparently some developers who sold software through BMUG at the MacWorld Expo in Boston last August still have not been paid...

If BMUG is really in trouble, it may indicate that Yours Truly is a "typhoid mary" for users groups; starting in 1994, I was a member of the Boston Computer Society, the largest computer users group on the east coast, as well as one of the oldest. It unceremoniously folded in September of 1996. BMUG graciously offered to transfer the remainder of my BCS membership to BMUG for no charge, and I gladly accepted. So if BMUG does go under, I'll refrain from joining any other users groups-- for the sake of humanity.

How depressing... the RC5 56-bit encryption cracking effort ended a couple of days ago, when a Pentium Pro 200 running Windows NT Workstation found the right key and decoded the message, "It's time to move to a longer key length." If you're unfamiliar with this effort, you might want to read about it here.

Not that Macs didn't do their share; on the contrary, Macs appear to have checked more keys than any other platform out there. Unfortunately, though, that simple fact will likely be lost on the computing public at large, who may only hear (or only remember) that it was a Wintel that happened to check the right key.

Mac users got two compensating factors, however. The first was the official press release reporting the end of the contest, in which the total computing power working on the project is described as equivalent to "14,685 Intel Pentium Pro 200 processors [or] 13,362 Motorola PowerPC 604e/200 processors," clearly indicating that a 200 MHz 604e is faster than a 200 MHz Pentium Pro. (Not that you and we didn't already know that.) The second is the fact that the guy who won came forward and publicly expressed on Macintouch that he wished he had found the winning key on a Mac, since his team was running Macs, PCs, and unix boxes and he's a "Mac freak" at heart.

Well, it's time to gear up for the new 64-bit challenge. This time, we want a Mac to crack the code. Head over to the Bovine RC5 Mac Client page and download the software. (For you bleeding-edge developers running the Rhapsody developer release, there's even a Rhapsody version available!) Get it, run it, win it. And no adding in the spare Pentium you've got collecting dust in the corner-- wouldn't you feel stupid if it happens to crack the code?