Wouldja believe we were so busy on Wednesday, we actually missed the season finale of "Redmond Justice"? It's true! We knew, in the back of our collective consciousness, that Judge Jackson was expected to deliver his final ruling on Wednesday at 4:30 PM EDT, yet that crucial piece of scheduling info was pushed right out of our heads by a gazillion other, far less entertaining factoids-- like how it's well-nigh impossible to get a 6.3A/250V ceramic fuse from Radio Shack without committing acts of grievous bodily harm on the sales help. Anyway, it was about 8:30 before we realized what we'd missed. Luckily, there's no shortage of post-trial coverage, so we at least got to see the highlights. And so, after two years of some of the most thrilling courtroom drama ever to grace the airwaves, we arrive at Jackson's final ruling: breakup reorganization divestiture. Yep, Microsoft called down the thunder and Jackson delivered. Smackdown! Many thanks to faithful viewer Scott Pennington for being the first to pull our heads out of a Shack-inspired rampage and pointing us in the direction of Jackson's official ruling.

Now, in surfing around trying to get more details on just what was decided, AppleLinks led us to a very interesting Reuters article which describes all of the behavioral restrictions to which Microsoft is subject in 90 days. The company is not allowed to: punish PC manufacturers or software vendors for dealing with Microsoft's competitors; force higher pricing on Windows to licensees who won't "play ball"; hide APIs and Windows source code from applications developers to put them at a competitive disadvantage to Microsoft's own developers; break its software to make competitors' software stop working with it; require PC manufacturers to require the installation of other Microsoft products with Windows; make deals with "would-be competitors" to divide markets; and so forth. Sheesh! You may as well tell fish not to swim, birds not to fly, and Kevin Williamson not to write dialogue for fifteen-year-olds that makes them sound like thirty-something film school dropouts. Microsoft: the tiger that's required to change its stripes. All of them.

And this is all before the "divestiture." Maybe it's just us (and given that Microsoft's stock had risen in after-hours trading following the ruling, we're guessing it's not), but the reality of the situation hasn't quite sunk in yet. Microsoft also seems relatively calm in its vows to appeal; according to CNET, Bill Gates is so calm he's spouting off lame platitudes. "Today is the first day of the rest of this case"? Oh, please. At least we can agree with him on one point: "Perhaps I should have taken the opportunity to go [to court] and talk about this in person." Oh, man... we'd have gladly given up a major limb of Bill's choice to have been able to see him on the stand. Talk about entertainment potential. Perhaps during the appeal?

And what about that appeal? Well, Microsoft's chief mouthpiece Bill Neukom is already on it-- he's filing with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and requesting that Jackson's whole order be stayed. According to Neukom, he's going to the Circuit Court instead of directly to the Supreme Court because he feels "the higher court would find the case too complex to handle on a so-called fast-track basis." It has, of course, nothing to do with trying to draw this case out as long as possible, or the fact that the Circuit Court has proven to be particularly Microsoft-friendly in past antitrust tussles. Buckle up, folks, because Round Two's just about to begin, and it's going to be a knock-down, drag-out dust-up of epic proportions...

Is anyone else just a wee bit tired of waiting for Java to fulfill its promise? It's been what, five years now since we were first told of a glittering utopia in which developers could write their software once, and anyone could run it on any computer he or she chose. The reality, of course, has been less appealing-- particularly for Mac users, who have suffered woefully slothlike Java performance for much of the language's history. Recent builds of Apple's Mac OS Runtime for Java have helped alleviate the speed problems, but developers haven't exactly been cranking out Java apps by the truckload. Blame who you like-- Microsoft's transparent attempts to corrupt Java's "run-anywhere" potential is our favorite scapegoat-- but Java's taking longer than expected to reach that ideal of platform-independent applications.

But if you've pretty much ignored Java's influence in the past, as a Mac user it may be time to start paying some serious attention. Following last month's announcement that Mac OS X will ship with Java 2 support out-of-the-box, Uncle Steve himself made a walk-on appearance at this week's JavaOne conference at the familiar Moscone Center in San Francisco. Steve joined Sun CEO (and professional Microsoft-basher) Scott McNealy on stage to reiterate Apple's commitment to the Java architecture, and to announce a new age of cooperation between Apple and Sun regarding Java development. "We're here to say that we'll deliver the best Java environment in the world," said Steve, referring to the fact that when Mac OS X ships, it'll be the only "high-volume personal computer operating system" to include Java 2 support-- and Java applications on the Mac will inherit the full benefits of Aqua's new lickable interface.

With Microsoft busy fighting its "divestiture," we're more positive than ever before about Java's potential to change the way people write and use software. Then again, in the past our confidence in Java's success was approximately the same as our level of confidence in Cop Rock staying on the air, so that's not necessarily saying much. Still, those of you who once regarded Java as no more viable than Microsoft's antitrust defense arguments may want to keep an eye on developments over the course of the next year. There's potential there, people. Maybe.

Would we, the producers of this show, ever commit such a flagrant breach of professional responsibility as to commandeer this broadcast medium as a vehicle for a personal rant? To those of you who didn't answer "hell yes" without a moment's hesitation, we'd like to extend our warmest welcome-- you're obviously new here. Regular viewers are aware that AtAT's main production system, a PowerTower Pro named "Victoria," went belly-up last Friday and has yet to be resuscitated. When last we issued an update, we had tried replacing the motherboard battery, removing the level 2 cache, and holding down the motherboard reset button for longish periods of time-- all to no avail. The system still doesn't respond in the least to attempts to power it up. So our latest action was to take the advice of a couple of viewers who suggested carefully opening up the power supply and checking the fuse.

Well, as far as we can tell with an unfamiliar and ancient multimeter, the fuse did appear to be blown, so we set off to buy a replacement at Radio Shack. To make a very long and infuriating story short (our cardiologist has advised us not to dwell on this particular experience, for health reasons), we tried two different Radio Shack locations, neither of which had the fuse in stock, and neither of which was confident of being able to special-order the part in less than "five to ten business days." It was at this point that we decided to go to Micro Center and just buy a whole new power supply. (The fact that we were perfectly willing to spend, say, $60 on a new supply when a $1 fuse may have fixed the problem may give you some idea of how frustrating our Shack experience was. Whoops, gotta watch the pulse rate...)

Now this is where things get truly surreal. Micro Center, a vast warehouse of hardware and software beyond the dreams of geekery, had only three power supplies on the shelf. This is a store that's so huge and well-provisioned, it actually has a whole huge room just for Macs, peripherals, and software. It probably stocks three dozen different kinds of internal CD-R drives, but for some reason the power supply selection makes us think of the Mac software rack back in the Egghead brick-and-mortar days. Worse yet, only one of those three power supplies is an ATX model that will physically fit in the PowerTower Pro. And it vents out of the top instead of the sides or back-- meaning that, if we were to install in into our system, it'd likely burn out in a few hours anyway.

More than a tad annoyed, we decided to try our luck at that Hades of computer retail, CompUSA. If things were surreal before, this was the point at which they got truly Kafkaesque. After combing the whole store twice and not finding the power supplies, we took it upon ourselves to ask for help. This turned out to be a serious tactical blunder, and we're now increasingly convinced of two things: 1) the stereotypical male aversion to asking for directions is somehow tied into a gestalt eon-spanning memory of a poor CompUSA shopping experience, and 2) the average CompUSA employee is hand-picked to be as unhelpful as possible.

We tried a few experiments, such as standing near a group of idle saleshands while looking as lost as possible; as we expected, this elicited no reaction. Actively attracting the attention of one of them and asking where the power supplies were resulted in a twenty-second blank stare. Once the inquiry had finally travelled the length of this specimen's nervous system at the speed of sludge through a straw, he slowly led us to-- a wall full of UPS units. "No, not uninterruptible power supplies," we clarified. "Just power supplies. The kind you put in the computer itself." Twenty seconds later, he replied that he had no idea to what I was referring (actually, we believe the exact words were "Me no see power supply. Fire bad!") and sauntered off.

Fascinated, we tried a second salesperson. This one actually claimed that CompUSA doesn't carry power supplies-- a statement we consider equal in outrageousness to claiming that Starbucks doesn't sell coffee, but frankly, by this point we were too exhausted to argue. Holding grimly onto the knowledge that we could always order a power supply over the 'net, we shook our heads, marveled at Apple's unyielding attempts to engender a positive Mac-buying experience in such an unfriendly atmosphere (it must be like growing corn on the surface of Mars), and made our exit.

Anyway, we've since recovered from that little ordeal. We broke open a power supply from an old 7500 and found the exact fuse we needed, but alas, Victoria remains powerless. Our next step will be to order a suitable power supply from a vendor who offers next-day delivery and a decent return policy, just in case Victoria's problem turns out to be a dead motherboard after all. And we'll continue to count our blessings that when we have to deal with computer superstores, we're generally able to confine ourselves to the familiar trappings of the Mac sections. Who knew shopping for a power supply at retail could qualify as a thirteenth Herculean labor?