This is the way that rumors get started-- and, of course, we're pretty darn excited about the whole prospect. Longtime viewers will recognize the "Apple is about to be bought out by X" plot device to be a staple of our little soap opera; whether it's the classic Disney-Apple merger, or fervent whispers about a purchase by Sun or Oracle, or even the most recent "Sony takeover" variation, nothing spells Apple like a nice, juicy buyout story. So imagine our glee when faithful viewer Kent Love pointed us squarely at an article over at MSNBC about how AOL should consider laying out a few billion for One Infinite Loop and everything contained therein.

According to the author, the reasons for such a purchase are plentiful: with a market cap of under $7 billion, Apple is "cheap" (hey!) to a media conglomerate now worth about seventeen times that amount; Apple has QuickTime, which is a natural match for AOL's massive online user base and its newly-acquired arsenal of Time Warner music and video content; and Apple makes the iMac, a consumer device that excels at simple Internet access and digital media delivery, and which could represent just the "media center" system AOL needs to send Microsoft running for cover. From our perspective, we only need one reason to consider this a nifty scenario: it's dripping with even more drama than the pilot for Fox's upcoming "Who Wants To Marry The Paradise Island Survivor's Million Most Explosive Home Police Videos?"

Think about it for a second. As soon as your brain processed the basic concept of AOL owning and controlling Apple, didn't your body trigger the same kind of primal fear response that you might expect if you'd just been dipped in Open Pit barbecue sauce and tossed in front of three starving tigers? You've seen what Netscape has been cranking out since it got swallowed by Case's Beast; just imagine what AOL would do to Apple's products. Do we really want our Macs' startup chimes replaced by the sound of that guy saying "Welcome! You've got an iMac!"? Scary stuff, indeed-- which is, of course, great for the ratings. So as long as it never really comes to pass, we say bring on the buyout rumors and keep 'em coming.

There's just one problem, of course, which is that the article takes pains to clarify that it is not reporting that AOL and Apple are actually considering any such deal-- the piece is simply an examination of why such a merger might be in AOL's best interests. It even goes so far as to state that a deal like that could never happen, at least not under the Second Jobs Dynasty. So what we're counting on is the infinitesimally short attention span of the average 'net surfer to miss all that, and instead glom onto nothing but the "AOL buying Apple" factoid, which will then be disseminated across the webscape like an unstoppable mutant virus. Hey, we can dream, can't we?

Believe it or not, reading through vast amounts of text about Christian prophecy and how the end of the world is nigh really isn't our idea of a fun afternoon. Thank the deity of your choice, then, for our browser's "Find" feature and faithful viewer Matthew Guerrieri, because between the two of them, we were able to locate an interesting bit of Macdom in the "year in review" over at Prophecy Central. Apparently Apple scored a supporting role in the proof that the Second Coming is soon upon us. Hey, you can't buy better advertising than that!

Yes, if you load the page in question and search for the word "Cube," you'll discover a reference to how "personal computers have reached the 'supercomputer' mark with the advent of Apple Computer's Power Mac G4 Cube-- over 1 billion calculations per second-- all in an 8-inch cube." This is given as proof of the "geometric growth of computing power," which in turn supports the biblical prophecy of "outstanding progress in technology, leading to world-wide electronic commerce and the mark of the Beast." Yes, people, you heard it here first: evidently the mark of the Beast has a cute little stem and a bite taken out of it. You always wondered about that whole "forbidden fruit" connection, didn't you?

Now, never mind that while the Cube did indeed appear in the year 2000, the Power Mac G4 actually brought gigaflop/supercomputer performance to the personal computer realm a whole year before. You should probably also ignore the fact that "geometric growth of computing power" has been happening for at least fifty or sixty years, now, and certainly isn't specific to the year 2000. Once you've blocked out those pesky inconsistencies, it becomes clear that, yes, the year 2000 was chock-full of prophesies coming true and heralding the advent of the imminent apocalypse-- and our own beloved Apple scored a starring role. Oh, we're so proud! Granted, Steve Jobs apparently wasn't satanic enough to rate his own "false Christ" page like Bill Gates was, but hey, it's a start.

Just when you thought the "Redmond Justice" trial had completely run out of steam, along comes news other than the usual dry-as-toast info about court filings and response briefs and other similar non-thrilling appeals dross. Personally, ever since Microsoft got slapped with the guilty verdict, we've found the show to have thundered downhill faster than after David and Maddy slept together on "Moonlighting." (Some shows rely on sexual tension; "Redmond Justice" needed the impending verdict to hold it together.) Now, though, it seems as though the writers are hoping to inject a little much-needed excitement by having the Appeals Court make some overtly pro-Microsoft noises.

As we all know, Microsoft has been whining about what it considers to be Judge Jackson's overt anti-Redmond bias since day one; imagine, the nerve of that guy, treating the company as if it broke the law or something! (After all, just because a defendant is caught faking evidence three times during one trial, that's no reason to be mean.) Anyway, Microsoft's most recent mantra regarding Jackson's bias involves interviews he granted to the press, in which he allegedly discussed the case improperly before the trial was over, thus demonstrating his ingrained bias against the defendant. Microsoft has been going on and on about this to anyone who will listen, and about a zillion people who won't.

But what's this? It turns out that the Appeals Court falls into the former category. According to The Register, that august body has just granted Microsoft a request it never even actually made: a "30 minute session on Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's conduct of the trial, and his alleged mouthiness outside of the court." This comes just one week after Microsoft agreed to drop the whole issue of the judge's conduct and focus instead on the facts surrounding its crime, so it really is a gift. What this means is that Microsoft and the government actually get to stand up and argue in court over whether or not Judge Jackson's behavior was acceptable-- as opposed to whether or not Microsoft's behavior was acceptable. Will that be enough to revive this show from the critical list? We'll find out soon enough...