Finally, a reason not to hate Mondays! Or, at least, a reason not to hate one particular Monday-- that Monday being January 7th, 2002. For as faithful viewer akuma informs us, according to an Apple/IDG press release that just made the rounds this morning, that hallowed date has officially been designated as Stevenote Day. Yes, come nine o'clock that January morn, His Steveness will once again address the Mac faithful and show us wondrous things that will free our minds even as they lighten our wallets. Mark your calendars and prepare to go deep into debt.

We know what you're thinking: what's with the move to Monday morning? The keynote has always been on the first day of the Expo itself, which, this time around, falls on Tuesday the 8th. We're positive this keynote originally had a Tuesday time slot, and the Expo site plainly refers to the new schedule as an "Important Date Change," so we weren't imagining things. Indeed, we wouldn't be surprised to hear that some of you who planned to fly in Monday night are going to have to incur hefty fees to change your travel plans in order to catch the keynote now. (Our hearts go out to you-- or they would, if we weren't stuck on the other coast during the festivities and resigned to renting a cozy little apartment in Webcastville.)

So does Steve just have a chemical peel scheduled for Tuesday morning that he simply can't cancel, or is there something more to this unusual bit of calendar shuffling? We can't help thinking that this might have been a logistical decision prompted by Steve's love of surprises. Usually Apple has to enact some pretty elaborate security measures while setting up its Expo booths, because the new gear has to remain secret under pain of death until Steve spills the beans during the keynote. But now that the keynote is taking place a full day before the show floor opens, Apple can keep everything safely under wraps until Steve makes his announcements, and then set up its booths without worrying about black-clad rumormongers with spy cameras and rappelling equipment sneaking in and scooping the intro. Smart, huh?

Note that "this is the first time in the 18-year history of Macworld Conference & Expo that the Keynote will take place the day before the exhibit floor opens." That might simply mean that the security benefits of such a move just never occurred to Apple before now-- but it might also mean that Apple has so much earth-shatteringly cool stuff to unveil this time around it can't possibly hope to keep it all from prying eyes without moving the keynote a day earlier. (The fact that the keynote is suddenly an hour longer than before may be a clue, too.) Whether or not you think this sudden date change hints at a keynote overflowing with LCD iMacs, G5 Power Macs, Apple-branded handhelds, and a Disney buyout or two, "Apple and IDG World Expo promises it will be well worth attending." C'mon, what more assurance could you possibly need?

While it's an established fact that Mike Dell tries to copy Steve Jobs's every move with a zeal attributable only to some form of serious chemical imbalance, the man isn't exactly Mr. Attention-To-Detail (as a passing examination of the fit and finish of Dell's products will likely attest). Accordingly, it's only natural when Mike misses a move every once in a while; nobody's perfect. It's just a bummer for Mike that forgetting to ape an Apple action occasionally leads to a court case and a potential loss of several million dollars. Who knew that screwing up at Follow-The-Leader could be so expensive?

Here's the thing: faithful viewer David Doyle forwarded us a Reuters article which reveals that Dell is being sued by six companies (including such bigwigs as Sony and Mitsubishi) for patent infringement. Apparently this all centers around MPEG-2, the compression method used in DVD video creation and playback, and which can't be done legally without licensing some 380 patents held by MPEG LA, a "limited liability company" comprised of the six plaintiffs "together with Columbia University and the City of New York." Dell isn't a licensee, but ships computers capable of DVD video playback anyway, which the plaintiffs allege is a big no-no. They're reportedly seeking "an award of unspecified damages," which AtAT sources are placing roughly in the neighborhood of "eighty kajillion dollars." Ouch! Imagine that on the quarterly balance sheet...

So how does this all come back to a slip-up in Mike's little obsession with All Things Steve? Well, apparently there are 330 entities licensing the MPEG-2 patent portfolio-- and one of them is none other than Apple Computer Inc. If only Mike hadn't missed that one little detail, he could have done the usual copycat thing and paid to use the MPEG-2 patents, too, and avoided this whole sorry mess. It's tragic, we know, but look at it this way: it's not like Apple hasn't been sued for patent infringement, too, so at least from that perspective, this misstep could still be interpreted as Dell following in Apple's footsteps. We imagine that makes Mike feel at least a little better about the whole thing.

Rumormongers, head for the hills-- Apple's on the warpath! At least, that's our gut feeling given the way that a couple of the more visible Mac rumor outlets have suddenly and mysteriously vanished from the face of the 'net. Yesterday we touched on the unexplained disappearance of Mac OS Rumors and posited that perhaps the universe was simply keeping things balanced given the return of AppleInsider after a seven-month-long unannounced hiatus. There's just one little problem with that theory: faithful viewer Adrian just tipped us off to the fact that AppleInsider is now also missing in action. In light of this somewhat ominous development, we strongly recommend that if you engage in LCD iMac speculation around the water cooler, you not drink the water itself without checking it for cyanide first.

Actually, we need to amend that; while it was definitely down for the past several hours, we notice that AppleInsider just sprang back to life. Evidently one member of the AI team managed to survive this morning's ninja attack, drag his broken and bleeding body over to the server, and pop the plug back into the wall before finally expiring in a twitching heap. In any case, a multi-hour outage for AI just weeks before a day-earlier, hour-longer Stevenote (plus the fact that Mac OS Rumors is still pumping out dead air) still might imply to the more paranoid among you that someone or something is doing its best to keep the rumors sites out of commission.

So who's next? Think Secret? MacRumors? Or possibly even the newest kid on the rumor block, Crazy Apple Rumors Site? Why do we get the feeling that the Naked Mole Rat will soon be fished out of the East River and Anne Onymous will accidentally fall out of a window onto an exploding bomb and get hit by a car? Surely no dirt-disher is safe from the scary pokings of whatever diabolical entity seeks to quell all pre-Expo speculation. The moral of the story, kiddies, is twofold: until the Expo, keep your heads down the next time you start whispering about the G5; and just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't all out to get you. Now excuse us, as we're off to get some radical elective plastic surgery...