You know, for a corporation embodying Pure Evil™ and bent on world domination by whatever wicked and dishonest methods it can manage to dredge up from the black, slimy depths of what may once have been its soul, Microsoft somehow still manages to come off about as competent at the whole "We're Going To Take Over The World By Any Means Necessary, Mwahahahahahaaaaa" gig as, say, Shemp from The Three Stooges after eating a couple of handfuls of lead paint chips. Case in point: surely by now you've heard this whole flap about a Microsoftian take on Apple's own Switch ads. If you somehow missed it (too busy recovering from swilling all that Columbus Day green beer, perhaps), here's the skinny: Microsoft posted to its web site the alleged testimony and alleged photograph of an alleged Mac-to-Windows switcher, in which said "Mac to PC Convert" detailed all the great reasons why she recently embraced the wonderful world of XP.

There's just one little thing wrong with that ad. Well, no, actually-- there are about six or seven big honkin' massively huge things wrong with that ad. The main one is that, instead of finding a real Mac-to-Windows switcher (yes, we're sure there must be at least a few out there who aren't on crack), Microsoft simply paid someone to lie about it. Oh, sure, the "switcher"'s name is conspicuously absent from the piece, but it didn't take long for Associated Press journalist Ted Bridis to track down the author's identity by-- surprise, surprise-- extracting hidden personal information from the accompanying Word document entreating other satisfied Mac-to-Wintel switchers (all three of them) to share their stories. (Thank heaven for Trustworthy Computing.) And thus we now know that the "switcher" is one Valerie Mallinson.

Ted, by the way, was apparently inspired to track down the "switcher"'s identity when eagle-eyed Slashdot readers such as faithful viewer Jason Wiley noticed that the posted image of the mysterious Ms. Mallinson was actually straight out of a PhotoDisc stock photo collection. So unless Ms. Mallinson is a freelance writer and a model, well, someone's being a little less than honest, here.

Then again, she's certainly doing something in addition to freelancing; did we mention that ol' Val isn't just a freelance writer, as she claims in her "Boy Howdy, XP Is Amazing" spiel, but works for Wes Rataushk & Associates, a PR firm which Microsoft has admitted to hiring for the ad? Interestingly enough, the end of Microsoft's "switch" ad features an "editor's note" saying that "now that we've successfully converted our writer to a Windows PC, we will be working on getting her to try a Pocket PC." Well, gee-- considering that faithful viewer Keith Isley noticed that Ms. Mallinson is credited on the Bicycle Africa web site as having been "a great help discussing solutions, getting equipment and finding resources" about the use of Windows CE devices-- yes, back when it was Windows CE-- something tells us that Microsoft won't have too much trouble.

Let's not even get into the fact that many of Ms. Mallinson's listed reasons why Windows is so much better than the Mac are brain-damaged to the point of farce. Actually, you know what? Yeah, let's get into it after all... heck, we've got coffee. See, when Val goes on and on about how Office is so much better than AppleWorks and Internet Explorer is so much better than Netscape, you really just want to give her a darn good shaking, since-- and one would think a former Mac user would know this sort of thing-- Office and Internet Explorer are kinda sorta both available for the Mac. In fact, IE is the only browser (well, short of Help Viewer) that ships on new Macs and with boxed copies of Mac OS X. Fer cryin' out Pete's sake, if she's so brick-stupid that she thinks the subjective superiority of Office and IE are somehow even remotely valid arguments for leaving the Mac platform, then maybe she is dumb enough to have ditched the Mac for Windows and liked it.

Anyway, the whole thing's been yet another big steaming pile of embarrassment for Microsoft, who has since pulled the ad. (When last we checked, it was still available in Google's cache, though; knock yourself out.) According to CNET, Microsoft "regrets" having posted the ad and that it was a "mistake in judgment." Mmmm, yeah... kinda like that "WE HAVE THE WAY OUT" anti-UNIX page they hosted on-- you guessed it-- UNIX. Or faking letters of support from dead people during the "Redmond Justice" brouhaha. Or faking videotaped evidence during that trial. Apparently "monopoly" means never having to say you're sorry-- or learn from your own bonehead mistakes.

Every so often we can't help thinking that maybe, just maybe, Apple really is serious about a slow push into the enterprise market. After all, Apple is cranking out stuff that big business should be drooling over, if it can get over its allergy to the Apple logo. First you've got Mac OS X Server, which is UNIX-based, serves up a whole mess of standards to just about any platform under the sun, and is far cheaper per client than Windows NT/2000/XP Server/whatever the heck they're calling it these days. Then there's the Xserve, a seriously sexy and reasonably-priced rack-mountable server on which to run it. Sheesh, what's next? A return to beige? A pink slip printer than can churn out 60 professional and personalized layoff notices per minute? A real, honest-to-goodness journaled file system?

Aw, bummer-- it's the journaling one. (Pity; the pink slip thing sounded neat.) Oh, sure, a journaled file system may not mean navel fuzz to you, us, and Johnny AppleWorks out there, but trust us when we say that the UNIX wonks and the big business IT trolls might just sit up and take notice. See, apparently journaled file systems continually log every little change to every little bit on every little disk, which allows for quicker rebuilding of data following a system failure. UNIX generally has it, Windows doesn't (at least, not fully), and the Mac will soon-- according to an eWEEK article pointed out by faithful viewer Rooser.

Reportedly, the upcoming 10.2.2 update includes technology code-named "Elvis" (thankyuhverruhmuch), which sticks a full-fledged journaling implementation right on top of HFS+, Mac OS X's primary native file system. And while Elvis will slow down system performance by ten to fifteen percent (apparently this is mid-'70s gettin'-pudgy Karate Elvis, not swivel-hipped Pre-Army Elvis), fear not-- it'll be disabled by default. But folks that want their systems scribbling down every teensy little thing they do can enable it via a quick trip to the command line, after which Mac OS X will grab a pen and start logging entries like "Dear Diary, today that dreamy Johnny S. smiled at me in the hallway while I was wearing my new pink sweater and /var/log/system.log grew by 83 bytes at 3:20 AM when a cron-scheduled backup started."

It's also worth noting that Elvis will be a real boon to those of you who find your new Macs to be just too darn fast. Simply wait for 10.2.2 to pop up in Software Update, install it, turn on journaling, and bickety-bam: instant 10-15% reduction in performance. Keep that in mind the next time you're lamenting that running Photoshop filters just isn't taking long enough to let you go for a cup of coffee and a danish. Or a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.

So, which is the better news: that IBM has finally released actual details about its long-rumored POWER4-based PowerPC desktop processor destined for use in new Macs next year, or that Steven the Dell Dude is finally getting the shaft? Personally, we're going for the former. Granted, we hate Steven with a fiery burning vomitous passion, and so his semi-retirement as reported by Reuters (many thanks to faithful viewer Tara Keezer for the tip) is plenty of reason for us to kick up our heels and celebrate Dell's choice to stuff Steven under the desk for a while. But our joy is cut short by the knowledge that Dell's "new, less dude-centric advertising campaign" features "a group of eager interns" and is nearly every bit as bad, in no small part because said "eager interns" are portrayed as empty-headed shmucks who apparently got their jobs without knowing that Dell sells computers via its web site. (You just have to love the message, though: "We hire total morons. Wanna buy a computer?")

So, IBM it is: faithful viewer Porsupah forwarded us an article in The Register which reports that, according to Big Blue's Peter Sandon yapping at the Microprocessor Forum, the official nom de chip of this non-Motorolan beauty is the PowerPC 970. It's a single-core 64-bit processor that can run 32-bit code without emulation and boasts two Altivec units while sucking down considerably less power than Intel's latest behemoths. "Conservative estimates" place the initially available chips at 1.4 to 1.8 GHz when they hit production in late 2003, which isn't going to wow anybody on raw clock speed, but the overall performance of these things might just turn a few heads.

More good stuff: according to a Wired story pointed out to us by faithful viewer mightyAdam, IBM's senior PowerPC architect claims that the 970 is designed for use in quad-processor Macs, "can certainly support eight-way" systems, and has a 42-bit address space-- allowing for the theoretical use of up to 4 terabytes of memory, i.e. over two thousand times more RAM than you can stuff into any currently shipping Mac. And by the time Apple ships a system that'll actually let you stick that much RAM in it, we bet you still won't be able to run Word and Excel simultaneously without massive disk swapping. But hey, we're still optimistic about this whole 970 thing, and if we never have to see the Dell Dude again, well, that's just icing on the cake.