Welcome, one and all, to the phenomenon known as Pixel Flood. You've certainly noticed this sort of thing happening before; in the final week leading up to a Stevenote (especially one at which Fearless Leader is expected to announce new hardware), a flurry of badly overcompressed JPEGs saturates the 'net, each purporting to be some sort of smuggled spy photo or "artist's conception" of the genuine article. Sometimes they're authentic, sometimes they're not, and sometimes they're just downright laughable in their ineptitude. Personally, we never much mind to which category a given Pixel Flood image belongs, because hey, it's all still grist for the mill.

As far as we can make out, Pixel Flood officially kicked off sometime yesterday, when what appeared to be a scan of a creased and crumpled black and white printout of something that may or may not have been the Power Mac G5 started making the rounds. While it has since disappeared from its original server, a reduced version is still available over at Mac Rumors. If you didn't get a chance to see the picture at its original size, trust us-- you're not missing much, except for a screening job so dithered it looks like the artist overdosed on Zip-a-tone. Apparently we've moved past the traditional method of disguising a picture of "questionable origins" by compressing it all to hell; now it's all about screening, printing, and rescanning. Next we predict it'll all be about pudding smudges and burn marks.

Anyway, not terribly much later, faithful viewer WYSIWYG informed us that AppleInsider had posted a fresh installment in its new oeuvre of fictionalesquish pieces. This latest one features 1) an apparent "homage" to the Naked Mole Rat's inimitable style (which, to us, fell flat because the Gay Blade's style is... well, inimitable, and author Kasper Jade was also apparently unadvisably sober when he attempted the stunt), and 2) an artist's rendering of what the G5 might look like. Amazingly enough, said artist's rendering looked exactly like an Illustrator tracing of the aforementioned screen job before someone went all Lichtenstein on its ass. Coincidence? Hmmmm.

Meanwhile, faithful viewer The DerekCat also sent us winging our way over to this forum thread, which displays what the administrator claims to be a "leaked image of the new 970 desktop macintosh computer!" Now, we're not going to come right out and say that this one's an obvious fake, but we will say this: if this does turn out to be the new G5, then we'll finally know what Jonathan Ive spent his £25,000 prize money on: a whoooooole lotta crack. We're not going to get into a point-by-point analysis of why we think all the images so far are probably bogus, because it really just comes down to a gut-level feeling. These don't feel like Ive's designs. If we're wrong, hey, no big deal. We'll just have to learn to live with a vaguely hexagonal footprint...

Attention, Apple stockholders: if you've been purposely avoiding checking AAPL's share price because your psychiatrist informed you that avoiding stress is the only way to suppress those pesky homicidal outbreaks, we're here to tell you that you can stop averting your gaze. By close of the market today, AAPL was at $19.12-- up about 93 cents, or over 5%. Not bad, right? But wait, it gets better; earlier in the day it had gotten as high as $19.48, setting a new year high. So there's one fewer reason for you to run amok with a chainsaw dipped in rat poison.

Why the price surge, you ask? Well, according to Yahoo! Finance, Apple actually received an upgrade by one of them thar analysts-- Needham & Company, to be exact. Needham upped AAPL from "Hold" to "Buy" due to "the strength of accelerating iPod sales, a possible rebound in Power Mac sales beginning this fall [Can you say "G5," children? We knew you could], and the fact that AAPL is abandoning its long-standing strategy of confining its software to the Mac platform." We assume Needham's talking about the upcoming iTunes for Windows, so we get the point, but we're going to be pedantic for a second, anyway: hey Needham, if Apple made a practice of "confining its software to the Mac platform," then why's it got QuickTime for Windows? Huh? Huh?

It's worth noting that two of Needham's three reasons for upping AAPL appear to be music-related, which may quiet some of the worrywarts who felt that Apple's recent focus on digital music is merely a desperation play to distract the public from the fact that Apple's hardware was looking mighty slow next to the competition's. Note that we're not saying that it isn't a distraction-- just that if it is, it's working; otherwise Needham's upgrade would have been based on nothing but speculation about the 970 showing up sometime soon. Let's hear it for bread and circuses. (Mmmmmm... Bread...)

Whatever the rationale, Needham's new price target for AAPL is $23 per share, which gives us all something to look forward to. Keep that chainsaw in good working condition, though, because all it takes is a downgrade from some other analyst who doesn't like what Steve says this Monday to send the stock drifting lower again. If that happens, though, at least you'll know whom you should eviscerate, so it's a win-win situation! Road trip to NYC!

Lightweights! All of 'em, lightweights! Remember that whole "Redmond Justice" fracas, in which, over the course of several years and several million taxpayer dollars, Microsoft was proven by an overwhelming preponderance of evidence to have willfully and illegally abused its monopoly position? Remember how, even after having lost on appeal, Microsoft's proposed settlement describes a "remedy" tantamount to a quick flick on the earlobe and a free lollipop? Remember how, after the changing of the guard in Washington a couple of years back, the new administration's Department of Justice rolled over so fast it caused a measurable seismic disturbance? And remember how only nine holdout states refused to sign the settlement, pushing for a remedy that might actually, you know, remedy something?

Well, those nine have been dropping like flies (as Microsoft offers to reimburse their court costs), and now another one bites the dust. As of last month, only West Virginia and AtAT's own home state of Massachusetts were still fighting the good fight by appealing the judge's decision to accept Microsoft's proposed settlement, and now faithful viewer NavyGuy tells us that West Virginia has just caved; the Boston Globe reports that the Attorney General Darrell McGraw Jr. is "abandoning further appeals" due to a "broader settlement" that also resolves antitrust and class action suits filed against the company in West Virginia. Which means that our own Attorney General Thomas Reilly is the last man standing in the fight to make things right.

"Nothing has changed," says Reilly's spokesperson. "Massachusetts remains committed to this appeal and will see it through. We have always known that this would not be an easy path, but a necessary one to hold Microsoft accountable for its anticompetitive behavior and restore consumer choice and competition in the marketplace." Reilly himself then added, "Screw the rest of you wussified Attorneys General; go slink off with your tails between your legs and count your dirty money while a real man takes care of those dastardly nogoodniks in Redmond! For I am REILLY! ALL BOW BEFORE ME!"

It should be noted that comments attributed to Reilly himself come courtesy of AtAT sources, and are therefore somewhat unreliable.

AtAT sources also report that Reilly is holding out for a remedy that includes free hits-- two hard ones on the arm each, to be delivered by Reilly himself to every single Microsoft employee, past, present, and future. We hear he's also pushing for a shot to give Bill Gates an atomic wedgie, while his original demand to strap Steve Ballmer down and give him a pinkbelly is being revised after the discover that Ballmer's belly is, in actuality, already pink. Very pink. It's pretty gross, actually.