Still clawing at your own eyeballs in frenzied anticipation of the release of Mac OS X 10.3? Yeah, us too, and this has really got to stop soon-- the Visine bills alone are killing us. Here's hoping that the rumors of a mid- to late-October launch come to pass and we aren't reduced to incessant ocular self-mutilation straight through until New Year's; it'd really put a damper on the whole holiday thingy. (Unless, of course, anyone's got an eggnog recipe in which vitreous humor figures heavily.)

The good news, though, is that we don't have to wait for Panther to get all excited about a new version of Mac OS X; if you fired up Software Update last night, you no doubt noticed that 10.2.8 is now ready for download and your ensuing rapturous approval. We, of course, downloaded and installed the 38.9 MB update ASAP (well, as quickly as we could with seriously impaired vision, at any rate); after all, who could resist "enhanced functionality and improved reliability" for "Audio, Address Book, AppleScript, Bluetooth, Classic compatibility, Disk Copy, Disk Utility, Finder, Graphics, Help Viewer, iChat, Image Capture, IP Firewall, Kerberos, Mail, OpenGL, Print Center, Rendezvous, Safari, and Sherlock"? Exposé, Shmexposé; enhanced functionality in Image Capture is where it's at, Daddy-o!

And "updated security services," too? Well, that's just the icing on the cake. Christmas in September, boy howdy!

But wait, there's more: Mac OS X 10.2.8 also granted us a taste of that rarest of treats, the Jaguar kernel panic! Or, rather, installing it did-- once the update was downloaded, installed, and optimized, clicking the "restart" button dumped us unceremoniously into the "Let's Pretend Nothing's Wrong" screen which calmly instructs you to restart your Mac without ever actually clueing you in to the fact that behind that serene screen lies the flaming, twisted wreckage of your entire OS session. Heck, even the subsequent restart taking forty minutes just to get to the Desktop was a blessing, since it gave us some quiet time to really make some serious headway in the whole eye-clawing department.

To be honest, though, the very bestest thing about 10.2.8 is the little note in its System Requirements: "Not for G5 systems." Yes, folks, now there's something your beige G3 can do that those fancy-shmancy new aluminum powerhouses can't; they're stuck in the oh-how-last-week 10.2.7, while you get to tool along with 10.2.8 and all of the glory its enhanced-functionality version of Print Center can muster. Who's laughing now, Virginia Tech? Who's laughing now?!

Um... well, Virginia Tech is, for one-- as are a lot of G5 owners who didn't have the opportunity to fling themselves headlong into 10.2.8ville. Whereas we only experienced a kernel panic after installation, apparently some others have had more serious problems (lost network connections; unbootable iMacs; festering boils on the face, neck, and shoulders), and Mac Rumors reports that Apple has pulled the updater. Oopsie! We'll let you know if we find any further problems following our installation. Hmmm, we do feel kind of itchy...

So about that PowerBook G5 that Cap'n Steve hopes to foist upon us all before the end of next year: are you one of the many obsessive fans who didn't get a wink of sleep last night because you couldn't stop worrying about how Apple could possibly get around the cooling problem? After all, the G5 processor in its current incarnation kicks out enough heat to vulcanize a whole Goodyear plant; it only appears in the newest Power Macs, which have been expressly designed with mesh panels and four thermal zones and nine fans and squads of tiny genetically-altered penguins who live inside and raid your freezer at night for ice to build little igloos around the processor core. That's a lot of cooling technology to try to squeeze into a PowerBook. (The penguins, in particular, have a really strong union and demand reasonable amounts of head room.)

That's why, AppleInsider claims, Apple is said to be "experimenting with liquid cooling systems" in prototypes of next year's 1/1,100th-of-a-supercomputer-to-go; little pipes will send liquid past the processor to carry radiated heat to the outside of the enclosure. And if, like ours, your skeptical minds just filled with images of PowerBooks springing leaks and needing to be scolded like puppies off the paper, rest assured that IBM has reportedly had liquid-cooled ThinkPads available since the "late '90s," so apparently it can be done safely without keeping the laptop in diapers at all times. (Thank goodness; our Huggies budget has been stretched to the limit.)

Indeed, the tie-in with IBM's laptops is interesting, since Apple and IBM have collaborated on notebook design in the past-- on the oh-so-popular PowerBook 2400. And since IBM makes the polar-ice-cap-meltin' chip that's in such dire need of heavy cooling in the first place, why, the whole concept of an IBM-cooled, IBM-powered PowerBook isn't necessarily all that far afield. But whereas the 2400 was popular precisely because it was teeny-tiny (the keys on the keyboard were so gosh-darned cute!), AppleInsider states that the PowerBook G5 might be limited to a 17-inch model at first, because all that cooling apparatus takes up a fair amount of space. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, since people who need G5-class performance in a portable would likely spring for the Big Mama version anyway.

And niftiest of all, depending on how Apple implements the liquid cooling system (and what liquid it chooses to use), this could open the door for any of a number of useful and attractive secondary PowerBook G5 abilities. Anybody can make a laptop that'll fetch your email and run your spreadsheets, but only the PowerBook G5 can steam-press your slacks before that important business meeting! Or perhaps you'd prefer it to dispense a piping-hot cup of nutritious miso soup? Or spray scalding Tabasco sauce into the faces of your enemies? Why, the possibilities are endless!

Wow, we take back everything we've ever said about Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly! Well, except for that stuff we said about her name, which really is a pretty funny one-- be fair. And actually, now that we think about it, we should probably only take back just about half of what we've said, instead of the whole enchilada, what with pro-rating and all. Still, we're here to affirm that Judge Kollar-Kotelly is only slightly less than half as lame as we originally said she was. Good for her!

What the whoosis are we yammering about, you ask? Why, the longest-running Microsoft antitrust drama on the air, of course: "Redmond Justice"! Sure, in past episodes the feds rolled over like a prize chow-chow at the Westminster show and most of the states' attorneys general followed suit, but our own beloved Massachusetts still stands alone as the uncontested King of Stubbornia, refusing to let Redmond walk away with a flick on the earlobe and a peck on the cheek. (Go, Tom Reilly!)

And why such 47%-unbridled praise for Judge Kollar-Kotelly? Because according to CNET, she just ordered Microsoft to cough up $967,014 to pay for Massachusetts's legal fees. And while that's reportedly a little less than half of what Massachusetts had asked for, it still means that our state suddenly has access to almost a million extra badly-needed bucks to put toward vital social programs such as special-needs education and subsidized prescription drug benefits for senior citizens, whereas Microsoft will be forced to lower next month's budget for employee Cheez-Its by 4%. Now that's justice, baby!

Microsoft, reeling from the blow of losing all that baked-in cheesy goodness, still managed to appear civil in the face of overwhelming snack food adversity; said a spokesperson, "Our priority is to move past this case and to build more constructive relationships with state governments." AtAT sources report that Microsoft plans to recoup its loss in pay-per-incident service fees by introducing six more bugs into the next release of Windows; meanwhile, rumors of impropriety amid eyewitness reports of several Keebler trucks pulling up to Attorney General Reilly's house in the middle of the night are as yet unsubstantiated.