Boy, are our faces red! We spent all that time yesterday trying to debunk the reports that Apple had hidden "1.26.04" in its digitally-altered 1984 commercial as a clever hint that the company would unveil something as momentous as the original Macintosh on that date, and what happened? As usual, Apple proved us wrong. Because before the day was out, Mac users were treated to not one, but two product introductions of earth-shattering impact. Nothing so prosaic as new G5s or a 20th Birthday iMac Special Edition for us, no sir. Instead, as faithful viewer hjcho revealed to us, January 26th, 2004, will forevermore be remembered as The Day That Brought Us AirPort Software 3.3 and Security Update 2004-1-26. (Please forgive any typos that may slip through today-- we're understandably still shaking from the adrenaline rush.)

By now you've surely devoured every scrap of available information on these two incredible birthday gifts, but just in case you fainted dead away from sheer joy after the news broke, here's what we know: AirPort Software 3.3 updates AirPort Extreme base stations to firmware version 5.3 (and really, who wouldn't want that?) and also "provides support for the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) specification for the AirPort Extreme base station and AirPort Extreme and AirPort clients." (We're far too giddy with excitement to bother looking up what WPA actually is, but it has the words "Protected Access" in it, so we're sure that it's the greatest invention since ridgy potato chips.) AirPort 3.3 also offers "significant benefits... from the standpoint of wireless printer sharing, easy base station administration, and many options for managing the range of your wireless network." Why, we've died and gone to heaven!

Meanwhile, as the cherry on top of the proverbial sundae, Security Update 2004-01-26 provides "several security enhancements" by updating "Apache 1.3, Classic, Mail, Safari, and Windows File Sharing." And that's not all: if you order now, it even includes all the functionality of Security Update 2003-12-19 at no additional cost! Heaven, shmeaven; we've died and gone straight to Heaven's Chuck E. Cheese-- where all the games are free, the pizza flows like running water, and the guy in the big rat costume doesn't reek of Night Train and the sour musk of despair.

Unbelievably, though, not all Mac fans were swooning over yesterday's security patch and wireless software enhancements, and some have gone so far as to suggest that the new entries popping up in their Software Update panels just aren't a fitting celebration of the Macintosh platform's two decades of innovation and panache. Clearly some people are never satisfied. Why, we bet that even if Apple had released AirPort Software 3.3, Security Update 2004-01-26, and another mind-bendingly incredible update-- for instance, AppleWorks 6.2.8-- these bellyachers would still complain that Apple had given short shrift to the Mac's big 2-0. But hey, we're not going to let them step on our buzz, are we? Because we've got improved wireless printer sharing to play with! Thanks, Apple-- and happy birthday, Macintosh!

Say, speaking of security updates, did you happen to find anything interesting in your inbox this morning? Like, say, oh, we don't know... eleven kajillion email messages with a subject of "hi" or "Server Report" or something similarly lame, all carrying suspicious-looking attachments? 'Cause boy howdy, we sure did. We couldn't tell you how many we received, because we've been up all night and deleting as we go, but we've got Mail set to fetch new messages every five minutes, and in one check it pulled in twenty of the lil' buggers. So we figure it's a safe bet that we're well into three digits by now, and that's just overnight. It's fun for the whole family!

So just what the fuzzy is going on, you ask? Aw, c'mon, take a wild running stab at a guess. Here's a hint: it begins with a "v," it rhymes with "Cyrus," and it's one more thing Microsoft will never have to pay for. Yes, folks, you guessed it: we're seeing the fallout from the latest mass-mailing virus (well, worm, technically, but virus sounds so much scarier) to hit the 'net. Faithful viewer Mike Flender forwarded us the facts, all chock-full of detaily goodness. Apparently this one's going by the name "Novarg" or "Mydoom," depending on which antivirus software company you listen to, and while it's apparently not terribly dangerous, it does appear to be spreading pretty fast; we certainly didn't get anywhere near this much mail when previous mass-mailing worms did their crazy rampage thing.

Reportedly this worm opens a back door on infected systems, allowing scary ne'er-do-wells access to the system's network resources and the "ability to download and execute arbitrary files." Also, starting on February 1st, infected machines will automatically bombard SCO's web site with traffic in a denial-of-service attack, which will really cripple SCO in a big way, since it always does a ton of 'net business on Super Bowl Sunday. (Sheesh, you'd think these virus writers would check a TV Guide before coding in a DoS date.) Most noticeably, though, it scans the systems it infects for email addresses and then sends itself to everyone it can find; we just got three more of the infected messages in our last five-minutely mail check. It's everywhere, we tell you, and if nothing else it's probably going to clog email systems something fierce.

Needless to say (but we'll say it anyway), Macs can't be infected by Novarg/Mydoom, so you needn't worry about your iBook sending out mass worm mail or being commandeered remotely by spooky evil hacker types or automatically attacking SCO's servers during halftime of the Big Game. (Although we suppose you could replicate that last bit of behavior with a smidge of AppleScript and join in voluntarily, if you're a SCO-hater at heart.) If you're feeling left out, though, take solace in the fact that at least you'll get to share the pain by weeding out a ton of harmless-but-annoying worm messages until the Windows world gets its shots up to date. Why, it's the next best thing to being infected!

Who knew that supercomputers make New Year's Resolutions? Not us, we can tell you that much. We always figured that resolutions were strictly the domain of shiftless layabouts like ourselves, who delight in the sheer absurdity inherent in an empty promise of self-improvement that will almost certainly wind up broken even before Dick Clark's New Year's Eve stops Rockin'. "We resolve to broadcast AtAT episodes in a timely fashion." "We resolve to stop making cracks about Steve Ballmer's mutant sweat glands and apelike tendencies." "We resolve to compile Beat The Analysts stats within a week of the end of the contest and update Viewer Mail at least once a decade." Oh, the laughs we shared...

But, apparently, resolve they do-- supercomputers, that is. Faithful viewer bo notes that rumor has become reported fact: Virginia Tech will indeed replace the Power Mac G5s in its "Big Mac" cluster (they're officially calling it "X" these days, but we figure if we have to swipe a trademark, we'd rather steal one from McDonald's than from Billy Zoom and that Exene chick) with Xserves now that said 1U rack-friendly systems are all G5-ified and groovy. Why the switch? A Reuters report quotes supercluster superstar Srinidhi Varadarajan as noting that converting 1,100 Power Macs into Xserves "cuts the system's size down by a factor of three. The new system will take much less power and generate less heat and free up space." So, yeah; apparently "Big Mac"'s New Year's Resolution was to shed a few inches.

Or a few hundred thousand. "Big Mac" in its current Power Mac-based incarnation takes up a whopping 3,000 square feet (and when it sits around the house, it really sits around the house); after the Xserve swap-out it'll only use a third that. No, it still won't be able to squeeze into a size 5 dress, but we're still talking about a mucho impressive 67% size reduction, which is more than Jenny Craig can promise. And in addition to clearing some room for air hockey tables-- nerds need fun, too, you know-- Xserves ought to save the university some cash on kilowatt-hours in the long run, since it costs a lot less to cool a thousand square feet than to cool three thousand.

The upgrade will be complete by May, and reportedly a price hasn't been hashed out yet, so the rumor that Apple would let the university do an even-trade swap didn't pan out. (We didn't think that sounded like Apple.) Likewise, therefore Apple isn't taking the Power Macs back, and their fate is currently undetermined. "We're working on getting them very good homes," says Srinidhi. Say, does anyone have Srinidhi's home phone number? Because we'd be willing to take three or four of 'em off his hands...