Hey, kids-- it's Friday the 13th! Quick, everyone put on a hockey mask and grab something sharp! (Oooh, slashy.) Yes, today's the day when everyone has a little Jason Voorhees inside just itching to get out, so celebrate one of the longest-running and most ludicrous (Seriously, did you see Jason X? Puh-lease) horror franchises in history by pretending to eviscerate someone you love.

Note that we said pretend. It's a bad time to go psycho on your loved ones for real, especially since tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Geez, who stuck those two days back-to-back, hmmm? Hallmark must not be pleased.

Anyway, the horror flick Mac fans really should be concentrating on today isn't Friday the 13th Part Whatever, but rather An American Werewolf in London-- or an American something in London, at any rate. Faithful viewer Simon Lepik-Wookey kicked us a Times Online article which reveals a scenario that's anything but horrific: you know how Apple's retail stores finally made the jump overseas last year with the flagship store in Tokyo? Well, apparently Apple is finally ready to unleash some retaily goodness on the British, because the company has reportedly made a deal for 20,000 square feet on Regent Street in London, where it'll establish yet another "giant flagship store" with the multiple stories and the glass staircases and all that other happy stuff.

And even over three thousand miles away, we can hear the question on the lips of all Mac-using Brits: "When?" Well, that's the good news; whereas Apple took several years to open its flagship stores in Chicago and New York, the Times reports that the London location "is expected to open in time for Christmas." That must come as a breath of fresh air for UK-based Apple fans who have been waiting forever and a fortnight for a European iTunes Music Store. (Then again, we notice that the Times didn't say which Christmas, so maybe you shouldn't get your hopes up just yet.)

So whaddayathink, people? Remember, looking strictly at the evidence, Apple has traditionally been pretty hostile to the UK, and the UK has recently gotten a bit hostile right back. So what's with the super-posh London store all of a sudden, and why the big rush to get it up and running? Is Steve just bucking for a knighthood? Maybe the news that Bill Gates will soon be a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire really got on Steve's nerves. Personally, though, we harbor our own suspicions about the whole Gates-getting-knighted thing; we can't help wondering whether the purpose of the Queen's invitation for Bill to kneel before her while she taps a sword on his shoulders was made just to get his neck in the vicinity of a length of razor-sharp steel. We keep picturing the blade hovering over his shoulder, the Queen saying "I've reinstalled XP one too many times, William!" and when Bill glances up, he sees she's wearing a hockey mask, there's a swishing noise... and then everything is darkness. We guess we'll know for sure when a Google News search for "queen decapitates gates" pulls up a nonzero result.

Memo to Steve: if you do receive an invitation to knighthood, it may not be a thank-you gesture for this London store you're building. Wear a chainmail turtleneck to the ceremony just in case.

Speaking of Friday the 13th, word has it that before the date became associated with a nigh-unstoppable supernatural killing force with a penchant for protective sportswear and introducing wayward camp counselors to the business end of a machete, it was more commonly associated with the phenomenon of bad luck. How appropriate, then, that at least one industry pundit thinks that Intel and AMD must have broken a whole lotta mirrors recently. The message we're getting is that if those companies weren't scared of the G5 before, they sure oughta be shaking in their boots when the next version officially debuts next week, because it's definitely bad luck-- and bad news-- for its competitors.

Faithful viewer Erebus sent us over to an article at The Register, which reports that IBM's PowerPC 970FX (the 90-nanometer successor to the chips in Apple's current Power Mac lineup, destined to ship in those new Xserves any day now) has just scored the "Microprocessor Report Analysts' Choice Award for Best Desktop Processor." Neat trick for a chip that isn't even expected to be introduced until the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Conference next week. But then again, the 970FX is no ordinary chip and deserves special dispensation: according to The Reg, Microprocessor Report's Peter Glaskowsky seems to think that "Intel and AMD had better watch out."

Why? Well, power consumption, for one thing: the original G5 processor (the 130-nanometer 970) running at 1.8 GHz chews up 51 watts, while the new 970FX running at 2.0 GHz only sucks down 24.5 watts. That bodes well for eventually squeezing one into a PowerBook, but more importantly from a chip race perspective, it gives the 970FX room to grow into much faster clock speeds without catching fire and vaporizing all matter in a twenty-foot radius: "The 970FX should yield well at 2.5 GHz, up from the 2 GHz speed of the 970... this 25 percent increase in clock rate will not soon be matched by Intel or AMD." Moreover, Glaskowsky thinks that Steve's original promise for the G5 to hit 3.0 GHz this summer is "aggressive" but "achievable," and "at 3 GHz, the 970FX should outrun the chips we expect from AMD and Intel in the same time frame."

So, low power consumption, high clock speed, and world-beating performance... is there anything else about the 970FX to gush about? Well, yes: cost. The 970FX is reportedly teeny-tiny, and as such, Big Blue can stamp a ton of 'em out of a single wafer-- more than the number of 90-nanometer "Prescott" chips Intel can punch out at once. That translates into a "large cost advantage" for IBM, which might someday translate into cheaper Power Macs or, more likely, higher margins for Apple. (Oh, don't act so shocked. It's the way of our world and you know it. That operating system you love so much costs money to develop, you know, and someone has to pay for Steve's increasingly expensive pudding habit.)

So we're looking at PowerPC processors winning chip-of-the-year awards, costing less than x86s, and (theoretically) outperforming them, too. It's a truly confusing time to be alive, but hey, we'll take it. We can hardly wait to see how a dual 2.5 GHz 970FX stacks up against Intel's and AMD's finest in independent testing later in the year. Go, Speed Racer, go!

And while we're on the subject of bad luck, howzabout that Windows source code leak, huh? In case you hadn't heard, as of Thursday night, it's official: according to an Associated Press article, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that some of the source to Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 had somehow been "illegally made available on the Internet." How much of the source? They don't know. When did it happen? They can't say. How many people might have gotten hold of it? They have no idea. Oh, and the biggie: How did it happen? Well, uh, they don't know that either. Whoops!

So what does this leak mean? Well, maybe nothing, but some people surmise that access to the source code might give virus authors just the sort of information they need to take their worms to the next level. And if software developers get a hold of it, Microsoft may lose its biggest competitive edge in the applications space, i.e. being the only company with a map of the island, so to speak. (Remember during "Redmond Justice" when forcing Microsoft to open up parts of its source code was considered as a partial remedy? Well, this is why.) The thing is, there are so few details available about how much code leaked out and what part of the OS it relates to, so as of yet no one's all that certain about what the consequences might be.

Of course, as you can see, that isn't preventing anyone from guessing authoritatively. Look, here's our ol' pal Rob Enderle doing his sound-bite-from-the-analyst thing again: "It seems unlikely this is going to create a material, significant security problem. It's more embarrassing than anything else because it makes it look like Microsoft can't control its code." Makes it look like Microsoft can't control its code? Sheesh, we figured that Windows itself had already taken care of that. As for whether or not the leak will create more virus havoc, maybe Rob's right, and maybe he's not. We don't know. But we will say this on the "embarrassing" front: anyone who isn't embarrassed to be seen in public with a bright red Ferrari laptop that emits digitized "vroom vroom" noises probably has a really skewed perspective on what's embarrassing and what's not. 'Nuff said.

And then on top of the whole source code thing, faithful viewer scubus notes that Microsoft is also in some danger of losing its "Windows" trademark. If you follow this kind of stuff religiously, you may already have been aware of Microsoft's lawsuit against Lindows.com Inc., a Linux-plus-GUI company that's looking to provide x86 users with an alternative to that Redmond stuff whose code has just been plastered all over the 'net. Microsoft claimed that "Lindows" was too close to its own trademark "Windows" and, since there weren't any Canadian high school kids to pick on that week, promptly made with the suing. (Geez, if anyone should sue Lindows, it's Apple; just look at the uglification number Lindows did to the Apple.com navigational 3D Tabs 'n' Shadows™ interface.)

Here's the thing, though: Lindows countersued, claiming that the "Windows" trademark was invalid because it was a generic term for the GUI elements the software provided. And a couple of days ago InfoWorld reported that a U.S. district court plans to tell the jury to think long and hard about whether "windows" was a generic term before Microsoft released version 1.0 of its product in November of 1985. Um... someone remind that jury about the significance of January 24th, 1984 and point out that, yes, Macs have always had those rectangular thingies with the scroll bars and titles and little pictures to click, and users had been calling them "windows" long before Microsoft ever kludged a similar interface on top of DOS. Sounds pretty open and shut to us.

So let's summarize, here; Microsoft's competitors may have a new tactical competitive weapon, Windows may have just gotten a lot less secure (go figure!), and on top of that, there's a slim chance that Microsoft will have to change the product's name if it wants any sort of trademark protection. Man, did someone just chuck black cats in front of Bill Gates all week, or what?