Following the recent Yalegate scandal,, we thought we'd point you to an interesting theory over at the Macintosh Conspiracy. Basically the author feels that by giving away Wintel machines to universities in the form of grants, Intel is actually helping Apple in the long run. This theory is based on the fact that while the Mac OS won't run on Intel iron, Rhapsody will, and so eventually, those Wintel boxes may end up being Intellitoshes.

It's a nice thought, but personally, we at AtAT feel that Microsoft has their fingers in the Intel "migration grant." Why? Because the request for proposals heavily stresses the use of Windows NT. So much so, in fact, that you can basically assume that any school that wins the grant is going to be running NT as a condition of their proposal. And while there may or may not be a specified time frame during which the equipment has to run NT, remember that this is a migration grant, and that no MIS department is thrilled about migrating a whole school to a new OS once, let alone twice.

So essentially, yes, Apple gets screwed. But it's not entirely unfair (or at least it's certainly not unheard of). Remember that Apple gained much of what foothold it has on the computer world by giving away machines to schools. Turnabout is fair play, but it sure ain't pretty.

The San Jose Mercury has a nice little article in which Microsoft tries once again to downplay the seriousness of yet another Internet Explorer bug.

The bug is related to MSIE 4.0's support of DHTML, and allows people to snoop around on the browser's hard disk. In fact, it even allows people to snoop around on other people's hard disks, if they're attached via the network. And while most people would consider the fact that some random guy could access their financial records and personal correspondence pretty freakin' serious, Microsoft says they disagree. Why? Well, first of all, the data can't be changed, only read. (We at AtAT feel this statement is equivalent to saying, "We're not going to burn your house down; we're just gonna stop in and watch the game while you're at work.") And secondly, not all files can be read-- only text files and graphic files. You know, the obscure stuff.

By the way, the bug doesn't appear to affect the Mac preview version of Explorer, and Microsoft probably has yet another patch available for affected users by the time you read this. But what really strikes us about this story is, nobody even cares anymore when they find another security hole in Explorer. It's like when you hear about strife in the Middle East-- yeah, it's tragic, but man, we've heard it all before. Give it a rest already.

Since it's Sunday and there's not much news to cover anyway, we've just gotta toot our own horn and point you to a short WIRED article called "A Mac Star Is Born As Another Burns Out," by Kaitlin Quistgaard, which they had listed on their front page. It chronicles the rise of AtAT and the demise of our late lamented comrade, MacInsider. (By the way, we notice that it's Sunday night, and MacOS Rumors is still down. Hmmm.) WIRED magazine called us a star! Howzabout that for some awesome publicity? I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Jobs...

(And to those of you who are tuning in for the first time as a result of having read the WIRED article, welcome!