We're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place here at AtAT. All false modesty aside, we're the best Macintosh-centric soap opera on the tube these days. (For those of you saying to yourselves, "But they're the only Mac soap opera on the air," yeah, well, what's your point?) And when you're king of the hill, others are always trying to knock you off. So why should we boost the ratings of pretenders to the throne by mentioning their sub-par efforts on our own superior show? Well, perhaps we're just so secure in the quality of our own show that we're not afraid of the competition. Or maybe reality occasionally infringes upon our self-delusional fantasy world and for a brief moment we can make the distinction between a real TV show and a wannabe web site. Probably the former, though.

At any rate, we've decided to point out that Ted Turner's own televisual adaption of the eternal struggle between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, "The Pirates of Silicon Valley," has been officially announced. According to Mac OS World, the made-for-cable movie follows Steve and Bill's excellent adventures from college in the 70's through to the tumultuous shenanigans of the present day. You can bet that your friendly AtAT staff will be tuning in, and not just to check out the competition; we're very interested to see ER star Noah Wyle's portrayal of Mr. Jobs, seeing as he's a Mac fan himself. (Once he even turned down an offer to do a voiceover for an IBM commercial due to his platform fidelity.) To a lesser extent we're also intrigued by the decision to cast Hughes-era geek royale Anthony Michael Hall as Mr. Gates, especially since the Hallster recently commented that playing Big Bill was the most challenging role of his career...

So for the real TV fans among you who actually plan your viewing schedule several months in advance, "Pirates" is due to premiere on TNT on Sunday, May 23rd. If that doesn't fit into your schedule, don't worry; as TNT is wont to do, the movie's already slotted to run seven or eight times over the course of the following two weeks, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding time to squeeze it in. Heck, you won't even have to miss an episode of AtAT if you're careful.