Ouch, the Motorola woes continue to mount like cars in a highway pile-up. In January the company announced that its cell phone business wasn't doing so well, thus necessitating the trimming of 2500 jobs and the closing of a plant. Then a few weeks later Motorola admitted that its semiconductor business was flagging, too-- say hello to another 4000 pink slips. Last week came the news that Motorola might even post its first quarterly loss in years. So what's next in the company's ongoing string of bad news? Would you believe, forced vacations?

No, really! Faithful viewer Jack S. forwarded us an article in the Austin American-Statesman which reports that Motorola is telling "about half of its workers" in its semiconductor division that they have to take one week off this month, and another week sometime in April, May, or June. Woo-hoo, SPRING BREAK! Someone alert the co-ed naked chip-designing team that it's time to get rowdy!

According to Motorola spokesperson Ken Phillips, this so-called "austerity measure" represents a "significant savings" because "it takes vacation costs off the books," even though workers who have accrued paid vacation time will still get their paychecks. We don't pretend to understand how having half of your staff still collecting checks while out at the MTV Beach House jiggling in skimpy swimwear (instead of, say, designing microprocessors while jiggling in skimpy swimwear) constitutes a cost-cutting move, but then again, that's probably why we're not running a multibillion-dollar company-- failing or not. In any event, we're curious about just what might happen to the spring break dynamics at Daytona following a sudden influx of thousands of ready-to-party Motorola engineers. The mind reels.

That said, hopefully this forced vacation will come as a much-needed break for those Motorola designers who probably worked nonstop all last year to stuff the PowerPC G4 through its 500 MHz bottleneck. Now that Power Macs are actually shipping at clock speeds up to 733 MHz, it's finally time to let loose; we wish the beach-bound Moto elves a restful week chock-full of sun, sand, surf, and alcohol-inspired, borderline-illegal, tasteless public behavior. Go get 'em, dudes! San Dimas High School Football rules!