It's never nice to kick off a weekend with bad news, but sometimes it's unavoidable: faithful viewer Yoshiki notes an Associated Press article which claims that Steven the Dell Dude is not being canned, as has been widely reported recently-- at least, that's what the dude's agent says. "Dell loves him and he loves Dell," quoth Bonnie Schumofsky, who also claims that "a very high authority" swore to her that Steven's job is secure. Of course, it's not like an agent is necessarily going to be a paragon of unbiased and objective fact, but truth be told, we believe the woman... mostly because deep down we know in our gut that Evil Incarnate can never be destroyed. (What, you're telling us that this silhouette of Steven on Dell's site isn't the spitting image of Satan?)

But really, it's okay, because faithful viewer The Professor tempered things a bit by calling our attention to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald which addresses an official Microsoft response to that whole fake switcher ad hubbub. It seems that Microsoft CEO Steve "I Have A Penchant For Running Around And Hollering Like My Ass Is On Fire" Ballmer publicly announced that his company "may consider sanctions" against Valerie Mallinson, the PR consultant who wrote the piece posing as an anonymous freelance writer who had ditched the Mac because Windows XP was just so gosh-darned wonderful. Actually, what Ballmer said was that "some marketing person did something that was not entirely straightforward" and that "if that's right, [he] will certainly castigate the offender." (And before you write in asking how Ballmer plans to castigate a woman, please... look it up.)

That's not the good bit, though. The good bit, the really excellently nifty bit, is where Stevie B. announces that in order to get the public to take this whole Trustworthy Computing initiative seriously, "it may be necessary to 'weed out' employees who did not live up to Microsoft's code of behavior." Pardon us while we guffaw into our soy milk. Microsoft has a "code of behavior"? Now that's something we'd just love to look over, if only to see how someone formalizes setting the ethics bar two thousand feet below sea level. "Rule 34: No pillaging and burning of villages is to occur during normal office hours." "Rule 76: Human sacrifice and the subsequent eating of the flesh will not be tolerated on company grounds unless the board of directors is invited to participate." Whom, exactly, is Microsoft going to "weed out" for violating this legendary code of behavior, three cannibal serial rapists from marketing and the guy in tech support who's channeling the ghost of Hitler?