Since we've officially fallen into the sinkhole of anti-news known as the During Expo, Post-Stevenote phenomenon (DEPS) and the only stuff floating around on the Mac news sites consists of third-party software update announcements and new product press releases, we've decided to use what little time we have left in this episode to try to make amends to Steve Ballmer. If you tuned in yesterday, you'll recall that our pledge to lay off Microsoft's CEO-- since he had some kind and thoughtful words for Apple, you see-- lasted about as long as a kumquat squaring off against a steamroller. But we feel bad about that, and since then we've been meditating to focus our mental energies. Plus we drank a bunch of raw eggs (well, the equivalent amount of Ener-G Egg Replacer, anyway) and ran up and down a big flight of steps outside while wearing sweats and raising our fists over our heads in triumph as inspirational movie music played. We're ready to give this another shot.

By an astounding coincidence, faithful viewer americanuck just happened to forward us an article at The Inquirer, which shamefully derides Mr. Ballmer for his performance at Santa Clara's Churchill Club where he praised Apple for doing "good, innovative work." It seems that The Inquirer isn't buying Ballmer's claim that recent virus outbreaks and worm... er, outcrawls has "humbled" Microsoft "in some ways"-- because he reportedly went on to chide Microsoft's customers for not installing the thirty security patches that Microsoft releases each day. It seems that he made the claim that his "mother-in-law's computer wasn't bothered by worms and viruses because she had turned on a security switch in Windows XP," so clearly if a user gets smacked down by a worm, it's his own fault for not being even as technically savvy as Ballmer's wife's mama.

Then again, since we have very little actual background on Mrs. Ballmer's-wife's-mama, we probably shouldn't fall into the classic traps of ageism and sexism by just assuming she knows nothing about technology. For all we know, she could be a brilliant scientist for whom the baffling ordeal that is Windows security management is as trivial a task as memorizing the full sequencing of the human genome. After all, we've all seen the results of her remarkable success in the fields of animal husbandry and interspecies breeding.

NO! No, that was directed entirely at the mother-in-law! That... that was not an insult to Steve Ballmer!

Sigh. Okay, no, no, of course, you're right-- it was. Nurtz. Guess we'll try again tomorrow. Back to the incense and the egg replacer...