Sometimes things just work out fine in the end, you know? For instance, today we discovered that we had forgotten to buy more breakfast cereal and were consequently all out of Irony-Os ("The Breakfast of Wise-Asses"), and, well, without our 100% USRDA of elemental irony each morning, we're even more useless than normal. Totally incoherent, as opposed to partially incoherent. Brains that register the same amount of biochemical activity as a bowl of cooling split pea soup. Irony deficiency is a brutal condition around these parts, and the last time it struck we had to hire ourselves out as low-rent speed bumps and door stops until one of us could get to the cereal aisle of a grocery store. You need coffee, we need irony. It's just that simple.

So there we were, resigning ourselves to our fate and wondering idly about how to get tire tread stains out of cotton when faithful viewer Richard Plotkin sent us a link to an article in Techworld.com. We mustered every last remaining iota of brain power at our disposal and read the headline: "Microsoft prepares security assault on Linux: Company will criticize Linux for taking too long to fix bugs."

And suddenly we were fine.

Yes, that's right, folks; spooked by Linux's increasing success in the enterprise space, Microsoft is now just flailing wildly in its desperate attempt to persuade big business to stick with Redmondware. Its upcoming initiative is called "Days of Risk" (Tom Cruise is in talks to star in the miniseries version) and it intends to "undermine critics and place a question mark over Linux's security by revealing that, on average, Windows poses less of a security risk."

Because, you know, there were all those Linux systems that got nailed to the floor by Blaster and SoBig. (Wow, we haven't had this much irony at once in years! We feel great!)

Now, we're not saying that Linux is perfect or that it doesn't have security problems, but just about everybody who uses a computer on a network (plus everyone else who happens to watch the news) knows all about how Microsoft left big honkin' holes in its products and cost the planet billions of dollars in lost productivity. Frankly, we don't care if Linux leaks like a colander with bladder control issues; Microsoft launching a major PR campaign to tell the world that its products are more secure "on average" than anything is just too precious for words. After all, when was the last time Red Hat had to put a price on virus-writers' heads?

We may never have to buy cereal again!