So what do you think, sports fans: is this an intentional Apple snub on the part of the United Kingdom? Faithful viewer bo was first to inform us that-- and we can hardly believe we're saying this-- the Queen of England plans to bestow an honorary knighthood upon Bill "Just A Fluffy White Cat And A Facial Scar Away From Bond Villain Status" Gates. Yup, that's right: Bill Gates, Knight of the Realm. If it weren't in the Telegraph, we'd never have believed it. We suppose that now his minions really do have to call him "sir." (Okay, no, not really; we bloody colonials aren't allowed to use the "Sir" title, so all he gets is a "KBE" suffix. Just a joke, folks, and an easy one at that, so it's probably one we'll make again.)

According to the Telegraph, Bill will become a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire ("Most Excellent Order"? That is from Bill & Ted, right?) for "services to global enterprise"-- and the BBC clarifies that to include his "profound impact on the British economy." Which is something no one can dispute, of course, since Bill's monopoly keeps roughly 95% of the technoliterate world running software riddled with gaping security holes that lead to billions of dollars of lost productivity every time some bored kid scrapes together the next Melissa virus-- so yeah, "profound impact" is indeed one way to say it. Another might be "font of all pestilence and a plague upon us all," but that was probably too long for the papers to quote.

Now, we're not at all sure about this, but we strongly suspect that Steve Jobs was never dubbed Sir Steven (See the "sir" thing again? Told you), honorarily or otherwise-- a situation that was probably bugging him enough already when Spielberg got his knighthood, but has surely become positively hateful now that Gates gets the royal treatment as well. That brings us back to our initial question: do you suppose the Queen is trying to tick him off? Because Apple's history with the UK is pretty spotty, and recently we've had to wonder whether or not the Brits were finally retaliating-- you know, by banning that Power Mac commercial last November, and then disparaging the iPod's battery life in the House of Commons just a week ago. Is Gates's knighthood just another jab back at Jobs? And is this all because the Queen has to wait until April to get her iPod mini?

Only time will tell, we suppose, so we'll be keeping an eye on future Brit-relevant developments as they... um... develop. But we will say this: if the Queen chucks a free suit of armor at Mike Dell for his "contributions to technological innovation," we're going to be pretty darn sure that something's up. Oh, and incidentally, just once we'd like to hear Billy-Boy say, "no, Mr. Bond-- I expect you to die!" It'd really make our week.