Normally we'd sit on something like this all week and trot it out for Friday's Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day, but since not much of urgency is happening in the Mac world (and the fact that we can say that on the eve of Macworld Expo is so sad we think we just might cry) and this piggybacks right off of last week's installment, we just can't wait. Besides, it's either proof that our Astonishing Predictive Abilities™ are still in full force (even when we don't realize we're using them), or that PC pundit John Dvorak secretly tunes in and cribs column ideas from us. Either way, it's pretty cool.

As you could probably guess, we rarely much care what Dvorak is spouting at any given time, since he's one of the few rabid anti-Apple Mac-bashing pundits that-- despite occasional lapses-- didn't eventually fall sway to Uncle Steve's Reality Distortion Field, like Hiawatha Bray and David Coursey did. When Dvorak bothers to mention Apple at all, it's just to complain that the iBook is too girly or that computers would sell better if they still relied on command line interfaces and Apple hadn't introduced the world to the GUI with the Macintosh-- "the first 'un-fun' computer." (Don't worry, folks, just back away slowly and avoid eye contact until they up his dosage.)

But here's the thing, see... faithful viewer Dave Barnes tipped us off to a new Dvorak article at PC Magazine in which-- and try to keep an open mind about this one-- the man actually talks about something cool: "the concept of Microsoft possibly shutting down." Oh, sure, it's still crazy talk, but at least it's crazy talk with a glorious pipe dream behind it; Dvorak's take is that Microsoft has clearly accomplished just about everything Bill Gates could ever have set out to do, it can't possibly be much fun to run anymore, and it's not like Gates and Ballmer can even spend what money they've got now-- so if it's not fun anymore, "how about simply shuttering the company?"

He uses this scenario as a possible explanation for why, as we recently discussed, Microsoft-- with over $56 billion in cash, mind you-- is cutting employee benefits to save $80 million this year. By Dvorak's logic, the real reason behind Microsoft's stated goal of wide-ranging cost-cutting to save a billion dollars "has to be one of three things: Someone sees a rocky road ahead, they are even greedier than ever, or they are planning a shutdown." He proposes that Microsoft may be planning to hoard all the cash it can, drop its own stock price "with one or two dubious reports," use the cash to buy back all of its devalued shares, and close the company. "I think this is exactly what Microsoft should do," he says. And we agree, although probably not for exactly the same reasons.

No, we don't honestly believe for a second that Microsoft is seriously planning a controlled collapse, and for the most part, neither does Dvorak: "I realize that this whole notion is crazy on the surface." (Nice job, John; the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.) But it really is an interesting theory, and more to the point, it comes just two days after we said "now all we need is for someone to suggest that Microsoft 'shut itself down and give the money back to the shareholders.'" Whaddaya think? Spooky coincidence, precognitive ability, or is Dvorak a closet fan?