Ah, once again Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day comes bounding up to us, yapping joyously and licking our faces in merry wonderment-- and this time our episode is actually broadcasting on the day itself, instead of being "observed" the day after like some second-rate federal holiday time-shifted to grant the plebes a three-day weekend in spite of some niggling accident of chronology. So, given both the special occasion of our unlikely promptness and the bumper crop of Redmond-hostile news bytes this week, in what manner do you propose that we celebrate both this weekly holiday and our own freakish burst of punctuality?

Perhaps by indulging in a mean-spirited bout of intellectual property schadenfreude! After all, there's plenty to go around; for one thing, according to The Register, the bigwigs at 3GPP choose a variant of Apple's favorite AAC digital audio format as the "codec of choice for 3G-delivered audio content." Remember, AAC was also picked as the official format for encoded music on DVD Audio discs, and with Microsoft pushing its own proprietary Windows Media format for everything from music to movies to digital livestock and canned goods, we can't imagine that it's too happy about these continuing legitimizations of the AAC format.

In a similar vein, we could gloat about how Microsoft just lost its patent on the ubiquitous FAT file system, which debuted back in the DOS days and which is still used on flash media for the storage of digital photos and the like. The patent didn't mean much in practical terms until last year, when Microsoft finally decided that it could stuff its cash mattress even fuller by licensing out the patent and thus extorting royalties from all those manufacturers who would otherwise have to redesign any devices that violated its terms. Anyway, the Patent and Trademark office has nullified Microsoft's FAT patent, citing the existence of prior art, so there goes that superfluous revenue source, then.

On the other hand, we could always fall back on the age-old classic of "Viral Armageddon." While we don't recall hearing anything about any newly-discovered Microsoft security flaws this week (miracles do happen!), faithful viewer Julian Clark tipped us off to a report from BBC News which claims that the JPEG buffer underrun bug we mentioned last week is now being actively exploited. It seems that there are some porn images floating around out there that, when simply looked at in Windows Explorer, can trigger the hush-hush installation of unwanted software allowing the Bad Guys (no, not Microsoft-- the other Bad Guys) to seize control of an affected Windows machine from anywhere on the Internet. Yeah, that inspires confidence.

But you know what? On this particular Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day, we think we're going to have to settle for plain ol' weirdness to the max. Faithful viewer Dave Sawyer was the first to point out Microsoft's Office 2004 for Mac sweepstakes, in which nine lucky entrants will win a free copy of Office and-- this is the spooky bit, here-- "a business professional action figure made to look just like you-- only all business." Yes, if you enter this contest and win, Microsoft somehow makes a teensy little plastic replica of you, sticks it in a business suit, and sends it to you along with a copy of its productivity suite. Tell us that's not the creepiest thing you've heard in ages. Suppose they request that you send in a complete set of head shots from which they model the doll, or are they just going working from swiped ATM video footage and spy satellite photos? (Everybody knows they're watching your every move, right?)

Knowing what you know about Microsoft, then, obviously we suggest that you stay well away from the Office sweepstakes, because you'd have to be a pretty trusting soul not to think that Microsoft is making extra doll-copies of all those Mac-happy winners, reaching for the hatpins and hot wax, and using them as convenient voodoo dolls to strike against the Mac community. Oh, paranoid, are we? Sure, we're paranoid. Paranoid like a fox.