Sorry, folks, but in addition to being really, really late, this episode's also going to have to be really, really short-- we're having one of those days when all technology hates us. It happens every once in a while; stuff that's been working fine for months or even years all of a sudden turns on us, usually in packs, backing us into a corner of the AtAT compound where we huddle armed with nothing but a sharp stick and a burning need for vengeance against the products that betrayed us. We won't bore you with all the details, but if you want a taste of just one of the half-dozen or so happy fun surprises that smacked us upside the head today, suffice it to say that when an AirPort Extreme connection through an 11 Mbps 802.11b access point piping to a 3 Mbps cable modem connection suddently tests out at speeds just shy of that of a 9600 baud modem, clearly something's amiss. (No, we haven't fixed it yet, but thank heaven for really long CAT5 Ethernet cables.)

And yet, even though by now it was technically two days ago and despite having ample reason to skip it, we simply can't bring ourselves to pass up Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day-- especially when CEO Steve "Ooga Booga!" Ballmer's been shooting his mouth off in public again. Faithful viewer Primordial Ape (any relation?) tipped us off to a Reuters report claiming that, on the same junket where he revealed that Bill Gates receives 4 million spam messages a day, he also warned an audience of Asian governmental bigwigs that if they did something as silly as use Linux to run their countries instead of Windows, they'd eventually wind up getting sued from all sides until the lawyers picked the last tiny morsels of flesh from their nations' bleaching bones and moved on to the next poor Linux-using sucker of a country. That's right, folks: use Linux and get your beloved homeland sued into oblivion!

The claim, here, as far as we can make out, is that since "Linux violates more than 228 patents," if you're foolish enough to use it, "someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO, somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property." What he doesn't come right out and say is that, more likely than not, that "somebody" will be Microsoft itself; even if none of the "more than 228" (which means, we assume, 229) patents allegedly infringed belong to the Redmond Beast, it's more than happy to bankroll other companies-- like SCO, for example-- to sue Linux-using organizations so that others will be too scared of the Big Bad Lawyers to wander outside the expensive, disease-infested "comfort" of the Windows sandbox. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt have always been the central ingredients in Microsoft's three-bean salad of success-- so why stop now?

Oh, but don't worry; there's been plenty of Ballmeriffic backpedaling since his "Linux is Death By Lawyers" speech. You may recall that when the lil' fella ruffled a few feathers last month by publicly pronouncing all iPod owners to be thieving music pirates, first he claimed he didn't remember what he'd said, and then he had a Microsoft PR flunky who was better qualified to tackle such matters (i.e. someone at least evolved enough to have acquired basic language skills) "clarify" that what Mr. Ballmer actually meant was that iPod owners were "likely among the most law-abiding consumers of digital music." Well, things didn't flip quite that floppy with this whole "Linux Will Kill You" spiel, but it's close.

According to Microsoft Watch, the company is officially "denying that its CEO Steve Ballmer told Asian government leaders on Thursday that Microsoft believes that Linux violates more than 200 software patents." All he really did, they insist, was cite "a controversial study" that, um, "claimed that Linux has been found to violate more than 200 software patents." So let us get this straight: Ballmer never said that Microsoft believes the allegations of Linux patent violations; he just waved a third-party report making that claim in the faces of his audience while holding a flashlight under his chin and making spooky "Ooooo! Oooooooo!" noises. In other words, "we dont believe these charges ourselves, but we're certainly not going to let that stop us from using them to blackmail you all into shackling your countries to Windows until the end of time itself."

Yeah, that sounds about right. But that's cool, because at least when Linux has finally been crushed underfoot and Apple has been relegated to making nothing but iPods and socks to put them in, Windows will be literally everywhere from desktops to coffeemakers and we won't be nearly so surprised on these occasions when all our tech tries to kill us.