What do you mean, you haven't figured out what you've going to be for Halloween yet? It's two days away, people! Everyone knows that you need at least six months to assemble a decent costume-- one that'll get Old Lady Devers to slip you one of those full-size Snickers bars she keeps for the really scary kids instead of the Necco Wafers she doles out to the uninspired masses. Now you're going to wind up wearing a sheet with a bunch of holes cut in it and saying "I got a rock" every time you look in your loot sack.

And don't think for a second that using any of those Forbes Billionaire Masks as noted by MacMinute will get you out of this bind. Sure, Steve Jobs as a pirate is cute and all, but it's not going to cut it if you want to run with the big boys. (If they had done a Ballmer mask, then maybe-- although we can certainly understand the position of Forbes's lawyers when they insisted on not allowing any masks capable of actually frightening small children into a coma.)

Okay, okay, don't panic-- we've got just the costume idea for you. You want a costume that'll strike terror into the hearts of all who behold you? One that'll send even the bravest of souls screaming into the night? One so scary that you could clean up (figuratively speaking) by purchasing stock in the major underwear companies prior to unleashing your vision of ultimate horror upon the world? Then your path is clear, Grasshopper: you need to go as a Mac OS X security advisory. AAIIIEIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Seriously, what could be scarier than Mac OS X leaking like a sieve-- or worse, like Windows? CNET reports that security firm @stake just issued three advisories describing flaws affecting Mac OS X-- flaws involving access to core files, buffer overflows, and the mishandling of file system permissions. Run! Run for your lives!

Okay, okay-- so the situation's really not all that scary after all. The core file advisory doesn't even apply to default Mac OS X installations, and the firm doesn't really know if the buffer overflow exploit is really as big a problem as it implies ("@stake has not fully investigated the extent that this attack can be exploited, but since it appears to be an overflow in the kernel the severity of 'possibly execute commands as root' is warranted"). The file permissions problem is the only one we consider to be a biggie, since it potentially allows attackers using a shared Mac to do things with more access than they've officially been granted-- but again, this is all a far cry from the weekly Windows flaws that "could allow hackers to seize control of a victim's Windows computer over the Internet, stealing data, deleting files or eavesdropping on emails." And yet CNET and other news sources pounced on these relatively innocuous Mac OS X flaws like hyperactive spaniels on a pile of Snausages.

Of course, we can't be blamed for being just the teensiest bit suspicious of @stake's motives for releasing these advisories in the first place. You might recall that @stake is the security firm that fired its Chief Technical Officer for contributing to a report stating that Microsoft's "near ubiquity in personal computing" (and its apparent inability to secure its products) has made most computer networks, including that of the U.S. government, vulnerable to "massive, cascading failures." See, @stake does a lot of business with Redmond-- such as, say, publishing a security analysis commissioned by Microsoft which just happens to conclude that Microsoft's .NET framework is-- astoundingly enough-- more secure than IBM's WebSphere! Now, granted, we know absolutely zero about WebSphere, but you have to admit that when a security firm takes money from Microsoft and subsequently proclaims any Microsoft product to be more secure than, well, anything else at all, there's a certain "hmmmmmmm" aspect to the whole situation.

Then again, since the Mac OS X vulnerabilities only affect "10.2.8 and below" and @stake's official recommendation is that people "Upgrade to Panther (Mac OS X 10.3)" (not exactly a bad thing for Apple), maybe it's all just a crazy coincidence. But with Microsoft itself having promoted Panther on its web site just days ago, this could still all be part of some grand nefarious plot by Redmond to subjugate the entire human race and sell it as cattle to the flesh-eating giant arthropods of the Crab Nebula-- a plot that somehow all begins with Mac users upgrading to Panther.

Say! Have you considered going as a flesh-eating giant arthropod? That's always good for a laugh...

Speaking of getting fired for posting stuff about Microsoft during your off-hours (and with a segue like that, you know this isn't going anywhere good), it turns out that it's something of an epidemic these days. Faithful viewer John Gruver informs us that one Michael Hanscom of a blog called "eclecticism" recently posted a captioned photo of a few stacks of Power Mac G5s being delivered to Microsoft's loading dock, which just happens to be at the building where Mike works. Get it? Microsoft buying Macs. It's, like, ironic or something!

Well, okay, no it isn't, since Microsoft cranks out all sorts of software that isn't Windows, and we imagine it would be kinda tough to develop Office for the Mac without actually using a Mac at some point in the process. (Then again, our own impressions of Office occasionally make us think that Microsoft tried to do it anyway.) Still, it made for a cute picture. Bummer it cost Mike his job.

See, four days after he posted the photo, he described the consequences of having committed such a heinous and deviant act: his boss at MSCopy called him into his office and informed him that, because of the picture he had posted to his blog, Microsoft had decided that he was "no longer welcome on the Microsoft campus." Microsoft claims that the act of taking and posting that photo was a "security violation," and therefore Mike was summarily canned. Wow, isn't it a shame that Microsoft isn't that strict about security in its products?

Sure, you can argue that Apple would have done the same thing in similar circumstances, and you'd be right. But let's be perfectly frank, here-- does anyone really think that Microsoft fired this guy because of a "security violation"? What, they're really sensitive about unauthorized people seeing the last foot or so of the company's loading dock? Nuh-uh. Apple, sure; Steve's made it abundantly clear that any breach of company security is a capital offense, even if it's just telling someone what kind of coffee is served in the cafeteria. Microsoft? Well, let's put it this way: if Mike had snapped the same picture when Microsoft was taking delivery of three pallets of, say, Dell Precision workstations, would he still have gotten bounced? How about if it were three pallets of canned cling peaches? Would Microsoft possibly have cared? But show the company buying Macs-- especially right after Panther's release and Microsoft's admission that the next version of Windows is still three years away-- and bam, suddenly it's bye-bye cubicle.

Microsoft had every legal right to do what it did; we just question its motives, that's all. After all, if the company were really in the habit of firing everyone who ever violated security, given how many flaws are uncovered in its products every twelve seconds, the entire development and quality assurance divisions would be ghost towns with tumbleweeds rolling down the halls. (Actually, maybe the quality assurance division is empty; that'd explain a lot.) Meanwhile, have you noticed how much good press Panther is getting, including the Wall Street Journal's suggestion that "if security issues are important to you" and "you're tired of the virus wars," "you could just buy a Mac"?

Whatever. It turns out that Mike was just a temp and he's still signed on with his agency, so with any luck he won't wind up bankrupt and homeless just because he posted a photo of a bunch of Macs. The moral of the story? Don't poke an 800-pound gorilla just when it's starting to get nervous.

Jeez, Mac OS X security advisories? People getting fired for posting photos of Macs? The human race getting sold as food to giant space lobsters? Talk about a downer of an episode so far. Tell you what: we're going to scrap the original final scene describing irrefutable medical studies linking long-term Mac use to massive chromosomal damage and the Mac-using body's inevitable dissolution into a homogenous soupy goo (albeit a homogenous soupy goo with class), and instead we'll spend the rest of today's air time on unconfirmed pie-in-the-sky speculation and rumors surrounding the continuing evolution of the PowerPC. Okay? And afterwards, if you're still feeling a little blue, we can go for ice cream. Our treat.

So here's the skinny: MacRumors has one o' them thar "Page 2 reports" of admittedly "uncertain authenticity" which sketches out what's supposedly going to happen with IBM's PowerPC development over the course of the next year or so-- and if it's true, it's some seriously delirium-inducing stuff. You know how the current G5 is technically a PowerPC 970 and derived from IBM's heavy-hitter POWER4 server chip? Well, allegedly IBM has already given Apple a few 980s, which are based on the architecture of the POWER5 and which, in their current developmental state, are already 90 nanometer chips running at 3 GHz. These are slated for inclusion in the "next-generation" Power Mac, which may well be called the G6 when it surfaces "only 12-16 months" after the G5 first appeared.

That's not to say that the G5 won't get a revision in the meantime, of course; the report claims that the 970's update is "well under way," the move to a 90-nanometer process will start "within six weeks," and by February the low-end Power Mac G5 might run at 2.2 GHz, with the line topping out at up to 2.8 GHz. Oh, and what about G5-based PowerBooks? Look for them between "April 2004 and September 2004," since the "only obstacle" is figuring out how to keep those puppies from melting through the floor and slipping through the earth's crust. No problem.

So, see? Happy stuff! There are all sorts of reasons to smile, what with faster G5s mere months away, G6s due mere months after that, and G5 PowerBooks due to touch down in as little as half a year's time. Why dwell on the negativity of Mac OS X security holes and the growing problem of jobless bloggers when there's so much good stuff coming? Allegedly? According to an unconfirmed and anonymous source?

By the way, we were totally lying about the ice cream.