Well, whaddaya know about that? In the middle of Day 3 of the "WE HAVE THE WAY OUT" UNIX vs. Windows Saga, Microsoft finally caught a break. To recap, Microsoft and Unisys launched an anti-UNIX site last week-- only word got out on Monday that they were running it on a UNIX server. So, early yesterday, they made a panicked switch to a Windows server to save face... soon after which, the site went completely non-functional, alternating between serving blank pages, "Directory Listing Denied" errors, and, most recently, a cryptic message to the effect that "no web site is configured at this address." One would think that if anyone could get a simple one-page site with a form submission running under Windows 2000 and IIS, it would be the company who wrote the frickin' software. Needless to say, the folks who hustled to launch the pro-UNIX "WE HAVE THE WAY IN" (running flawlessly on UNIX, natch) have probably been giggling nonstop for days.

But Microsoft has finally gotten its page up again after well over a solid day of downtime-- nice illustration of why businesses should switch from UNIX to Windows, guys; bravo-- which means the party's over (at least, until someone hacks the site). And now that the dust is clearing, it appears that the only high-level Microsoft exec to take the fall for the whole fracas was President and COO Rick Belluzzo, who "unexpectedly resigned" today amid a "restructuring," as reported by the Associated Press. (But of course we all know the real reason Belluzzo's walking; HE HAS THE WAY OUT.) Anyway, at this point we should probably turn our attention to something at least vaguely Mac-related for a change.

Well, how about this? Now that Microsoft's 47,600 employees are finally done scrambling to get a single anti-UNIX web page running on a Windows server, the Mac Business Unit is free once again to turn its full attention to our platform of choice. According to a Macworld UK article, the MacBU has "scheduled a presentation for April 10" to "discuss the future of the group and its products" now that Uncle Steve's historic and controversial 1997 deal with the devi-- uh, Bill Gates-- is drawing to a close. Remember, Microsoft only agreed to provide Mac versions of Office until this coming August, which means that, theoretically, Microsoft could disband the group and immediately stop developing and supporting Mac Office if it so chooses. C'mon, what's the Justice Department gonna do-- sue them?

However, if you're an Office user, don't panic just yet; Microsoft is widely expected to announce how lucrative its Mac business is and that it plans to keep taking your money for as long as you're willing to keep handing it over. So while we won't know for sure for another week, it's a pretty safe bet that we'll soon be hearing about all sorts of terrific Mac products and the assimilation of the Mac platform into Microsoft's .NET strategy. We don't know about you, but personally, we're keeping our fingers crossed for a Mac port of Microsoft's killer app: the IIS web server. Bring it on, baby!

Not that we didn't think they'd be clueless enough to go through with it, but those geniuses in the music industry continue to find ways in which to make the listening experience as baffling, irksome, and potentially harmful as humanly possible. Operating under the deeply held conviction that buying a CD and then copying certain songs to a custom disc for use in the car or transferring its contents to a portable MP3 player constitutes a mortal sin for which the guilty parties will surely fry for all eternity, the music industry has kindly decided to save your soul by trying to make it impossible for you to commit those heinous misdeeds in the first place. And that's why CDs are now appearing on the market that will crash your Mac as soon as you pop them in the drive.

That's right; the mere act of playing a CD on your Mac apparently counts as a music industry no-no, at least if the latest Celine Dion album is any indication. As faithful viewer Robert Buchanan pointed out last week, Celine's latest release is protected with Sony's "Key2Audio" copy protection, at least in some European countries. And as Celine fans in those geographical markets soon discovered, if they tried to play the protected discs in the drives of their Macs (or even their Wintels), the system would generally crash. Think of the reboot time as penance for having attempted something so naughty. A Hollywood Reporter article has more on this exciting new phenomenon, including details about how, in addition to causing a system crash, Celine's new disc "will not eject using normal methods" and "could unpredictably affect the drive's firmware." Holy expensive aversion therapy, Batman!

Now, we should probably mention that we here at AtAT are about as likely to listen to a Celine Dion CD without being forcibly restrained as we are to plunge Tabasco-coated meat thermometers straight through our own eardrums "because it feels good." Still, that's purely a matter of taste, and it's completely irrelevant to how this whole "protected CD" nonsense really sticks in our collective craw. We don't care if your personal listening tastes run to Celine or Yanni or Winger or collections of Halloween sound effects; if you legally purchased the CD, we really think you should be able to play it on your Mac if you so desire-- and yes, even transfer its contents to an iPod. Call us crazy. (Everyone else does.)

So the next time you're shopping for some new tunes, make sure you check those labels; the affected Celine disc apparently bears the warning, "will not play on a PC or a Mac"-- a warning we soon expect will be appended with "and will crash your system faster than Windows 95 on a Pentium/66 with 8 MB of RAM-- oh, and it might permanently wreck your drive just to make sure you never try to pull this kind of crap ever again." Remember, U.S. denizens, so far apparently the only "protected" Celine CDs were released in Europe (possibly because Epic/Sony thinks that Europeans will be less likely to retaliate with swift and blinding violence), so you don't need to be too careful just yet, but you don't need a weathervane to know which way the wind blows.

Yeesh, we're seriously thinking that Apple might need to adopt a strict cash-up-front policy when it comes to these mondo huge education deals, because it's becoming increasingly clear that until the money is safely tucked away in Fred Anderson's enormous underground piggy bank, Apple shouldn't be counting on using it to finance its next big corporate kegger. Case in point: we recently told you that, after an arduous two-year battle to keep other people's mitts off the funding, Maine's Governor Angus King finally signed the state's budget last week, and his controversial laptop fund remained intact-- much to the relief of Steve Jobs, who had already trumpeted his deal with Maine to be the "largest educational technology program in history." It might have turned out to be decidedly less so, had Maine slashed its $25 million laptop budget (that was originally earmarked to provide 36,000 iBooks for every seventh- and eighth-grade student in the entire state) and bought 36,000 Bob the Builder "Fun with Bob" laptops instead.

So yeah, we figured that the signing of the budget marked the end of the fight over who got their paws on the cash: the $25 mil stayed in the laptop fund, and would eventually find its way into Apple's coffers. After all, once a budget is signed and officially official, that's it, right? Nuh-uh. According to the Portland Press Herald, Maine's House of Representatives passed "surprise legislation" yesterday in hopes of snagging some of that cash back. Apparently there's a bill in the works that, if passed, would siphon $3.5 million out of the laptop fund and into an existing "cushion" account intended to help Maine school districts that, under the state's new funding formula, won't be getting as much money next year.

Not that that's a lousy use of the money, of course, but more than anything, we're just amazed at how the fate of this cash just never seems to get nailed down. We get the feeling that we're going to be hearing about this money for the rest of our natural lives, because the battle over how it's going to get spent appears to have more bad-sequel back-from-the-dead staying power than Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers combined. If the bill is passed, Governor King has the option to veto it, but the House feels that it has "enough votes to override a veto." In any case, we're only talking about 14% of the total fund maybe going bye-bye, so even if $3.5 million does get sucked away, we're still looking at roughly 31,000 iBooks for the middle-schoolers of Maine-- which, according to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, is still "more iBooks than you can shake a stick at."

If that happens, though, we're sort of curious to hear how the state will deal with the issue of 5,000 students who, while their classmates all tool along on brand new iBooks, will instead have to make use of a crayon and a legal pad. Perhaps the easiest way around that unpleasantness would be to round up 5,000 students at random, have them humanely snuffed, and then deliver their remains to the state's middle school cafeterias. Ta-daaa-- all students left standing will have iBooks, and the state gets to stretch its school lunch budget a little further. Sure, it's not a new idea, but hey, it's a classic.