If you happen to think "military intelligence" is a contradiction in terms, prepare to eat those words, soldier. Over the past year or so, we've seen some very positive signs coming from that sector of the government-- at least in terms of computer platform choice, and really, what better indicator of intelligence is there? First, the Army made a smart move last year when it finally took decisive action against hackers. Needless to say, it was extremely embarrassing when U.S. military security had been breached in the form of some kid hacking the Army web site, so the Army dishonorably discharged its eminently hackable Windows NT-based web server and enlisted a Mac running WebSTAR instead. Since then, the Army's site has been secure and hack-free.

The Navy, however, still hadn't done much to erase the haunting spectre of the USS Yorktown incident-- until now. For those of you who don't recall the infamous Yorktown shutdown, we're talking about one of the Navy's computer-controlled "Smart Ships" that suffered a total system failure following a divide-by-zero error a few years ago. The ship went dead in the water and actually had to be towed back to base. Care to hazard a guess at what operating system was responsible when the Yorktown went belly-up? Yup, it was our old pal Windows NT, which apparently choked on that zero like a chicken bone when a more "robust" OS like Unix would have handled the situation a bit more gracefully. It's a darned good thing the Yorktown failed during peacetime instead of during, say, a full-scale Canadian invasion, or we'd all we saying "aboot" and have decent health care right about now.

But the Navy's definitely starting to show signs of wising up, at least if AppleInsider can be trusted. At one time the Navy was "the single largest Macintosh customer in the world," but intense political pressure eventually led to a standardization on Windows and a prohibition of all things Apple. But reportedly the seafaring branch of our nation's defense is on the brink of lifting its ban on the "purchase and incorporation of Apple Macintosh systems." How's that? Well, apparently Navy higher-ups have been meeting with Apple execs-- including Rear Admiral Steve-- "for some time now." Whereas our first guess would have been that Steve was negotiating the U.S.'s surrender terms on behalf of his home planet, it seems that Steve's intentions are purely friendly-- for now. As we all know, no one's better at playing politics than Steve, and accordingly, a draft proposal is making the rounds that would let any Navy department requisition Macs for appropriate uses. We don't know about you, but we'll certainly sleep safer knowing that Macs will soon play a larger role in protecting our national security.