Spam is still getting through?! Microsoft is going to be the end of us all?!! Must be the morning roundup...

Good morning universe, I hope you’re well. I’m f [Don’t event think about it -Ed] ...feeling fantastic ? The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and I can just about make out the letters on my keyboard. All is well, except for the fact that it has been pointed out to me that this place is turning into a sort of a shrine to me, given the ubiquity of my mug on the top stories. I can assure you that this is not intentional, and we’re working on a bug-fix to ensure that in the near future we replace me with more relevant images. Your house on Google Earth and such.

Of course if Microsoft gets its way we might not be on the air in 60 days. The company has quietly sidled up to web developers and whispered "Uhh, umm, you know IE7, right ? Well umm, we need you to recode half the internet to fit into it. You have 60 days. Umm, make that 59 days, 11 hours." Apparently they’re changing the way ActiveX works after a patent dispute with Eolas Technologies, and now Microsoft needs to stream content and ads in a completely different way, requiring substantial amounts of wiring to be ripped up and reworked. It’s like the Evil Genius delivering an ultimatum, only they already have your ten million dollars

Sticking with Microsoft, apparently the Number 2 over there likes to brainwash his kids. Steve Ballmer is probably beginning to regret saying that. When asked if he owned an iPod the intrepid Microsoft CEO told Fortune magazine that he didn’t, and neither did his kids. "My children, in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed." Begin a spate of "Nasty iTunes websites found in IE cache" jokes. And his kids can look on the bright side : He’s worth $14 billion, so that’ll probably cover the cost of a youth spent in fear of opening up a browser and meeting Google

Still, he might be doing it in order to protect their health. With the spate of (alright, one case of thusfar) "iPod’s made me go deaf" court battles the fruity-tooty company has placed free software on its website which allows one to limit the volume that the iPod can reach. This is to combat the amount of idiots in the universe who jam the earbuds right in, flip up the volume to levels so that others can hear the music whilst standing next to them [On a busy building site, surely ? -Ed] and then wonder where that constant ringing noise is coming from. What’s the only catch ? They have to be smart enough to know they need and then download said software

Dontcha just hate spam ? Dontcha just love all the new and improved ways of fighting spam ? Arentcha just cynical enough to know that it wouldn’t work ? Yes, apparently spammers have done what everyone in the known computer-universe has done since problems began and found a way around spam blockers. Apparently instead of just firing off bogus emails, they fire off a bogus email to a bogus address and when they get a "Sorry, could not deliver that message" bounce back they have the IP address and real email they need to make their spam look more credible to filters. The b[Snip ! -Ed]

Some people just can’t stay put in the one job. According to the rumour mill a one Mr. Samuel Naffziger, who was one of the leading designers on Intel’s Itanium processor and who was nicked from HP not a year ago, has now been poached by AMD, along with six of his co-workers. His job will be to help AMD in opening a design centre in Fort Collins, which AMD expects to grow from between 20 to 200 designers. But spare a thought for poor Intel, having had their poached game poached again

In case you were wondering what the "Face of the web" is, according to the study into internet usage it might look something like Chairman Mao. Apparently last year, when overall internet growth slowed, it was the Chinese who provided the heaviest usage, spending an average of 17.9 hours per week online. But it was the Japanese who saw the greatest growth, with 89 percent of the country having accessed the net in the past 30 days, versus China’s 50 percent. Of course that’s of those surveyed, as I doubt they have much in the way of Slashdot out in the Bally Backend of Nowhere that still makes up a lot of China. I would make a communism joke, but the soul is unwilling

And finally today, because I know that you’re all pining for it, 30 years on from the foundation of Apple we have the best Steve Jobs quotes. "You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me." What an f’ing great way to get yourself rehired

Coming up today I’ll be wondering if I should have another cup of coffee, Rob Wright will be thinking about Britney Spears and on the article front I hear we have something in the tubes, which is nice if not even a little unexpected. "Do something to surprise and entertain the readers," we get told. So umm, we’re all going down the pub. Review your own bloody graphics cards. One out of two directives followed, that’s practically 50 percent mission success. [What I think Aaron means to say in this paragraph is, "We’ve got a review of the Sony HDR-HC1 high-def video camera coming up for you." -Exasperated]