Coming off the curtails of Microsoft’s absurd recent announcement redefining the seasons to avoid another release date pushback, progress over in Tiger land strongly suggests that Apple may be releasing Tiger earlier than some expected.

Please read: Tiger on Track for Mid-April Release

Granted, all Apple ever promised was “in the first half of 2005.” Understandably, everyone translated that as “in the summer of 2005,” a reasonable conclusion. How pleasantly surprised we all will be if Apple could push out Tiger in early May, potentially even in late April!

What do you do when you’ve been promising a product for 4 years, and now your inability to deliver is becoming a joke? What do you do when you need to push back your release date yet again, but you can’t bear more rants from your cherished customers?

Well, if you’re Microsoft and you’ve promised a summer release date, why not just change the definition of “Summer”?

Please read: Microsoft Clarifies SQL Server Ship Date.

I always thought it was commonly understood in the United States that “Summer” indicated anytime in the months of June through August. However, Microsoft has indicated that they are not altering SQL Server’s release date–they are merely clarifying what they meant by indicating “Summer 2005″–by rewording it to “the second half of 2005″, which I understand as anytime in the months of July through December.

Don’t rest on the crutch of petty word games; if you can’t release your product by your latest promised release date, accept the truth and report it as such. I’m sure SQL Server will barely make a 2005 release date, if at all.

I can’t count how many times I’ve reinstalled Windows on my workstation at home. Sometimes it’s because of my obsessive need to keep a clean system; other times it’s because I’ve hosed my system with my multiple-system boot setup. Regardless, I’ve been wasting my time. I could have been imaging my computer this whole time.

So now I’ve wised up. Just today I made a “perfect” Windows install, with SP2, my anti-virus software, my preferred settings, and a couple of my most commonly used programs. Now that that’s done, I use a Linux Live CD–which for the uninitiated, is a Linux bootable CD–and now I’m imaging my Windows partition with Linux.

How, you might ask? It’s simple!

Once Linux boots up, I first login to my fileserver, which is coincidentally a Linux system as well, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, I’m actually connecting to it using Samba. Then, I simply use the DD command:

dd if=[The partition you want to image] of=[The location of the file to save]

So, in my exact case, I mounted the fileshare at /ramdisk/bkup, and my partition was /dev/hda1, so:

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/ramdisk/bkup/WinXPSP2.img

Luxpro has developed probably the most audacious rip-off of an Apple product to date, even putting Microsoft to shame.

Please read: Luxpro Corp. rips off iPod shuffle.

If the description doesn’t get the point across, a picture speaks a thousand words. The Super Shuffle appears practically identical to the iPod Shuffle, right down to the white ear buds, with the only difference being the product name and an extra switch on the back. What’s more, the Super Shuffle actually outperforms the iPod Shuffle in features.

Certainly imitation is the highest form of flattery, but there must be some execs at Apple that are fuming over this one.