This is pretty funny. Apple contracts various companies to manufacture their iPods, and apparently one company mistakenly allowed a situation where the iPods were being manufactured and released with the RavMonE.exe virus, effectively serving as Typhoid Mary devices for any Windows customers.

Apple is taking steps to correct the matter, and apparently it is an extremely small percentage (less than 1%) of affected iPods.

In the Information Week article “Apple Says Shipped iPods Carrying Computer Virus“, statements from both Apple and Microsoft are quoted. Allow me to translate and paraphrase.

Apple: “We’re sorry for shipping our iPod with a Windows virus. Gee, it’s too bad Windows is so bad with viruses.”

Microsoft: “Yeah, but you’re stupid for letting the virus get on your product, even if, erm, it doesn’t affect your own OS. Just watch it in the future, will ya?”

Information Week has reported that the programming job decline has finally stopped. This is a relief, because this has worried me over the past few years as programming jobs got axed and people fled the profession like the plague everywhere I turned.

There is no fabulous rebound of the position, but that’s fine. Stopping the bleeding is the first step to healing.

The irony of it all has me cracking up. After waiting weeks for my 404 article to get put on CFDJ, it gets printed just shortly after my hosting company moves my account to a new server…and forgot to migrate my existing custom error handler settings. So I had an article about 404 forwarding with examples that came up with 404 errors.

All is well now. Heh. Heaven forbid I have a moment of pride without a humbling moment immediately thereafter.