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One of the biggest surprises of Macworld 2008 was the lack of an announcement on the professional line of Apple laptops. Most pundits, myself included were expecting these to come out last week.

That doesn't mean Apple's pro customers are going to have to wait much longer. A few of the stars are aligning that may bring Apple's flagship laptops a much needed upgrade within the next few months.

If you read way down to the bottom of a Wall Street Journal interview with Bill Gates that ran yesterday, you'll discover that the Microsoft executive admitted to watching pirated movies on the Internet. The confession came as he was talking about content he had viewed on YouTube. Here's part of the exchange:

WSJ: You watch physics lectures and Harlem Globetrotters [on YouTube]?

Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.

WSJ: But those were stolen, correct?

Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.

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Pilot fish is called out to fix a secretary's keyboard. "It was cheaply assembled, and it would get stuck due to burrs on the plastic keys that would hang up on an adjacent key," says fish.

"The fix was to pick up the keyboard and drop it flat on the desk. The key would usually spring loose from the impact which would allow you to pry it off with a small screwdriver. You could then file the plastic burr off with an emery board and put the key back on."

A client/server application lets this organization's inside salespeople place customer orders at the prices quoted by the sales reps on the street. But something's not quite right, reports a pilot fish in the know.

"Back in November, we started having problems with a particular division," fish says. "Every morning, every order in the division's order log would delete."

"Good morning, you're fired and getting replaced by a software engineer from India with an H-1B visa ... APRIL FOOLS!" This is a bad joke to play on an engineer these days, because it is just too close to actually being true.

The root of "April Fools Day" goes back to the 1500s when the New Year date was moved from April 1st to Jan 1st. Those who were unaware of the change were open to pranks and jokes. They were the "April Fools".

April 1st, 2007, is still, however, the beginning of the new year for H-1B applications, and it is American engineers unaware of these activities who are once again the April Fools.

Bill Gates draws first-blood while IEEE raises an army of engineers in the pivotal fourth round of the H-1B battle of the Immigration Reform bill war.

In his opening move, the world's richest man strikes hard at American engineering careers by testifying before congress in favor of unlimited H-1B visas.  Bill's prestidigitatory presentation sought to somehow convince lawmakers that the best way to encourage American students to enter engineering is to import more engineers from other countries. 

First, he says, we must "place a major emphasis on encouraging careers in math and science".  Then he suggests opening the flood gates to foreign engineers by eliminating the cap completely, "So even though it may not be realistic, I don't think there should be any limit".  Sadly, there were no challenges to this point by the committee.  Not one Congressman or Senator suggested that increasing the cap might further discourage students from entering the engineering field. 

Despite studies which show there is no shortage of engineers, Bill Gates insists that the tech industry needs the cap raised. 

Fearing political fallout, senior Senators McCain (R-AZ) and Kennedy (D-MA) retreated from the H-1B and Immigration Reform bill battlefield last week.  The McCain/Kennedy coalition split and opted not to release the immigration reform bill they've been working on. 

McCain seemed frustrated with the endeavor and is also concerned about losing support from his conservative base in his bid for the Republican presidential candidacy.  Conservative voters are strongly against guest worker programs which, many feel, leads to amnesty for illegal aliens.  The H-1B program is not related to illegal immigration but it is growing into an equally controversal guest worker program with heavyweight opponents such as IEEE-USA, the AFL-CIO, the CWA and many others who are joining in as the immigration battle progresses.

When it comes to high-performance computing, it's Linux in the lead and Microsoft scrambling to catch-up.

The first person to be positively identified due to the AOL search query release this weekend is the lucky Ms. Thelma Arnold.  Or at least the first person to allow her name to be put in print, that is.  I'm willing to bet the authors of the article identified at least one or two other candidates, and Ms. Arnold was just the first they could contact.  Give it another day or two and I'm sure more people will be positively identified.  There's just too much data, too easily searched, for more people to not show up.

It came right down to the last seconds of the bout, about midnight of the lame-duck session of the 2006 United States of America Congress.  Senator Boehner (R-OH) took one last shot, trying to slip an H-1B increase into the India Nuclear deal.  American engineers were on the ropes. 

The committee was in a closed-door session late Friday night. Engineering careers were about to be knocked out for good.  Members of various groups from the left and the right were frantically calling their representatives.  Family members of engineers from around the country were calling senators, many for the first time ever.  Last Friday night, the major news media didn't even cover this fight but it continued until Saturday morning.  There was only a small mention of the India-Nuke bill on the news later that night.  But the fight was still going on behind closed doors.  Early Saturday C-SPAN displayed only, "India-Nuke Deal passed" for several hours, with no details.  It wasn't until the next morning that anyone even knew who won the fight.  The next morning engineers in America woke to the good news,  "No increase in the H-1B cap!".  The first battle was won with a whimper of inaction.

It hurts to get slapped across the face by the most powerful man in the world, but American engineers are not down and out yet.  At the very opening moment of round 2, President Bush comes out swinging; knocking down any argument American engineers and other high-skilled professionals might have against H-1B immigration laws.

The president fired the first salvo in the 2007 H-1B Battle, telling selected employees of Dupont that he feels strongly that America needs to raise the cap on H-1Bs.  Here is the exact excerpt:

This manufacturing plant outsources a simple assembly job to a "sheltered workplace," where the work will be done by people with mental disabilities, reports a pilot fish whose job is to help set up the equipment.

"Along with the assembly, they also had to stick a bar-code label on every product," fish says. "So we put a PC and label printer there. On this PC was a small program made by our developer which consisted of a text file with a list of all possible product codes and a tiny interface in which the workers have to select the code and quantity and press print."

Fish's only role early on is to prepare that PC and tell the developer that it's ready and can be shipped. So far, so good, he thinks.

In fact, it is good. Turns out the workers can handle the assembly and labeling just fine. And a few weeks after the start of the arrangement, the company is ready to update the list of product codes.

"Which triggered the following events," says fish.

Leading Democrats struck American engineers with a powerful left-left combo before the opening bell of round 3 of the H-1B battle.  Senator Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Kennedy (D-MA) attempted to secretly add an amendment to the Minimum Wage bill last week.  This earmark would have massively increased the H-1B cap and could have dealt a death blow to countless engineering careers across the country.  With the immigration bill still months away, two senior Democrats stepped into the ring to demonstrate where their allegiance lies.   It looks like it may be "curtains" for the engineers of America.

As a security admin, you know that just about every device on your network spits out some kind of a log. And you also know (or you should know) that keeping track of those logs is an important piece of the puzzle to knowing your security posture. But you have to know the main purpose behind capturing logs before you can make a good decision on what method you will use to capture the logs.

We don't need al-Qaeda to blow us up. We are perfectly capable of lighting the fuse ourselves, courtesy of our inability to share information vertically and bilaterally.