Given how late Friday's episode turned out to be, a fair number of you have written in wondering why we didn't address the issue of Michael Dell's latest round of gum-flapping to CNET. No, we weren't asleep at the wheel (or anywhere else, for that matter); faithful viewer Jeff Barbose was the first to inform us of the Dell interview early Friday morning, well in advance of the production loop that day, so by the time we'd even really started Friday's ep, we were well aware of Dell's assertion (as summarized so neatly by MacMinute) that his company spends roughly the same amount-- even more-- on research and development that Apple does. So why, you rightly ask, didn't that little tidbit make its way into Friday's plot?

Simple: we had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Seriously, we just couldn't wrap our brains around the concept. Sure, we could have gone the easy route and characterized Dell's Apple-sized R&D budget as just another example of Mike obsessively trying to be like Steve, but that wouldn't have addressed the fundamental issue of just what the furry heck Dell is doing with that half-billion dollars every year. The man flat-out admits that he's happier (i.e. richer) being "pragmatic" than "revolutionary," and he makes his money the Walmart way: by using sheer bulk to get the lowest prices on ridiculous quantities of stuff, selling it cheaper than anyone else, and sending the competition spiralling into insolvency and madness.

In short, the man bolts cheap parts together to make cheap computers, slaps the Dell logo on other companies' products when it's not cost-effective to build things himself, and generally only innovates in areas of inventory control and cost structures. So what sort of research and development could possibly be chewing up half a billion smackers a year? This is the question that haunted us all weekend, and we knew you wouldn't be satisfied with a simple "Mike's insane and is just copying Steve again" scene. As a discriminating AtAT viewer, you're not here just to be entertained; you demand answers, and by gum, we're going to pretend to give them to you!

And that's when it hit us: sure, Dell spends half a billion on research and development every year-- and 98% of that is spent on ways to spy on Apple's research and development. Think about it: wireless camera equipment, long-range listening devices, bribes for high-level executives, cloaks of invisibility, remote viewers and psychic hotlines-- all of that takes some serious moolah. And really, how else is Mike going to stay exactly one step behind Apple technically, allowing him to stay twenty steps ahead financially?

"But AtAT," you ask aloud (much to the confusion of your coworkers), "what about the other 2%?" Ah, well, that was spent on Dell's one true innovation this year. See, the AtAT compound somehow wound up on Dell's mailing list (dream on, fellas), and when there's nothing good on TV, every once in a while we'll flip through a copy of the latest catalog just for giggles. The thing is, the last time we did that we think we spotted exactly what Dell probably spent ten million clams to develop on its own: an ingenious method of marketing laptops by comparing each model's weight to that of a gallon of milk.

True! There was a picture of a little milk jug (or part of one, or one and a half, etc.) next to each notebook, to demonstrate its relative weight compared to a quantity of dairy. Pour the illustrated amount of milk into a laptop bag, sling it over your shoulder, and you know exactly how heavy that Inspiron will be! We have to admit it, folks, it's hard to believe that Dell beat Apple to the punch on that one...

Speaking of stuff we probably should have written about on Friday but found slightly too baffling to discuss even reasonably coherently (trust us, it gets worse as the week drags on), what's up with all the wanton promiscuity among perambulating iPod owners lately? We admit it: down here at the AtAT compound we're actually pretty uptight and strait-laced as far as certain types of, er, "sharing" are concerned. So you can imagine our alarm at hearing that the simple and chaste act of listening to our iPods in public can now be interpreted by a certain lewd subset of the iPod community as an open invitation to come over and... insert things into... certain... um, places. Seriously, we're afraid to leave the house.

If you haven't the foggiest clue what we're rambling on about, here, then clearly you missed the WIRED article that faithful viewer Democratus forwarded us last week. It seems that mild-mannered software executive Steve Crandall was out for his evening walk, listening (as usual) to his iPod, when he was suddenly accosted by another iPod listener who invaded his "comfort field," unplugged her earbuds, and "indicated the jack with her eyes." (We are clearly getting into Harold Robbins territory here, and Basil Fawlty would not approve.)

Crandall was evidently a man of loose enough morals that he couldn't resist the siren song of experiencing a strange woman's iPod, and he plugged his earbuds into her jack, as she plugged 'buds into his. Crandall's ears were greeted by a "rush of techno"; thirty seconds later the exchange was over (the first person who makes a crack about "stamina" is getting sent straight to bed without dinner-- we mean it!), the two uncoupled, and went their separate ways without ever saying a word. Yeesh, it's the seventies all over again. And anonymous thirty-second trysts are probably just the beginning, too; we sense the imminent advent of iPod key parties, where everyone winds up going home with someone else's 'Pod. Before long we'll be hearing about people listening to two iPods at once, and from there it's a slippery slope down to iPod Caligula.

Now, we're not judging anyone, here (much)-- you folks can live whatever sort of "lifestyle" you choose, and it really doesn't affect us in the slightest. Unless, of course, you come loping at us with drool running out of the corners of your mouths, brandishing a naked iPod with its jack exposed and aiming an eager earbud prong at us, in which case-- and consider this fair warning-- you will be Maced. Think of it this way: if there aren't any iPod viruses yet, with this sort of behavior going on, there sure as shootin' soon will be-- especially with all those filthy Windows users carrying 'Pods these days. Who knows where they've been?

So for heaven's sake, if you are going to engage in this sort of behavior, please, in the interest of public health, always use an iPod Skin. They're rubberized, protective, and yes, they even come in different colors. We imagine that people like you actually like that sort of thing.

There goes the neighborhood-- or so you might think. From your perspective, it probably seems like everything was just fine with the iTunes Music Store during its first six months of operation... you know, back when it was a Mac thing. Tons of Mac users happily purchased millions of songs at a fair market price and never once considered subverting Apple's "FairPlay" digital rights management system for purposes of illicit purposes. Oh, sure, there was that little flap about streaming songs across the Internet, and there were plenty of us burning purchased tracks to disc and re-encoding them as unprotected MP3s, but that was so we could (for example) play the songs on our TiVos, and not so we could pirate them via KaZaA-- and actually cracking FairPlay itself was the furthest thing from our innocent little minds. The sun always shone, the birds always sang, and life had a bouncy little idyllic soundtrack sort of like something from "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet."

And then the Windows users moved in. (Da da da dummmmmmm!)

You all probably remember the brouhaha that ensued when somebody on the Wintel side of the fence released a little something called MyTunes, which made it simple for Windows users to capture other people's streamed iTunes songs to disk; technically it really wasn't that big a deal, since anyone looking to swipe a song with MyTunes would need shared access to someone else's library and be using one of three "authorized" computers to play (and thus capture) purchased iTMS music anyway-- but it certainly seemed like a harbinger of things to come.

Well, evidently it was, since The Register now reports that no less a celebrity geek than Jon Lech "DVD Jon" Johansen, the guy who cracked the CSS encryption used to copy-protect most commercial DVDs (and has subsequently spent most of his waking hours beating back endless waves of Hollywood lawyers trying to collect the bounty on his spleen) has turned his attention to iTunes for Windows. Reportedly he has written a short program called "QuickTime for Windows AAC memory dumper" ("Catchy name, Jon, but what does it do?") that "dumps the output of a QuickTime stream to a file." Sounds innocuous, right? Except that the QuickTime streams it can grab include protected iTMS songs-- and unlike MyTunes, DVD Jon's program isn't just recording whatever sound comes across the sound card; according to MacRumors, it's actually intercepting and writing the raw AAC data-- sans encryption. In other words, it can strip the copy protection right out of iTMS song files without the loss of quality associated with "stream rippers."

The software's in an early state, yet, so the raw AAC data lacks header info and is therefore unplayable in any actual software so far, but the writing's on the wall... and who knows how the music industry will react? It sure would be unpleasant if this sort of activity led to the labels taking their ball and going home, forcing the iTMS to close up shop. But like we said before, you may well think that this is all happening because Apple let Windows users into the party-- which, to a certain extent, is true, but just to keep the prejudice from getting completely out of hand, it's good to keep in mind that DVD Jon cracked CSS so that Linux users could (legally) watch DVDs, not so that Windows users could pirate movies. Motive aside, though, things might get a little ugly from here on out, and Apple might get caught in the middle. D'oh! Here's hoping Steve keeps his Reality Distortion Field set on "frappé," or maybe even "liquefy"...