As you know, even though AtAT's primarily a Mac-centric show, Microsoft makes frequent guest-star appearances. And it's not always gratuitous, what with Microsoft and Apple being bestest buddies after that infamous August 1997 "cease-fire"-- Microsoft does make Mac products, after all, and Apple also testified in the "Redmond Justice" trial, so that's another link right there. And now we've got yet another reason to put the Redmond Giant on the air: not satisfied with having copied the Mac interface, the QuickTime "brushed metal" look, the whole concept of iMovie, and countless other aspects of the Mac's software, Bill Gates has now resorted to stealing Steve Jobs's personal characteristics, as well.

See, in an interview with Red Herring kindly pointed out to us by faithful viewer Paul, Billy-boy makes several... interesting remarks. Most notably, he flat-out refers to the government's antitrust case against his company as "worse than dumb." In fact, he calls it "malicious," because it's "saying that the government can design software." Now, after having been subjected to Word 6 a few years ago, by Microsoft's standards we bet that the government could design software-- but that's beside the point. The point is that, after reading a bevy of quasi-paranoid/Napoleon-syndrome quotes like "Are you saying that anything AOL does is a threat to Microsoft?" and "Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy, and Steve Case... are the primary billionaires who have been behind [Redmond Justice] from the start," we have to agree with Paul that Bill has finally engineered his very own Reality Distortion Field. We also agree that, "unfortunately for Bill, his RDF apparently only works on himself."

Meanwhile, Bill should start looking up the French translation for "worse than dumb," because it looks like the "Redmond Justice" craze is about to hit Europe. Faithful viewer Malcom Sanders noted an Associated Press story about the European Union's brand-spankin'-new antitrust case against Microsoft, "alleging the software giant is abusing its market position in operating systems to dominate the market for server software." Sacre bleu! Time to tune that RDF, Bill-- and get it fitted for 220-volt power, while you're at it.