Anyone who's been tuning in to this little show for any length of time probably won't be surprised to learn that the AtAT staff is often plagued with unsettling paranoia dreams involving Microsoft's attempts to subjugate humankind as a slave race of workers and drones, while Bill Gates reigns supreme as World Emperor. (Hey, who doesn't?) The thing is, dreams being the wacky things they are, Microsoft's world-domination antics are generally zanier in our own personal slumberland than they are in real life. So instead of, say, a transparent attempt to crush an enemy by bundling a competing product free with the operating system that holds over 90% of the desktop market share, we're typically dreaming about Microsoft brainwashing the children of the world to use Windows by having Bill Gates lick each individual piece of Cap'n Crunch cereal before it goes in the box.

In fact, a little over a week ago, we had this really crazy dream about Microsoft instituting a Reward-The-Stool-Pigeon program to crack down on the sale of "naked computers"-- a heinous disease that's crippling our economy because some ne'er-do-wells actually have the gall to try to buy computers without Windows on them. Get this; we dreamed that Microsoft was actually trying to bribe PC manufacturers to rat out people who ordered computers without Windows by offering them Fossil watches and barbecue grills as prizes for squealing on these dangerous criminals. We didn't think much of it at the time; insane garbage like that infects our sleeping lives on a regular basis. (We should maybe talk to someone about that.)

Imagine our utter shock, then, when we were cleaning out our downloads folder this morning, and discovered that, rather than being a twisted product of our deranged subconscious minds, Microsoft's "Squeal For Prizes" promotion is real. Faithful viewer Jeremy actually emailed us a link to a Wall Street Journal article on the pilot program last week, and apparently our Fight Club-style levels of sleep deprivation forced our tired minds to file such an absurd scenario automatically in the "nutty dream" category. And really, are you surprised? This whole scheme sounds like either a bad dream or the plot of some profoundly awful movie script-- but take it from the journal, folks: it's a real, honest-to-goodness (though intensely ill-conceived) Microsoft initiative. Hoo mama.

See, Microsoft can't believe that anyone is crazy enough to want to run something like Linux, so the company assumes that anyone buying a Wintel without the "Win" is planning on installing a pirated copy of the company's operating system. And so, in an attempt to collar these obvious pirates, Microsoft actually emailed "thousands" of PC manufacturers to say "You may be eligible to win prizes! Here's how!" and then proceeded to detail the process by which these fine, upstanding box-builders could snitch in exchange for a copy of Flight Simulator or a spiffy free watch. Geez, who needs dreams when the real world is this surreal?