Hey, do you remember that thing people kept saying to you when you told them that you just got mugged by someone wearing a Donald Duck costume and brandishing a chainsaw? They kept telling you that "truth is stranger than fiction"-- which probably annoyed the living bejeezus out of you, in part because what you really wanted them to say was "I'm calling 911 so you can receive emergency medical attention for your assorted grievous chainsaw wounds," but mainly because it's a trite expression which only reveals that most people read really boring fiction. So instead, how about we just say that reality is at least as twisted as Internet humor? It doesn't have quite the same ring to it, granted, but at least it's not exactly a cliché. Then again, with Microsoft around, it might well be soon.

Geezers like us who were actually eating solid food by 1995 recall the hilarious debacle of Microsoft Bob, the company's first wildly misguided pre-Win95 attempt to make Wintel clones "friendly" to the average consumer-- standing in stark contrast to all those wildly misguided post-Win95 attempts to do the same thing. How was Bob to have accomplished this Herculean task? Well, primarily by supplying a selection of annoying animated figures that incessantly offered unwanted help, asked stupid questions, and refused to get out of the way. Oh, to have been present at that pitch meeting: "We can make PCs just as easy to use as Macs. Three words: talking cartoon dog." (Then again, since the Bob project was managed by none other than eventual Bill Gates snugglebunny Melinda, it's probably best that we weren't there after all. Nerd love: fear it. Believe us, we know.)

Well, unsurprisingly, Bob spawned a heckuvalotta jokes (yes, in addition to the colossal joke that was the software itself), one of the most widely-forwarded being a fake press release about Microsoft claiming all rights to the use of the "Bob" name. Private citizens named "Bob" would either have to change their names or pay a "small monthly licensing fee" which would allow them "to continue using their former names at very low cost." The press release is well worth reading in its entirety because 1) it quotes a pre-CEO Steve Ballmer, 2) it includes a throwaway reference to the now-discarded Apple technology known as OpenDoc, and 3) it was uncannily prescient in predicting what would really happen over nine years later.

No, it's not all guys named Bob under attack: it's one guy named Mike. Faithful viewer Bill Gates is the Devil! (now there's a fella whose name is a lawsuit target if we've ever seen one) pointed us toward an article in The Province which reports that 17-year-old Mike Rowe needed a domain name for his web design services, so he registered MikeRoweSoft.com. Emperor Gates was evidently not amused, because he dispatched his crack legal team posthaste. Said lawyers demanded that Mike surrender the domain name, presumably because "Mikerowesoft" is such a common misspelling of the Redmond Giant's name and people looking to download the sixty-odd critical security patches of the hour keep going to Mike's site and hiring him to do web design instead. (Happens all the time, we're sure.) Mike replied that if he were going to yield the rights to use his own name for his web site, he ought to be compensated. Microsoft offered him the princely sum of-- ready for this?-- ten bucks.

Okay, so it's a whopping $1.51 more than Mike paid to register the domain name in the first place, but the condescension is palpable; "Here ya go, kid, go buy yourself a Sunny-D-- it's on us." Mike was insulted (and rightly so) and wrote back asking for a thousand dollars (or ten thousand, depending on which report you believe), mostly because they'd ticked him off. The next thing Mike knows, he's the recipient of a 25-page letter "accusing him of trying to force Microsoft into giving him a large settlement for his name." Oh, the irony; funny how Microsoft seems oblivious to the fact that its lawyers are trying to force Mike into accepting a settlement that pegs his name-- and his time-- as being worth less than a Steak Quesadilla at Taco Bell. Evidently lawyers on the Redmond payroll think knives only cut one way; we're surprised more of them aren't accidentally lopping off fingers and limbs all the time.

So there you have it: if Microsoft's lawyers get their way, Mike Rowe won't be able to do business on the 'net using his own real name. Sounds a lot like the Bob-licensing joke, doesn't it? Who knew Internet humor could be so spookily predictive? Maybe in another five years, there will be a Microsoft car that crashes twice a day and requires that you press the "Start" button to turn the engine off. And if spam is predictive, too, there are going to be a whole lot of EXILED NIGERIANS needing help getting their fortunes back...