Sound like a world you don't live in? Something you'd like to own?

Well, it might not be just a dream for anyone sick of ubiquitous capitalist branding. It's also a work by San Francisco artist Andy Cox.

The Anti-Capitalist Operating System is a stripped-down desktop available to anyone via a free downloadable program now online for public beta-testing.

On the heels of the Windows ME and Apple OS X operating systems, ACOS takes a different approach to the corporate operating system paradigm.

"By building our own operating systems, we can hack our way out of the current impasse of capitalism," Cox says.

"I think the Web is a public space, or at least that's what we're struggling to protect, if it isn't already too late," Cox says. "The operating system itself is this weird kind of controlled space we enter everyday, which promotes the illusion of freedom of choice, while tying us all into the same way of working."

Of course, Cox's grand pronouncement is more talk than action. ACOS doesn't really function as an operating system. It just tweaks a site visitor's browser so it appears as if a new operating system is being used.

ACOS is the latest offering in Cox's Together We Can Defeat Capitalism campaign, created to get the public to question the oh-so-sacred notion of capitalism itself.

"I like to think of it on the borderline between art and activism, somewhere between hacking and satire," says Cox, whose MO echoes that of popular Net artist collectives RTMark and etoy, which all use the Web to deliver subversive satirical messages about commerce and society.

ACOS is Cox's first foray into the realm of digital art. He's best known for producing provocative public art pieces.