Here we are at episode 6 of the new "Redmond Justice" season, and the plot is still bogged down with poor Netscape head guy Jim Barksdale still stuck on the stand. On the plus side, though, other factors are heating up and making the show more enjoyable again. Specifically, we're talking about the interesting new direction Microsoft's personality is taking; we're detecting not-so-subtle hints that the software company's undergoing a gradual metamorphosis in attitude. Whereas they once took the stance that they're being picked on by jealous competitors and bored politicians for successfully innovating for the good of their customers, it looks like they're starting the slippery slide into developing elaborate conspiracy theories and living a life of outright paranoia. In other words, they're becoming our kind of people.

For instance, consider this Computer Reseller News article about Microsoft's latest take on that infamous June 1995 meeting between themselves and Netscape. The government's stance is that at this meeting, Microsoft illegally offered to divide up the browser market with Netscape. And whereas Microsoft's early defense has been more geared to showing that the whole meeting was originally Netscape's idea, they're now claiming that the whole thing was actually a deliberate and elaborate attempt by Netscape to entrap Microsoft and get them mired in antitrust troubles. It was, in their own words, "a setup" intended to get Microsoft out of the way so that Netscape could have the whole browser market to themselves. Therefore, it's Netscape that's guilty of anticompetitive behavior. Wow! If Microsoft lawyer John Warden ever gets tired of litigation, we could use him on the writing staff here at AtAT, because that's one good conspiracy theory right there.

And that's not all; the government is in on it, too, according to Microsoft-- making it a conspiracy in the truest sense of the word. In a San Jose Mercury News article, we learn that Microsoft has accused the government of deliberately suppressing evidence in an attempt to railroad the software company. Apparently a June 23rd letter from Gary Reback (a well-known anti-Microsoft legal crusader) to the Justice Department didn't show up until last Friday, after Microsoft's lawyers spent Thursday playing up the contents of a later letter from Reback dated July 28th. The government claims that they didn't find the June letter until recently because it was part of another investigation. Fishy? Perhaps. All indications are that this thing is going to get a lot bigger before it goes away. Bring it on!