Just when "Redmond Justice" seemed to have slipped into a lull, things got hopping again during Microsoft's cross-examination of government witness Edward Felten. If you've been tuning in regularly, you know that Felten is the Princeton University professor of computer science who has testified that Microsoft's integration of the Internet Explorer web browser into the Windows operating system was not done because of any planned design, but rather to force Windows customers to use IE. If the judge's reactions during the courtroom proceedings are the means by which we measure which side wins, this round seems to go squarely to the government. A Reuters story has more.

Felten, you see, came up with a program that he claims can remove IE from Windows 98; it basically deletes all of the icons and executable launch scripts from the user interface, and edits the Windows Registry so that IE isn't launched automatically when an HTML file is opened, etc. When a Microsoft attorney told Felten that his software didn't work as stated, Felten's response was that it worked just fine-- until December 4th. Apparently Microsoft modified Windows 98 at some point prior to that date in such a way as to make Felten's software incompatible. This is where the judge pricked up his ears, as he interjected to ask Felten, "Are you telling me that as part of discovery you provided this code in September, whereupon there appears to have been product changes by Microsoft?" Felten replied with a simple "yes." Hmmm, that looks just a wee bit suspicious-- and the judge certainly seems to think so, too.

That little piece of evidence may have colored Jackson's behavior later in the proceedings, when he once again grew impatient with Microsoft's line of questioning and ordered lawyer Dave Heiner to stop "playing word games." Heiner quickly finished up his cross-examination after the judge's statement that "If you continue to pursue this line of questioning it simply appears to be inviting him to make a careless mistake." That was probably a smart move on Microsoft's part; if the judge were as miffed at us as he obviously is at them, we'd want to cut our losses and move on, too. And so ends one more battle in the ongoing war.