So at what point does something stop being funny and start being just plain sad? Apparently not content with simply turning their anti-trust trial into a Jerry Lewisesque slapstick farce, Microsoft is now pushing their defense further into the realm of the pathetic and absurd. Instead of an intense courtroom drama or a screwball comedy, we now feel like we're watching a Beckett play in production. Case in point? Not a week after Microsoft's legal team was forced to admit that a videotaped test they entered into evidence was in fact an "illustration" created by splicing together footage shot of more than one computer ("Whoops! Sorry! Didn't we mention that?"), they introduced yet another tape of yet another test-- and, once again, had to admit that things weren't quite what they seemed. A Washington Post article has the pitiable details.

It seems that Microsoft wanted to prove that Windows 98 makes the process of signing up for an Internet service provider much quicker than it is under Windows 3.1. (We imagine that their point would be that the integration of the web browser is what makes the difference, though that sure seems like a specious argument to us, given all the other differences in the two operating systems.) Anyway, the videotape in question showed two computers walking through the ISP sign-up process-- one running Windows 3.1, and one running Windows 98. The Windows 98 system finished first by a wide margin, but once the presentation was done, government mouthpiece David Boies (the eagle-eyed trustbuster who noticed the discrepancy leading to the first videotape fracas) asked whether the two computers had identical-speed modems. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft "thought so" but didn't know offhand. They checked, and found that the Windows 98 computer had the benefit of a 56K modem, while the Windows 3.1 machine had only a 33.6 kbps model. We imagine the phrase "sinking feeling" must have applied collectively to the Microsoft legal team by this point, though they stood their ground and insisted that the speed of the modems was "irrelevant" to the task at hand.

Granted, Microsoft has a very valid point: pitting a 56K modem against a 33.6K modem during an ISP sign-up test isn't quite the same kind of blinding gaffe as being caught with faked and fabricated video evidence, but it's just about the last thing that Microsoft needed right now. Whatever credibility they might possibly have retained in the judge's eyes has very likely crumbled to dust following this latest craziness. One would think that after last week's media feeding frenzy, Microsoft would be very careful to make sure that any further submitted test results were absolutely and completely credible. The fact that they'd overlook something as simple as making sure two computers in an Internet access speed test have the same speed modems is just one more example of Microsoft's lamentable lack of attention to detail. At this point we can only assume that they either seriously believe that they're invulnerable, or they're actually trying to lose. As far as we're concerned, we're more interested in hearing if the two tested machines even had the same processor in them...