So you've seen "Pirates of Silicon Valley" and marveled at the audacity of Bill Gates selling IBM an operating system that he didn't yet possess. Your mind reeled at the greed that would pay the poor developer of QDOS a mere $50,000 for an operating system that Gates knew would net him millions. So is "Redmond Justice" the sequel to "Pirates," at least from the Gates half of the story? Is this the tale of how the karma wheel spins back around and kicks Bill in the kiester? We won't know until the trial is over, but throughout the proceedings we've seen more than enough evidence that Gates likes to play dirty. Heck, sometimes the nature of the evidence itself is evidence that Gates likes to play dirty. Remember that terrific videotaped "test" that showed Windows performance degrading after Internet Explorer had been removed? When government law-talking guy David Boies pointed out on-screen discrepancies that proved the "test" had been doctored, we witnessed one of the great TV courtroom moments of all time.

One would think that after getting caught with their collective pants down, Microsoft's legal team would be just a little gunshy about introducing fake evidence again. But if The Register is correct, it's hard to wean an old dog from old tricks. Apparently a "highly dubious" piece of evidence could possibly be enough to hold Gates, et al in contempt of court. See, Microsoft's lawyers recently introduced some Gates email into evidence-- some memo in which Gates claims that the purchase of Netscape by AOL effectively nullifies the government's entire case. The snag is that the email in question was "written specifically to be leaked" to the press last year; it was essentially the same kind of spin job as those letters to the editor from "industry players" which were actually concocted by Microsoft's public relations staff. The Gates email was essentially a "press release," and not real mail that the press mysteriously managed to get their hands on. Heck, the government even cited email about the email, in which Microsoft PR people discuss just how to leak the memo to maximize its press coverage.

So there's really no question that the memo was "cooked." The $40 billion question is, why on earth is Microsoft entering this into evidence? Either their lawyers are sadly misinformed about the very case they're handling, or they're really bad at faking evidence. Given the faked tape demo earlier, we're inclined to believe the latter, which, if true, is not likely to put Microsoft in very good standing with an already impatient judge. A third possibility is that the entire Microsoft legal team is either congenitally stupid or on some serious drugs, which we won't rule out entirely. Just about the only thing that could make "Redmond Justice" more exciting these days would be a surprise mandatory drug test that shows the whole Microsoft team full to the brim with illegal opiates... Maybe during July Sweeps?