Yes, it's Friday once again, folks, and tradition dictates that it's Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day-- but this week we're going to go just a little bit off-off-topic and do the bashing in a slightly more oblique fashion than usual. Don't worry, it won't hurt a bit, we promise.

What we're about to tell you is actually old news, but since roughly half our viewing audience gets 95% of its knowledge of current events solely from Mac web sites, there's a decent chance you haven't heard about it yet. According to The Inquirer (as pointed out by faithful viewer mrmgraphics), the Deputy Chief Information Officer of our illustrious Department of Homeland Security, one Laura Callahan, finally resigned last week, after months of controversy about her qualifications. Specifically, her degrees and "doctorate in computer information systems" came from Hamilton University, a learning institution that "emphasizes the individual needs and goals of the degree candidate." As in, "I need a few degrees to pad my résumé and my goal is to get them by writing you a check."

In other words, Hamilton U. is allegedly a "diploma mill," an unlicensed and unaccredited "school" selling doctoral degrees to anyone with $3,600 to pay for one (credit cards not accepted). Government Computer News reports that it's run by "two or three people" out of an old motel. And so "Dr." Laura Callahan is no more a Doctor of Information Systems than we are Doctors of Love, except that our Certificates of Mastery of the Arts of Gettin' Freaky only cost us ten bucks each the last time the carnival rolled through town. (Well, plus framing costs; you don't buy certification like that without displaying it proudly on the wall, ya know.)

"But AtAT," you ask, "where's that oblique Microsoft-bashing you promised us?" Patience, Grasshopper; remember when the Department of Homeland Security made that bonehead move of signing a $90 million contract to name Microsoft as its "primary technology provider"? Sure you do-- that's the one that put Redmond software on the department's 140,000 computers, despite the fact that any organization with the word "security" in its freakin' title should darn well know better. If you still don't remember it, here's a little chronological landmark to jog your memory: this is the contract that was signed about a day and a half before Microsoft admitted the existence of that "critical flaw" in Windows that eventually led to the rampage of the Blaster worm a month later. Ah, there's a glimmer of recognition.

So what we're getting at is, given "Dr." Callahan's high-ranking position in the DHS information systems department, it's finally starting to make sense to us how the organization could have been so completely clueless as to pay $90 million to stick such Swiss-cheese software on its 140,000 computers. Now, okay, true, Laura had been "on administrative leave with pay" since last June (wow, she was raking in paychecks and government benefits for doing nine months' worth of nothing? Sign us up for a fake degree or three!), and the Microsoft deal wasn't signed until mid-July, but based on the typical speed of bureaucracy, we think it's safe to assume that the contract was in the works long before Laura got busted.

Windows: The Technology Choice of Uneducated Frauds and Their Non-Credential-Checking Government Employers!™