Geez, is it really Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day again? Why do we feel like we just finished one of these? Maybe it's because Labor Day means we wound up with one fewer broadcast between installments. Maybe it's because that scene about how control of the Royal Navy's nukes will soon be in the twitchy hands of Windows took a decidedly WO-TM-BDesque turn just three days ago. Or maybe it's because we walk around muttering expletives about Microsoft under our breath pretty much every waking minute of every day, so every little thing seems to smear together into one nonstop simmering Goulash of Senseless Redmond Hate. (Try it with noodles.) In any event, it's that time again, but since it doesn't feel like that time, how about we go with a topic just slightly more esoteric than usual?

See, normally we wouldn't go near something as abstruse as the influences that led a London borough to sign a ten-year deal to use Microsoft technologies over the open source solutions it had formerly seemed to favor; it's just too far afield to hold most people's interest, and indeed, The Register needed three dense pages to document exactly what had happened to cause the flip-flop. Fortunately, there's a nice, dramatic hook at the center of the whole thing that clarifies the crux of why the Newham Council eventually abandoned the idea of using Linux and similar technologies in favor of joining itself at the hip-- and wallet-- to Microsoft for the entire coming decade.

No, it wasn't aliens. Good guess, though, especially since, as The Register reported a few weeks back, the Newham Council (one of the "standard bearers for open source trials") eventually came around to believe that "as well as being cheaper than open source software, Microsoft is more secure." Seriously, if bodysnatching alien pods aren't to blame, what is?

Well, this is what did it: an "IT audit and analysis" carried out by some firm called Cap Gemini, whose representatives apparently stop just short of wearing big circus hats with the words "WE ARE INDEPENDENT FROM MICROSOFT" flashing on and off in big red letters on the front. It was that "independent" study which convinced the council that Microsoft software is cheaper and more secure than open source alternatives. That's fair, right?

Except that, as faithful viewer Chris Pepper pointed out, it's since come to light that not only was that "independent" study paid for by Microsoft, but it also based key conclusions entirely on data given to it by Microsoft itself. Apparently the entire "Microsoft is cheaper" verdict arises from the following excerpt: "Microsoft have also offered figures for a (current configuration) to Linux migration that they have generated from the same Gartner model using input data validated with the ICT group. We have not independently validated these figures... Microsoft believe that a desktop migration to an open source solution based on a Linux Platform could potentially generate... potential cost savings to the council over five years of £1.6m, or roughly half that available from the deployment of a Microsoft based solution."

In other words, this oh-so-independent Microsoft-funded study states that the Newham Council can save twice as much money by using Windows instead of Linux... because Microsoft says so. We especially love how Cap Gemini even admits that it's just passing along Microsoft's figures which it didn't bother to "independently validate." What is this, the "Redmond Justice" trial all over again? When does Microsoft bring in the faked videotapes?