And then, of course, there's our favorite Goliath vs. Goliath story: Microsoft vs. the U.S. government. "Redmond Justice" is still on hiatus until April 12th, but gears are turning behind the scenes, as the show's producers figure out what's going to happen next when our favorite courtroom drama goes back on the air. Apparently the stars are squabbling with the writers about who's going to come out on top when this whole thing is over. You know what that means: settlement talks. According to a CNET article, it may be dawning on Microsoft that their chances of winning this case outright are just a little on the slim side.

So far, though, no settlement talks have been scheduled, and the common ground between Microsoft and the government isn't very large. (In fact, metaphorically speaking, you could just barely fit a porta-potty on it, but only after introducing several inconvenient structural modifications and violating local zoning laws.) In fact, just about the only thing the two sides have in common is that they're both "open to a settlement"-- provided that settlement meets each side's unspecified-- but probably rather stringent-- requirements. Given the current power imbalance, we doubt the government would accept any settlement offer that Microsoft would be likely to offer.

Purely for entertainment's sake, we'd love to see this trial run through to completion, but the odds are stacked so heavily in the government's favor, we consider it pretty unlikely that Microsoft won't finally cave and accept a settlement that they won't particularly like. After all, they're a highly successful company, who didn't get as far as they have by making stupid decisions. On the other hand, sometimes it seems like Microsoft has been saving up its allotment of stupid moves over the years and is splurging them all on this one trial, so who really knows? Either way, there are only a few weeks left before the trial is scheduled to resume, so the clock's ticking...