TheRegister's recent news article about Newham council signing a 10-year contract with Microsoft included a very, very interesting mention about a certain Microsoft-funded study by CapGemini:

One of the deciding factors for Newham in appointing Microsoft as its strategic partner was an IT audit and analysis carried out by CapGemini. Although CapGemini makes a big noise about being independent from Microsoft, the study was indeed funded by the software firm . One of the main conclusions of its research was that as well as being cheaper than OSS, Microsoft is more secure than the open source alternative.

How low can you go in order to bring in that dollar? It's no secret that all the big consultancies are fighting for the privilege to bend over in front of Microsoft. How long will it take for the public to stop believing these "independent" studies?

To continue the fine tradition of petstores (including one by Sun, one by Clinton Begin using iBatis, a couple of versions using XDoclet, and one by the devil himself), The Prevayler team has come out with Presto, a petstore implementation using Prevayler.