It is, however, getting progressively more difficult to put Microsoft's legal woes down to misleading snippets that only appear to show anticompetitive behavior. Tuesday's ruling in the Sun Microsytems suit, for one, forces the company to stop pushing a "polluted" Windows-only version of Java; the judge said Sun's case had "real merit." Gates has since grudgingly decided to support pure, Scott McNealy-brand Java in Windows 98. "We're moving to make our product comply with the order," he told the AP. Will the beleaguered billionaire be saying the same once the government case is complete? "Just wait until the Microsoft people actually get up there and talk about these relationships" with other software companies, Gates warned. Maybe then the snippets can return to their natural habitat.