It can't be easy being Ray Ozzie. Microsoft's chief software architect is just 18 months into the job as Bill Gates' handpicked successor, yet depending on whom you ask, his tenure will either signal a bold new era for the company or mark the beginning of its terminal decline.

Intellectual Ventures is closer to Microsoft than most people may realise and Microsoft asserts its 'rights'

When an animal gets cornered, it becomes afraid. That’s when it becomes irrationally aggressive. Microsoft has truly become an animal recently and it shows.

"Wednesday night’s Microsoft (MSFT) press release about open source software [OSS] began with one of the most loaded sentences in OSS history: “Today Microsoft Corp. and Linux desktop provider Linspire Inc. announced a broad interoperability, technical collaboration (sic) that also includes intellectual property [IP] assurances.”"

If there's one thing to be said for Microsoft, it's a shrewd player. They've done in just a few years what takes some companies decades to do. They've cornered the desktop OS market. All of this success has caused some of their detractors to call them dishonest, unethical, and in some cases just downright evil. All of this has come from their efforts to make a few bucks. Well, a few billion in their case. But as of late, Microsoft has gone an extra step further in expanding and maintaining, or in some cases grabbing dominance in every market they can get into, if they aren't there already.

I do realize it's a pretty provocative title, perhaps I should clarify. I don't mean to say that all users will start running Linux and Microsoft will go out of business. I mean the death of Microsoft as we know it...as "the only, dominant, choice for desktop PC computing."

Come to realise the true motives for Microsoft public 'endorsement' of ODF.

Microsoft has lobbied state legislators in the US to introduce a law which would prevent a business selling goods and services if one of its (possibly foreign) suppliers was found to be using pirated Microsoft software.

Does the Microsoft-HTC patent agreement mean we can expect to see Microsoft weigh in on the Apple vs. HTC patent infringement matter? Or is the Microsoft-HTC deal just one more example (with more mobile-phone makers possibly to come) of Linux companies attempting to head off potential Microsoft lawsuits involving Linux?