The leader of Microsoft’s integration efforts around open source software and its proprietary technologies is expanding his role by adding the title "general manager of Windows server marketing," further indication that Microsoft plans to crank up the volume on its Windows/Linux story.

Microsoft Corp. may be trying to make it easier for delinquent corporate customers to "true up" their volume license contracts. But CIOs who have tangled with Microsoft on licensing issues said this latest program does little to tackle the real issue: the difficulty, short of buying Microsoft's most expensive class of license, of staying compliant.

"...Firewall logs and network captures are being used to find and arrest dissidents. It's not hypothetical, it's not paranoid, it's real... and happening with the technology we've all been building..."

"Not content with running your computer, Microsoft now wants to read your mind too. The company says that it is hard to properly evaluate the way people interact with computers since questioning them at the time is distracting and asking questions later may not produce reliable answers. "Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions," the company says.

Microsoft has dropped its appeal against the Korean Fair Trade Commission, complying with the antitrust regulator's 2006 instruction to pay a 32.4 billion won ($34 million) fine and to sell its Windows operating system and other software products separately.

Microsoft's detente with the open-source world is growing stronger by the minute. Steve Ballmer said today that he wouldn't consider an open-source-based business model a deterrent to buying a company Microsoft found interesting.

Microsoft's big plans to rule the Puppylinux market.

IMAGINE YOU'RE HEAD OF IT at a large company. You're standing in front of the board explaining why you want to switch from Windows to Linux. You have all the technical benefits and cost savings up on the screen. Everything's going swimmingly until you let slip that you want this bunch of middle-aged fogeys in sober suits to bet the farm on something called Gutsy Gibbon.