When Microsoft employee, Brandon LeBlanc announced that Microsoft ruled the netbook world, he was exaggerating, shall we say, just a wee bit. I was going to stomp on him but Chris Kenyon of Canonical, the business that stands behind Ubuntu, beat me to it.

Boston - A Boston College computer science student has asked a Massachusetts court to quash an invalid search warrant for his dorm room that resulted in campus police illegally seizing several computers, an iPod, a cell phone, and other technology.

The VAR Guy loves cat fights as much as the next guy. Jennifer Aniston vs. Angelina Jolie? Classic but a bit dated. Canonical vs. Microsoft? Not quite as sexy, but certainly timely and just as much fun. The latest spat involves Canonical dismissing Microsoft's claims in the netbook market.

MICROSOFT'S "academic kickbacks" are no news to us. Microsoft pays hundreds of dollars to professors who secretly promote its products (and bullies those who don't). Microsoft was doing almost exactly the same thing to throw fire at the GNU GPL version 3. The company from Redmond routinely pays academia to promote its agenda and here is the very latest example which comes from the New York Times.

A quick look at ways in which Microsoft markets its closed ecosystem under misleading banners. THERE are all sorts of articles out there that can truly bother one's mind. For starters, Microsoft's latest spin on "Open" XML is being deconstructed by Andre...

...that, at least, is what this deranged story in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper claims.

Seems every time I write a piece suggesting open source as an option, I get a couple of comments warning readers about the scary complexities of open source licenses. So I decided to ask a guy who knows.