Two notices of dismissal have been filed with the courts -- Microsoft's in Washington State, and TomTom's in Virginia, each dismissed without prejudice, ending both patent litigations. "Without prejudice" means that either could ramp it up and do this some more in the future, should circumstances arise that made it necessary. But in most cases, it means the litigation, or whatever, is over.

The Linux Foundation is ready and willing to help companies get Microsoft’s FAT out of their products.

It's no hoax: “They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” -Bill Gates. WELL, what can we say? Like most such deals, it smacks of collusion or dumping, sometimes even bribes like Live@Edu, public looting, or even addiction techniques like the *Spark programmes.

ONE particular new thread that caught people's attention began with this revelation: "You know what scared ME from using Windows? Working for Microsoft for 14 years, 4 of them in the Windows division.

The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit vendor-neutral organization that coordinates development of the Linux kernel, has responded to the recent news that Microsoft and TomTom have settled their patent dispute. Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin wrote a blog entry on Tuesday commenting on the outcome of the conflict.

This is not an April Fools’ Day joke. --Microsoft just officially announced that they will discontinue all Encarta products by the end of the year. They will shutdown all of their Encarta websites worldwide and will stop selling their software products, namely Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium encyclopedias.

THERE is some outrageous coverage in the press which not only misses the point that Microsoft was kept inside the "Open Cloud Manifesto" loop; it also falls for Microsoft's PR stunt, which almost characterises the company as a proponent of openness.

If you are a new online business owner, one of the best pieces of advice I can give you is to not become a whore to Microsoft, their high cost, and their ludicrous licensing system.