If you thought adverts on the web have become more offensive and more intrusive than ever before, then it might be time to find alternatives to using software from Microsoft.

Heads up! Some new patent applications have just been posted on the Peer to Patent Project website, including one from Microsoft, its first entry in the project, on a kind of system I think of as a DRM'd computerized bean counter which tracks all the media clips bought and sold in the offline system of the invention, and then pays copyright holders and their ex-filesharing pirate distributors.

But even Microsoft's childlike "that's mine" attitude about intellectual property and patent violation claims against open source doesn't explain the company's resistance to Red Hat. The question to ask: Whose intellectual property rights is Microsoft seeking to protect?

The more I think about Microsoft, the more I realise that they are, possibly for the first time, seriously cornered (or surrounded, depending on how you want to see it). A little history will clarify why I think so - and why I think that this might really be the beginning of the end for Microsoft.

Red Hat, the largest Linux vendor, and Ubuntu-maker Canonical have both rejected calls from Microsoft to forge a deal similar to the one the Redmond giant signed with Linux distributors Novell, Xandros, and Linspire.

Even though it's a corporation, Red hat has continually placed being a good member of the open source community over being one of the corporate community. Their dedication to open source is outstanding, and yet they receive very little thanks. As a stronghold and *the* prime of example of corporate GNU/Linux, they are an important domino. We have

All the recent huss and fuss over Microsoft's patent FUD campaign and their "we will sue you unless you pay us grievous amounts of cash" threatening of Linux is only the tip of the iceberg in a much larger war.