Customer demand is synonymous with technological innovation. Pushing the boundaries of product design, manufacturers continually look to do more – features, functionality and processing power – in less space for less money.

Companies used to give away pens, squishy balls and coffee cups to worm their ways into the hearts of customers. Now, they pass out database software.

Sun Microsystems announced today that they are buying Innotek. You can read the announcement here. In case you don't immediately recognize the name Innotek, they are the makers of the VirtualBox virtualization software that many of us have come to know and love. It's a great alternative to VMWare and they have an Open Source edition as well.

Just a few hours after Yahoo! rejected Microsoft's $44.6bn purchase offer, the Redmond-based software giant has responded, reiterating that it "reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal."

Yahoo Inc.'s board plans to reject Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited $44.6 billion offer to acquire the Web giant, a person familiar with the situation says.

Articles about Microsoft's bid have probably tired you to death by now, but this article discusses one particular aspect of the potential takeover, namely its effect on GNU/Linux and BSD users. Here's a point-by-point analysis of the impact, covering several of the key issues:

Normally IT gets walloped in a recession, with new projects put on hold until the economy thaws. Take the 2001 recession, for example, which saw IT budgets that had been growing 12.9% per year shrink to a 2.8% growth. In such circumstances, enterprises have traditionally placed existing projects on life support while cutting off the air supply to new projects.

An article published last week quotes Microsoft officials who claim that IBM is solely responsible for ISO's recent decision to deny OOXML fast-track approval. IBM hasn't taken the accusations lightly.
Bob Sutor, vice president of standards and open source for IBM, has told Ars Technica "If 'business as usual' means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like OOXML on the IT industry, we're proud to stand with the tens of countries and thousands of individuals who are willing to fight against such bad behavior."