Microsoft has agreed to change the terms of its school agreement with Norwegian regional municipalities, following a complaint by Norwegian company Linpro to The Norwegian Competition Authority (NCA).

So, I understand this [quote from Microsoft's web site] to mean that Microsoft pays these researchers to think and study and figure out ways to innovate in search so Microsoft can beat Google and Yahoo. Microsoft, I would guess, gets rights to the IP in some fashion. No wonder it has spent a fair amount of effort trying to get the community to drop the GPL and adopt the BSD license instead.

Microsoft and Linux distributor Xandros on June 4 signed a broad set of collaboration and patent agreements that reminded many of the November 2006 Microsoft/Novell partnership. What do analysts and other Linux vendors think this new deal means for Linux?

Early adopters of Microsoft’s new Vista operating system are reporting problems with its implementation of IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet’s primary protocol.

Nearly a decade after the government began its landmark effort to break up Microsoft, the Bush administration has sharply changed course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct, including the recent rejection of a complaint by Google.

"Folks, Microsoft will do anything and everything to kill off any competitor, real or perceived. I've seen it. What they represent--the destruction of our freedom--is our enemy. I'm not a Linux zealot, or even a GNU/Linux zealot. I'm a Freedom zealot. And I fight for it every day."

But what if your company is so high-profile in the PC industry that every internal move is noted by MS? What if MS is permanently on-site? What if MS pays your company (in one form or another) to keep their desktop standard internally? What if MS coerces your business...

It was just about the strangest call I’d ever received from Microsoft. “We have a new product we want to show you,” said the PR woman (I’m paraphrasing). “But we can’t tell you what it is, or even what category. But it’s truly revolutionary. It’s going to change the way people work with their computers.”