Microsoft, and free software? Free software and Microsoft? Microsoft offering software for free? Come on, today it's not the 1st of April! Humm... today, it seems it's not about Microsoft having something wicked prepared for the free software world, but about offering free access to some of its huge commercial software portofolio. Sounds awesome, don't you think?


Microsoft's new program, called DreamSpark, allows students in United States, Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom (more to follow, in the near future) to use for free a wide range of commercial applications from the Redmond Giant, including Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft Expression Studio, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003!

While this action from Microsoft may be fueled by the need to face the free software community, as well as various competitors offering similar programs for students and non-commercial users, Microsoft's senior director of academic initiative, Joe Wilson, says it's all about helping the young prepare for their future careers, but I am sure improving the company's image is also a goal (nothing wrong with it, from my point of view).

"Microsoft puts a whole lot of effort in reaching out to college students. I think the main benefit that Microsoft gets is that it defuses some of the negative impressions that college students sometimes have of Microsoft.", said Greg DeMichallie, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

These being said, we should see what happens in the long run, but if you're a student, I am sure you'll be very pleased to find out that expensive software products just came within your reach.

Oh, no! Is this a nightmare? It can't be, I'm in the middle of the day, here!That story, once again? It seems so...but let's hope now is the last time!


Finally, Mr. Gates has something to say about the entire deal, and the interesting part is that, according to him, Microsoft won't raise the bid they made for Yahoo, so it seems they are simply moving away from the Internet search market... or not? Well, that's what remains to be seen!

"We sent them a letter and said we think that's a fair offer. There's nothing that's gone on other than us stating that we think it's a fair offer. They should take a hard look at it.", said Bill Gates about the offer made to Yahoo.

It's interesting to note that most analysts thing Microsoft will do whatever it takes to get in control of Yahoo, and I must admit I thought the same, so far. Now, considering what Bill Gates has to say about it, I think they won't bid again, with a higher value, but there are still things to try, such as a hostile takeover of Yahoo's board, or an offer directly to their shareholders, especially since their shares closed at $29.66 on Friday, and may go slowly down, from this moment on.

Before I finish this, it should also be noted that Bill Gates didn't specifically held a speech on this matter, it was simply a response to a question asked during a phone interview about a completely different topic...

I have been using Firefox as my primary browser for a long period, and now its place has been taken by Opera, but Firefox remains my second choice, when Opera seems to have problems with various sites. Unfortunately, it seems a flaw has been discovered in both of them, and it looks like this may compromise one's security pretty seriously. Well, I finally got to see this happening... so let's see what is this all about, shall we?


According to Gynvael Coldwind from Vexillium.org, a flaw affecting both Firefox and Opera's way of handling image files may lead to a hijack of one's Web history. The idea is as it follows - a malicious BMP file can be created, and when you load that file, random information from your browser's memory is extracted, and I don't even want to think about someone stealing my passwords!

"The harvested data contains various information including parts of other Web sites, users' favorites and history and other information.", said Coldwind. Once the data has been extracted from memory, it can be send to a remote computer, by using JavaScript.

At last, it should be noted that, while this flaw can lead to Firefox crashes, there's no information about Firefox 3 Beta being affected, but Opera 9.50 seems to be affected...