Transaction valued at approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock; provides 62 percent premium to current trading price for Yahoo! shareholders; combined entity to create a more competitive company, providing superior value to shareholders, better choice and innovation for customers and partners.

The wait is nearly over for the first service pack for Windows Vista, according to sources close to Microsoft.

Microsoft has said the highly anticipated service pack would be out in the first quarter of this year, but some say it could be available in the next few weeks, more than a month before the quarter ends on March 31.

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on Friday pushed back the release of SQL Server 2008 until the third quarter.
Microsoft had planned for a second-quarter release of the product, but insisted the later date still keeps the company on track to ship the database software within the original goal of 24 to 36 months after SQL Server 2005. "We are on track to reach this goal," the company said a blog dedicated to SQL Server.

Everyone loves to get stuff for free. We line up to get a free drink, we sign up for free checking accounts, and we're happy to get a free gift with the purchase of our next car. We love free stuff, even though we all know and understand that free is an illusion. After that free drink, we pay for the next three. The bank is making money by investing what we put in that checking account. The car dealer can afford to give away a small gift because the profit on the car is large. But none of this seems to bother us - free things still have a certain allure.

It has been 24 years since Microsoft first released Word, and four years since the program's last major upgrade. How much more can Microsoft do to tweak its venerable word processor?

These tools will help you apply a Creative Commons Attribution license to your documents, photos and other files before you share them on the web:

CC PDF Converter - This is an open source PDF writer with an an inbuilt Creative Commons License generator. That means you can directly embed any Creative Commons license into your PDF documents at the time of conversion itself. [Demo Video]

When he was chief executive of Intel in the 1990s, Andrew Grove often talked about the "software spiral" -- the interplay between ever-faster microprocessor chips and software that required ever more computing power.

The potential speed of chips is still climbing, but now the software they run is having trouble keeping up. Newer chips with multiple processors require dauntingly complex software that breaks up computing chores into chunks that can be processed at the same time.

Microsoft has entered into a licensing agreement with the nonprofit Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF) under which the software giant will be providing developers working on the Samba file and printing system with the information they need to ensure interoperability between their open-source software and Windows.

Essentially, the agreement gives the Samba team access to Microsoft specifications for the protocols in the Work Group Server Protocol Program and allows the Samba team to create, use, and distribute implementations.

CoDe : Component Developer Magazine is the answer for your software development information needs. You'll find in-depth explanations of the latest Microsoft technologies, as well as loads of practical development tips!

Website
http://www.code-magazine.com/

When it comes down to identity management, the Windows and Linux operating systems fail to play by the same tune. But at the same time, Windows Server can be leveraged in order to manage both platforms. This is the promise of a whitepaper authored by Chris Travers, the owner of Metatron Technology Consulting and Contributing Author to the Microsoft Open Source Software Lab. Travers revealed that Windows Server 2003 R2 was effectively a turning point for the streamlining of the implementation Windows-based identity management solutions tailored for Linux.