Once again Microsoft is busy shafting consumers. According to 10 pieces of identical spam in my hotmail inbox (which is my spam only email address anyway, so not a problem) MSN messenger "as part of Microsofts initiative for trustworthy computing" (translated from Danish - wording may not accurately reflect the English version of this message) will be updated in a non-backwards compatible fashion. The trustworthy computing line is as believeable as the now standard 911 defence for the Bush administration's policies on any issue. Reports in the news indicate that it is not a security update but just an attempt to throw all the MSN capabable IM clones off the MSN network.
In short, they're at it again - and inspired by the "take no prisoners, answer no questions, money is power" style of the Bush administration we can expect a lot more of incidents like this in the near future. Attacks on Google. Tying the optional MS Office add-on to Windows even closer to the OS. More use of MSN from the OS.
If only "avoid their products like the plague" was a real option.

As an aside, the Danish arm of Microsoft translates "trustworthy computing" as "pålidelig beregning" - which means something more along the lines of "dependable computation" (with "beregning" in danish being unmistakeable as anything but adding numbers together).