The nascent plot of Microsoft’s proposal to Yahoo thickens again today as Microsoft hints at a hostile takeover of Yahoo, after insisting that the $44.6 billion it offered is “fair.” Since receiving Yahoo’s predictable rejection, the boys from Redmond are saying they’re determined enough to bypass Yahoo’s board and hold their money out for shareholders to take, err, vote on. Sun Microsystems scoops up Innotek for its open source virtualization software package, with which Sun plans to extend its own Sun xVM virtualization platform onto the desktop. Contributing editor Martin Heller eyed the declarative programming language Bill Gates detailed and Mr. Heller sighed. “Why, what a novel idea! It isn’t like there were hundreds of new computer languages designed every year.” Yet another programming language. On four of its newest phones, including the N96, Nokia integrates Google into its search application, even though Google is encroaching on the handset maker’s turf. Apple patches 11 more bugs in Mac OS X, some of which rate as extremely serious, and could be exploited to run malware on a victim’s PC. This round includes fixes for Safari, Mail, Launch Services, the Mac OS Directory Services, Open Directory, and several Unix components that ship with Apple’s software. And RIM acknowledges that service was down for three hours yesterday and, although it gave no reason for the outage, the company claimed that no messages were lost. Software Development