A couple of days ago it came to light that Microsoft, everyone's favorite software powerhouse took out a patent on what very well could be the spyware to end all spyware - a system which scans information stored on a workstation and sends it Someplace Else for analysis... to generate advertising specifically geared for the person logged into the box. The patent describes a system integrated not only into the operating system and user interface, but all of the applications linked against this functionality that would look at every document on the machine, every e-mail sent or recieved, multimedia files' metadata …