Last Friday, Microsoft employees, along with some U.S. Marshals, raided office buildings in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Lombard, Illinois and seized servers thought to be used by botnets for identity theft. The botnet in question is related to Zeus malware, which utilizes keyloggers to snag users’ financial information and is thought to be responsible for around 13 million infections across the globe. That’s part of the reason Microsoft took the initiative to handle things personally; the other part was trademark infringement.

If it seems The Pirate Bay is the only torrent site to be in the news, that’s because it is big and popular enough for more mainstream outlets to pay attention to it. Case in point, there are a ton of places on the Internet from which to grab torrents — some of which extremely popular — but only links to The Pirate Bay have been blocked by Microsoft in Windows Live Messenger, as opposed to links to other popular torrent sites.

Famed and somewhat notorious game designer Peter Molyneux, creator of the Fable and Black & White video game franchises, will be leaving his studio, Lionhead Studios, and Microsoft. By leaving Lionhead Studios, Molyneux will be leaving a company he co-founded back in 1997, and by leaving Microsoft, he’ll be giving up his seat as creative head of Microsoft Studios Europe, which has yet to have a successor named. Fable fans need not worry, however, as he’ll be staying on as a consultant to help finish the next iteration of Fable, Fable: The Journey.

Are you a consumer? Do you like previews? Have you been wanting to check out the wacky new Windows 8 UI? Starting today, you can do so for free! The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is now available for download, and all you’ll need is a good bit of harddisk space, and a USB stick or DVD to burn for easier installation. You’ll also need to appreciate weird art, because that new UI alternative feels pretty weird to use on an actual desktop. You could also just ignore the thing and use the standard desktop arrangement like you’ve been using your whole life. Get the public beta here.

There is a  Star Wars-branded thing called ”Galactic Dance Off” and it’s coming to a Kinect near you, that is, if you can’t manage to run away fast enough. Before you get too excited upset excited, this isn’t a standalone property. No, it’s a mode available in the upcoming Kinect Star Wars, a detail that seems to speak volumes about the game’s actual content. But it gets even better.

In light of Google’s new privacy policy changes, Microsoft has released a jab at Google in the form of a new Gmail Man video ironically, as I’m sure you’ll note, hosted on Google-owned YouTube. Whether you agree with the Microsoft ad –because it is an ad, after all– or not, it’s hard not to appreciate the that little girl’s expression when she finds out where ads come from. Personally, I think everyone is over-reacting anyways. I hardly ever say anything important over gmail anyways; I usually use GChat, or text from my Android phone. Whatever. Come over here Big Brother! Gimme a big hug!

It’s about that time in the console generation when rumors start flying around like wild. Many of them make you excited for all the wonderful gaming possibilities the future can hold, others are a little bit more terrifying. Naturally, as “Xbox 720″ enthusiasm keeps snowballing, we’re going to get a bit of both. For instance, the new Xbox is rumored to be at least 6 times more powerful than the 360, support Blu-ray, and bring a new version of Kinect along with it. The catch? It may not support used games.

Microsoft has announced that Kinect for Windows will be made available starting less than a month away, on February 1. The hardware and software will release in an array of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain, at a suggested U.S. retail price point of $249. If you’re wondering, GameStop is selling a 4 GB Xbox 360 Kinect bundle for only $50 more than the Windows Kinect, at $299.

So remember back, after the big Sony hacking fiasco, when Sony pushed a PlayStation Network update that required all users to surrender their right to sue Sony? Well now Sony is getting sued over it. There were a lot of questions about whether the move to include the clause was actually legal, and now we’re set to find out. Sony did provide a way to opt-out of the clause, but it was hard to find and even harder to excute; you had to send them a letter snail-mail, which as we all know, is an activity bordering on impossible. Seriously though, it’s kind of a pain and that was a pretty sketchy move on Sony’s part.

Any web developer or child of computer-owning parents will tell you how much they dislike Internet Explorer. It’s not just that it is seen as an inferior browser, but that whenever anyone comes into contact with it, there’s a good chance it is a years-old version, out of date by a few full version numbers. Microsoft realized that it is almost 2012 and it is time to put a stop to Internet Explorer 6.0 and its cohorts, and will begin rolling out automatic updates for Internet Explorer sometime soon.