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The 28-year-old Mingo, a graduate teaching associate at San Diego State University, put together Microsoftedu.com this summer for course credit.

The site will earn him three units applied to his masters of fine arts degree in creative writing. It includes stories set in a Microsoft-dominated future, as well as art based on the company's terms of service agreement.

Media hacking group ark is supporting Mingo with legal advice and publicity.

"In the case of Andy's site, it is pretty clear that it is satire and we feel that this blanket approach that a lot of large corporation have, this knee-jerk response to send out a blanket letter, cuts down on the free speech rights of a lot of people out there," said ark spokesman Frank Guerrero.

"Most of the time, these [sites] end up going down, out of sight and out of mind, and that is how these intimidation practices are perpetuated," Guerrero said.

Mingo's satire does have a point, according to one academic who tracks corporate involvement in computer curricula.

In the recent essay Killing Off Linux: It's All Academic, University of Virginia professor Bryan Pfaffenberger said that schools are not getting the funding they need from the states for software, and companies such as Microsoft are happily stepping into the breech.

Pfaffenberger said that Indiana University recently announced a US$6 million deal that will allow the school to freely distribute Windows software to all students and faculty.

"California State University chancellor Charles Reed keeps saying, if you're nervous about vendor funding for campus computing infrastructures, there's only one remedy: 'Get used to it,'" Pfaffenberger wrote.

Pfaffenberger was careful to distance himself from any conspiracy allegations, but said that Microsoft is pressuring colleges and universities to move to Windows NT as the server platform.

"There is a very strong argument for technical diversity in our educational institutions," he said.

Meanwhile, Mingo -- who said lack of choice forced him to build his site with Microsoft software -- intends to keep his microsoftedu.com alive as long as he can.

"It will live on and I will be around for a couple more semesters," he said.

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