E-Commerce Times: Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL)
Goes to Court over PeopleSoft Poison Pill
Story Highlights:
Oracle Corp. has asked a court to toss out PeopleSoft's customer assurance program, saying the company's cash guarantees amount to an attempt to block Oracle's hostile takeover bid and lock in pay packages for PeopleSoft executives. In the motion filed with the Delaware court that is handling other aspects of the takeover bid, Oracle said PeopleSoft's newly revised assurance plan -- which promises customers cash refunds for their software purchases if the company is bought and the purchaser phases out support
-- may make its longstanding $7.3 billion bid unfeasible.
Full Story on the E-Commerce Times
TechNewsWorld: Canada Marks First Internet Election in North America
Story Highlights:
Eastern Ontario voters today were allowed to vote by Internet or telephone -- but not by paper ballot -- in what is being called the first all-electronic election of North America. Despite e-voting security issues in the United States that have pitted some researchers, publishers and ISPs against Diebold Election Systems, the Linux-based voting system used in the Ontario election is as secure as or more secure than financial industry transactions, CanVote president Joe Church told TechNewsWorld.
E-Commerce Times: Strong Holiday E-Commerce Forecast Tempered by Security Fears
Story Highlights:
Consumers are gearing up for another strong online holiday shopping season, but they continue to express concern about the security aspects of buying via the Web, according to a survey commissioned by the Business Software Alliance. The BSA said the survey found that more than 63 percent of consumers in the United States plan to do at least some Internet shopping this holiday season. Still, about three-fourths of all U.S. shoppers surveyed said they are concerned either a "great deal" or a "fair amount" about a host of security issues.
Full Story on the E-Commerce Times
LinuxInsider: Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)
Story Highlights:
To prevent Linux from running away with Thailand's subsidized "people's PC project," Microsoft has dropped the price of its Windows/Office package from nearly $600 to $37. Other Asian countries are lining up to duplicate the Thai program. As a result of the events in Thailand, analysts have begun to predict the end of Microsoft's long-standing "one-price-fits-all-markets policy." Significantly, first-time PC users in Thailand are finding the Linux Thai Language Edition easier to master than Windows.
TechNewsWorld: Gateway Intros 14 New Products, Nips at Dell
Story Highlights:
While some PC makers talk a good consumer electronics strategy, Gateway is turning talk into products. That's what Gateway executive vice president Scott Edwards told TechNewsWorld in an exclusive interview following a New York City press conference where the computer maker with the bovine brand introduced 14 new business and consumer products. "Our friends in Texas made some big announcements a month or two ago, but I don't believe they have any sense of depth in a real product lineup as Gateway has," Edwards said, referring to Dell Computer.
E-Commerce Times: Former Gateway Execs Face Charges as Dell Charges
Story Highlights:
Three former Gateway executives, including former CFO
John J. Todd and former CEO Jeffrey Weitzen, face
civil suits charging they manipulated the computer
maker's earnings in mid-2000 as the onetime market
darling struggled to keep up with expectations amid
slumping sales. The three are alleged to have hidden
"significant trends in Gateway's business," including
the fact that PC sales growth was dropping, and to
have disguised earnings by lumping one-time
transactions into ongoing revenue bookings.
Full Story on the E-Commerce Times
LinuxInsider: SCO Files Subpoenas To Summon Stallman and Torvalds
Story Highlights:
Claims and counterclaims now have turned into dueling subpoenas, as IBM (NYSE: IBM)
and SCO continue to spar over allegations that a Linux kernel promoted by Big Blue was copied from SCO's Unix System V source code. Earlier this month, IBM issued subpoenas for SCO investors and analysts, including Bay Star Capital, Renaissance Ventures, Deutsche Bank and Yankee Group, in the court case that began in March when SCO claimed contract violations and sued IBM. SCO has now filed its own subpoenas for Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman.
TechNewsWorld: Plastic Discovery Means Advanced Memory
Story Highlights:
With the discovery of a new property in commonly used plastics, researchers from Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)
said they have invented a combination of materials that could lower the cost and boost the density of electronic memory. The research, detailed in this month's issue of Nature, involves a previously unrecognized property in a widely used polymer plastic coating. Combined with thin-film silicon transistors, the polymer can store data like a CD but would serve as a conventional electronic memory chip.


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