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Submission + - Twitter Rejects Prosecutors' Subpoena For A User's Data Without Warrant (forbes.com)

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: In an unprecedented stand for user privacy, Twitter filed a motion yesterday in a New York state court asking a judge to block a subpoena that would force the company to turn over the data of one of its users, Malcolm Harris. Harris was arrested in an Occupy Wall Street protest on the Brooklyn Bridge in October for “disorderly conduct.” The company's lawyers claim that the subpoena violates the fourth amendment and Twitter's terms of service, which says that users' tweets belong to them and thus can't be handed over to law enforcement without their consent.
Google

Submission + - The Patent Mafia and What You Can Do To Break It Up (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Just like the organization of which Don Fanucci was part of in the Godfather, Part II, there is another "organization" today seeking to "wet their beak" every time some company comes up with a new or better way to use technology. This "Patent Mafia" is building patent stockpiles like the US and USSR stockpiled nuclear missiles at the height of the cold war. A difference between the real Mafia and the Patent Mafia is that the Patent Mafia actually uses the government and the courts to strong arm and enforce their will.

The lawsuits are raging all across the tech world. Oracle sues Google, Yahoo sues Facebook, they counter-sue. Others threaten, others buy more patents and the circle goes round and round.

Don't be fooled by the lawsuits between these tech titans though. The real cost that the patent mafia extracts from the tech world is on the smaller companies who can't afford to battle the Apples and Microsofts of the world. Their choices are far simpler. They can abandon their innovations or they can choose to pay and allow the Mafiosos to wet their beaks. Also, don't be fooled about who the real losers are here. The the real losers are you and me. We lose out on being able to leverage innovative new ideas and technologies that come to market or have to pay more for them so that the the mafia can wet its beak.

This system of software patents has been called out by many. While companies are certainly entitled to the fruits of their inventions, many of these patent rackets are based on patents improperly issued, improperly enforced or improperly applied.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft censors The Pirate Bay links on Windows Live Messenger (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
RemyBR
RemyBR writes: "Microsoft has confirmed that users of its instant messaging app will not be able to send each other links to popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, citing malware fears.
"We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked," Redmond told The Register in an emailed statement."
Facebook

Submission + - Lawyers Using Facebook Research for Jury Selection (wsj.com) 2

Submitted by unassimilatible
unassimilatible writes: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that trial lawyers are increasingly using social networking sites like Facebook to research jurors in real-time during the voir dire process. Armando Villalobos, the district attorney of Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas, last year equipped his prosecutors with iPads to scan the Web during jury selection. But what of the jurors who have their privacy settings restricted to "friends only?" Mr. Villalobos has thought of a potential workaround: granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily "friending" his office. Faustian bargain, or another way to get out of jury duty?
Oracle

Submission + - Oracle's open source identity reborn at ForgeRock (internetnews.com)

Submitted by
darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: "Oracle trashed a lot of former Sun technologies — not the least of which is Sun's open source identity platform which included OpenSSO and OpenDS. Now open source startup ForgeRock has taken those castoffs and created a business that has now been running successfully for year.

"My personal goal here is to prove that you can have an open source business that is profitable," Simon Phipps former chief open source officer and Sun and now chief strategy officer at ForgeRock said. "Having principles and having profit are not mutually exclusive."

"
Security

Submission + - Police arrest five over Anonymous attacks (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: Five people have been arrested in the UK, accused of taking part in Anonymous' DDOS attacks in support of WikiLeaks. The five men — aged from 15 to 26 — are still being held by police for questioning. Met Police said the investigation was a collaborative effort between forces in the UK, EU and the US.
Privacy

US Twitter Spying May Have Broken EU Privacy Law 342

Posted by samzenpus from the playing-nice-with-others dept.
Stoobalou writes "A group of European MPs will today push EU bosses to say if the US government breached European privacy laws by snooping on Twitter users with links to whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) will today pose an oral question to the European Commission, seeking clarification from the US on a subpoena demanding the micro-blogging site hand over users' account details."
Businesses

Chevron Got North Sea Contract Despite IT Safety Crashes 89

Posted by samzenpus from the what-could-go-wrong dept.
DMandPenfold writes "The UK government gave Chevron the go-ahead in September to drill in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, in spite of the US oil giant's admission that its contractor's spill prediction software constantly crashed and was not a reliable predictor of how far oil could travel if an accident took place. The news comes in a week that US investigations into BP's disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill hit the buffers, after an IT contractor firm refused to hand over access to its software."
News

Submission + - Chevron wins huge permit despite safety IT failure (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by DMandPenfold
DMandPenfold writes: The government gave Chevron the go-ahead in September to drill in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, in spite of the US oil giant’s admission that its contractor's spill prediction software constantly crashed and was not a reliable predictor of how far oil could travel if an accident took place.

The news comes in a week that US investigations into BP's disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill hit the buffers, after an IT contractor firm refused to hand over access to its software.
Open Source

Submission + - Ex-Sun CEO to Ellison: avoid death by open source (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by gearystwatcher
gearystwatcher writes: Former Sun CEO Scott McNealy talks to The Reg on where things went wrong and acquisition by Oracle: "We probably got a little too aggressive near the end and probably open sourced too much and tried too hard to appease the community and tried too hard to share," McNealy said. "You gotta take care of your shareholders or you end up very vulnerable like we got. We were a wonderful acquisition — we got stolen for a song at the bottom of the Dow."
The Almighty Buck

PayPal Withdraws WikiLeaks Donation Service 794

Posted by timothy from the no-funds-for-you dept.
ItsIllak writes "The BBC are reporting that PayPal is the latest company to abandon WikiLeaks. The list now includes their DNS providers (EveryDNS) and their hosts (Amazon). PayPal's move is unlikely to result in many more people boycotting the company, as most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them for years for a wide variety of abusive practices." Adds reader jg21: "As open source freedom fighter Simon Phipps writes in his ComputerWorldUK blog, behavior like this by Amazon and Tableau [and now PayPal] 'informs us as customers of web services and cloud computing services that we are never safe from intentional outages when the business interests of our host are challenged.'"
News

Submission + - BP ignored safety modeling software to save time (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by DMandPenfold
DMandPenfold writes: BP ignored the advice of safety critical software in an attempt to save time before the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a presentation slide prepared by US investigators.

The slide in question briefly appeared on the Oil Spill Commission’s website in error, but was quickly retracted.

Advanced cement modelling software, provided by BP’s cement contractor Halliburton, had highlighted serious stability concerns with the well...
Businesses

LSE Breaks World Record In Trade Speed With Linux 452

Posted by timothy from the linus-mentioned-their-startling-speed dept.
LingNoi writes with this excerpt from ComputerWorld UK: "The London Stock Exchange has said its new Linux-based system is delivering world record networking speed, with 126 microsecond trading times. The news comes ahead a major Linux-based switchover in twelve days, during which the open source system will replace Microsoft .Net technology on the group's main stock exchange. The LSE had long been criticised on speed and reliability, grappling with trading speeds of several hundred microseconds. The 126 microsecond speed is 'twice as fast' as its main international competitors, the London Stock Exchange said. BATS Europe and Chi-X, two dedicated electronic rivals to the LSE, are reported to have an average latency of 250 and 175 microseconds respectively. Neither company immediately provided details. But many of the LSE's older and more traditional rivals offer speeds of around 300 to 400 microseconds. Nevertheless, Linux is now standard in many exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange."
Advertising

Microsoft Admits OpenOffice.org Is a Contender 480

Posted by CmdrTaco from the first-you-ignore-them dept.
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Microsoft has unwittingly admitted that OpenOffice.org is a rival, by launching a three-minute video of customers explaining why they switched to Microsoft Office from OpenOffice.org. Glyn Moody writes: 'You don't compare a rival's product with your own if it is not comparable. And you don't make this kind of attack video unless you are really, really worried about the growing success of a competitor. [Microsoft] has now clearly announced that OpenOffice.org is a serious rival to Microsoft Office, and should be seriously considered by anyone using the latter.'"

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