EU probes Oracle, Sun deal

Oracle has come under investigation by European regulators over its purchase of Sun Microsystems, after the EU Competition Commission said the deal could be bad for open source, states Computing.co.uk.

The commission said in a statement it has opened an in-depth investigation into the planned acquisition under EU merger regulations.

An initial market investigation indicated the proposed deal raised serious doubts about its compatibility with the single market, suggesting the EU is worried that Oracle might have too much control over the database market.

Apple is once again playing security catch-up to the rest of the computing world, this time with an update for the Leopard version of its Mac operating system that patches critical holes in Java that were fixed on competing systems 29 days ago, reports The Register.

The patch updates Leopard to Java versions 1.6.0_15, 1.5.0_20, and 1.4.2_22, which Java creator Sun Microsystems released on 5 August. The four-week turnaround time is better than an update from June, when Apple trailed Sun by six months, but it's still problematic.

What's more, according to these specifications Apple posted in June, Tiger - the Mac OS X version that predated Leopard - continues to use Java versions 1.5.0_19 and 1.4.2_21, the same buggy iterations it warns could allow attackers to hijack end-user machines.

Nokia will collaborate with social networking giant Facebook to introduce lifecasting with Ovi, enabling users to publish their location and status updates directly to their Facebook account from the home screen of their mobile device, states FierceMobileContent.

According to Nokia, lifecasting with Ovi also promises to yield new mobile communication patterns. These include sending messages or status updates or navigating to a friend or a place. These are all concepts that dovetail with the handset maker's Ovi Store and its "Social Location" approach. This approach touts a customised and contextually relevant user experience determined by factors like personal contacts and physical whereabouts.

Lifecasting with Ovi will debut on the new Nokia N97 mini, which features a tilting 3.2-inch touchscreen display, qwerty keyboard and customisable home screen.

Britain's oldest original computer, the Harwell, is being sent to the National Museum of Computing, at Bletchley, where it is to be restored to working order, says the BBC.

The computer, which was designed in 1949, first ran in 1951 and was designed to perform mathematical calculations; it lasted until 1973.

When first built, the 2.4m x 5m computer was state-of-the-art, although it was superseded by transistor-based systems. The restoration project is expected to take a year.