HP sues Hurd over Oracle appointment

Computer maker Hewlett Packard (HP) has filed a lawsuit against its former head, Mark Hurd, in an attempt to stop him joining database software maker Oracle, the BBC reports.

Oracle announced the appointment of Hurd as co-president late on Monday night. HP said Hurd's appointment would put its “most valuable trade secrets and confidential information in peril”.

Hurd, who resigned from HP only a month ago, is a friend of Oracle's chief executive, Larry Ellison. He was forced to quit after a sexual harassment investigation, but has denied any wrongdoing.

The FBI and other police agencies don't need a search warrant to track the locations of Americans' cellphones, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday in a precedent-setting decision, writes CNET.

In the first decision of its kind, a Philadelphia appeals court agreed with the Obama administration that no search warrant - signed by a judge based on a belief that there was probable cause to suspect criminal activity - was necessary for police to obtain logs showing where a cellphone user had traveled.

A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit said tracking cellphones “does not require the traditional probable-cause determination” enshrined in the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits government agencies from conducting “unreasonable” searches.

Mozilla has released a fifth Firefox 4 beta, offering graphics hardware acceleration on Windows and a new API that lets site developers code pages that visually display audio data inside the browser, says The Register.

“The latest update to Firefox 4 Beta brings super fast graphics and incredible new audio capabilities to the Web,” reads a blog post from Firefox development head Mike Beltzner.

The new beta also includes HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which lets Web sites demand that Firefox always use a secure connection when visiting.

SAP has rolled out almost 1 500 iPads for users across its business, according to CIO Oliver Bussmann, reveals computing.co.uk.

He revealed in conversation with the publication that the company has deployed the tablet PCs with e-mail access, access to a virtual private network, Citrix software to enable access to server-based applications and business intelligence tools, via BusinessObjects.

The SAP CIO said that he intends to make the device generally available to all SAP employees as soon as possible. The company currently has 17 000 BlackBerrys rolled out across the organisation and Bussmann said that within 12 months, there will be as many iPads in use by SAP employees.