HP trumps Dell's 3PAR bid

Computer maker Hewlett Packard (HP) has bid $1.6 billion for data storage firm 3PAR, trumping a $1.2 billion offer made by rival Dell last week, reports The BBC.

Along with IBM, the two firms are looking into more profitable business areas outside of making computers.

The bids come as part of a glut of merger and acquisitions activity in the technology sector, including last week's $7.8 billion bid for McAfee by Intel.

Indian authorities have arrested a computer scientist for refusing to divulge the source of an electronic voting machine that he and a team of researchers used to expose holes in the country's election system, reveals The Register.

The Hyderabad home of Hari Prasad, MD of Netindia, was raided on Saturday morning at 5:30am by authorities, who questioned him for two-and-a-half hours before taking him into custody. Police then transported him to Mumbai, which is about 14 hours away.

The arrest follows research released in April that disclosed several vulnerabilities in India's electronic voting machines, which authorities have claimed are fully tamper-proof and even perfect. The flaws were discovered on a machine that an anonymous source donated to the research team in February, after elections officials refused to make one available.

The UK government has decided not to go ahead with long-standing plans to create a database containing the personal records of every UK citizen, writes Computing.co.uk.

It would have contained information taken from the UK National Identity Card scheme, which the government scrapped in May this year.

Following admissions from technical designers that they were unable to find a cost-effective way of implementing the system, plans to turn the Department for Work and Pensions Customer Information System (CIS) into the data sharing tool, known as CISx, have been shelved.

Britain's defence secretary, Liam Fox, has defended his comments calling on retailers to ban the forthcoming Medal of Honour video game from their stores, says The BBC.

On Sunday, Fox said he was "disgusted" by the game, which allows players to adopt the role of the Taliban in the Afghan war.

The game's publishers Electronic Arts said the minister had portrayed parts of the game inaccurately.