Oracle head to pay $122m settlement

Software mogul Larry Ellison has agreed to pay $122 million in a revised settlement with Oracle shareholders, the terms of which were approved yesterday by a California judge, reports CNet.

The suit, filed in 2001 by a group of shareholders, charged that Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, and Jeff Henley, the company`s chief financial officer at the time, sold shares while knowing the company would soon report an earnings shortfall.

Ellison offered in September to settle the case with $100 million in charitable donations and without admitting wrongdoing, but a California judge declined to approve the proposed settlement because it saddled shareholders with extra costs. The terms of the new settlement leave the $100 million payment to charities intact while requiring Ellison to pay $22 million in legal fees.

Microsoft`s consumer-facing PC security bundle, Windows OneCare beta, which is being tested in an invite-only manner, is on the verge of being rolled out to a broader public audience, reports eWeek.

Microsoft told testers that OneCare Live Beta, under the Windows Live brand, will be opened to the public "very soon" but the company isn`t offering a specific ship date.

The program bundles virus scanning, firewall protection, data backup and PC cleanup tools, and was recently refreshed to add new features for file scanning and data backup.

Bram Cohen, founder and CEO of BitTorrent, held a news conference yesterday with Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America and chief lobbyist for the movie industry, to announce an agreement aimed at choking off illegal movie traffic exchanged on peer-to-peer networks, reports The New York Times.

The creator of software used by millions of computer owners to download movies agreed to prevent his Web site from linking to illegally available movies online, the latest result of a bid by Hollywood to gain control of a growing piracy problem.