HP won't say if CEO to testify in SAP-Oracle case - Reuters

* HP does not release executive schedules

* Oracle said HP trying to keep CEO from testifying

By Gabriel Madway and Jim Finkle

SAN FRANCISCO/BOSTON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) has declined to say whether its incoming chief executive, Leo Apotheker, will testify in a high-profile trade secrets case involving Oracle (ORCL.O) and SAP (SAPG.DE).

HP, the world's largest technology company by revenue, would not say whether Apotheker, a former CEO of SAP, will start his new job at the company's Palo Alto, California, headquarters.

Those offices are close enough to the Oakland courthouse, where the trial is being held, to make it easy for Oracle to formally serve him a with subpoena to testify.

The trial begins Monday, which is also Apotheker's first day at HP, and is expected to last for five weeks.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has accused Apotheker of supervising the theft of his company's software. He said on Tuesday that he suspected HP's board planned to keep Apotheker away from the company's headquarters until the trial is over.

SAP spokesman Saswato Das defended HP, saying that Ellison's facts about his old boss, Apotheker, are wrong.

"In his personal campaign against HP and desire to create a sideshow, Larry Ellison doesn't even bother to get the facts straight," Das said. "Our focus in the case is on determining fair and reasonable compensation, and we won't let personal vendettas interfere with the court's judgment."

An HP spokeswoman on Wednesday would not say where Apotheker will be when he starts work. The company said it does not release schedules for its executives, and declined to comment further.

Apotheker said earlier this month he planned to spend the "following weeks and even months" traveling the world to talk to HP employees. HP named him CEO at the end of September.

SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott told Reuters that he would testify if called by Oracle and that he will be in the courtroom next Tuesday when his company's attorneys present their opening argument.

"I want to show that the co-CEO of SAP has a personal and professional interest in our company, in our brand and the way this matter is handled," he said in an interview. (Reporting by Gabriel Madway and Jim Finkle; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Limewire Must Close After Four-Year Court Fight - eWeek

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By: Nicholas Kolakowski
2010-10-27
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Limewire has been ordered to shut down, by a federal judge who argues the file-sharing service ?intentionally encouraged direct infringement.? By all appearances, this could represent the endgame of music companies? four-year effort to take Limewire offline. 

Indeed, Limewire?s Website seems dead, its landing page covered with a plus-sized legal notice. ?Limewire is under a court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software,? it reads. ?Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.?

Meanwhile, Limewire executives attempted to put a positive spin on developments.

?The injunction applies only to the Limewire product. Our company remains open for business,? George Searle, CEO of Limewire, wrote in an Oct. 26 posting on Lime Company?s corporate Website. ?We remain deeply committed to working with the music industry and making the act of loving music more fulfilling for everyone.?

Searle added: ?Our team of technologists and music enthusiasts is creating a completely new music service that puts you back at the center of your digital music experience.? Details of that new music service, however, were not forthcoming in the blog post.

However, the court?s take on Limewire seemed decidedly more negative. According to reports, Judge Kimba Wood of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan said the Website ?marketed itself to Napster users, who were known copyright infringers.? A variety of interested parties, ranging from Sony Music Entertainment to Warner Bros. Records, had joined legal forces in the case against Limewire, which they jointly accused of facilitating widespread music theft.

Limewire even found itself broadsided over its security and file-sharing protocols by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which launched investigations in 2007 and 2009 into file sharing on peer-to-peer networks. In response, Limewire argued that it had reworked its service to address those concerns. Over the years, sensitive information such as social security numbers and banking data had managed to leak onto Limewire?s network, raising the hackles of business executives and security experts.

Based on Searle?s comments, Limewire could follow in the footsteps of Napster and attempt a rebirth as a legitimate digital-music portal. A Napster app comes pre-loaded with Google TV, with others available for iOS and Android devices. However, any new service would encounter substantial competition not only from Napster, but Apple iTunes and other media services.

Meanwhile, peer-to-peer networking?and the possible copyright violations that come with it?continues to thrive online. 

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4 killed in blast at Pakistan shrine - CNN International

The bomb explodes shortly after dawn prayersThe shrine is one of the country's largest No one has claimed responsibility

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Four people were killed early Monday morning when a bomb exploded at one of Pakistan's largest Sufi shrines, police officials told CNN. Eight others were wounded.

The bomb was placed at one of the gates of the Baba Farid shrine and exploded shortly after dawn prayers when crowds of morning worshipers usually leave the site, police said.

The shrine is located in Pak Pattan, an ancient city in Punjab province about 190 km (118 miles) south of Lahore.

Baba Farid is considered one of Pakistan's most revered Sufi saints.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast. But in recent months Muslim extremists have stepped up attacks against minority sects and their places of worship.

Police officials said eight people were injured in Monday morning's blast.

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Group Plans to Keep Pressure on Newly Elected Conservatives - Wall Street Journal

A leading national tea-party group, anticipating big electoral gains for conservative Republicans, is laying plans to maintain pressure on new members of Congress after the Nov. 2 vote.

Associated Press Supporters at a St. Louis rally co-organized last month by the Tea Party Patriots. The group has emerged as a national coordinator for the movement.

According to an internal memorandum reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Tea Party Patriots, an umbrella group that says it works with nearly 3,000 local groups around the U.S., is planning a multipronged campaign that includes advertising, polling, hundreds of rallies, and a summit of newly elected members of Congress early in 2011.

Tea Party Patriot leaders say they are gearing up both to fight Democratic efforts to pass legislation during the lame-duck congressional session and for a struggle with conventional Republican leaders over the loyalties of new members of Congress.

They are seeking to raise $2.8 million to promote 2,000 tea parties on April 15, 2011—ahead of the tax-filing deadline— and at least four regional conventions during the year, as well as annual polling, nationwide leadership summits, college-campus clubs and more.

Tea Party Patriots is run by a committee of leaders scattered around the country and doesn't endorse or give money to specific candidates. But it has been instrumental in organizing national rallies that have attracted hundreds of thousands of participants. It also regularly coordinates efforts among hundreds of local tea-party groups.

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The meeting of newly elected officials, the date of which hasn't been set, is designed to keep new representatives connected to "what we expect from them," according to the memo. Incumbent Republican members of Congress and the party's national leadership won't be invited, said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, in an interview.

"The incumbents have allowed us to get into the problems we are in now," he said. "We hope to get to the freshmen before the incumbents get to them, and start twisting their arms."

The memo cites comments regarding tea-party candidates by the former Senate majority leader for the Republicans, Trent Lott, to the Washington Post in July, when he was quoted as saying: "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them."

"These are the same Republicans who played a role in the spending excesses of the last decade," the memo says.

Mr. Lott said in an interview that he regretted his choice of words in reference to working with tea-party candidates.

"All I'm saying is that the Republicans are going to need to work with the new members of Congress, whether they are from the tea party or anywhere else," Mr. Lott said. "To control spending or to get anything constructive done for the country, they're going to have to work together."

The plan has been circulating in tea-party circles over the past month and continues to be refined, including at a meeting this month in Atlanta of tea-party coordinators from around the country.

It references a 40-year-strategy for the organization and its goal to "convert 60% of more of the population to support our core values of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets."

Short-term post-election plans call for the Tea Party Patriots to mobilize against the lame-duck session of Congress and to prevent "disastrous bills that will likely be introduced or reintroduced, including cap-and-trade [proposals to regulate emissions], comprehensive immigration reform, additional stimulus spending, and campaign-finance reform," according to the memo.

Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com

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Adobe's Flash-based AIR hits Android and RIM tablet - Register

Adobe MAX 2010 Adobe Systems is targeting mobiles, TVs, and app-stores with new editions of various Flash-centric tools and its Rich Internet Application (RIA) framework.

The company has unveiled preview editions of the next Flex Framework, its Flash Builder design and development environment, the Flash Catalyst design tool, and version 2.5 of its Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). Previews are due at Adobe's annual MAX conference in Los Angeles, California, with final code promised for sometime in 2011.

Adobe's software now works on Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, putting Flash-based applications and services on these devices.

The software isn't yet working on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 because Adobe missed a cut-off date for the release of Microsoft's latest mobile operating system, launched this month. Adobe is still working with Microsoft to deliver AIR on Windows Phone 7, Adobe told The Reg.

Flex Framework and Flash Builder will be updated to work on Apple's tablet-tastic iOS in an unspecified follow-on release, but Flex Catalyst won't be making the move.

Adobe said it picked the Blackberry tablet because RIM is being very aggressive and "really wants to get into the game."

Adobe and prime tablet provider Apple have had a major falling out during 2010, as Steve Jobs lambasted Flash, championed HTML5 as the Flash alternative, and went to extraordinary lengths to confuse developers and exclude Flash from the iPad.

As it now stands, Flash can cross compile on iOS, but Adobe must use native code for the runtime on Apple. On non-Apple devices, AIR is the runtime.

Adobe has also announced that smart TVs from Samsung Electronics due in 2011 will work with applications built using Flex and the Flash tools.

Applications will be built using Adobe's tools and made available for sale and download to TVs from Samsung's TV App Store, which will run outside the browser on TV sets.

To that end, Adobe will today unveil Inmarket - a service Adobe promised would see developers upload their apps to be sold on other providers' stores.

Inmarket will take care of deployment and billing, and provide an accounting break down of where their applications have sold, Adobe promised.

The idea is that developers will code their applications once and they won't need to worry about difference service providers deployment characteristics or dealing with billing and payment systems, Adobe said.

The service also means Adobe can remain relevant in a world of app stores, as the company becomes the holder of hundreds of thousands of apps in its warehouse.

The first store to work with Inmarket will be Intel's App Up Store, and Adobe expects to run 10 more stores across desktops, mobiles, tablets, and TVs in 2011, group product marketing manger for Flex and Flash Builder Dave Gruber told The Reg. Adobe's middleman service will initially only work for AIR-based apps and will be free initially, Gruber said. Other apps would be considered later, and Adobe will re-evaluate whether to charge in a year, he said.

There is, of course, one app store unlikely to be participating in Adobe's warehouse-retail model: Apple's App Store. Apple is not in talks with Adobe to use the service.

"I'm not sure frankly that will happen, Apple isn't motivated to do this." Gruber said.

He noted that Apple isn't the only big app store player in the game, and Adobe will counter by giving developers access to as many app stores as possible, hoping to provide the broadest reach.

Adobe is going big on mobile and TV in this round of releases, as it tries to take its Flash player and the Flash-based AIR to more screens than just those found on a PC. Adobe's hope is that more Flash-based apps can be written-once and run-anywhere using the same framework.

AIR 2.5 adds support for mobile to help this. Phone staples such as accelerometers, multi-touch, gesture, geo-location, and camerashave been exposed in the Flex framework and made easier to access. New mobile UI components have been added and application performance tweaked by between 40 and 60 per cent depending on the application and handset. Performance has been improved by "thinning" the number of libraries in AIR.

Flash Builder features a new packaging function to deploy apps to different mobile devices. Adobe is also working with handset makers and OEMs to make AIR run well on their hardware. The company has promised its AIR on HTC, Motorola, and Acer systems, in addition to RIM and Samsung.

For developers, Flash Builder and Catalyst have bi-directional workflow to pass code and design elements backwards and forwards been creatives and coders.

Also continuing the focus on mobile is Adobe's LiveCycle that's been extended to Android, Blackberry, iPhone, and Windows Mobile. LiveCycle is Adobe's suite for building and customizing business-applications' workflows, so - conceivably - you can now use Adobe to run back-office documents and apps on mobile in addition to the PC.

LiveCycle enterprise Suite 2.5, due Monday, will connect to Microsoft's SharePoint 2010 through a new connector, and work with your security model to control who views, copies, or forwards documents. Also, there's a new JavaScript API so Adobe's software works on platforms that work with HTML but not Flash - like the iPhone or iPad. ®

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