IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 9 November
09-11-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
Record entries to BT Young Scientist expo | Oracle and SAP clash in courtroom trial
The Irish Times reports that two upgrades to Garda communications and CCTV networks have cost almost EUR9.5 million in the past five years. The cost of upgrading the Garda internal phone network on its Dublin metropolitan region and rural PABX networks came to EUR9.2 million, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said in response to a parliamentary question by Fine Gael’s Charlie Flanagan. Meanwhile, a recently completed upgrade of the Garda CCTV system from analogue recording systems to digital cost EUR230,000, a separate parliamentary question by Alan Shatter revealed.
The paper also says that student interest in science and research is buoyant, given the record numbers applying to participate in next January’s BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. Almost 4,000 students submitted 1,735 projects for the event, with entries coming from all 32 counties. The 3,943 students from 346 different schools who submitted projects set a new record. The exhibition takes place at the RDS in Dublin from 12 to 15 January.
The Irish Examiner says that Google and Dell plan to push ahead with more acquisitions. Google is likely to buy more companies about the size of YouTube and DoubleClick to help offer more online services, the company’s head of mergers and acquisitions said last week. Dell plans more takeovers in its drive to double the size of its data centre business to USD30 billion in sales, a company executive said.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon.com is to start paying publishers more when they sell magazines and newspapers on its Kindle electronic reader. Amazon will pay publishers 70 percent of the retail price, after subtracting delivery costs, for each magazine or newspaper sold through its Kindle Store. Amazon did not say what the previous percentage was.
The paper also says that Toshiba's net profit surged in the July-to-September quarter from just above breaking even a year earlier, on the back of strong demand for its memory chips. Toshiba posted a net profit of JPY27.35 billion (USD338 million) for the fiscal second quarter, compared with a tiny profit of JPY94 million in the same quarter a year ago. Operating profit nearly doubled to JPY71.02 billion from JPY36.46 billion a year earlier, while revenue rose 3 percent to JPY1.630 trillion.
According to the Financial Times, Oracle chief Larry Ellison has put a value of USD4 billion on software from his company that was downloaded illicitly by a subsidiary of German rival SAP. The figure is 100 times larger than the damages that SAP has argued it should pay for the infringement, and raises the stakes in a courtroom confrontation between the software rivals. The trial, which began last week, stems from SAP’s admission that a US subsidiary, TomorrowNow, downloaded documents and software from Oracle’s servers, despite not having authorisation.
The paper also notes that internet pranksters have brought down the Royal Navy’s website, causing embarrassment for the Ministry of Defence. The Navy’s news and information site was rendered useless for more than two days, but no military secrets were stolen, the Navy said. A holding page was put up in its place promising the site will be back online “soon”. Researchers said that a Romanian hacker calling themselves Tinkode, who has previously challenged the security of the Nasa and US Army websites, was claiming responsibility for the attack.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 