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The top 10 stories in IT this week

26.11.2010
This week was a busy one in IT news, with the European Parliament giving the OK to the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, SAP being slapped with a US$1.3 billion penalty because employees of its now-defunct TomorrowNow subsidiary stole corporate materials from Oracle, and Attachmate's plan to buy Novell for a whopping $2.2 billion. And those were just the biggest of the headlines -- there was plenty more as well.

1. and : The once top-secret ACTA will now head for a vote during meetings in Sydney Nov. 30 to Dec. 3.

2. and : SAP's argument that it should not have to pay more than $40 million for the materials that TomorrowNow employees stole from Oracle fell on deaf ears as a U.S. federal court jury ordered SAP to pay $1.3 billion. Some analysts said they thought that amount was excessive.

3. and : Attachmate's announcement that it plans to buy Novell for $2.2 billion sparked questions about the worth of Novell, but the company still holds valuable assets, primarily Suse Linux.

4. : BP ignored safety software that pointed to stability concerns before its well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a presentation slide from U.S. investigators of the disaster. The slide was briefly posted at the Oil Spill Commission's website before being removed, but The New York Times published a screenshot of the slide, showing "risky" steps that BP and partners Halliburton and Transocean made to save time.

5. : A newspaper in Taiwan reported that iPad 2 will have a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port and two cameras -- features that are lacking in the first iteration of the tablet.