They may’ve signed up for the service to stay free of unsolicited email, but people in Blue Security’s "Do Not Intrude Registry" are getting spammed, the company said Wednesday. What’s more, a spammer is attempting to intimidate the Blue Security customers by sending them threatening messages, according to the Israeli company, which launched its spam-fighting service in July last year.

Borland Software is restructuring and laying off 20 percent of its work force. The software company announced the downsizing on Wednesday. The approximately 300 layoffs will come from varied international operations and result in a consolidation of Borland facilities.

Congress’ leading proponent of forcing Internet service providers to retain records about their users’ activities lashed out at the industry on Wednesday, saying such a federal law will be a "very minor burden" to bear. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, said at a House of Representatives hearing that new laws were necessary to thwart child pornographers and other Internet predators. Investigations into illicit behavior have been hampered because data may be routinely deleted in the normal course of business, DeGette and other data retention proponents claim.

An open-source security audit program funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has flagged a critical vulnerability in the X Window System which is used in Unix and Linux systems. Coverity, the San Franciso-based company managing the project under a $1.25 million grant, described the flaw as the "biggest security vulnerability" found in the X Window System code since 2000. It could be exploited to allow local users to execute code with root privileges, giving them the ability to overwrite system files or initiate denial-of-service attacks.

With industry experts predicting a wave of consolidation across the security applications sector, the continued efforts of the IT industry’s largest players to bake more defense features into their products could accelerate the rapid shifts in the market. Since the beginning of 2006, most of the computing world’s largest names have issued new promises of added security in their products, with companies such as Cisco, EMC, Intel and Microsoft aggressively promoting their expanded efforts. In some cases, such as EMC’s buyout of rights-management specialists Authentica in March, leading technology firms are bringing onboard new capabilities and products via acquisitions.

A recent research report by Foote Partners, a management consultancy firm, found that noncertified IT skills have been growing in value at a rate nearly two times that of certified skills. A new follow-up report looks at what happens next to vendors who rely on their certifications programs to gain mind share for their technologies and support sales of their products. While qualities such as industry knowledge and customer experience appear to be taking the lead, certifications haven’t been going down without a fight. Instead, vendors have been banding together to create new, master-level certifications that are vendor-independent, technology-neutral in focus, and available to any person who can qualify.

The FBI’s use of a Patriot Act provision that lets it make secret requests for subscriber information from Internet service providers drew scrutiny from U.S. senators on Tuesday. At a wide-ranging oversight hearing convened by the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Robert Mueller faced a number of questions from Democrats voicing concern over the scope of the controversial investigative tactic, known as a National Security Letter, or NSL. Federal law requires communication service providers to provide records about individuals in response to such letters, which do not require the use of a court warrant. Legal challenges to that measure’s constitutionality are still pending.

Laplink has introduced a new simple, low-cost utility to its line of connectivity products. Laplink DoubleView is an invaluable software utility for anyone with a second PC, whether it’s a laptop or even an old desktop gathering dust. Laplink DoubleView transforms any spare PC into an extension of your primary computer’s native screen, effectively doubling your screen real estate. Now, you can get the extra visual space you need for enhanced productivity simply and inexpensively in a software-based solution. In minutes, the screen of the second PC will act as an extension of your primary PC screen, so that you can spread your work out over both monitors for maximum viewing efficiency and productivity.

Relieving the very real forced-migration fears of its acquired customer base–particularly PeopleSoft and JD Edwards software users–Oracle announced it will continue to develop its individual lines of software indefinitely. More important, Oracle has said it will add substantive upgrades beyond the release of Fusion, its next-generation suite of applications, due about 2008. At the combined Oracle Applications User Group and Quest user conference, Charles Phillips, co-president of Oracle, outlined the Applications Unlimited program that provides ongoing development and dedicated development teams for the Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JDE and Siebel applications.

Customers across the board are looking for systems that consume a lot less power and take up less floor space, which is creating a huge opportunity for IBM to promote its Blue gene supercomputer to a range of industries, including the financial sector on Wall Street. In an address entitled "IBM Blue Gene: ultra-scaling and power efficiency for computational advantage in financial services," at the Linux on Wall Street conference, Dave Turek, the vice president of deep computing at IBM, said energy, floor space and the ability of systems to be recycled are the biggest issues facing customers today.