April 28, 2005

Bill Gates spoke at the Library of Congress and said that he wanted to see H1-B quotas, which currently stand at 65,000 per year, be eliminated. He said that H1-B quotas pose a great threat America's competitiveness against countries like India and China.

April 12, 2005

European data broker Reed Elsevier, operator of the LexisNexis system, today announced that 59 security breaches of its databases may have resulted in the theft of personal information on 310,000 U.S. citizens. This data included names, addresses, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, and other information easily used for identity theft and other kinds of fraud. Reed Elsevier has now begun sending notifications to those affected by the theft of their personal information from LexisNexis.

April 9, 2005

The U.S. ban on Internet gambling was dealt a blow this week, as the World Trade Organization ruled that certain aspects of the ban violated international trade agreements. The case was brought before the WTO by island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. The ruling forces the U.S. to make some changes to laws against Internet gambling in order to comply with the WTO decision.

April 9, 2005

The ICANN Board has approved the creation of two new top level domains (TLDs). The .jobs and .travel top level domain registries have been designated to be Employ Media and Tralliance Corporation, respectively. Customers will not be able to register domains with these suffixes for several months while the new registries set up registration procedures and hire customer support personel.

April 9, 2005

One of the nation's biggest spammers has been sentenced to 9 years in prison. According to court records, his spamming operation was grossing about $750,000 per month by sending out at least 10 million e-mails a day. However, because the spammer was convicted under a new law, the judge delayed the start of the prison term while the case is appealed.

April 7, 2005

The State of Florida is debating legislation that would regulate online dating sites by forcing them to disclose information about what kind of member screening measures are in force at each particular dating site. Other states looking into similar laws include California, Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and Texas.

April 7, 2005

The government of the U.K. is funding an initiative, called the Open Source Academy, to increase the use of open source software within the public sector. The initial focus of the initiative is create an open source code repository, knowledge base, collaboration platform, and directory of support providers.

March 28, 2005

Hillary Clinton, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, has condemned violent videogames as a "major threat" to morality, and may make it one of the leading issues of her campaign.

March 20, 2005

The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) has released the latest Cyber Security Report. Among other findings, the PITAC states that "The information technology infrastructure of the United States, which is now vital for communication, commerce, and control of our physical infrastructure, is highly vulnerable to terrorist and criminal attacks."

March 10, 2005

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of former presidential candidate John Kerry, has claimed that the 2004 presidential election might have been computer hacked by supporters of President Bush.

March 8, 2005

CNET has posted an interesting FAQ about blogging and your job. The bottom line is that if you blog, do it on your own time and don't talk about your employer in your blog. Also, employment laws will not save you if you get fired for blogging.

March 8, 2005

A new Ohio law, effective May 2nd, requires residents to obtain a license and post a $50,000 bond in order to sell on eBay as part of a business. While occasional sellers are probably immune, it is unclear as to how much eBay activity is required before sellers need to comply.

March 6, 2005

According to experts, political blogs are in for some rough times in the coming months and years. New campaign reforms being proposed may alter how the political blogging community operates.

March 2, 2005

On March 29th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of MGM vs. Grokster. A number of industry trade groups, consumer advocates and lawyers have filed briefs in support of peer-to-peer networks and software vendors. Any decision by the Supreme Court on this issue will have immense impact on software vendors, the movie and music studios, ISPs and consumers.

February 21, 2005

A group of prominent politicians is proposing a national sales tax on each CRT and LCD display sold, as well as on any device containing a CPU. The money would be used to help solve the problem of discarded electronics, which contain lead and other toxic substances.

February 14, 2005

Eason Jordan, the chief news executive at CNN, has resigned after being attacked by the blogging community.

February 11, 2005

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 261-161 on Thursday and approved the Real ID Act, a bill forcing states to issue electronic ID cards.

January 29, 2005

A congressional committee has suggested that an existing tax could be revised to place a 3% tax on all data communications services including broadband, dialup, cable modems, cellular, and DSL.

January 14, 2005

The Wall Street Journal and The Slate are reporting that Howard Dean's presidential campaigned paid two high profile Internet political bloggers to say positive things about Dean in their online journals.