Agencies flooded with comments about broadband stimulus
Two U.S. agencies soliciting comments about how to spend $7.2 billion in broadband deployment money have received about 1,400 comments, with conflicting views on Net neutrality among them. Read more...

IBM, Adobe, Oracle join EU antitrust case against Microsoft

Patent office rules in favor of Microsoft in Alcatel-Lucent appeal

Microsoft ordered to pay $388M in patent violation case

FCC moves toward national broadband policy

Feds count H-1B applications as engineering unemployment spikes

U.S. trade office releases information on secret piracy pact

Kaiser hospital cans 15 for peeking at octuplet mom's medical records

Senate bill seeks to give feds new private-sector security powers

Cognizant agrees to pay H-1B workers $500,000 in back wages

More Legislation/Regulation Stories

The Internet Kill Switch
"To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making."

Conficker, IBM-Sun redux, Italy quakes
Security researchers have found that the Conficker worm has been updated to make it harder to fight, and it is also aiming to invade more PCs (3 million to 12 million not being enough, obviously). While security vendors work to fend off the worm, analysts say that Sun is not likely to fend off other suitors now that it has rejected IBM. A major earthquake in central Italy underscored once again how important mobile communications and the Internet are in helping survivors appeal for help and in getting out information.

A Lesson in Compliance from the Chemical Industry
In many ways, the role of the CSO is directly tied to business profitability. By creating and enforcing policies that protect human, physical and intellectual assets, the CSO ensures the very integrity of the organization. This link to the bottom line, though, is about to become much stronger--and quite possibly much sooner than anticipated.

HITECH: Be afraid, be very afraid
Maureen Martin of The Heartland Institute, a think tank promoting public policy based on individual liberty, limited government and free markets, argues that the new Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act  exposes too much personal information.

Facebook exec on balancing privacy, business needs
CPO Chris Kelly talks about Facebook's view of privacy and how that affects its ability to serve up ads.

IBM layoffs, Manifesto saga, Google tweaks
IBM is laying off thousands more employees and is likely to ship more of those jobs overseas, news of which riled up a whole lot of people. A back-and-forth over a "secret" document regarding cloud computing -- of all things -- also stirred it up in some quarters, making us think that some folks really do need to get out in the sunshine a little more. Google brought some happiness to the mix, though, announcing it has added some semantic technology to its search engine.

LinkedIn Privacy Settings: What You Need to Know
Since LinkedIn doesn't require you to share the same types of personal information as you do on Facebook, the service's privacy settings appear to be much more straightforward than its less business-oriented competitor. But if you leave the default settings in place, you might be surprised to know what information you make public on LinkedIn.

Careless with Your Business Website? Don't Get Sued.
An improperly created website can breed lawsuits. It's not the place to test the limits of the law. Once you put information out on the Net, it's there for anybody to see. It's the ultimate in unrestricted access. You might create a site for potential customers, but your competitors and enemies get to see it too. A cautious and conservative approach is the way to go. How cautious you need to be will vary depending on several things. The preventive medicine is a legal audit of your website.

Kundra takes leave, Google raises privacy flags
Well, at least the issue is not unpaid taxes this time -- but Vivek Kundra, the brand-new, first-ever federal CIO after just a few days on the job is already on a leave of absence after the office of the Washington, D.C., CTO was raided by federal agents. Kundra had been the District's CTO before President Barack Obama appointed him the nation's CIO. In other news, Google peeved privacy advocates by announcing a behavioral advertising program and separately saying it is testing a new service that will transcribe voice-mail messages and make them searchable.

People Search Engines: Slam the Door on Info
As we slowly put more and more pieces of ourselves online, specialized search engines are making it easier than ever to pull them together into a highly detailed (and potentially invasive) profile of our virtual lives.

Editors' Picks

Linux, Mac, Windows XP: Whatever your choice of operating system, we have some fun things for you to try. The operating systems of yesteryear weren't all sunshine and roses. Cyber cynic Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols names his picks for some of the worst OSs of all time. Apple's newest Mac Pro takes a significant step forward with the move to Intel's new Nehalem processor and an infrastructure that should be able to squeeze the utmost out of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.6. Satellite radio will die soon anyway, but Apple will accidentally perform a mercy killing of Sirius XM Radio this summer, says Mike Elgan.

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