Roy Mark

The credit card processor that exposed approximately 40 million records to possible identity theft is facing possible financial ruin. After Visa and American Express canceled their contracts with CardSystems last week, the company’s CEO told Congress the future is grim for the Atlanta-based firm. Following the record hack in May, both Visa and American Express […]

In a move designed in part to appease White House and congressional free- trade critics, China agreed Thursday to stop pegging the value of its currency to the U.S. dollar. Permitting the yuan to float at market value is a long-standing goal of the technology industry. With the approval of the highest levels of Chinese […]

WASHINGTON — With the flow of science and engineering graduates dwindling, U.S. Senators promised legislation to refill America’s technical academic pipeline. Offering few details, much less any budget numbers, the lawmakers said the bill they hope to offer next week will increase federal support for cutting edge, multidisciplinary research and support for “revolutionizing” manufacturing technologies […]

WASHINGTON — Almost a month after the Supreme Court ruled that peer-to-peer (P2P) developers are liable for copyright violations if they actively induce piracy with their technology, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley continue to snipe over the meaning of the decision. “The court said if you build a business plan based on inducement, you’re going […]

UPDATED: HP plans to cut almost 10 percent of its global workforce in a move it said was designed to save $1.9 billion. The company plans to initiate the 14,500 layoffs over the next six quarters in addition to modifying its U.S. retirement plan. The job cuts and restructuring are expected to result in $1.6 […]

The good news: Federal agencies are making progress in implementing stronger information security regimes. The bad news: It hasn’t helped much. A new report released Friday by the general Accountability Office (GAO) states that “overall” agencies are improving their systems security, but “pervasive weaknesses” still plague agencies and threaten the “integrity, confidentiality and availability” of […]

News Corp. is acquiring Intermix Media for approximately $580 million. News Corp. said the acquisition will nearly double its Web traffic to more than 45 million unique monthly visitors. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Perhaps Intermix best known property is MySpace.com, a social networking site, which is […]

U.S. Senate Republican leaders finally tipped their hand Thursday on long-awaited identity-theft legislation. After months of back-room maneuvering, the proposed bill is likely to provoke howls of protest from both the technology and financial services industries. The Identity Theft Protection Act (S.B. 1408), co-sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Hawaiian Democrat […]

Consider this scenario: Somewhere in America a terrorist bomb rips through a building. It turns out the explosion was triggered or coordinated by a cell phone or wireless broadband signal from an airplane thousands of miles away. That’s the latest worst-case scenario being painted by the Department of Justice (DoJ) in its comments about the […]

Elevating the bureaucratic status of cyber security at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is part of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff’s sweeping reforms announced Wednesday. Currently, cyber security is coordinated at DHS by the director of the National Cyber Security Division, which resides in the department’s Infrastructure Protection Directorate. The technology industry has long complained […]

The United States and China are again negotiating over piracy and software procurement practices. Meeting in Beijing last week, the talks resulted in “measured” progress. The meetings ended with a number of commitments by Beijing to address two major areas of concern to the U.S. high tech industry: lowering China’s 90 percent piracy rate and […]

WASHINGTON — After nine years of aggressive lobbying to slow the digital television (DTV) transition, broadcasters are dropping their objections to a Jan. 1, 2009, deadline to end U.S. analog broadcasting. The policy reversal by the powerful and influential National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is considered a key element in forcing broadcasters out of their […]