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Billionaire investor Warren Buffet is donating the bulk of his formidable personal fortune to charity, and the Reverend Cecil Williams could not be more pleased. Williams is not a direct recipient of Buffet's largesse; the Sage of Omaha will donate US$31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundat...

Once again, AT&T's actions have sparked a national debate over customer privacy. The company deliberately kicked off a new round of debate with its announcement last week that it was changing -- or as it said, "modifying" -- its privacy polices for Internet and video customers. To be sure, compa...

Hoping to put its software at the center of a unified PC-based communications system that encompasses voice as well as data, Microsoft said it would work with a number of partners in the telecom and tech industries to produce a range of devices -- including IP phones and peripherals. Microsoft said ...

Last week's dismissal of the Metabolite case by the Supreme Court was a welcome relief to the intellectual property community, seemingly besieged with Supreme Court cases, eBay-inspired injunctive denials, patent reforms, Congressional pressures, the Blackberry brouhaha, and other challenges to the ...

In the midst of social networking zeitgeist, many advertisers find themselves torn. The lure of the young demographic that flocks to sites such as MySpace and FaceBook is powerful, but the risks many. The recent case of a 16-year-old being lured into traveling to the Middle East is just the latest ...

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday became the latest agency to acknowledge that personal data had been placed at risk due to a lost laptop computer, part of a trend that underscores the wide range of threats facing consumers' personal information. The FTC said it would provide free credit moni...

Oracle reported a strong fourth quarter Thursday, saying profit rose 27 percent over a year ago as sales surged 25 percent, with the gains largely attributed to the company's aggressive acquisition strategy. The maker of database products and business applications said revenues from new licenses for...

Sarbanes-Oxley has certainly made quite an impact on corporate governance since its enactment in 2002. Most of us remember the corporate debacles that brought about SOX. In fact, one of them, the Enron failure, is still very much in the news today. Consider some of the ways that SOX has affected cor...

Driven by technology, access to content is TiVo's primary need. To a large degree, however, access to content is precisely what traditional TV and cable broadcasters, as well as film studios, still control. This crucial point has long been recognized, as well as debated, by TiVo management. The co...

Federal regulators on Wednesday agreed to impose or increase universal service fees on wireless and Internet-based phone subscribers. The Federal Communications Commission changed the "safe harbor" percentage for wireless carriers from 28.5 percent to 37.1 percent. The FCC is also requiring Voice ov...

Just two years ago this summer, there was international alarm that youths, some as young as 11 years old, were signing up, en masse, for online gaming accounts. However, that seedy scenario no longer prevails as the online gambling industry has embraced "effective measures" to promote "responsible g...

With the tech industry still abuzz over the announcement that Bill Gates will step back from the day-to-day operations of Microsoft, the software giant Tuesday acknowledged the immediate departure of one of its top marketing executives. Martin Taylor, 36, regarded as a key advisor to CEO Steve Ballm...

With floor space at large retailers at a premium these days, you'd think the allure of reducing all the aisles occupied by DVD movies to the footprint of a kiosk would be compelling, but that's not the case. According to a studio executive who agreed to talk to the E-Commerce Times on terms of anony...

Less than two weeks after hopes were dashed that the House of Representatives would include strong net neutrality language in a telecom bill, backers of the approach to ensure Web services companies unfettered access to consumers across high-speed networks are pinning their hopes on lawmakers in the...

The loss of personal data on an estimated 26.5 million U.S. military veterans, up to 2.2 million current service members and an unquantified number of spouses continues to generate public controversy. It also provides lessons for how the private sector could prevent and respond to the loss of perso...