Grant Gross

The debate over the security of electronic voting machines hasn't gone away after November's elections in the U.S.

A top executive from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. will serve 10 months in prison and pay a US$250,000 fine for his role in a global conspiracy to fix DRAM (dynamic RAM) prices, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

Just 21 percent of U.S. residents believe the next Bill Gates will come from their country, according to a new survey on Internet attitudes released Wednesday.About 27 percent of respondents said they believed the next wildly successful technology entrepreneur will come from China, and another 22 percent said Japan.

The U.S. Congress has wrapped up its work for the year by passing a bill that would make it illegal to obtain a person's phone records without permission. The bill now awaits President George Bush's signature before it becomes law.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has begun mailing claim forms to more than 1,400 identity theft victims who spent money to clear up identity-theft problems due to a security breach at data broker ChoicePoint Inc. announced in early 2005.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the federal board that oversees elections technology, has approved a testing and certification program for electronic-voting systems.

A U.S. district judge on Tuesday praised the schedule set up in a revamped technical documentation project that's part of the four-year-old antitrust settlement between Microsoft Corp. and the U.S. government.

Oracle working with other technology vendors, has launched an open-framework initiative to develop software to protect identity-related employee, customer and partner information, the company said.