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The Federal Communications Commission is likely to impose a new regulation on the largely unregulated cable television industry, the first of what may be more to come.

Under a proposed rule circulating at the FCC, cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have to slash the price they charge smaller television programmers to lease access on spare cable channels, a move the FCC says would open up cable viewers to a wider diversity of shows.

In addition, the FCC is contemplating a national ownership cap that would prevent one company from having more than 30 percent of all cable subscribers.

FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin would like the commission to vote on what is known as the "lease access" rule by the FCC's next meeting, scheduled for Nov. 27, and is optimistic that he has the three commission votes needed for passage. The proposed rule comes as a result of the agency's annual review of competition in the video industry.

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According to Nielsen//NetRatings the Online encyclopedia Wikipedia has added about 20 million unique monthly visitors in the past year(making it the top online news and information destination)

Wikipedia had 46.8 million unique visitors in May according to NetRatings(that's a lot of visitors!!). Wikipedia also finished on top of the news and information category every month this year!

I personally like Wikipedia, I use it almost daily to find information. If you have never been to [ wikipedia.org ], I would recommend you give it a go sometime.

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Following some frosty responses to Microsoft's controversial patent deal with Novell last year, the software maker has begun a more aggressive attempt to persuade open-source software companies to license its know-how.

In an interview with Fortune magazine published this week, Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, provided a stark tally of 235 Microsoft patents the company believes are violated by free and open-source software, though he stopped short of detailing any. Specifically, he alleged that the Linux kernel violates 42 Microsoft patents; its user interface and other design elements infringe 65; OpenOffice.org infringes 45; and other packages infringe another 83 Microsoft patents.

Microsoft could have several motives for rattling its patent saber: slowing down open-source rivals, raising fears of open-source legal risks among customers, and winning payment for technology the company believes it deserves from a group that's generally been unwilling to pony up.

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Google is warning Web users of the increasing threat posed by malicious software that can be dropped onto a computer as a Web surfer visits a particular site.

The search giant carried out in-depth research on 4.5 million Web sites and found that about one in 10 Web pages could successfully "drive-by download" a Trojan horse virus onto a visitor's computer. Such malicious software potentially enables hackers to access sensitive data stored on the computer or its network, or to install rogue applications.

Google's report, published last week, said the rise in Web-based malicious software has been aided by the increasing role that the Internet plays in everyday life, along with the ease in setting up Web sites.

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Google outstripped Microsoft in March to become the world's most visited Web site. The new ranking from Comscore comes in the same week that a British marketing firm named Google the #1 brand, beating out Coca-Cola for the top spot.

Google had 528 million unique visitors in March, up 5 percent from February, according to comScore. Microsoft had 527 million visitors during the same month, up 3.7 percent.

Behind Google's success: It's domination of the search market, of course, with 53.7 percent of all searches on the Web, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Microsoft trails with 10.1 percent.

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Intel said it will offer solid state flash memory drives that are faster, quieter and more power efficient. Intel's unit is based on NAND flash memory. The first drives being shipped are small in capacity, at 1 GB and 2 GB, but larger drives are planned for later this year and next, culminating with units of 80 GB and 160 GB density.

The days of the spinning disk hard drive seem to be numbered as Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Tuesday joined the growing field of companies offering solid state flash memory drives that claim to be faster, quieter and more power efficient.

The new Intel unit, named the "Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive," is based on NAND flash memory, a type of solid state memory -- commonly used in digital cameras and MP3 players -- that is less expensive to produce than NOR, the other type of flash memory.

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Although the Microsoft Zune has fallen some in the sales ranks, Microsoft says it expects to sell more than 1 million of the music players by the end of June.

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Microsoft on Wednesday announced plans to make Windows Vista, the newest version of its Windows operating system, available to consumers online when the product is officially rolled out at the end of this month. The launch of the consumer version of Windows Vista is scheduled for Jan. 30. The operating system will be available in four consumer versions.

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Sony Corporation of Japan will start selling the lightest 12.1 inch notebook computer in the world from December.

The Type G computer weighs 898 grams, Sony spokesperson Shoko Yanagisawa said. The company hopes the new PC will help it increase the ratio of revenues from sales of PCs for business use to 30% by March 2010, from less than 10% at present.

All Sony personal computers are sold under the Vaio brand. The company is looking to sell 4.2m PCs worldwide in the year to March 2007, an increase of 14% year-on-year.

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Hackers are using online encyclopaedia Wikipedia to spread malware, according to a security firm.

Sophos discovered that hackers had created an article on the German edition of Wikipedia containing false information about a new version of the Blaster worm, along with a link to a fix.

However, the fix is actually a piece of malicious code designed to infect visitors' PCs.

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Many prospective buyers of digital music players, including those who currently use Apple's iPod, would be likely to choose Microsoft's upcoming Zune player, a market research firm said Wednesday.

A survey of 1,725 U.S. teenagers and adults found that of those who planned to buy a digital music player in the next 12 months, 58% who owned iPods and 59% who owned some other brand were either "somewhat likely" or "extremely likely" to choose a Zune, ABI Research said.

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Microsoft has announced the date on which Windows Vista will be made available to businesses.

From 30 November corporate customers of the software giant will be able to get their hands on the next version of the operating system.

Also on that date Microsoft will make available Office 2007 - its suite of business programs.

Home users will have to wait until January 2007 to get hold of a copy of the Vista software.