An anonymous reader writes "A breathtaking lawsuit was filed this week against every major player in the 'for-pay' television industry. Every major broadband and cable company in the US was named in the federal suit, which seeks the right to obtain content piecemeal rather than in the large (and expensive) packages that cable companies offer as the only option right now. This follows closely on the heels of encouraging comments from the FCC chair that he supports this kind of service. 'The complex web of contractual arrangements among service providers and networks amounts to a monopoly or cartel that has "deprived consumers of choice, caused them to pay inflated prices for cable television and forced them to pay for cable channels they do not want and do not watch," [antitrust lawyer Maxwell M. Blecher] wrote in the complaint filed on behalf of cable subscribers in several states. The complaint, which alleges a conspiracy to monopolize as well as violations of federal antitrust laws, names nine plaintiffs, but Blecher wants the U.S. District Court to certify it as a class action.'"

alphadogg writes "For a decade, IPv6 proponents have pushed this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol because of its three primary benefits: a gargantuan address space, end-to-end security, and easier network administration through automatic device configuration. Now it turns out that one of these IPv6 benefits — autoconfiguration — may not be such a boon for corporate network managers. A growing number of IPv6 experts say that corporations probably will skip autoconfiguration and instead stick with DHCP, which has been updated to support IPv6."

An anonymous reader writes "News.com has an article on the announcement of Microsoft and Universal to introduce watermarking technology into audio files. The technology could serve several purposes including tracking file sharing statistics and inserting advertisements into audio tracks. The article goes on to suggest that watermarking could possibly replace DRM in the near future."

athloi writes with a link to an editorial by John Dvorak over at the PC Magazine site. Rather than his usual tilting at windmills, Dvorak turns his attention to possibility of another big internet economy 'pop': "Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results — a bust. It's déjà vu all over again. Each succeeding bubble has been worse than its predecessor. Thus nobody is actually able to spot the cycle, since it just looks like a continuum. I can assure you that after this next collapse, nobody will think of the dot-com bubble as anything other than a prelude." It certainly seems like another burst is imminent; will this one be worse than the original, or have less of an impact?

japerr writes to mention The Independant is reporting that a new breakthrough may bring scientists one step closer to a Star Trek style transporter. " A team of physicists has teleported data over a distance of 89 miles from the Canary Island of La Palma to the neighbouring island of Tenerife, which is 10 times further than the previous attempt at teleportation through free space. The scientists did it by exploiting the "spooky" and virtually unfathomable field of quantum entanglement - when the state of matter rather than matter itself is sent from one place to another. Tiny packets or particles of light, photons, were used to teleport information between telescopes on the two islands. The photons did it by quantum entanglement and scientists hope it will form the basis of a way of sending encrypted data."

An anonymous reader passed us a link to an article on the Boston Globe's website, talking up efforts by MIT to make programming a non-threatening part of grade-school education. MIT has developed a new programming language designed to encourage experimentation and play. Called Scratch, the project eschews manuals and high-level concepts in favour of approachability. "Efforts to make computer programming accessible to young people began in the late 1970s with the advent of the personal PC, when another programming language with roots at MIT — Logo — allowed young people to draw shapes by steering a turtle around a screen by typing out commands. But the path to mastering most programming languages has been strewn with obstacles, since students needed to figure out not only the underlying logic but also master a brand new syntax, observe strict rules about semicolons and bracket use, and figure out what was causing error messages even as they learned the program."

A number of readers clued us to the latest development in the saga of te sale of DoubleClick: Google has thrown its hat into the ring against Microsoft and (reportedly) Yahoo and AOL. Most of the stories quote a Wall Street Journal piece that is only available to subscribers. Google's entry into the bidding may boost the price for the remaining pieces of DoubleClick (parts of the company having already been sold off) to $2 billion, twice what its current owners paid for the whole thing. Some reports speculate that this figure could give Microsoft pause.

DrupalAssociation writes "Drupal, the popular and widely used CMS, now has the backing of a non-profit association. Having grown in size and scope for the last six years, the Drupal software project needs more structured support with infrastructure, marketing and funding. The Drupal Association will help with these needs but will not be directly involved with Drupal software development. Donations are now being solicited. Plans for Corporate and individual membership are being drawn and will be announced at a later time. Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal and the President of the Association, announced the Association on Drupal.org today."

BuR4N writes "Mark Russinovich takes a look at the Windows Kernel and the changes made in Vista. In this second part he describes the workings of the features SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, ReadyBoot, and ReadyDrive and how they improve system performance."

hey0you0guy writes "For the past few months copyrighted clips of shows have been edited to include advertisements for Gawker Media. These clips have been uploaded to the video sharing site YouTube by a user going by the handle Belowtheradar. These clips are then being linked to by Gawker itself: 'Gawker.com, for example, on Thursday featured a YouTube clip from ABC's talk show The View. At the beginning of the video, there is an ad for Gawker. On Wednesday, Valleywag posted a link to a video of television satirist Stephen Colbert talking about Wikipedia. At the beginning of that video there is an ad for Valleywag, a blog dedicated to Silicon Valley gossip.' CNet contacted the copyright holders for the videos (which range from NBC to Apple), and mostly received responses of 'we're looking into it.' At least two groups did confirm they did not give permission for this kind of advertisement."

DMiax writes "Reuters reports that a group of scientists from University of Edimburgh may have realized a nanomolecular engine - a Maxwell's Demon. The device selects and traps other molecules based on their direction of motion. Physicist James Maxwell first imagined the nano-scale device in 1867, and the research team cites him as the basis for their understanding of how lights, heat, and molecules interact. The device is powered by light, and may spur advances in nano-scale technology to new heights in coming years."

Vinit wrote in with an article that describes Microsoft's strategy for future versions of Windows. It begins: "As we all know that Microsoft Vista was originally scheduled to be released in 2003, after two years of Windows XP, but it got delayed by over five years due to various reasons. Definitely, Vista is very very improved OS over the previous versions, but the delayed in the launch has cost Microsoft, billions of dollars. Now the question at the moment is, what exactly after Vista? Microsoft can't afford to wait another five years for an operating system. People are becoming more aware of the choices they have, and Linux is no longer a hobbyist OS, and that day isn't far away when it becomes simple enough to be a viable alternative to Windows. The competition is fierce. That is why, to stay at the top, Microsoft has planned a 'Vista R2', codenamed 'Fiji' which will be released some time in 2008. And after Fiji, there will be Windows 'Vienna'. Windows Fiji, will not be a totally different OS from Vista; but it will be an add-on. Whereas Vienna will be totally different from Vista."

prawnonthebarbie writes "Microsoft is battling the trend for frazzled office workers to give up on Outlook and auto-forward all their mail to Gmail: the company is promising 2-GB mailboxes in Exchange 2007 rather than the piffling 50-MB mailboxes most workplaces have now. Speaking at the launch of Vista, Office, and Exchange in Singapore, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Martha DeAmicis said Microsoft had built clustered replication into Exchange so corporate IT admins wouldn't be worrying about backing up big mailboxes to tape. However, its killer feature appears to be its plans to make those gigs of email available on Joe Officeworker's mobile phone."

mcflaherty writes "The Federal Trade Commission has stated that it is going to investigate the use of 'Viral Marketing' by corporations. This is the type of advertising that seeks to start a word of mouth campaign for the product via consumers themselves. Previously, consumers themselves set the buzz. But lately advertisement firms are stepping up to the plate themselves, seeding the market with buzz that looks independent of the company, but is in fact funded by them. The crew at Penny Arcade contend that corporate generated buzz is not Viral Marketing, and perhaps Guerrilla Marketing would be a more apt term. Either way, it appears to be a profitable advertising model."