XM and Sirius to Merge

Satellite radio competitors XM and Sirius are planning to merge into one company.
This still has to be approved by the FCC and faces government regulatory approval. That it would form essentially a monopoly on subscription satellite radio is one concern.
But is it any different than ClearChannel owning 1200 stations nationwide, creating essentially a monopoly in many markets? The fact that now practically all sources of media are owned by just a handful of companies is very concerning.

Are YOU spreading spam?

PC World magazine reports spam is on the upswing compared to last year, thought to be mostly due to botnets, networks composed of broadband-connected PCs that, unknown to their owners, are used to send spam.
Yes, if you are one of those people who don't run your Windows update regularly, or don't have a firewall turned on, or routinely download pirated music from a P2P network, you could be contributing to the problem. It is estimated by some that 25% of all personal computers on the internet are compromised in some way that can be used in a DOS attack or to remotely send spam.
It is also being reported that cybercrime is now more lucrative then drug trafficking.
People, if you are on broadband, get a router. It serves as a hardware firewall. Don't click links in email. Don't download illegal music. You have no idea what is in that "music" file you are downloading.
Update to IE7 if you continue to use IE, or better yet, use Firefox. Use Thunderbird instead of Outlook.
And run Windows Update after the second Tuesday of every month for Pete's sake.

New Version of Nigerian Email Scam

A new version of the old Nigerian email scam, or '419 scam' has been seen in email inboxes lately. This time the twist is the email purports to be from a US soldier in Iraq. This scam is older than the internet, it used to be (and still is) distributed by fax before email became popular.
It basically is a money laundering proposal, a version of advance fee fraud, to supposedly smuggle funds out of Nigeria, or Iraq, using your assistance. It states you will be handsomely rewarded for your assistance.

Unbelievably, five billion US dollars have been scammed out of people worldwide that responded to this scam. This organized crime is said to be the third largest industry in Nigeria, where stolen funds are almost never recovered.
You can watch an ABC news segment they produced on this here on YouTube.
More information on this scam can be found here and here.

Do not respond to ANY email spam offers! It only perpetuates the spam problem for the internet as a whole, as there is practically no cost to the spammers to send out millions of emails to reach the small percentage of people who actually respond. Spam increases costs to ISPs that have to filter it and deal with increased email volume.