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Democrats

Senator Arlen Specter Becomes a Democrat 1124

Posted by kdawson from the crossing-the-aisle dept.
Akido37 was one of many readers letting us know that US Sen. Arlen Specter has changed parties to become a Democrat. This gives the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, and 60 if and when Al Franken gets seated from Minnesota. However, Specter said in his announcement that he will not be an automatic 60th vote for breaking Republican filibusters. While the senator's move seems to have surprised many Republicans, it is understandable to moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who said, "You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words of how they [Republicans] view moderates. Either you are with us or against us." Specter noted that in his home state of Pennsylvania, 200,000 formerly Republican voters switched party allegiance last year.
Spam

Opting Out Increases Spam? 481

Posted by timothy from the damned-either-way dept.
J. L. Tympanum writes "I used to ignore spam but recently I have been using the opt-out feature. Now I get more spam than ever, especially of the Nigerian scam (and related) types. The latter has gone from almost none to several a day. Was I a fool for opting out? Is my email address being harvested when I opt out? Has anybody had similar experience?"

Comment Just quit already (Score 1) 700

by penginkun (#27493837) Attached to: Beware the Perils of Caffeine Withdrawal

"I drink around eight cups of coffee a day, along with a soda or two, and I definitely suffer from nasty withdrawal symptoms without my fix."

Amateur. I used to drink 1.5 two liter bottles of Coke every damn day. Then in January I dropped that to two 12 ounce bottles a day. Then in February I dropped that to one 12 ounce bottle a day. And then last month I dropped it to one bottle a week.

Headaches? Yep, got those. Know what I did about them? I took a couple advil and crawled into a dark hole. After a few days the headaches stopped and I was fine.

I noticed a few things, too. One, I could eat spicy food again. It used to be I had to take an antacid if I was even going to LOOK at something spicy. Now? I eat what I want. I don't get crippling migraines anymore. I don't have those days where I feel like something died in my gut. I don't have "days" of any sort anymore - I have more energy, I can think more clearly and best of all I've got back all the money I used to spend on Coke. Plus since what I am drinking is made with sugar rather than HFCS I'm not bombarding my system with that crap any more.

Yes, caffeine withdrawal is a bitch, but it's worth it. When you consume a drug it should be because you WANT to, not because you NEED to.
Movies

Columnist Fired For Reviewing Pirated Movie 466

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-mess-with-rupert dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Roger Friedman, an entertainment columnist for FoxNews.com, discovered over the weekend just what Rupert Murdoch means by 'zero tolerance' when it comes to movie piracy. On Friday, the film studio 20th Century Fox — owned by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate ruled by Mr. Murdoch — became angry after reading Friedman's latest column, a review of 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine,' a big-budget movie that was leaked in unfinished form on the Web last week. Friedman posted a mini-review, adding, 'It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer.' The film studio, which enlisted the FBI to hunt the pirate, put out a statement calling Friedman's column 'reprehensible' while News Corporation weighed in with its own statement, saying it had asked Fox News to remove the column from its Web site. 'When we advised Fox News of the facts,' the statement said, 'they promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.'"
Censorship

Phoenix Police Seize PCs of a Blogger Critical of the Department 515

Posted by Soulskill from the check-and-mate dept.
logicassasin sends in a story about a blogger in Phoenix, AZ, who runs a site that is critical of the local police department. The police recently raided his home and seized his computer hardware. "Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment — which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation." A local publication quotes Pataky saying, "We have heard internally from our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me... They took my cable modem and wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem."
The Internet

FBI Seizes All Servers In Dallas Data Center 629

Posted by Soulskill from the surgical-precision dept.
1sockchuck writes "FBI agents have raided a Dallas data center, seizing servers at a company called Core IP Networks. The company's CEO has posted a message saying the FBI confiscated all its customer servers, including gear belonging to companies that are almost certainly not under suspicion. The FBI isn't saying what it's after, but there are reports that it's related to video piracy, sparking unconfirmed speculation that the probe is tied to the leaking of Wolverine."
The Internet

Morality of Throttling a Local ISP? 640

Posted by kdawson from the what-would-larry-do dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I work for a small (400 customers) local cable ISP. For the company, the ISP is only a small side business, so my whole line of expertise lies in other areas, but since I know the most about Linux and networking I've been stuck into the role of part-time sysadmin. In examining our backbone and customer base I've found out that we are oversubscribed around 70:1 between our customers' bandwidth and our pipe. I've gone to the boss and showed him the bandwidth graphs of us sitting up against the limit for the better part of the day, and instead of purchasing more bandwidth, he has asked me to start implementing traffic shaping and packet inspection against P2P users and other types of large downloaders. Because this is in a certain limited market, the customers really only have the choice between my ISP and dial-up. I'm struggling with the desire to give the customers I'm administering the best experience, and the desire to do what my boss wants. In my situation, what would you do?"
Businesses

New Zealand's Recording Industry CEO Tries to Defend New Draconian Law 269

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the embrace-your-customers-instead dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Campbell Smith, CEO of the RIAA equivalent in New Zealand, has written an opinion piece for one of New Zealand's largest daily papers, in which he tries to justify the new 'presumed guilty' copyright law. This law allows recording industry members to watch file-sharing activity and notify ISPs of users who are downloading material. The copyright holder can then demand that an ISP disconnect that user — without the user ever having a chance to demonstrate their evidence."

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