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Comment Re:Conspiracies, please. (Score 2) 130

Limiting number of RCPT TO lines is a fucking awful way to handle spam, and explicitly discouraged by RFC 2821:

All that says is that you should not reject the message based on the number of recipients. You can, however, temporarily reject (using a 4xx status code) recipients after some set number. Any good MTA will retry the tempfails.

I currently have a variation of this in place where any e-mail to a "special" address (like postmaster or webmaster) can't have any other recipients at my mail server. Right now, it's a log-only rule, and hasn't been triggered very often, but I wanted to make sure I don't reject or filter messages to those addresses, but I also don't want them to be used to allow unfiltered spam to be sent to everyone else in the domain.

OTOH, if the e-mail is a bounce (defined as from ""), I do reject it if it has multiple recipients, directly in violation of the RFC portion you quote. The is because a bounce is to notify the sender that something went wrong, and it's impossible to have more than one sender.

Comment Re:Big Difference (Score 1) 210

VCRs always needed to use "analog hole" methods and unencrypted signals.... DVRs were not allowed to move programs without permission.

Sure they were...I did it all the time with recordings of OTA HDTV using a MyHD card in my PC.

I think you are assuming that "DVR" == "device supplied by cable or satellite company to record encrypted signals".

Comment Re:CASL bad law and affects more than email (Score 1) 145

The nonsensical phrase 'double optin' points strongly in that direction.

That phrase is just a shorter way of saying "opt-in plus confirm". If a website gets a request for adding an e-mail address to their list, sends a "confirm that you really wanted this" e-mail to the address, and doesn't send any more e-mail unless you click the link and confirm, they definitely aren't a spammer. Honestly, anybody who has a true opt-out that really stops e-mail isn't a spammer...they just aren't as nice as the ones who require opt-in for everything.

I use a separate e-mail address for every website I deal with, and I can tell you that with over 500 e-mail addresses, only one or two has ever had a problem where I couldn't opt-out of marketing e-mail. OTOH, my real e-mail address (that only friends have) gets lots of true spam attempts. When you run your own e-mail server, you get to see what really happens, and the reality is that legitimate companies already try to do the right thing as far as opt-in/opt-out.

And, e-mail isn't really a big deal...I'm much more annoyed by companies that auto-check the "remember my payment information" box, and then require you to jump through hoops to change to a different payment method on the next purchase.

Comment Re:The Failure of good intentions. (Score 1) 145

It's a matter of reasonable effort. How can a company determine that a given email destination is Canadian?

It's impossible without also collecting the user's physical address. A Canadian citizen living in Canada using a gmail.com should be covered by this law, while a US citizen living in the US who happens to have an e-mail provider with servers located in Canada should not be covered by the law.

Comment Re:Linux? (Score 1) 145

Canada is the party at fault, Microsoft is just responding to a stupid law.

Whats stupid about requiring people to opt-in?

Because this law (and any anti-spam law) is just like DRM...it only really affects honest people.

Large companies like Microsoft generally try not to "spam" you. Yes, you may technically receive an unwanted e-mail from them, but they do use some sort of opt-in right now. On the other had, true spammers don't care...they are just blasting e-mail to any e-mail address they can get their hands on. Then, when it comes time to enforce the law, only companies that are easy to find will actually be prosecuted...the fly-by-night spammers will never be bothered by this law, and if they are, it's likely they won't end up paying any penalties anyway, as their assets won't be as easy to find.

What this law does is make any company that wants to send you e-mail have to have opt-in plus confirm for every change of preferences, plus they will have to keep a lot more information about you, and this law seems to prohibit them from giving you a choice to receive "non-related" e-mail. Every e-mail under this law must fit a narrow category for which you opt-in. So, if you signed up for e-mail about "Windows 8.1", if MS releases "Windows 8.2", they cannot send you an e-mail in the "Windows 8.1" category that says "hey, Win 8.2 is out, it's great". This means that their categories will end up being broader, and this will inevitably result in more spam complaints about them, as they would "annoy" people by sending Windows 8 info on the "Windows" list, when all some people want is Windows 7 info.

A small business/website will be impacted even more. I recently got an update from a website that said they had partnered with a different company for their Android app, so the old app won't work anymore, and you'd have to download the new one separately. How in the world could I have opted-in to that e-mail before the fact, since blanket opt-in isn't permitted by this Canadian law. A few complaints from Canadian users, and this small site would have been bankrupted by the fines.

And, again, real spammers won't have to care about any of these issues, and you will still get phishing e-mail from "Expedited Shipping" about "Delivery Notification".

Comment Re:No Question the Drive is His, No 5th Amend. Iss (Score 1) 560

The Fifth does not have a catch-22. Invoking it may not be considered an admission of guilt.

The case in the GP post (LEOs know you have the key, ask you for it, but don't suspect there is evidence on the drive concerning you) does turn into catch-22.

Your two choices in that instance are to provide the key or not. Providing the key means that obviously there is nothing on the drive concerning you (unless you are really stupid).

Not providing the key gets you thrown in jail for obstruction unless you invoke your right to avoid self-incrimination. Thus, if you invoke your 5th amendment rights, LEOs know that there has to be something on the drive concerning you, since it has been upheld that "pleading the 5th" when it doesn't actually apply is illegal. So, when you invoke your rights they can throw you in jail for obstruction (claiming you are lying about the contents of the drive incriminating you). OTOH, if you really do have a valid 5th amendment claim, this means that they have certain proof that something on that drive is evidence of a crime you committed...the trick is proving which crime.

Which is where the catch-22 comes in...in this case, invoking your rights leads to the inescapable conclusion that there is definitely evidence against you of a crime on that drive. The only real question is whether LEOs having a search warrant for the drive concerning somebody else could then use information on the drive as evidence against you in an unrelated crime. If they can't, then of course you happily turn over the key 100% of the time.

Basically, this boils down to the 5th amendment only really protecting you when you are the target of the investigation. When you aren't the target, have evidence about the target, and have committed crimes yourself, you end up being SOL unless somebody wants to grant you immunity.

Comment Re: Warriors, unite! (Score 1) 208

There really was no excuse for piracy! And yet piracy was rampant! It was all over the torrents. Just to save a penny?!

It's absolutely true that some people won't pay for anything, but those people aren't lost sales, either.

Between them and the people who don't like the number of hoops you have to jump through when you do pay (one of the latest Humble Bundles was for Steam keys, which isn't a problem for me, but some people didn't like it), there is a lot of instances of "piracy" counted where the price of the product is completely unrelated to the percentage of unlicensed copies.

Comment Re:Haha, nobody will do this. (Score 1) 208

If somebody could tell me how to get Metro 2033 to stop stuttering on a machine that is twice as fast as anything you could have purchased when it was first released, I'd be happier.

I've tried everything on every page Google suggests, but I still get 80 frames per second 95% of the time, with sudden drops to 5fps for about a half-second. I can even drop down the quality and resolution so that the difference is even more dramatic: 140fps down to the same 5fps. Metro: Last Light runs fine, so I suspect the engine upgrade solved the problem. Hopefully, the Redux version using the new engine will drop to less than $10 by the time I've gone through all the other games I bought.

Comment Re:No Question the Drive is His, No 5th Amend. Iss (Score 1) 560

Even if the hard drive isn't yours, or it hasn't been established that it's yours, if they know you have the password for whatever reason they can compel you to give it up. Failure to do so would at least be obstruction, or perhaps as bad as aiding and abetting.

Catch-22, then, as if you invoke your right against self-incrimination, they know that the drive has something about a crime you committed, while if you merely refuse to provide the key, you are arrested for obstruction, regardless of whether or not you actually have the key.

Comment Re:I lost the password (Score 2) 560

The court cannot compel speech, or "a product of the mind" like a combination or encryption key, if in doing so the individual would incriminate himself. The exception -- the ONLY exception -- is when specific evidence or illegal material is already known to be inside, "with reasonable particularity" as the courts have put it.

In this case, the defendant admitted the encrypted data is communications with someone who is not his lawyer, and the state showed that those communications are likely to be evidence in this case. So, this time, the ruling is correct.

If, however, the defendant had an encrypted file and the state had no knowledge of what might be in it, then the mere fact that it is encrypted is not probable cause to issue a warrant to compel the release of the password.

Comment Re:I lost the password (Score 0) 560

Security through obscurity isn't security, anon.

You do realize that encrypting your hard drive with a key you keep in your head really is just security through obscurity...if somebody discovers the key, they can decrypt the drive. All the anonymous poster is doing is using a really long key, and a unique way to remember what that key is.

It's not bad because he is using a file on the drive as the key...it's bad because the file could be updated at any time, thus wiping the key.

Comment Re:Nook e-reader (Score 1) 51

>Me, I'm hanging onto my Bookeen Cybook Opus. It actually has buttons instead of a touchscreen. I don't need gestures, swipes, and text entry. I need 'push here for next page' and 'push here for previous page' and a D-pad for selecting books and working menus.

I have a 10" Onyx Boox because I wanted the larger form factor, ePub support, and better PDF support. I'm right with you on the need for physical buttons, but the Boox also comes with a stylus that allows faster navigation in some situations.

From what I can tell, every e-reader has their own problems, mostly because of the HTML support of their reader software, but there are also some UI and usability issues as well. The Boox is basically stupid, with no catalog for books, but that means I can just copy books over using the USB connection and build my own structure using the file system. Once you are reading, though, it doesn't get in the way, and getting to the table of contents of a book is the only thing that I wish was more streamlined.

Since changing devices could be painful depending on what HTML is used by your existing e-books, I'll probably stick with this unit for quite a while.

Comment Re:Wrong decision (Score 1) 484

Yes, but the each is still only encrypted once, so that all copies of HGTV (for example) transmitted by Dish use the same encryption. The unique part of the card is the part that controls whether that card is allowed to be used to decrypt a particular stream.

Aereo stored and encrypted your personal copy of a broadcast separately and differently from somebody else's copy.

Comment Re:One disturbing bit: (Score 1) 484

Somewhere around the 5th to 7th inning I grew up with Jack Buck or Mike Shannon saying: "This broadcast is presented by the authority of Major League Baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. Accounts and descriptions of the game may not be retransmitted or broadcast without prior written consent of the St. Louis Cardinals, LLC.

Regardless of Jack Buck's credentials as a broadcaster, that doesn't make this statement of supposed copyright law accurate.

There are many exceptions that would allow complete re-transmission (like listening over bluetooth headphones). In addition, there are many fair use ways to copy the broadcast that don't require written permission.

The problem with this ruling is that technically, bluetooth headphones are covered by it. So would receiving the broadcast using a radio connected to your PC, then streaming it to your phone over the Internet. Even if only you can access the stream (which is exactly what Aereo was selling...the hardware and software that let you do something you could do for yourself if you wanted to), it's infringement according to this ruling. And, it's a really bad ruling since there is no higher court, and we know that a Congress that gets a lot of money from cable companies won't amend the law to say that the length of the wire on a private stream doesn't matter.

Yes, SCOTUS claims this doesn't apply to Amazon letting you stream music you own a copy of without ever having to upload that copy, but you can bet some lawyer is going to try and use it as a precedent.

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