"Genre" isn't really a problem on IMDB, as users can't directly set that. I believe you are thinking of "plot keywords", which are really nothing but tags, and have become silly.

How does a "loud shirt" have anything to do with the plot of the listed titles?

The MyHD DVR ignores the setting of the broadcast flag, as does pretty much every other OTA HD recorder. This is primarily because it has never been intentionally set on any program.

When those are broadcast OTA (over the air, i.e., TV using the same frequencies and antennas as has been used for 50 years) and can be decoded by any ATSC-compliant device, I suspect I'd have no problem moving the program anywhere.

Or, if you really are a terrorist and want put a bomb in your laptop, just replace the 8-cell battery with a one-cell, which will give you enough power to pass this test while still giving you lots of room for explosives.

For people who distribute pictures like that, hangin's too good for 'em.

The scenarios from Larry Bond's The Enemy Within are also pretty scary. If they came to pass, it's likely the entire US highway system would be completely TSA'd.

LCDs use more power when displaying a completely black screen (since they have to charge the cell to have the crystals become non-transparent), and thus are more likely to get a dark image "stuck".

The problem is that a reasonable timeout that will provide you some sort of protection is way too short if the power to the display is truly being turned off. It takes my TV about 5 seconds to recognize that the video signal has come back, and it would be very painful if after two minutes (my screensaver timeouts on boxes I can configure) of pause, I have to hit some "do nothing" button to wake up the display so that I can then hit play and not miss anything.

Also, if you have any of the auto-sensing video switches/receivers, it's a real pain when then source signal completely disappears, as the unit switches to the next input with a signal.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.