Internet and e-mail policy and practice
including Notes on Internet E-mail


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22 Jul 2013

E-pending in real life Email

The other day I got an odd flyer in the mail, sent from Singapore, advertising a $1,000 six volume reference set about wellbeing, which is apparently an academic subject these days. (Click on the label to see the whole thing.)

This is a rather odd thing to arrive in my mailbox, since it is not a topic in which I have ever shown the least bit of interest. But a little squinting at the label reveals what happened.

See more ...


  posted at: 23:53 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Email/ependrl.html

20 Jul 2013

Four New Generic Domains ICANN
At its meeting in Durban, ICANN signed contracts with the applicants for four new top level domains. The new domains are شبكة, which means "web" in Arabic, онлайн and сайт, which mean "online" and "site" in Russian, and 游戏, which means "game" in Chinese. They should give us an interesting hint about the future of the new TLDs, because all four are utterly, totally, generic.

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  posted at: 00:37 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/ICANN/newfour.html

18 Jul 2013

Cargo cult account security Internet

Arthur in L.A. asks:

Why do online accounts like the one at my alarm company keep adding extra security questions? The choices always require either a subjective answer ("What's your favorite movie?") or, in a two-person household, more than one answer ("In what city did your parents meet?")
We all know that passwords are a terrible security mechanism. People forget them, and bad guys are ever better at guessing them. So there are basically three ways to authenticate a person: something you know, such as a password, something you have, such as a driver's license, and something you are, a biometric. Two-factor authentication schemes are much more secure than single factor.

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  posted at: 00:25 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Internet/cargocult.html

05 Jul 2013

The Winklevoss twins are looking for some greater fools. Like you, perhaps. Money

You've probably heard about the Winklevoss twins, who got a great deal of money from Facebook in a 2008 lawsuit. Now they have bought up a vast number of bitcoins—reportedly about 1% of all of them—and presumably want to make bug bucks in the bitcoin market, but to succeed they need some suckers to help them out.

They recently filed a preliminary prospectus with the SEC for the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, which is intended to be an exchange traded fund (ETF), Felix Salmon blogged about the reasons that it would be a terrible investment if the SEC allowed it which they probably won't, but I haven't seen comments on the key fact that this ETF appears primarily a way for the Winklevii to unload their bitcoins on a large pool of greater fools.

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  posted at: 15:14 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Money/winklebit.html

01 Jul 2013

Google Books case part 4,523: decide fair use first Copyright Law
The endless lawsuit by the Authors Guild (which purports to represent authors, no longer including me), against Google moved another small step toward completion today.

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  posted at: 13:33 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Copyright_Law/noclass.html

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ICO Fines Manchester Firms 150K for Flood of Unlawful Spam Texts
21 days ago

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785 days ago

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