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


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29 May 2013

Liberty Reserve now, Bitcoin next? Money
The papers have been abuzz with the
shutdown of Liberty Reserve, an online payments system, due to accusations of large scale money laundering via anonymous transactions. Many people have noted similarities between LR and Bitcoin and wonder whether Bitcoin is next. I doubt it, because with Bitcoin, nothing is anonymous.

See more ...


  posted at: 02:35 :: permanent link to this entry :: 2 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Money/libcoin.html

11 May 2013

Buying coffee via a series of tubes Money

When I was a small boy and needed clothes, my mother would take me to the Best's department store, where we'd pick something out, and then go to pay for it. The clerk would take the money and the slips, put them in a cylindrical container, and send them off with a whoosh through a pneumatic tube to somewhere upstairs. After a delay of what seemed to me to be about a week and a half, our change and receipt would whoosh back, and we could go.

Buying things with Bitcoin is a lot like that. It's really, really slow to use, like ten minutes to several hours per transaction. While there are workarounds to speed it up, they all break some of the aspects of Bitcoin that make it different from normal money.

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  posted at: 23:09 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Money/bcslow.html

07 May 2013

Poor Palau Email
Palau is a tiny country of about 20,000 people with excellent snorkeling in the South Pacific. Like every country, it has a two-letter country domain .PW. Back in 2004, Palau leased .PW to Encirca, who tried to brand it as Personal Web, with approximately no success. Late last year, DirectI took it over and rebranded it as Professional Web. They went through an ICANN-style sunrise and landrush process and apparently got tens of thousands of defensive registrations. About a month ago, they opened it up to everyone with very cheap $5 registrations, and the spam began.

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  posted at: 17:23 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Email/palau.html

04 May 2013

I don't think I'll be unblocking mail from .PW any time soon Email

One of the managers at .PW sent me a note saying that (paraphrased) now that the world knows their customers are gushing spam, they're finally starting to set up some of the anti-abuse measures that they should have done in the first place.

But then I got my first response to an abuse report:

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  posted at: 20:13 :: permanent link to this entry :: 2 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Email/pwnope.html

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Who is this guy?

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Other blogs

CAUCE
It turns out you don’t need a license to hunt for spam.
4 days ago

A keen grasp of the obvious
Italian Apple Cake
562 days ago

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Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

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