Slashdot Mirror
No Slump For Sex Online
Despite the explosion of sexual activity online, a Zogby survey found that 65.l per cent of respondents believed finding sexual fulfillment on the Net was "not likely." Duh.
These robust figures show just how hypocritical and schizophrenic America's attitudes about sex and the Net are, and how much the success of online sex sites reveals about the future of the Web.
In a l999 CBS.MarketWatch.com poll, 23 per cent of the people surveyed called pornography the Net's worst feature. It's certainly all most politicians want to talk about when it comes to discussing the online world. But somebody isn't telling the truth. A 1999 report by Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer of the California- based Marital and Sexuality Centre found that 75 per cent of those who enjoy adult Internet sites don't tell anyone about it.
The popularity of sex sites, especially during a so-called Tech Crash, ought to send a message about technology and applications that work online, or don't. Like Napster, sex sites offer genuine utility for millions of people who want sexual information and activity. Sex, like music and entertainment, is a universal human interest. Technology can make it easier for people to connect with these interests, and when that happens, the technology works. And the Net is rattling old taboos. Even though the number of people accessing sex sites has gone through the roof, the Cooper/Scherer report found that the proportion of sexual compulsives online parallels that in the general population. The hue and cry about the menace of cybersex addiction seems misplaced.
Law enforcement officials have also been reporting a dramatic rise in child pornography online, but there is no evidence that sex crimes are on the rise either, according to researchers and federal (including FBI) statistics. Is it possible that the availability of sexual material online gives people healthier and safer outlets for sexual impulses than were previously available?
The problem with the way media, politics, morality and the Net have gotten all tangled up is that the confusion makes it difficult to measure the real consequences of online sexuality, clearly a significant new social reality. The Net has, for the first time in contemporary history, given individuals the freedom to explore sex and sexuality, despite ferocious opposition to the idea from government, elected representatives, religous groups and much of media. Tens of millions of people can access sex sites, talk about sexual fantasy and practice, consider whether they're gay or straight, meet one another, indulge in fantasies, gather information, assume different identities. According to the Cooper/Scherer report, 87 per cent of sex- site users said they felt no shame or guilt. More than 60 per cent pretended to be a different age than they actually are; 14 per cent admitted that they made up other attributes; another five per cent assumed the opposite gender.
Some interesting conclusions emerge from all of this. Simple exposure to sexual imagery doesn't appear as harmful or destructive as many politicians, moralists, educators and others would claim, as they pass legislation requiring blocking and filtering. Nor do the clucking or the legislation seem to have much effect. Even while Congress passes profoundly stupid laws like the Children's Internet Protection Act -- which forces local schools and libraries to install filtering programs whether they want to or not in order to get federal aid -- the number of adult Americans accessing sites devoted to sex seems to be growing by the day.
Another pattern that's been developing over several years is also becoming more distinct: The Net works well as a corollary to non-virtual human behavior and activity, not as a subsitute. Messaging doesn't replace voice-to-voice communications like phones; free music doesn't stop people from buying CD's (which sold in record numbers last year); e-books aren't more attractive to most readers than the real thing. And sex sites and virtual sexual identities don't replace real sex.
But c'mon, man - they're foreign kids, and they've gotta have something to do when they're not making your Nikes!
1 + 2 does not equal yellow. The act of creating child porn is damaging because it requires a child to be assulted. The act of viewing existing images may be a safe outlet for those urges. Of course, never let logic get in the way of a good witch hunt.
OK, let me point this out for once and for all, if you are a teenager, kiddie porn is _good_ (no, not 8 years old, but around 15...). Just look at it from a different perspective, eh?
It has been shown that while the number of porn sites is exploding, the "appetite" of browsers is not matching that explosion. The supply and demand balance is shifting towards too much supply. While a couple years ago it would have been easy to make a lot of money with porn on the web, that is no longer true today. Name a fetish, any fetish, and you will find dozens or hundreds of sites catering to you, for free. The porn kings are "pushing" the product, but there is only so much "pulling" (heh) that we can do.
It's not fair to say that ``sex sells'' to all humans. And it's not fair to say that the ``human libido'' continues. And I don't mean this in a trivial way in the sense that I can find an eighty year old grandmother who isn't interested in sex on-line or getting laid. Rather, there are entire cultures where the adults go years without having sex because they see sex only as a means of procreating. So they only have sex when they want a child. People are fond of saying ``all men masturbate and most women too;'' according to the anthropologists who have studied the above mentioned culture, that is probably not the case. In fact, probably none of them ever masturbate.
My point is this: so many people are fond of saying things like ``human nature'' and ``human desire'' and try to apply some claim to humans universally. But often when people make claims like this they are very far from the truth. For example, there is a culture where it is accepted, no expected, that a boy suck his fathers penis and swallow its load. It is part of the boy's passage to manhood. The idea is that by accepting an important part of what it means to be a man from another man he is gaining that mans intelligence and power. So it's not fair to say that ``human nature rejects the idea of sex with children.'' Or another relavent example is the one I have given above. Or cannibals give another example. Or entire socities that are vegetarian; so it's not fair to say ``it is human nature to eat meat'' or ``we are carnivores by nature'' when there are groups of thousands of people showing that to be false.
Our sexual desires and our nature is dictated almost entirely by our own culture. Our attitudes towards sex, drugs, food, personal space, hygeine, alcohol, education and so on are different than almost all other cultures. When it comes to human nature, there are almost no absolutes, almost no universals and almost surely large sets of counterexamples to every sentence of the form ``it is human nature to do X.''
So here is how I would change what you said:
Well, yes, it DOES appear that Katz is right on this occasion. The only problem is that his conclusion is painfully obvious when applied to our society. Sex sells to most Americans. It almost always has, and it almost always will. Through good times and bad, Americans will almost always want to get laid.
I work in the online porn industry myself, and would say the view from the trenches are different than those reported.
The metric used, counting the number of free sites and pay sites over two time samples, is almost completely unrelated to the the success or profitability of the industry. Unlike many non-porn dot coms, porn has historically been very protiable, but the profits per subscriber and per "amount of work" (nebulous, I know) are generally decreasing.
If you look at publicly traded companies that own or run porn pay sites, they've been hit as hard as the rest of the tech sector. New Frontier Media (NASDAQ: NOOF) which runs iGallery.net (which in turn runs tits.com , pussy.com, etc.) went from $12 a share in April 2000 to around $2 a share today. Private Media (NASDAQ: PRVT), a major European porn publishing company which runs its own sites as well as has licensing deals with US net companies, went from $12.5 a share in April 2000 to around $6 a share today. Rick's Cabaret (NASDAQ: RICK), a Texas-based strip club company that runs several large sites, went from $5.50 a share in April to $2.25 a share today.
More intangible measures, such as profits per surfer signup, also seem to be falling. Exact figures aren't published, but some major companies are reducing their "referral fees" paid for advertising the sites. Cyberotica , the 1st or 2nd most visited for-pay porn site most months according to now-defunct PCDataOnline.com, has dropped their referral fees from $40 to $25 per "free signup" since last year. Smaller companies are following suit, and larger ones that are holding the line for competitive reasons are showing signs of financial strain. RJB Telcom, which runs the other top-visited pay site, Karas's Adult Playhouse , has held their referral fees at $35-$42 per subscriber, but has been a couple weeks late paying affiliates for several months. (Their difficulties initially stemmed from an expensive legal entanglement last November, but if they were as profitable as a year or two ago, they almost assuredly would have recovered almost instantly). Both companies are very well run, and grew from profits rather than IPOs...the publicly traded companies haven't shown any outward signs of profit problems, but their management is typically not as sensitive as the successful private firms in responding to market changes.
The boom in free porn sites, which Katz cites as a sign that the industry is doing well, may actually be the opposite, at least economically: the abundance of free porn is widely thought to be eroding the demand for pay sites, though there are too many factors at play to prove a causal relationship. For those who don't know the business model, free sites exist by running ads for pay sites, so the success of the two are intertwined. One thing most of the industry agrees on is that it's harder to make money in porn lately, whether from free sites or pay sites, and based on the few publicly traded companies dealing in online porn, investors are seeing the same thing.
Wired News also reported about a month ago on the Wireless Porn industry -- photos being sent down to a wireless PDA or Cell Phone, and therefore being a tremendous cash cow. Quite intresting how appealing to the basic human nature works.
--
WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
There certainly is some real child porn out there. But the way law enforcement officials define child porn is pretty broad. They say if you do not have files on hand documenting the ages of each model depicted in a film or still photo, they are assumed under 18. So, we are not just talking about pictures which depict what appears to be a 9 or 10 year old child performing oral sex. You must also include nude photos of nubile 19 year old college girls who could pass for 16 or 17. Both of these are painted with the same broad brush. So, when I hear about some guy getting busted because child porn has been found on his hard drive, I wonder whether he had real child porn or the trumped up variety.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Impossible to use the internet for sexual ends you say? Try http://www.m4m4sex.com/. If you happen to be a gay male looking for some action, you couldn't pick something more efficient.
The site works well in heavily gay cities, such as San Francisco and Miami, but it works just as well in areas where being gay is practically a crime.
Perhaps Jon Katz should write an article about this site specifically. The members in Milan have continually expressed how helpful this site is for their lifestyle when they live in a country that is dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. I can't wait until they open up Rome.
Of course, I'm biased because I developed most of the site for them but it seems relevant here.
Something is definitely wrong... there are way more than 1,100 pay sex sites... I mean, if I can name almost half as many off the top of my head (and I haven't even paid for porn online)... And like you said, if there really are 280,000 free sex sites out there I'd like to know where they are. The numbers just don't add up, are they made up? You know you have some issues when you have to make up numbers to show that sex sells.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
we have come to think that awful pisswater like Miller is what beer is supposed to taste like.
Why do you think Budwieser have those huge horses? Me thinks it's not a coincidence that Bud taste like piss.
somebody made a non-alchohol beer that tasted the same Guiness, I would drink it all day, every day.
Amen brother. "Honestly Boss, it's non-alcoholic Guinnes...hic...Guinness"
Sure, but we are one of the only species that can have sex at any point in the female's menstrual cycle (except that really yecchy part.)
See...sex hang ups. The yecchy part? So what - wear a condom, wash up after. Big deal. Plus for some women the release helps them relax and makes the cramping a little more bearable.
Besides - Unless it's a gushing heavy flow, it's not that messy plus it's pre-lubed.
Sure, I could type it in, but it'd be nice if /. editors would make this a direct link. Sextracker could use the traffic.
--Gus
The misleading assumption here is that each "site" represents a company that has set up shop to sell pornography online, much like Amazon.com is a "site."
In reality, a single pornographer is liable to have hundreds of sites under its "umbrella." I know a guy who used to run DNS for a Web pornographer, and he was regularly called upon to register or alter DNS info for hundreds of domain names every day.
Statistics like these prove there are a lot of porn sites out there, true. But they don't actually say anything about the health of the online pornography industry per se.
--
Breakfast served all day!
Even light-hearted comedies like The Marx Brothers (specifically, Horsefeathers) had Speakeasies, active drinking by all characters, deception of quality (the same large jug was used to fill a bottle of "Scotch" and a bottle of "Rum" (by Chico)), theft of alcohol in large quantity for smuggling to others later (by Harpo), etc...of course, I could be misinterpretting Horsefeathers as a light-hearted comedy; it might have been seen as a very controversial film for the time...
Hollywood basically continued to act likes its promotion of alcohol was not only harmless, but like it was Hollywood's God-Given Right to promote alcohol.
Just as Hollywood today thinks its a God-Given Right to promote sexual promiscuity and open-activity...
b.t.w., these are opinions/observations of the actions of the Movie and TV entertainment industry, and not condemnations of alcohol consumption or sexual activity itself.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
More to the point, the (probable) increase in the number of children being exploted in the creation of child pornography doesn't show up on the FBI's radar for one simple reason: most of it happens offshore, in Asia and Eastern Europe.
Check both your links, and find that the first contradicts what you say about the second - alcohol consumption prior to 1840 was more than double (nearly treble) what it is today.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Sadly, sex is always lucrative and shameful.
IIRC, pornography makes more money than Hollywood, yet while 9 out of 10 people will admit to see a movie, only 1 out of 10 will admit to watching pornography.
I see two conclusions.
1) Americans are ashamed of sex.
2) Pornography enthusiasts spend lots and lots of money on porn.
Wow, what a simple viewpoint.
First, define "drunkeness". What do you mean? The 13 day moving average of my blood alcohol content? Perhaps you mean the amount of alcohol consumed?
Check out this link and you'll see that beer consumption did go down, but the hard liquor consumption was unaffected.
Check out this link and you'll see that consumption has far exceeded in the years after prohibition any level seen before prohibition. Do you still think we're on the fast track to the level of drunkeness only seen in Russia (ha ha)?
Sorry to interrupt this discussion with some FACTS. I know that sort of behavior is considered rude by some.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Sex economy often moves against normal economy. (...and please excuse my wording.)
The porn industry in the 80's skyrocketed when our economy was down. Yes, a lot had to do with the VHS medium maturing, but historically, people look to sex, drugs, and alcohol as a means to relieve their everyday tensions.
There is no slump in sex sites, says Robert P. Libbon of American Demographics Magazine. He cites a report from sextracker.com that the number of free adult Web sites grew from 22,100 in l997 to 280,300 last year.
I suspect that the trolls of slashdot have increased the "popularity" of one infamous site. I had never heard of goatse.cx before (No, I am not going to provide a hyperlink, you really DONT want to go there) come to think of it, I never wanted to hear of the site.
Eeesh. What frightens me is that somehow someone could probably make money off of that site through the trolling on Slashdot. Recently some people who had seen the link forwared it to me via ICQ. Thanks to slashdot I already knew what it was and did not open the link...
I just thanked slashdot for educating me about goatse.cx...
Eeeww.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
What areas are there where one is NOT already too many? Murder? Rape? Arson? Pickpocketing?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Low UID troll day?
Seriously, that's like the third one I've seen today.
C-X C-S
(Oh, and just for good measure, I'll drop my low UID troll.)
look at how they got the numbers -- I don't know about this particular study, but an anonymous poll that goes
1. do you or have you ever enjoyed an adult internet site?
_Y _N
2. Did you, have you, or will you ever tell anyone about this?
_Y _N
many people will say things anonymously who won't say them when they can be traced back to them. Anonymous cowards on slashdot are a clear example of this. Sometimes they even say accurate, useful, interesting things.
Pr0n is a big time money maker. It doesn't cost much to produce, and on the internet the distribution costs are low too, there is a huge demand for it, even though a lot of people don't like to admit it. Even the heavily religious and a lot of women, who are the most publically critical of pr0n are often closet pr0n consumers. The internet is a great outlet for pr0n, especially for the bashful pr0n consumer because people can view it more or less in 'the privacy of their homes' without having to visit some seedy adult book store, receive unusual packages in the mail or confront a cashier at a convenience store who is hostile to a purchase of Hustler magazine or whatnot. Of course as we all know there is not really much true privacy, especially on the internet, but to a certain extent there is strength in numbers, and there are so many pr0n sites and so many people visiting them that it is hard to single an individual out from that.
"we are one of only two species on Earth that have sex for enjoyment,"
That's a load of garbage. You can't tell me that all those animals out there are thinking about procreation to perpetuate the species. Humans are probably the ONLY species that occasionally has sex for reasons other than pleasure. Penguins don't stop and think "Gee, it is probably time to do my part to contribute to the overall penguin population." Please people, let's turn our brains on occasionally.
If you have his numbers, please give Katz back his 1 key so he can stop using the letter 'l' as a substitute for it when he uses a date.
BilldaCat
curious about the sig, there--who are you saying said that?
(as in, it is a line from a Nine Inch Nails song, as in Head Like a Hole, track 1 on Pretty Hate Machine(1989?) by Trent Reznor, not Charles E. Hill?)
am I missing something, or are you just wrong about who said it?
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
are you kidding? love line has been on for like fifteen years (with various co-hosts, but always with dr. drew)
I think you perhaps miss the point.
Let's imagine they find a collector with several thousand pornographic images of children. There'll be hundreds of kids in here, with the collection ammased over a long period and from many areas in all probability. The chance of them being able to track the perpetrators isn't good. So, if you're going to prosecute this guy (who's been a part of a demand chain and we all know about supply and demand) then you have to prosecute for posession of the images. Which can't practically be distinguished beyond reasonable doubt from fakes. Hence this viewpoint.
No, the UK hasn't given up on all but child porn. The simple point here is that it can't be touched if the fake is legal...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
If that's your opinion then fine.
The opinion of law enforement over here (which, as a computer guy, seems sensible) is that it may not always be possible to gather that form of evidence as the one can't be distinguished from the other.
I'm happy with this situation.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
UK Law (which strikes me as sensible) says that anything which is or appears to be child porn is illegal. Why?
Simple. If the fake is legal, it's almost impossible to prosecute the real thing as the instant defence becomes 'it's faked'. How do you prove beyond reasonable doubt that it isn't? You can't, in all honesty.
If you want to keep the real thing illegal and prosecutable, the fake has to be illegal too. A free speech advocate is almost certainly going to jump up and down on this, but this is the sort of thing which makes me GLAD Britain doesn't have absolute freedom of speech. It creates far too many problems and undesirable situations. For reference, I'm a Liberal Democrat. Slightly left of centre, basically.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
that's already illegal.
caveat pornographer.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
He cites a report from sextracker.com that the number of free adult Web sites grew from 22,100 in l997 to 280,300 last year. Sex-for-pay sites grew from 230 to 1,100 during the same period.
Notice the survey is up to last year. If you track the dotcom boom up until last year, you'll still find tremedous growth. It's the beginning of last summer until now has the market been crashing down so quickly.
All your other dated surveys were made before the dotcom crash. How do you know if the sex online industry isn't slumping now? What if all those horny guys paying the sex sites were the ones downloading porn at work, and now they that they're fired they don't have the bandwidth to stream video from hotnakedteenagechickz.com?
It wont have the same legal issues as MP3 swapping, so would be a decent business modal, especially for pay-for-subscription.
Actually, something like this would run into the same problem Napster has eventually. People would start trading images from scanned magazines or other pay sites. About a year ago Penthouse went after usenet posters of their pictures. If Napster-like porn trading started and reached the levels of use Napster has the porn industry would sit up and take notice much like the RIAA.
cell phones are the ultimate platform for porn. they vibrate, and are small enough to... uh.. never mind.
nik
ok, i cannot let this stand uncommented. while you are obviously not a religious freak of the sex-is-a-sin-sort, you still make some assumptions that i find outright false.
- on technical grounds, i don't think that it it statistically proven that porn excludes or in any way inhibits a long term relationhip.
- i don't think porn and one night stands can be put into one and the same category. porn is a fantasy, that can very well be enjoyed together with your faithful partner. one night stands (i assume you mean cheating on your partner) on the other hand seriously jeapardize the trust between two people, and are, IMHO, a sign something is seriously wrong with the relationship to begin with.
- the people photographed and filmed are for the most part not victimized people who regret what they are doing or hate their life. they are (sometimes highly paid) professionals, who do their job, just like other people do their jobs.
- i attribute all sexual victimization that _does_ happen on-screen (real amateurs, 16-year-olds, etc) not to the porn industry, as the demand for porn, high as it may be, can easily be satisfied by professional actors and actresses.
i believe that most victimization comes from the fact that our society tries to repress sexuality - this, for me, is the main cause that sex is often mixed up with violence and power. it shouldn't be - it should have nothing to do with either.
- i don't see why partners/spouses should be offended. if they are, then, in my opinion, they don't understand their partner or have low self-esteem. of they have low self-esteem, maybe the partner (who is watching porn secretly) doesn't give them the feeling they are appreciated.
- i cannot see what would be wrong with strange fantasies about women showing up and having sex with us. we all know it's a fantasy.
there are some problems i see in porn. there is lots and lots of really crappy porn out there - i would say 99.9% have nothing to do with an enjoyable sexual experience - that's not how people do it.
there is so much to sensuality, yet porn reflect but 0.1% of that. you get big plastic tits and men with really long shlongs doing some kind of gymnastics - it doesn't look enjoyable for either partner, and most likely isn't very, either. i don't want to tell people how to have sex, but i wish we had more variety, more sensuality, more erotics in porn. good porn is hard to find and rare.
my guess is that if america weren't so anti-sex and anti-fun, we would have quality directors and storytellers make good porn movies. and the world would be a better place for it.
do i know what i am talking about? well, i have been in a steady relationship with my girlfriend for 8 years, no cheating no lying, and sometimes (not very often actually - quality issues) watching porn together. i would not even think about trading her for some pornstar fantasy, not for one second.
sex is an expression of love, and we should cherish it in all it's forms. that includes but is not limited to: watching porn alone or with your partner and having sex alone or with your partner.
Katz, this has to be the most misleading mixture of statistics I've ever seen. There may be some support for your point, you may even be right, but your quotes of random statistics prove absolutely nothing.
the number of free adult Web sites grew from 22,100 in l997 to 280,300 last year. Sex-for-pay sites grew from 230 to 1,100 during the same period.
And just what constitutes a Web site? Is it one nudie picture or a whole multimedia adventure? The sex industry uses 'free sites' as a lure to take you to there pay site. Many of these pay sites are just a sub-section of a larger one. These numbers mean nothing.
Despite the explosion of sexual activity online, a Zogby survey found that 65.l per cent of respondents believed finding sexual fulfillment on the Net was "not likely." Duh.
Define 'sexual fulfillment', please. Hell, just define 'fulfillment'. 68 percent of the people I survey believe sexual fulfillment only occurs in a lasting, trusting relationship. That's sort of hard to find on the 'Fuck My Ass Hard' web site.
These robust figures show just how hypocritical and schizophrenic America's attitudes about sex and the Net are, and how much the success of online sex sites reveals about the future of the Web.
How do two unrelated, meaningless numbers reveal anything.
In a l999 CBS.MarketWatch.com poll, 23 per cent of the people surveyed called pornography the Net's worst feature. It's certainly all most politicians want to talk about when it comes to discussing the online world. But somebody isn't telling the truth.
Try cruising for some porn for a while. No other category of sites has as many pop-up banners (except maybe MP3 sites). I would call porn sites the Net's worst feature.
A 1999 report by Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer of the California- based Marital and Sexuality Centre found that 75 per cent of those who enjoy adult Internet sites don't tell anyone about it.
And here is the worst lie of all. Just because the vast majority of people cruising for porn don't tell anyone, you imply that everyone is doing it. If 4 out of 100 cruise for sex, 3 won't tell anyone, 68 will think there is nothing to be gained by it and 23 will think it's disgusting. Your numbers add up perfectly Katz, but they don't mean anything, and they definitely doesn't imply that people are lying, hypocritical, or schizophrenic.
The popularity of sex sites, especially during a so-called Tech Crash, ought to send a message about technology and applications that work online, or don't. Like Napster, sex sites offer genuine utility for millions of people who want sexual information and activity. Sex, like music and entertainment, is a universal human interest. Technology can make it easier for people to connect with these interests, and when that happens, the technology works. And the Net is rattling old taboos.
Or maybe the net is offering those who would break the taboos anyway a chance to do it without suffering the social stigma. Every culture has activities and views that it finds acceptable and taboo. People who follow the social structure are accepted, those who choose to break the taboos choose not to be part of that social structure. All the Net does is provide people with enough privacy to walk in two worlds at once.
According to the Cooper/Scherer report, 87 per cent of sex- site users said they felt no shame or guilt.
I'm willing to bet that this correlates well with Napster users. Maybe the revolution of the net is that it allows people to break social taboos without incurring the social punishment (the only thing that really keeps the number of murders down).
More than 60 per cent pretended to be a different age than they actually are; 14 per cent admitted that they made up other attributes; another five per cent assumed the opposite gender.
Only 14 percent. My survey shows that every male in every chat room has a 12in wanger, yet a recent study by a condom company (see today's bbspot) says the average length is 5.6in. My conclusion is that the net has a special attraction for people with big wangers. All the 45 year old men are either 18yr old females (36DD, BTW), or 22 yr old, independantly wealthy playboys. Remember, on the Net no one knows that you're a dog.
Really, Katz. Is this the best you can do?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Copyright laws also include photographs and other forms of art.
So your point is that we should pick the lowest age and be done with it?
I think you need to join the "Get a Clue Club".
Beware the wood elf!!!
You might think 16 is a good age of concent, think again. In America you can't drive unless your 16, vote unless your 18, get shot at and die in a foriegn country for your country unless you're 18 (17 if your parents want you to get shot at and die in a foriegn country) 21 to drink and 25 to get lower insurance rates.
Evidence suggests that premature exposure to advanced sexually explicit ideas at an early age can mess a person up but good. What's more, it is unlikely that although you can kill Pallestiniens(sic) as soon as you're a "Man" in Isreal, that your parents are going to be just thrilled about having you watch American Porn later on that evening.
Most communities in the United States today agree that anything under eighteen is a minor, dispite the belief in some eastern and southern states that mirrors "old enough to bleed, old enough to breed" mentality.
If you're going to just pick an age though, you should probably pick one that is at least legal.
Beware the wood elf!!!
Jon Katz appears to have fallen off of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.
Let's talk about online pornography. As a dad trying to keep his kids from seeing it. The web makes pornography extraordinarily difficult to hide from my kids. When I was a kid in the late seventies, there was no such thing as 'online pornography'. If I wanted to see it I had to go to my best friends house and look through his Dad's closet. I would never have seen the world wide host of stuff appearing a click away on the web.
As a society we've gone from having to sneak to look at the stuff to not being able to buy it in stores but being able to look at things people should never see in the privacy of our own homes.
The problem as I see it is that a mild dose of the stuff can help answer questions for children that they couldn't get answers to any other way. A major dose of the stuff leads naive young minds to believe things about members of the opposite set that are most certainly not true.
On line sex sites almost never go to the tame and ordinary, they strive for the bizzare and extraordinary and in the process they take countless young minds with them. How plain real life must seem to budding youth when it is compared to some online pornography.
On the other hand and to a different subject, there is no amount of child pornography that is healthy for any society. To permit it with enthusiasm is to guarantee that most children who are abused by it are to be left behind to deteriate. Maybe they will grow up to be exceptionally screwed up adults. Maybe they will abuse their own children. Maybe they will end up on "Love Line" with Dr. Drew talking about what their parents did to them and wondering why they can't form a relationship.
Beware the wood elf!!!
The resolution of a modern cellphone display must be on par with the old C=64 and Apple ][ stuff, why should pictures of naked people be any less popular in that medium?
"Hmmm, I think you're missing the point. Its not a "healthier and safer outlet" if some children are still be expoited to make the child pornography... get a clue."
s e/NationalLaws/ for details.
Define "child" in this context. It varies around the world. Can you produce image with someone of unquestionable legal age (say, 18) that LOOKS like they are younger? No child is harmed here.
Also check out http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm
and you will see that the age of sexual consent varies in the world (and the U.S.) from 12 on up.
Many countries have specific laws against child pornography, but they also specify ages younger than you would think. 16 in the Netherlands.
Check out http://www.interpol.int/Public/Children/SexualAbu
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
From what I understand, a large porportion of the child porn being found is endless reposts of the same pictures, made back when it was legal in places like Denmark. While that is still obviously not acceptable, it's much better than if it was new.
--
Well, I think that's probably more in keeping with what the pron industry does, but in fact sexuality in films was really quite open in early Hollywood - until the decency schoolmarms, fresh out of the job of persecuting consumers of alchohol - turned to a much easier target. Hollywood.
But more to the point - so what? I'm sure there are a lot of very sheltered people and ostrich-like parents screaming about American Pie in the terms you use. My uncle wouldn't let my cousin watch the Breakfast Club because it was "permissive," whatever that means (it's the moralistic equivalent of "inappropriate" - it means, Humpty-Dumpty-in-Wonderland style, whatever the speaker wants it to mean).
But I don't think that American Pie was a success (after the first weekend) because a kid boned a pie; the movie was a relatively fresh and honest portrayal of the confusion, yearning, and emotional turmoil that accompanies peoples' first sexual experiences. Portraying a subject is not the same as glorifying it, as you seem to imply.
Frankly, I think this was the most coherent Katz article I've seen. Those wailing or crowing about "the death of content" would do well to look at the things that are succeeding without judging them or moralizing if they are to understand what forms of entertainment DO work online.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Actually, IIRC, this is an old typist trick (someone correct me if I am wrong):
1997 has to be typed with both hands, while l997 can be typed with one, which may be faster in certain cases (not that it is a good thing on the net)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
...online brokerages and selling pr0n.
Both of them are low setup costs, provide a service people want in the privacy of their homes and are addictive once you realize how easy it is.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
L-999, huh? Nice typewriter ya got there, Katz!
As for the 23% who saw pornography as "the Net's worst feature" - obviously too many banner ads and not enough pr0n to make it worthwhile.
They must mean they don't tell anyone but Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer.
Not necessarly. It could mean that they surveyed people at the Centre to find out what percentage downloaded porn, and got numbers that were 75% beneath the anticipated results (found by examining other surveys or surveying spouses or whatnot).
There are even experiments you can do in which you convince the participants that you already have the information, and you're just seeing if they'll be honest about it. These kinds of experiments sound outlandish but actually seem to work quite well (they've been used to determine that racism and sexism still exist, even though talking about either one except in humor is becoming taboo).
Daniel
Take a look at the stock of I Village (IVIL) or Women.com (WOMN) and tell me they are booming.
IVIL today: $0.50/share 52-week high: $16/share
WOMN today: $0.15625/share 52-week high: $8.25/share
Work for Change & GET PAID!
It's to the left of the '2' key..
What's even better is watching the search-monitor for what people are searching for. Here's a quick outtake (I just fired up bearshare):
filipina
monster dicks
nicole teen jpg
aerosmith
deep throat
notorious big juicy
russian mpg
lolitas
dogfart
cock suck
britney spears
lick my nuts
peter north
gay sex
This is because the pay sites only link to pay sites (no pay site would link to a free site). But the free sites link to both free sites, and pay sites (since most pay sites have schemes where they pay people for posting their banners).
;)
So you see links to pay sites everywhere, and fewer links to free sites. If you get stuck in the "pay site circle", you can follow links for months and never find a free site. However, once you get on a "free site circle", you're set.
I find this figure believable -- and I think its "free sites" also includes those AVS (AdultCheck, AdultBouncer, credit-card-for-age-purposes etc.) sites, which one tends to 'lump in' with pay sites, but don't actually charge their viewers.
Interesting that the button I'm about to click is labelled "Submit"
Sex is not frowned on (by any mature person). Pornography is frowned on. There is a world of difference of attitdue between doing it, and watching somebody else do it.
Statistics? Facts? Where's the soapboxing about how the geek culture is unappreciated? Dammit, there's nothing here for me to get worked up about.
Now I have to rant about having nothing to rant about.
have sex at any point in the female's menstrual cycle (except that really yecchy part.)
*ahem* Some folks like the yecchy part, too...
"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
How do you prove beyond reasonable doubt that it isn't? You can't, in all honesty.
How about actually finding the abused child? If the picture is real, then the cops have photographs of the victim while the crime was being committed, which is more than they have to go on for most other crimes. Yeah, it means they may have to do a bit more work, but convenience for law enforcement is not an excuse to suppress freedom. It's that kind of thinking that gave us Carnivore and you guys the RIP bill.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
What you've got here is an overly-generalized, intolerant opinion that you can try to justify with "facts", but the bottom line is, it's still just your opinion.
I happen to agree with some of it. To generalize, yeah, the porn industry is a depressing, pathetic, disgusting, misogynistic, sad, twisted little universe. Not entirely unlike a lot of government/corporate organizational culture, by the way - some interesting analogies could no doubt be drawn.
However, there is a pretty substantial niche of "good" porn. Fun, healthy, sex-positive, respectful erotica - and I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. It can bring couples closer together, give people creative ideas, or just be a fun turn-on. In fact, I'm sure even good old "bad" porn is used in a positive way by some people... you might have noticed how people aren't all alike, especially when it comes to sex.
But the fact is, you and I are in no position to decide what is or isn't healthy for other people when it comes to sex, and neither is anyone else. It is too personal, intricate and just plain wacky a thing to follow some set of imaginary rules about what is or isn't good.
Personally, I think you had an obligation to your friend to not say anything about what you found on their PC. Unless you're REAL close to this friend, their sex lives are not your business - she asked you to help with her PC, not spy on her husband. She's a victim of your interference. That's my opinion. I'm well aware of the various ethical arguments to be made around this issue... as a geek, I've come up against this same thing many, many times, and there are people who think ratting people out is the right thing to do. Fine by me. Go for it. Me, it's not my style. I say, whatever gets you through the night (as long as, obviously, we're not talking child porn here). I say, it's not up to me to interfere in other people's sex lives.
Would I want to be involved with someone who was a regular porn user? No, not personally - it's one of those basic incompatibilies. Would I want to be in a relationship where my partner felt the need to hide sexual things from me? That's the more relevant question. I sure wouldn't care if my partner liked to look at nekkid pictures every now and then, or sometimes enjoyed "good" erotica, even if they wanted to do it privately. I'm cool with that, as long as I'm not feeling neglected. I mean, c'mon, what's more eye-pleasing than a well-shaped pair of breasts? What's wrong with a fun dirty story from time to time? In my book, not a thing, and if my partner would dump me over it, then I'd consider that a big dope-slap that I should be doing more to help improve her self-esteem, or whatever the issue there is. The alternative (again, generally) is denial and repression, and I don't consider those healthy and desirable tools in a relationship. Of course, another possible alternative is that a couple's sex life is so intensely satisfying that neither partner ever even bothers considering looking at porn... but that itself takes a certain level of knowledge and skill and passion, the likes of which I rarely see in couples, but then again I don't attend church, so maybe I'm missing out.
Anyway... I think your opinion of porn as a cause-and-effect sort of bad deal is exactly the same argument as the violent video games debate, or the heavy-metal-makes-kids-suicidal debate. At any rate, it's a fact that these kinds of hypotheses have not and probably will not ever be conclusively proven either way. I think it's short-sighted and narrowminded for anyone on either side of these debates to come down 100% either way. People are complicated. Life is full of grey areas. Some things are pretty clear, but others aren't. As long as we understand that what works for me may not work for you, and you can have one opinion and I can have another and that's OK, then we should be able to get along just fine...
> (sort of like what Russia is now)
:)
:)
Russians have always consumed a lot of alcohol since the beginning of alcohol's history. It's in their genes, dude.
> If you drink, and you don't get drunk, it's wasted.
That's right. People don't drink beer because it tastes good, but because it has alcohol in it. The only drink that is considered to be drinked for it's taste is wine. Which is nice.
Maybe the pay-for-sex are really rent-a-chick sites. Have you tought at this ? :)
--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
The pornography industry has been a tech pioneer. I worked on a rather lame porn site in '95 that utilized realm authentication, used databases, tracked user 'preferences'; All cutting edge for the time. It was also of the first to implement the perl packages from (now failed) CyberCash. The porn industry was also first to make use of push-gifs, streaming media, and advanced features of DVDs, now all common place. Looking forward I'm sure pornographers will be first with the revolution going on in 3-d technology and the new generation of cameras.
Sex, or porn, might be the lowest common denomiinated message - the easiest content when content is a void. As Marshall MacCluan opined, as the medium expands, the message moves closer to it's lowest common denomintor -- which I would say is porn. I think we can witness small examples of this on cable TV -- the more channels we get, the more insepid the programming gets.
And on the web, the more URLs, the more porn. It's MacLuen's premis in action.
-z
It's simple: parents and teachers are two-faced lying hypocrites. They want you to feel badly about anything they can't control, your sex drive being one of those things. They mask their "concern" for you with paranoid fears about disease and pregnancy, (both of which can be avoided with safe sex and education). It changes when you're 21 because (too bad for them) you suddenly have just a few new rights and freedoms (not to mention money to spend...). But if you get married, then it's your turn to start living the lie that your parents lived! Luckily most 20-somethings I know grew up with much healthier attitudes, and if mom, dad, and every damn prude out there doesn't like it, well they can go screw themselves!
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
> That's right. People don't drink beer because it tastes good, but because it has alcohol in it. :)
> The only drink that is considered to be drinked for it's taste is wine. Which is nice.
Please don't speak for everyone when you say that.
I like the taste of beer and do drink only one or two beers sometimes, not for the alcohol but for the taste.
Is it really that people are people ashamed of sex or are people ashamed of non-monogamous, fantasiacal sexual encounters, even if only imagined?
I see a lot of people in these comments questioning those numbers put forth by the researchers for one reason or another. I'd like to say that I think those numbers aren't far off at all.
I work in a small town ISP in middle American right in the center of the Bible Belt. It's a pretty religious place being 98% christian (conservative guess), and we have more churches than grocery stores here.
A few months ago I ran a transparent web proxy on some of our lines to guage whether it would do us much good. While tuning the cache I noticed is that there is a -whole- lot of porn browsing going on. (No I didn't match any of that up to user info, I respect privacy as much as possible).
Out of curiosity I wrote a simple script to comb the cache and see what percentage of URLs were porn related, I made a list of obvious things to search for like 'breast, pussy, hotchicks.com' etc. etc. Not scientific by any means but it gave me a decent ballpark. At 10pm at night I was getting percentages in the 35-40 range, quite a bit more than I expected.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Just as Hollywood today thinks its a God-Given Right to promote sexual promiscuity and open-activity...
Being an atheist, I can't vouch for whatever rights a god might grant to Hollywood. However, first amendment free speech restrictions do give anybody, including Hollywood, the right to talk about whatever the hell they want to.
It's the advent of censorship, ratings etc. that has more or less gagged Hollywood from showing more explicit or disturbing material. To the point where some people actually believe that Hollywood does *not* have the right to make movies with any content they wish, which is undoubtedly the intent of the censorship.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Just the same, most animals don't actively think about why (or whom) they are fscking - The exception being humans and some apes (I heard that some have sex to kill off aggressions within the group, instead of fighting each other).
Thinking about it, humans should develop that way too. Make love, not war.
Home Page
It was said: "Law enforcement officials have also been reporting a dramatic rise in child pornography online, but there is no evidence that sex crimes are on the rise either, according to researchers and federal (including FBI) statistics. Is it possible that the availability of sexual material online gives people healthier and safer outlets for sexual impulses than were previously available?" Hmmm, I think you're missing the point. Its not a "healthier and safer outlet" if some children are still be expoited to make the child pornography... get a clue.
Maybe his dickhead is smarter than his real head. Then again notice the shortness of the article compared to his usual diatribes, it appears it was being typed with one hand only. :)
FarHat
At the intersection of computation and biology.
To boil it down: A lot of people asked why I was looking at cache files and accused me of being unethical by snooping around. Honestly I don't remember the specific reason I was looking at cache files (this incident happened several years ago) most likely had to do with me being much more clueless at the time. My friend was standing looking at the screen watching what I was doing and saw the cookies and files from the porn sites herself so I didn't point them out to her and say "look what your husband is doing!" She asked me how they got there and I simply told her that someone had to have visiting those sites.
It is true: directly this is not the fault of pornography, its the fact that her husband was lying to her, but I believe that if there was less access to such a thing that there might have been less of a problem
Also as far as statistic showing that porn effects long-term relationships, this is true, I don't have them infront of me and I'm not sure where they are on the net but I promise I have seen them.
Finally I don't pretend to be a sex theripist or try to dictate how people should act about sex or how people should live their lives, I'm pointing out that there is evidence that says maybe there are good reasons to choose to stay away from it.
As a side note I have been to Europe and just because sex is more prevelent doesn't make it any better
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
Some interesting conclusions emerge from all of this. Simple exposure to sexual imagery doesn't appear as harmful or destructive as many politicians, moralists, educators and others would claim, as they pass legislation requiring blocking and filtering.
First of all I want to say that I am all for free-speech and free-press. I don't believe that library computers should have censorware placed on them mostly because I don't think that it works and I don't want to be blocked from legitimate websites. The problem with this statement is that it paints all politicians, moralists, educators in a light of being completely conservative, stupid and incapable of understanding the real issue. Some of them don't, this is true, but to generalize all of them this way is unfair. I think there are real issues that should be addressed and are over-looked by both extreme conservative parties, and extreme liberal parties.
I would most likely be considered by this audience to be a "religious" person. But I'm not going to sit here and spout off that God said sex was bad and therefore we shouldn't look at porn, that's not the point (and besides God never said that, just an idea that is put forth by people who haven't actually read the Bible). The point is that contrary to Mr. Katz statement above, people who engage in sexual activity, be it porn (internet or elsewhere), or one-night stands, whatever, have less fulfiling long-term relationships. And I know there will be people who don't much care for long term relationships in the first place but it is proven statistically that people in long term relationships, especially marriage relationships are happier and lead more fulfiled lives.
There are more victims of porn than first meets the eye. First the people being photoed, erotic dancers, whatever, a lot of times they do these things willingly but because they feel they have no other way to make money. Of course there is the child argument which goes without saying. But I personally think what is most over-looked is partners/spouses of people looking at porn. About a year ago a married friend of mine asked me to come look at her computer (some problem with the Internet settings) in the course of working on it I discovered cookies and cached files from porn sites that her husband had been surfing. She was devistated. She felt like she wasn't good enough, that her husband didn't love her for who she is. In essence that women is a victim. I certainly would be upset if it was my girlfriend looking at these things, and I know she'd break up with me if she thought that I was. The victims can be the people we care about.
Finally we victimize ourselves. By looking at porn we buy into an unrealistic fantansy of strange women who show up out of nowhere and have sex with us. Come-on! That doesn't really happen, and we start evaluating people by those ideas.
Pornography turns people into objects of sex. Maybe I have high ideals but I believe that people should be judged as people. I know its rare but maybe its time as a society we change. Freedom shouldn't come at the expense of other's Freedom.
Flame away! :)
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
I was thinking that, in last week's Sopranos, the writers got lazy and substituted boobs for plot.
If you want to understand the concept of tolerance and of Freedom, jump on a plane and come have a look around.
As for the pr0n, all the *Made In Amsterdam* pr0n you see on the net comes from San Fernando Valley, Hamburg or Budapest.
doei, adapt
Now I'm from Sweden, but I'm pretty sure we aren't more of sex maniacs then americans. The pornographic movies, for instance, were american like 99% af all pornography made...
The fact that more pron is made in America than in Sweden is Amrica is less sexually liberated, and therefore need to watch pornography to get sexual satisifaction (or relief) when in Sweden you can go down to the Red Light district everyone always talks about.
Th
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
So, you want me to believe there are 200 free sites for every commercial sex site. This must be some new definition of free that I am not aware of...
In Murphy We Turst
How about actually finding the abused child?
Good point. Having a victim to testify against the person who *took* the picture, for that crime, is a good idea.
However, I believe possession and distribution are also crimes. These criminals may not even know who the kid is, or if the photo is real or not. In these cases, it is important to follow intent. As long as it is a crime to possess or distribute kiddie porn, it doesn't matter if the material is real or fake. What matters is that it is intended to pass as real.
Freedom of speech only goes so far. You cannot shout 'Fire' in a crowded theater, because people might get hurt. Likewise, you cannot fake kiddie porn and claim it's acceptible if for no other reason than it will create a market for less technical perverts to pass their real kiddie porn as fake, because kids will get hurt.
--
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I wonder what the results of this survey in a more sexually enlightened country like Denmark or Sweden would show?
Actually, we (yes I'm swedish) aren't as sexually enlightened and liberated as everyone seems to think. The same kind of puritans exist here as everywhere else and they yell as loud as they can about things they don't really have a clue about.
At the very least, it's a First Amendment-given right.
Not unlike your First Amendment-given right to be disgusted with it all.
--
I'm sorry--that's simply an excuse for not actually bothering to go out and find evidence.
If it's real, then there is a real victim involved. People are likely to have seen the victim with the perpetrator; the victim can be questioned. Have UK police given up on child abuse other than child pornography, where there's not an image they can show the judge and jury?
Then how did the report find out?!?! I bet they were all going through the MS Passport Service. ;^)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Her husband wouldn't have had a compelling reason to be gawking at naughty pictures if he felt she was good enough for him. Now if he's just not satisfied with what he has, you cannot blame the porn. Blame the guy.
I wouldn't break up with my girlfriend if she was looking at porn. I'd be curious and somewhat tickled. Plus that would allow me to reciprocate without guilt.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
My friend, you are only a few years too late to submit your 'modal'. Search the web for peer to peer or gnutella.
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
Amsterdam is not stoned off its ass, anyone more than rest of western countries are drunk off the ass. People smoke spliffs in cafes if they want to, but you don't see as many off there face wrecks as you do drunks in the any other big city. The great majority of amsterdamers are normal respectable people going about they business. A lot of the tourist of course are there for the drugs and prositution that they can't get in there own repressive countries.
This article on working for porn sites was on http://freshmeat.net a while back.
It's really interesting (and no, it's not a dirty story). It's about how porn sites have to be coded really well to cope with high loads, including tons of images, and with very high reliability since they are pay sites.
Do you grok? Maybe you can work for the porn industry!
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
Well, out of every 100 men they asked, 75 said they didn't enjoy online porn. Ergo, 75% of men are liars. :-)
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Hmm. Exactly 75%, eh? Does this sound like a "pull numbers out of my ass" situation to anyone? Or did they use a seriously small sample (say, 8 or 12 ppl)?
Grab.
It brings a whole new meaning to the term "p2p".
This is a good point, that bears some further discussion. Throughout history, whenever a new media is developed, someone immediately finds a way to use that media to deliver pornographic content. Here are some:
Photos
Daguerreotypes
Stereoscopes
Postcards
I'd say that people's desire for pornography has driven many technologies. Many people credit the adult industry with the rapid development of VCRs and portable video cameras. What do you think the number one use of Polaroid cameras is? Hint: It's not taking pictures for the bullettin board at work. Bottom line? Porn sells. Always has, and always will. I'd even be willing to bet that the race to create a good Virtual Reality program to perform complex, life-saving surgeries is being run with just slightly less vigor than the race to create a Virtual Reality program to give blow jobs.
He cites a report from sextracker.com that the number of free adult Web sites grew from 22,100 in l997 to 280,300 last year. Sex-for-pay sites grew from 230 to 1,100 during the same period.
Wonder if they have a list...
;->
"So which came first, the chicken or God?" - Joseph Haldeman, All My Sins Remebered
<I>Name me one market that, when the demand for its product rises dramatically, doesn't respond with increased supply.</I>
7 /d iamonds/index.html
OK. How about diamonds?
http://www.salon.com/business/feature/2000/09/2
Is it just me or is the link contained in the post bad? The ref on the link seems to be "http://slashdot.org/www.danamonitor.com".
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Just wait until you (or some of you) goto a college that accepts people from all over the world. You don't realize how open other cultures are to sex until you start mixing into a group of people from other countries. I'm from the US and when I first went to college I was kinda suprised as to how open so many people from other countries were about sex. Most people from other countries would willingly talk about sex out in the open on the campus while Americans would shy away from and walk around these groups of people to avoid the conversation.
Another thing I don't understand. Why is sex considered such a bad thing that everyone wants you to avoid? But then when you hit 21, sex is suddenly a great thing you should be doing. It's like telling kids 2+2=4, then when they turn 21 2+2 really equals 6.
I'm posting this again as a non-AC
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
There are a boatload of niche groups that only have a few hundred/thousand people that qualify in the whole world. IRL it is almost impossible to cater to groups that small because they are geographically seperated. On the 'net these smaller groups can find each other and keep updated with the latest and keep each other informed on what is going on that concerns them.
The other benefit of the 'net is that no matter where the information exists, it is accessable to all and no one has to go without the latest updates due to not knowing they exist.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Actually I prefer a Merlot to Port... Of course Porn is better than either.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
No, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. He made a very extraordinary claim with no proof. I think it is quite fair to not trust him.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
Try FreeBSD (or Linux) and Squid
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Child porn may well be similar.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
How do you feel about that?
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Disgusting in what way?
"
The problem with that logic is that pedophiles will always want more. (That's the nature of addiction).
"
Surely this doesn't follow?
Pedophiles are no more addicted to sex than homosexuals, hetero-sexuals, bi-sexuals, catholics, mormons and linux developers.
The problem here is you've equated :
Someone who finds children sexually exciting = additcted child pornographer = regular child rapist = satan
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Even in this post-Dotcom era, I still hear folks talking about community, user-to-user chat (Microsoft called me today to take a survey about adding chat(!) to the msdn.microsoft.com web site), and other things, and I'm still unconvinced that these are worthwhile business ventures.
Katz, all I want to know is wether or not you allow your kid to access sexual imagery/porn online?? I mean, simple exposure to sexual imagery doesn't appear as harmful or destructive.... right?
This is another view of the world.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/10/21/index .ashe/cover.ashe/index.html
It's about Danni's hard drive, but it includes this statistic:
online adult content generates about $300 million annually in the United States.
For all people talk about how 'big' the sex industry is, consider this: in 1995 (when I was doing some contracting for them), Philip Morris' domestic revenue was $30 billion (20 billion from food & beer, 10 billion from tobacco), their total world-wide revenue was $60 billion (non-domestic revenue was $20 billion tobacco, $10 billion food/beer). As for profits, keep in mind that PM is one of the most profitable blue-chips out there - tobacco generates mad profits, no matter how big the tax the govts put on it (food much less so).
I just find it interesting how such a tiny industry gets blown up into such a big deal - the whole online sex industry has revenue estimated at 1% of a single brick & mortar old economy organization.
A favorite quote of mine from the PM Globe (an internal newsletter) (paraphrased): "In 1995, the Kraft cheese division generated $3 billion in revenue. However, this only represents 1/6 of the world's cheese market, so there's plenty of room for growth!"
-BbT
...subcultures online are booming -- auctions, women's communities, gaming, Open Source, entertainment, p2p...
I love how you go from P2P sucks to p2p being a booming subculture.... All within one day!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The problem with that logic is that pedophiles will always want more. (That's the nature of addiction).
What you're talking about is akin to saying to a crack addict, "you can have a small amount", and then expecting that no one will exceed that amount.
The fact is that despite the unpopularity of the word "immoral", society as a whole decides that certain things just can't be allowed. Child porn and incest are among the most universally agreed upon.
Things become less agreed upon as you move into things like keeping narcotics illegal, and saying that it's wrong to sleep with someone unless you married to them.
The things aren't black and white, they're judgement calls. And there is nothing wrong with making a judgement call.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Well, I suppose it depends on your definitions of "entertainment" and "slump," but I can offer first-hand assurances that entertainment sites are in the same slump that the rest of the industry is in -- the cash just ain't there. Sure, there may be as many readers as ever, if not more, but it's not lack of interest that's causing the tech slump, unless you count the interest of venture capitalists.
This isn't intended as a whine (or, for that matter, a whinge), just an observation. Most of the best entertaiment on the Web comes from people who never planned on getting rich anyway.
If you don't want my koalas, baby, don't shake my eucalyptus tree.
Back in August, I had a feeling that things were slowing down (I was a self-employed contractor, it's either feast or famine). It's true, while the rest of the tech industry has been slowing down, where I work we are taking on new customers and growing (in profits as well).
Hammer of Truth
Hows this for an idea
:}
A Napster-ish program (interface atleast)
that lets people trade porn.
Find some way to verify age and what not, and add a way to catgorize things (Which IMO napster should do as well, but alas..)
It wont have the same legal issues as MP3 swapping, so would be a decent business modal, especially for pay-for-subscription.
They may even make enough to justify paying people for their bandwidth (what a thought)
If anyone wants to take this and run, be my guest
Concider it a public domain software modal
Anonymous Cowards (unregistered users) always have a default score of 0. Registered normal users have a default score of 1. Registered normal users with a lot of karma (meaning they've been moderated up often in the past) can enable an option to post at 2 by default. See how it works? Post more, and post good, and your posts will be seen by more people.
The reason it was repealed was not that it did not work, but that illegal booze became a high-profit product for organized crime (much like cocaine is today).
There's no question that cocaine use would be higher if it was legal. You can make a case for legalizing it for a variety of reasons, but to imply that outlawing a drug is going to make it more popular is just silly. If that was true, then alchohol and tobbacco would be the least popular drugs in America, because they are legal... In fact the opposite is true, they are far more popular than the banned ones.
Ever since prohibition, our culture has been one which, for the most part, insists on "responsible" drinking. (The typical college campus being an obvious exception for the last 20 years or so.) Contrast alchohol consuption in America with most European countries, and you will see that we are still relatively dry.
That reminds me of the time I was drinking with some stangers from Finland. When I was about ready to call it a day, they insisted on buying me another round. One of them said to me, "in Finland we say: If you drink, and you don't get drunk, it's wasted."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Very well. Drunkeness - The state of being heavilly intoxicated.
Total consumption over the course of the year does not mean much as an indicator. Somebody who drinks 2 glasses of wine with dinner every evening drinks more in a year than somebody who binge-drinks every Friday, but the regular wine-drinker is living a more healthy lifestyle, and far less likely to cause a major car accident, isn't he?
Even accepting your numbers, according to your second link, drinking was at its absolute LOWEST during prohibition... If the goal of prohibition was for people to drink less, that would be an indication that prohibition was working.
Thank you for your facts, but they seemed to lend more to support my argument than yours.
Also, yes... We are once again on the fast track to being a nation of alcholics. A good indication is the steady rise of alcholism among young drinkers. Binge-drinking on college campusses has been rising at an astonishing rate for quite some time now.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Correction: People don't drink crap like Budweiser and Old Milwaukee for the taste, but to get intoxicated.
There are a lot of people drinking beer specifically for the taste, as evidenced by the rising popularity of microbreweries and imported beer in America.
Here in America, we are a little behind the rest of the world in discovering that beer is supposed to taste good. We've been drinking horrible beer for so long, that we have come to think that awful pisswater like Miller is what beer is supposed to taste like.
The alchohol is part of the flavor and texture of the drink. If somebody made a non-alchohol beer that tasted the same Guiness, I would drink it all day, every day.
Coffee on the other hand... I drink that mostly for the fix. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You are in such a rush to get your hackles up against a perceived enemy, that it does not even occur to you that I might in fact favor looser restrictions. I'm merely pointing out that the argument that decriminalization will reduce use is not really supported by the facts.
Why am I concerned that binge-drinking is on the rise among the young? Because, as Charlie Chaplin pointed out, the thing about young people is they grow up to be adults. A trend among young adults, if it continues, becomes a trend of the general population.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
....I was really worried that we were going to lose interest in sex.
With such an explosion in free adult sites on the Net as he suggests, where is all of this content coming from? Do each of these sites have all of their own models that they photograph? I can bet that most pay sites would be interested in exactly what their content consists of. Of course I'm not labeling free sites as all being perpetrators... but with an exponential increase in these free sites it makes me wonder.
I wonder what playboy is thinking right now...
The thing I like most about this, is that it gives America some perspective on where they stand in relation to the rest of the world.
We all know, due to the birth rate, that at any given second, lots of people around the world are having sex. Even in the United States where pornography is looked down upon, folks are getting it on. Even here in Utah, where sex is *almost* as bad as taking a drink, babies are popping up everywhere. So its obvious, there is a whole lot of lovin' going on.
However, in many countries, this sexual activity is in the open: it is discussed, and it is celebrated. These people recognize that we are one of only two species on Earth that have sex for enjoyment, and they aim to get the most out of sex, as long as the innocent are not getting damaged by it.
But of course, here in the good 'ol US of A, we revert to our puritan values, and look down on anyone that openly exposes sexuality. The whole attitude of the United States can be summed up in the words of Helen Lovejoy dicussing the statue of David (from the Simpsons for the uninformed):
"It depicts body parts that, pratical as they are, are evil".
In other words, we know that sex is required for the survival of the species, but it shouldn't be enjoyed.
So we come to the Internet, which brings the whole world out in the open, and, hey, lookie there -- there is a whole lotta sex out there. To the rest of the world, this is normal and expected, but to Americans this is an "explosion of evil". Sorry, Mrs. Lovejoy - there is no sudden infusion of pornography in the world, it has always existed, and it always will.... you have just had your eyes closed for the last 200 years.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
Would it be a place where technology posts got moderated down as a "troll"?
Probably would get a bunch of hits ...
;-)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Who would have guessed...
To be serious, sex sites never participated in the NASDAQ's irrational exuberance and it is not at all surprising that they are not affected by the market dive. Sex sites don't need investors because they are already cash cows.
If you think about it, sex sites and fancy business ideas like priceline and co have something in common at a root of their business plan. They both market the costumer's own desire back to him in a shiny wrap. They "add value" to our desires. The difference is that sex sites succeed because they have a grip on the end customer's desire, whereas most dot coms figured out that you could make a kill out of investors' desires and fantasies and never have to deal with real customers. To bad it will end soon. There is little in life more asthetically pleasing then watchig a fool and his money part.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
On the other hand the idea that Christianity never viewed sex as evil is ludicrous. You're either a flamebait or a complete ignorant. Why don't you read St. Pauls letters in the Bible for a more serious engagement with official Christian doctrine?
-- look, cheese ahoy!
Unless you go onto a MU*, in which case it jumps up to, oh, what is it these days, 30-40% or so? =)
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Just the same, most animals don't actively think about why (or whom) they are fscking
Well, that has nothing to do with whether or not they enjoy it. Show me any mammal species that doesn't enjoy having an orgasm...I think Lizz is right, you're just trying to bamboozle yourself with human mysticism suggesting that humans having sex is something different from other species having sexAs Lizz said, turn your brain on once in a while:-P (Ok, just kidding there, but come on - can you honestly argue with biological logic for the sake of trying to put human sexuality on a pedestal for some unknown reason?)Cedric Balthazar Rotherwood
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform +
System Admin. for Solaris
Just like all those "underreported" crimes out there...
sulli
RTFJ.
With two sex articles on the front page and another at the beginning of the week, maybe it's time to join our friends at Plastic and create a new Slashdot topic?
sulli
RTFJ.
ie. is it goatsex that is leading the way?
Or is it plain Jane erotica?
Or do people simply not care as long as it's free?
That's the kind of metrics I care about. Maybe we could loosen the religious right's hold on America if we could show that, indeed, most people in this country are depraved lunatics. After all we are a D E M O C R A C Y right?
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Point to some of these "studies" in your comments in the future. Don't make unfounded assertions based on "studies" you have read without allowing us the priveledge of reading them as well.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
the California- based Marital and Sexuality Centre found that 75 per cent of those who enjoy adult Internet sites don't tell anyone about it.
This just wouldn't go past my bullshit filter. How can they know that 75% of pr0n surfers don't tell anyone about it, if they don't tell anyone about it ? If I say "No, I don't do xyzzy" then they can't turn around and say "Of all those who said No, we have found that 75% are liars."
Retarded reporting if I may say so myself, but of course most commercial survey firms are retarded. Fun.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The notion of a "safer outlet" seems to be based on the popular notion of catharsis. That is, that by letting out your anger, or satisfying or sexual urges by viewing porn, will lead to a release of your built up tensions and you will feel satisfied. Unfortunately, catharsis is a myth. Look through any psychology text, or read any study on catharsis, and you will find the results are exactly the opposite. Rather than letting the violence out, subjects realise that expressing violence is ok, and the act of catharsis leads to an increase in violent tendancies. I don't believe we should censor pornography and just pretend it doesn't exist. But to suggest that looking at child porn is healthy, does not agree with studies that show the opposite.
You can pretend that drugs are the answer to all of the world's problems but I assure you, it's the #1 problem the world faces today, period. It is the root of so many other problems, as is alcohol, that the results of drug use can't be properly uantified.
As far as Amsterdam goes, I guess I wouldn't know anything at all about it. Except for the, oh, 7 or 8 times my fiancee and I have (combined) been through there on our way to Africa. KLM is better than British Airways, although that isn't saying much.
...I'm sure Dubya will be "fixing" this soon..
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Whatever....Amsterdamn is awesome....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Actually, in a recent study teenagers in the UK actually take more drugs than those of any other nation in Europe - including Amsterdam.
Having been to Amsterdam, I can report that those stoned were mainly tourists.
--
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
it's a poor business model slump. sheesh. some of us are still here.
i could live a little longer in this prison
I remember hearing some horror stories from college where some guys I knew dated the same young lady one after the other. Sharing was okay, it seemed, as long as you included the source code.
Don't even get me started about "groupware."
I need to take a shower. Now I feel all slimy.
but do you really think this is news for nerds? =P
(instant karma)
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
It's late, allow me to be pedantic for a bit.
To the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, there was no category of imagery known as pornography. Erotic imagery was everywhere in ancient Rome. Walter Kendricks does a nice book covering this topic called The Secret Museum.
It wasn't until after the rise of the press in Europe around the 1500s that the notion of a special category for sexual imagery came into being.
The idea that certain classes of people have to be protected from sexually explicit imagery is relatively recent in western culture and didn't necessarily originate from the church.
Rather, the development of censorship against sexually explicit materia seems to have had more to do with the desire to conceal the details of sexual difference in the name of upholding the otherwise weak sexual norms of that period in european history.
This desire for concealment has been an extrememly powerful force into our modern times and we are still only beginning to expose ourselves to sexuality in the manner of a society of soveriegn human beings.
Let us look upon the success of pornography on the net with great pride. We are slowly awakening into a civilized people.
Where were you during the '70s, man??? Have you never heard of the "sexual revolution"?? (Not that I was there, but at least I've heard tales.)
The Net is revolutionary in many ways, but people explored sexuality with freedom, and often with anonymity, long before the word "personal computer" ceased to be an oxymoron. Let's acknowledge the revolutionary nature of the Internet, but let's not exaggerate it ad absurdium.
Sex-for-pay sites grew from 230 to 1,100 during the same period.
:P
...he visited each one in the name of "journalistic integrity".
BOSTON SUCKS!
Obviously you have never seen Loveline on MTV. It not only broadcasts there, but I believe also on KROQ(radio) in L.A. Yeah, it's pretty tame, but they do discuss sex. And that's just a recent show. People like Dr. Ruth have been on the air for years. I remember a show out of NY that was syndicated in a bunch of cities, including New Orleans, in the mid-nineties. The hosts were Dr. Judy and Jagger or something like that, can't remember. Anyone else remember them?
Tired of sitting at that karma cap? Start a flame war today! See just how low you can go!
I wish I had some mod points for ya' AC. You're exactly right.
Well, yes, it DOES appear that Katz is right on this occasion. The only problem is that his conclusion is painfully obvious. Sex sells. It always has, and it always will. Through good times and bad, the human libido continues.
The solution is regulation. IMHO.
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
Take a look at the real statistics (especially the murder rate) before you post next time.
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
I think the place where sex is really omnipresent is in advertisement even if it is suggested most of the time...
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
Also, this is obvious, if sex is so successful, it means that there are a lot of buyers! Which means that online sex fills a gap, fulfils a need. In my opinion, sex is still a source of frustration for many, which comes from religion background mostly. If interest for religion continues to go down, sex will become *normal* and will no longer be associated with shame, guilt and evil. There are ethnies which live already very happily with sex and have been for centuries (ok they're not Christian, Islamic, ...).
To me, sex is not a problem at all as long as everybody is consentent. Where there is sex without unwanted violence, then there are no limits. However, I'm strongly against child porn because in probably 99% of the cases, the child is absolutely not consentent. This is why online porn is questionable... All the sites I've seen talk about lesbians, gays, ... (you name them), in short all the sex fantasies one would want to buy. But when they get into young teens they reach the limit of sexual maturity and the closer you get to it, the more unwilling the 'teens' may be.
Maybe a 'red label' (no pun intended) for quality should be put in place which guarantees that a porn site contains material with consenting actors only.
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
Prohibition isn't the best example here. At the time, state voting districts were drawn to favor rural districts over cities. For example, the state of Florida had an 'urban' district that conveniently tied all of the major cities and over half the population into a single voting district. Also, many of the large breweries had German names, at a time when Germans were generally unpopular in the US. Prohibition actually passed with a minority of popular support.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
From theonion's Ron Jeremy interview. Actually I've heard this same topic breeched first after the video cassette boom and replicated time and time again with the latest tech achievement. I guess Jon Katz wanted something new to troll about this week:
O: How would you say the industry is changing with technology?
RJ: Well, CD-ROMs. We've always been the leaders. People in porno have always been the leaders in new eras and new things--on tape, on CD. The first X-rated tapes were pre-recorded, are you aware of that? And all the major studios followed. The very first tapes to rent and bring home were X-rated. I already shot a hologram technique. They shot me on hologram so I can now appear lifelike in your living room--isn't that scary?--with a girl. You know, we're the cheaper medium, so people experiment with us. In fact, we were the first of go CD-ROM with computers and all. So adult films have always been leading the way when it comes to technology. So we keep up. Basically, whatever's happening, there we are.
What is music when you despise all sound?
When did A'dam become independent?
The problem with that logic is that pedophiles will always want more. (That's the nature of addiction).
OK, let me preface this by saying that I'm all-out against kiddie-porn. I am absolutely in no way condoning it.
I think that you're making an awful big assumption to say that pedophiles are addicted (to sex, or sex with kids, or kiddie porn, or whatever). It could just be a simple preference. Just because I prefer my porn to include women who are blonde and have large breats doesn't mean that I'm addicted to blondes with large breasts. I just happen to like it better that way.
A 1999 report by Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer of the California- based Marital and Sexuality Centre found that 75 per cent of those who enjoy adult Internet sites don't tell anyone about it.
They must mean they don't tell anyone but Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer.
Seriously though, nothing irritates me more than a researcher saying "Your numbers are wrong and mine are right because nobody will tell you the truth."
And from what I've read, most of the "stoned off their ass" are tourists/refugees from countries heavily involved in the War on Some Drugs.
for giving Americans such a sex obsessed and sex ashamed society.
I wonder what the results of this survey in a more sexually enlightened country like Denmark or Sweden would show? There would probably be less sexual traffic, but more people admitting to it.
Sex, like drugs and voilence, is partly so attractive because it is forbidden, and yet marketed so extremely. It becomes a vice to grab Joe Sixpack into a cycle on consumption, dissatisfaction, and consumption.
#finger fridge
fridge: ooh it's cold here, come warm me up big boy!
$man microsoft
Crowded elevator smell different to midget. -Chinese Proverb
It is just me or I think that every keyboard now has the key for the digit 1 now? No need for using l for one.:)
gcc -o sig sig.c sig.c:4: #error NO SIG FOUND make: *** [sig] error 1
So... what your saying is... Katz was typing with one hand? BWUAHAHAHAHAHA! Priceless!
- I am made of meat.
www.danamonitor.com doesn't exist.
- I am made of meat.
What, I repeat, WHAT is the useless, not-even-a-domain, linked-in-the-f#%$@%#-article LINK?!?!?
How about:
"(Use the Preview Button, Katz! Check those URLs, Katz! Don't forget the http://, Katz! Make sure it exists, Katz!)"
- I am made of meat.
wasn't it revealed that they were just a buncha skanks from the midwest? damn americans...
iluvpr0n.
There are a growing number of men and women in the US who feel they can experience greater sexual freedom online then they could in RL. Are these people freaks? Social rejects? Drug addicts? No. They are mature people who live in a nation where 'sex' is still a dirty word. Do they enjoy sex in RL. Of course. Do they engage in it? Yes. Do they live in an area where their sexual activities would be difficult to maintain? Frequently. Are these those perverted pedophiles we are always hearing about? No. These are regular men and women who may be workaholics, sexually unfulfilled, or those wishing to push their own personal boundaries.
And these men and women make up a growing number of adult entertainers online who do it because they enjoy it. They have regular jobs, some have regular families, and most are far from the "superstar model" mode.
These men and women do not feel they are feeding the 'pornography' craze that has been linked with the growth of the internet. They enjoy the interaction that goes on between themselves and those they entertain. Those that are in a position to gain financially from this type of interaction do not feel cheapened.
For in the end, as so many of us have discovered, many of the people online who come to us for entertainment don't want JUST sex. They want conversation, friendship, sex; they want the whole "FANTASY". And are those who look for this kind of interaction any different then those of us who are willing to offer it? 45% of the people that myself and others like me have interacted with wanted the "FANTASY". And this 45% were workaholics, sexually unfulfilled, in the wrong state or region, or were pushing their own boundaries.
I'm really tired of hearing that the ADULT section of the internet is all pr0n. Pr0n isn't interactive. Let's not keep lumping 'adult' interaction with pr0n. The internet is based on interaction and knowledge. Just because it's adult in nature doesn't make it evil.
Funny that this message appears at this time--I was just browsing around on some of my favorite "adult" sites that I haven't seen in quite a while. Now I guess I should feel guilty. Too bad.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
Really? Too bad I haven't found it yet...
I live in Sweden. An earlier comment here said that countries like Denmark
and Sweden are more sexually "enlightened". Whether that is true or not,
I do not know.
However, a year ago or so, a swede mede a documentary film about the
pornographic movies that is shown in a swedish pay channel. In this documentary,
some clips from pornographic movies were shown. This lead to a huge debate,
and many people wanted to forbid pornography in tv. The documentary was
shown in the swedish parliament and everybody seemed very chocked;they
had offcourse never seen anything like that before!
So, what you could excpect was some law changes since "everybody" thought
this was disgusting. But what happend? Well, after the documentary was
shown in tv, the subscribers of this pay channel, where the pornographic
movies were showed, increased by 20% !! That clearly proved how it really
is. People do want porn, even if most of them don't admit it.
Now I'm from Sweden, but I'm pretty sure we aren't more of sex maniacs
then americans. The pornographic movies, for instance, were american like
99% af all pornography made...
So really, who are we trying to fool here? People want port!
The advantage/disadvantage of the Internet is the ability to be anonymous. People can express ideas that they would never express, or partake in things like online porn in the privacy of their own home (the guy at the video store doesn't even have to know)which they probably wouldn't if they could be identified. For that reason people will always partake in things like on-line sex sites or other things that might be publicly frowned upon.
Just wondering how many providers do this and how much it helps. I work at the University Of Arizona and when we installed our web cache engines (4 of those little Cisco pizza boxes) it cut our usage by like 25%. They really save us a lot in bandwidth costs.
I was checking out this page and noticed it said something like "26 comments". I hit refresh about 10 minutes later and it was suddenly at 82!
I hope this doesn't mean that many people want to see Katz having sex.
The more cable channels we get, the more graphic the channels seem to get (anyone see last week's Sopranos, where about half the episode took place in the strip club?). I think it's due to the increased competition. What's the best way to get someone to watch your channel instead of a "Friends" repeat? Hmmm... howzabout sex!
Part of the reason for the large amount of sexual discussion online is the fact that discussing sex, sexuality, gender roles, etc, is the fact that although humans are naturally curious about the topics (hell, none of us would be here without sex), either through shame, illogic, etc, we don't talk about it. We have shows which discuss eating on the radio and TV, but a show that talks about nothing but sex would be considered a "vulgar" thing. The internet, on the other hand, changes that. Anonymity and pseudonymity give people a chance to as those questions that "decent" people would never ask, and also, an ability to role play, to see what's on the other side of the mirror. So, it's no real surprise that there is a proliferation of sex on the internet, people are curious about it, and they are able to ask questions without having a funny stare when they start asking for the latest hermaphrodite pr0n.
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
Go download your favorite Gnutella-based client program, connect, and do a search for the porn of your choice. It's so easy to amass gigabytes of mpegs that it's a wonder people will actually pay to visit x-rated websites. There are also centralized filesharing programs (FileNavigator) which will allow you to trade video with others who are also connecting to various OpenNap servers.
Very informative peer-to-peer links:
www.clip2.com
www.infoanarchy.org
From these places you can audit various downloadables as well as read the latest p2p news.
Oh damn you all, starting things without me here.
All right, who's up for some of this?
:shakes vigorously:
--Midori
"MY WORLD IS A CROTCH!!!" -Sluggy Freelance, www.sluggy.com
Actually, speaking from the gay standpoint, we were the most open about sex in HS, and were most oft the ones to speak about it. Sure, some of us were in the closet, but think about it this way: being gay, we obviously had enough previous sexual experience to determine this; hence, on the whole we were less puritanical and more liberal with our minds. It was the rabid theonomous bastards that were the most shut up.
--Midori
"MY WORLD IS A CROTCH!!!" -Sluggy Freelance, www.sluggy.com
How many pop more pop up ads have been generated in this time, relative to say, a year ago. Anyone have any figures on such stuffs?
The One,
The Only,
--The Kid
the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception
www.quantumheresy.com
Food remains a strong seller.
Residential electricity sales show no sign of declining in the e-slump.
People are still willing to pay to be entertained.
--
In a job hunt a few months ago, I responded to an ad for a web programmer. It sounded neat: All I had to do was help develop three types of websites that would then be sold to customers who could then customize the website as they wanted. Basically an ecommerice business in a box. Only thing is, one of the types of e-business' to be developed was an online porn site. At that point I declined and went about my business. If this trend continues, I can see that there would be a proliferation of online sex websites, driven by the prospect of quick profits as this developer goes around selling pre-packages pornsites to whatever idiot he can con into doing it. Definitley an example of how technology can be abused.
I cracked a smile when I saw this "feature" article.
"No Slump For Sex Online" -- this is a revalation? You mean sex is still popular? Who'da thought!
I feel sorry for the researchers that are studying the effects of tartar on gum disease in chimpanzees or something boring like that.
Invisible Agent
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds it irritating when Katz writes "l997" instead of "1997". They're not the same character! In any sane font, ASCII 49 != ASCII 108, they look entirely different. Katz, don't be a script kiddie. $DIETY knows we have enough already posting to Slashdot...
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
if there are so many of these sites up(it's not like this is news to me at all...) how come you dont see any naked men! come on people
There's too much sex on my computer! I mean, I keep fallin' off!
------ 1001001
--
--
Daily news on women, sex, porn and more
This article says "a Zogby survey found that 65.l per cent of respondents believed finding sexual fulfillment on the Net was 'not likely.'"
:-) MondoMole.com
Uh, what?? Where are these guys surfing? Seems like an abundance of stuff out there.
Stumbled across a site the other day as a perfect example. It was an adult image search engine. All free. What else could anyone ever need?
Oh well, what do I know...