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Web Profits in the Gutter
The New York Times has an article about the web's one true growth industry: spam, fraud and porn. Societal meltdown or flourishing ecosystem? The talking heads debate.
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"My bullshit web company didn't succeed because it was bullshit, and the only new or good thing about it was its .com address! God, come from heaven and save me!"
How about retooling your business plan to provide services and products that people want. Saying that the only successful businesses that use the web are web-only companies (such as porn) is like saying that the only successful businesses that use the highway are truck stops, motels, and Cracker Barrels.
Spam becomes less successful daily. The first successful spam was the Green Card Lawyer spam and it's all gone downhill radically from there.
As far as fraud goes, show me a commercial space that's free of fraud and I'll show you one that's pretty profitless, constrained, and empty of innovation in general.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
society meltdown - no matter where you go, there is someone out there that will do what you least expect for money, and that means absolutely anything.
flourishing ecosystem - having said that, this brings us to the new breed of low lives that will do anything for money, maybe an old ecology of ppl using new methods - no matter how much other ppl have to suffer for them to consider themselves 'successful'.
Unfortunately the internet is now where they breed and this is a complete abuse of the technology that was there for totally opposite reasons.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
I'm sure the new york times makes a healthy profit selling people's information that they collect from mandatory registration to advertising firms.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Porn helped drive the printing and video industries. Gutenberg's second book, after the Bible, was erotic stories.
Spam? Hell, if the U.S. Post Office stopped all "third class" mail (spam), they'd be broke and out of business tomorrow. I've always looked at online spam as an opportunity -- ISPs should do more research into filtering spam and offer it as a premium service.
Fraud online is just like fraud offline. Snake-oil salesman that traveled from town to town during the 1800s comes to mind. Cavaet Emptor -- nothing new here. And with all due respect, anyone who believes some Nigerian ex-thugs that stole billions picked YOU to launder it (and apparantly all your friends, since they all got the same e-mail) DESERVES what they get.
Try as you might, you just can't legislate away greed, sloth and stupidity.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I really, really did not expect that many people out there to be buying the penis enlargment pills. I mean... think about it for a moment here:
It is really indicative of either
a) a lot of people are erm... sub-par intelligence-wise. or
b) porn / magazine / whatever has gotten a lot of men in a same gridlock as mannaquins has on women: except while you have the "our store sells clothes to 'real women' and we use 'natual models'", you won't ever find a "real-sized penis men's club"... when's the last time you really saw "size small" condoms on sale?
c) or both.
it is really worth worrying to a certain degree. as for the part that basically says "sex sells," well no kidding...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"When the Arizona attorney general's office recently shut down a Scottsdale company, CP Direct, it offered a glimpse into the spoils of the Internet's dark side. The company sold pills via the Web that promised to increase penis length, bust size and body height."
:(
I guess my pills aren't coming then
Now I will have to send away for that tiger penis balm that is guaranteed to make me hung like a stallion and sexually attractive to women.
I remember when the first talk of web-based shops were on the cards. They were saying it was the 'High Street' stores that would lose profits and business... and some chose to do the 'ostrich effect', while others went for the full madness effect (i.e. anyone remember EggHead stores - DUH!).
But it is those stores that have an existing infrastructure who then expand into using the web to generate extra revenue are the ones who will thrive. Just because web shopping came along doesn't mean people will all of a sudden stop going to the mall.
A lot of the porn industry has thrived because of the anonimity, as well as the breaking down of borders... hence laws governing porn.
"We will lose the Internet if we don't save it." and "civil society" has broken down online... probably not, it's just that people know that they can currently get away with doing stuff, and the net still being in its relavtive infancy, people know that they'll be able to do whatever they want until push comes to shove and the governments themselves catch up with technology.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Well, yes.
Anyone stupid enough to believe any claim of a spammer is going to be separated from their money sooner or later (most likley sooner)
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Why is anyone surprised by this? After all, practically none of the dot coms had a viable business model -- it was all "get customers now and make it up later (on volume!). The only thing that made it possible in the first place was the billions upon billions of dollars that venture captial threw into the pot...
As the article mentioned, the things that are working well on the web are the same things that work well (from a financial standpoint) in real life: selling pr0n and ripping people off. Only with the web, you can reach a MUCH wider audience (such as under-age boys [sub-18] with the pr0n -- all without fear of prosecution). After all, no one in their right mind would stand outside a middle school trying to sell copies of porno magazines -- he'd be arrested (and most likely hung) in quick fashion.
But with the web (and spam), these sleazeballs are allowed to advertise to a group that was previously off-limits. The rest is basic economics: increase the size of your target audience, increase your sales...
The same thing goes for ripping people off: you're able to reach a wider audience. Slap together a slick web page, and you give yourself an air of legitimacy -- all the better to draw in the stupid and gullible.
The internet is not making people more stupid, and isn't contributing to the demise of society... It is merely bringing the existing stupidity and lack of culture to the forefront of society, instead of letting it hide in dark corners... It is making depravity more visible, that's all.
Funny because I heard on NPR a couple days ago that "e-commerce was having a great year". I guess it all depends on who you ask, and if the person you ask had a bullshit business model to start with.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
This is a no brainer. Don't expect telcoms, music publishers, TV people, commercial software vendors, governments and any other large, entrenched and threatened industry to say that the web is good for anything but kiddie porn, bomb making and whatever horror is up for the day. I'm tired of hearing all the BS from the so called reputable news sources.
Advertising is in a slump because no one expects anyone to have any money soon. The NYT itself is in the same shitcan everyone else is in. Sorry, that's the way the cycle turns.
The problem for those interests is that people will get what they want without the helping hand of those who would control them. People want telcom services they don't have to pay by the minute for. They want news they can pull for themselves rather than the stream of push current media provides. They want feedback on that news, pure objective informed voices on the spot. They want to make their songs availble to others without the intervention of one of five big publishers. They will build what it takes to get those things and those that publish nonsense about it will simply fail. Their are more powerful motives than profit.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
but frankly i don't know how people are so stupid that they fall for internet scams or buy products through "special deals" *exclusively* for them and 20,000,000 other people.
Next Sunday, sit across the street from a church parking lot for your answer. Some people will believe anything.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
In a settlement with the company, the government got $30 million for consumer refunds.
Like everything else, if the government can get a cut, they will finally get its hands dirty... I am normally against the government to make a profit off crime, but its nice to seem the get off thier ass.
When I browse at work, I can't go look at any pr0n. But I get as many annoying ads and popups on legit sites as I did on pr0n sites before I started using galeon. :-) As for Spam, I get nearly as much from legit companies (Sony, Orbitz, Priceline, Alaska Air...) as I do from the snakeoil salesmen.
A bigger question, though, is why do we have to "save the Internet?" Many legitimate industries started out with less-than-honorable beginnings. And places can transform their images from sin to family.
Look at Vegas.
In some ways, I wish the "cyberspace" notion had never been introduced, because it furthers bad analogies like these, comparing the net to a geographical neighborhood, which has apparently become a red-light district.
The reality, of course, is that the internet is a communication medium, not a neighborhood, and the apparently-proliferating number of sleazy businesses making use of it proves very little. Sure, you can make money selling fake penis-enlargement pills at a $57 markup, so long as you can find suckers (although I do admit being a bit surprised that there are so many of them).
Brewster Kahle is right on point, even if his thoughts are buried in the article:
Now if only the NY Times would stop running articles about the supposed decline of electronic "civil society," and start commentataing on the actual decline of actual civil society. Or, heaven forbid, the sleazy nature of elected officials and their corporate benefactors.
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
You can make up a bunch of stickers that have nothing more than the web address for your band or your blog or whatever written in an interesting way, plaster them everywhere at sight level, and you'll get a few hits from it. A web address is best used as a link from a tiny part of the real world (a business card, a t-shirt, a sticker on the wall of the bathroom at a dance club) to whatever else you'd like to tell someone. Pretty much every weird sticker or poster you see put on anything that will stand still has a web address on it. Near where I live, a cellphone company put up lots of billboards that just had their web address on it. The fact that I heard about this from other people says that it was a useful marketing tactic, this time. Not sure if it sold anything, but it did get the word around.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
This is because it's a "pull" medium; you look at what you want to look at. Advertising depends on shoving stuff in people's faces, and they hate that. Everything that looks like a "push" medium on the Web has flopped. Even spam is a dud; most spammers are very tiny operators; they're annoying, but, as businesses, less successful than the typical local retailer. The publicly held spam-type companies, 24/7 Media and DoubleClick, are in the tank.
The winners in this are the big online retailers, most of whom were big offline catalog retailers. L.L. Bean, and Barnes and Noble, for example. Their customers are mostly repeat ones, their advertising is in traditional media, and they have a brick-and-mortar presence.
It's sad that Sears failed as a catalog operator just before the Web took off; their broad catalog would have worked on line.
If you look for porn, you will find so much porn that you will not be able to look at a fraction of it.
However, the same thing goes for heraldry and blazons, Loglan, go, Irish music sessions, AK-47 variants, Super Mario Bros. 3, or gender studies- to name the contents of some of my most recent bookmarks. They came off of Google searches that spit out thousands of pages each.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I've been saying for a long time and will continue to do so, you can not easily make money off of something which promotes the free and unrestricted flow of information. The internet allows for data to move easily from point to point and removes many of the barriers that allow for making money. To make money off the net is chalenging and very few will ever be succesful.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
(emphasis mine)
Are we sure they're talking about e-mail? Don't they mean
--j
Porn helped drive the printing and video industries. Gutenberg's second book, after the Bible, was erotic stories.
So he moved from hardcore to softcore, huh?
RMN
~~~
I don't know. The sites that actually offer up good old fashioned product seem to be doing pretty good. It's the smoke and mirror sites that went under. People who thought they would make money just by showing up....Well they are where they should be -- gone and/or going. I have done ALL of my Christmas shopping online for the last 3 years (granted I tried to go to the sites that offered reduced or free shipping). I purchase most of my music online -- in the past I have also used the internet to decide what music deserved purchasing -- but the RIAA thought I was not buying enough...but thats another story. I buy most of my books online (even though I have not quite figured out how to suck a mocha through my modem just yet). I bargain hunt at ebay (I bet they have not passed out many pink slips). All the special software we use at work, and my wife uses at home is researched, reviewed, and purchased online....
I could go on forever and ever -- the bottom line being: People are spending money online -- they are just spending it on products.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Three years ago, the internet (the web in particular) was hyped into being the biggest change to society since the printing press.
Obviously most of the hype has not materialized. Although it does make some money for some people, the web has basically returned to what it was in the first place: a massive and highly efficient facilitator of information exchange. Much of this is business to business and is behind the scenes, but some of it, such as email, eclectic news sites, file sharing, and software distribution are in public view. Probably 90% of the non-computer-geeks that I know use the web for little more than email, reading news, and occasional shopping. And much of the shopping is from retailers that also have a brick-and-morter establishment.
Probably the biggest single effect of the internet is that more non-mainstream information reaches more people than ever before. This primarily non-economic use has been the major revolution brought about by the web. Although porn and spam are more prevalent than they used to be, they were always there, even before the big web hype bubble.
Try 5,750!
Not that the author wasn't doing their homework or anything.
I had an ex girlfriend who's family spent about $300 a month on various multi level marketing things, scams, pyramid schemes, envelope stuffing, etc. If someone mailed it to their house, they'd immediately send in the money for the get rich quick scheme of the week (or of the last 20 years... didn't matter).
And despite the fact that none of them ever worked, and most likely they'd never follow through on any of them long enough to find out, they'd just keep buying them up. Hell, there was one that wanted $10,000 to get started, and if they actually had the money they would have spent it.
Sadly, there are plenty of people like that. And they're not likely to suddenly wake up one day and smack themselves over the head and figure it out. They'll just keep doing it, because getting rich without any effort or work is the only thing that means anything to them.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I believe I have read that any post office's largest cost is manpower to deliver the mail to individual addresses. This is any post office, and there's not much they can do about it. If they stopped delivering to the 10% hardest addresses, snail mail value would drop dramatically - it could no longer be depended upon to get bills to all customers.
Junk mail does not directly subsidize first class, but it does indirectly, by paying part of the individual delivery charge. The cost of the delivery charge is pretty much the same regardless of how much mail is delivered to each address; they can only walk or drive to so many places in one day. Sorting mail and moving it between post offices is small potatoes compared to deliverying.
Infuriate left and right
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I've worked with enough "traditional" (ie head stuck up ass protecting centuries-out-of-date feudalistic notions of employment relationships) executives to sink a trillion dollars of dot-com VC into shoe-horning all kinds of bad business practices into internet-based business projects. And I've worked with enough "innovative" (ie gutless brainless talky talky no worky worky never do nothing) marketing types to stop the sun from shining, if only they could hold enough meetings on the marketability of sunshine. And, yes, I've received plenty of spam and scams so transparent (eg I stole tons of Nigerian money but I need a someone to help me get it so I'm looking for co-conspirators via mass email) that anyone who gets taken by them, frankly, deserves it.
But it's the thousands of people making more money due to unforeseen efficiencies of the Internet who are the more interesting story, in the long run. Just because something is more efficient doesn't mean there's a good way to commodotize it into a $20 billion dollar business. Hell, before the web ALL commercial use of the internet was spam: dunno why everyone expects it to make a new megacorp (oh, yeah, because they saw how successful Microsoft was in extracting profits from a predatory software monopoly!) as if you can control that sort of thing. The architecture favors a million successfull businesses that could not otherwise survive. The societies, right now, favor supporting an increasingly sclerotic class system and corrupted laws in favor of those currently in power. In the USA, this is a particular slap to our heritage (elsehwhere, you've lived with that shit for centuries).
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
OK, I doubt any /.ers would fall for these but they are worth knowing about as they are getting very popular right now. The way they work is simple but very elegant and even has a Dr. of Physics is well & truly sucked in to one of them.
It's basically a "new age" take on the old evangelists' preacher routine, "send me money and you will be saved".
If anyone wants to make a bit of money here's the magic formula: Setup a web site that reveals the "end of the world" such as PlanetX, Earth Changes, Comet collisions, alien invasion or all of the above. Link this in with bits of information from "psychics" like Edgar Cacye, Nostrodamus, and even the bible structured it in a way to provide proof of what you say (if you look hard enough you can find apparent evidence for anything). It is also advisable to have your own private channeled aliens as well. The idea is to make people as paranoid as possible.
Then sell a "savior kit" including detailed information gained from your aliens, maybe a map, of where is safe during the Earth Changes, how to signal UFOs to be rescued or other variations.
If using the channeled alien approach, your little ETs must state that every other bit of info around is from negative entities that wish to mislead. Also have your ETs state that anyone who tries to warn your suckers is being controlled by dark forces / is possessed / not in their soul plan to survive / has no soul.
Furthermore, state something like "If you have found this web site, you must have been spiritually guided to it, it must be your destiny to survive the earth changes", that's a killer and works almost every time as all people want to believe they are special. Never ever claim to sell anything; your web site must appear as an information source not a sales pitch for your hacked up book, introduce the book / tapes later on when you know people are hooked.
If people send you emails that disagree with your web site, always snidely reply something like "Ask for a refund at the door", if they really show you for what you are, use your channeled ETs to attack them. While waiting to spring the book / tapes / savior kit on people do drop in the fact that the web site costs money to maintain etc and ask for no pressure donations. Same ploy with the book, state that you needed to get it independently published and hence that is why it is expensive.
The only tricky side of this is of course you have to claim to care about people and that is why you are bringing this information out in public but the flip side is, you have to charge money for the actual information that you claim will help people. Not very spiritual, in fact totally materialistic and shows your motive is to make money from the gullible but the way to avoid this is to make people as paranoid as possible then they will not notice. If a few people do in fact notice that you have a big web site that you already pay for and you could publish the information for free without additional cost & killing a load of trees for the book, state that you have to make a living somehow in this horrible materialistic world, that you don't like it but you have to eat and Porches are expensive to run. This usually works even though you also claim their are massive spiritual rewards for helping people, use the "spiritual rewards" ploy to get others to forward your emails around to attract new customers.
This scam sounds very bizarre to anyone that hasn't come across it but its in full swing right now as there is certainly a lot of money to be made from the gullible new age crowd, I have met a lot of people that believe in this stuff and they have spent a fortune on it. Certainly a great money spinner for out of work techies, you need to learn the lingo and beliefs of the new age gang but that is entertainment in its self.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Furthermore, I do not even get NYT type spam at this address ("sign up for our premium content" and so forth).
Rather than idle accusations, does anyone have any proof of this accusation I hear so many peddling?
Cheers,
-- RLJ
...if only we had some sort of drm to promote online movies and high speed internet access so we could truly have a multimedia experience. We need the government involved in this to change things and make it a requirment so the web can truly be free.
http://saveie6.com/
-- RLJ
Why are spam and porn more profitable? Because they're destroying everything else. The increase of Internet scams, porn, spam, popup advertising, viral marketing, anti-privacy policies and other trash that comes with the Internet's popularity are actually what causes this problem. The con games some dotcom millionares pulled have soured others on investing in legitimate web companies. Millions of dollars of advertising sold to companies with overinflated traffic numbers destroyed the Internet advertising market. Corporate bean counters that suffocated fast sites with good content (replacing original news with Yet-Another-Reuters-Report) reduced the legitimacy of online news sites. Greedy and immoral/unethical people with their fake companies have ruined things for the good little businesses trying to survive. As always, the worst people have ruined things for the best people and society as a whole must suffer for it.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
That means that 500,000 people ordered penis enlargement pills!!! Five hundred thousand!!!.
If there are five hundred thousand people out there stupid enough to read their spam, then visit the web site and actually send the money... it shouldn't surprise people that the internet is full of garbage content. Oh wait, the surprised people are probably the same people who sent their $60.
The internet can't make stupid people less stupid, and frankly it can't make smart people smarter. All it can do is let smart people get at information they want faster, and stupid people get to the charlatans faster. Anyone who is really surprised by any of this, please send me $40 and I'll send you my left over penis enlargement pills.
This is the only way they can get the Web to be profitable using a model built around centralized content and unidirectional delivery to end-points.
I call this "T.V. with a 'Buy' button."
This is a poor model for constructing a viable business on the Web. It plays with none of the strengths of the Internet, and is susceptible to many weaknesses.
What is a workable Web-based model? It is easier to point to an example than describe. I would submit EBay as someone who -accidentally or by design- got this right.
They have the right intelligence at the hub, to broker the intelligence at the end-points.
If your model is low-end pay-per-view, you will make money with porn, not Pets.com. If you are blasting people's e-mail, you will sell them the things they are embarrassed to buy elsewhere -- Swedish Penis Pumps, Herbal Viagra, etc...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The pr0n industry is bigger than all of the major sports leagues combined in terms of overall revenues. Much larger in fact. Just on print and videos alone, not including the net. It has always been so.
You MUST be young.
The porn business really took off around 30 - 40 years ago after several court decisions made most porn legal (in the US.) With the advent of the VCR, porn exploded. It has NOT "always been so."
Wow. Yew speel werse then I dew.
I've been on the 'net since the days of Mosaic and before that, WAIS and Gopher. You know what I just realized? I've NEVER paid cash money for "online content". Maybe someday I will, but not yet. I don't use the internet as a "consumer". I use it for information, mostly, and maybe 10% of the time for entertainment. The non-pr0n kind. Big media wanted the internet to become another vehicle to the masses like television. It's not working and I say Thank Heaven. It doesn't surprise me at all that AOL has hit the wall. They have never really provided their customers with "the Internet". They basically provided their advertisers with their subscribers' eyeballs. AOL in trouble. What a beautiful thing.
Clueless congressional representatives, obeying their masters in Holywood, have taken up the cry that the reason highspeed broadband internet access hasn't really taken off is that there is no "online content" that will entice consumers into the arena. Then they use that excuse to say that Holywood won't provide this content until they can be "protected" from IP theft (which is a bogus concept, but that's another story). The bright spot in there is that the big communications giants have strung a ton of fiber around the U.S. and there's a glut of it. I have a cable modem and my satisfaction with speed on the internet as a whole is above 90%. Thank heaven (again) they built out this high-speed infrastructure before going into a tailspin.
Your comments just gave me an idea for an Internet moneymaker: e-lotto. Imagine being able to get Your Chance at BIG BUCKS!!! without having to leave the comfort of your house/trailer/projects. This would be like current Internet gambling, only with a state agency guaranteeing that the game isn't rigged and that your credit card info won't be stolen by some Bad People hosting their site from the Cayman Islands or somewhere.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
Actually, the porn thing is the one that baffles me. We are talking about the same internet where people trade music all the time for free, but for some reason they don't get that concept with porn? (But then again, I have never even desired to be a member of a porn site, so maybe I am missing something about the motivations involved)
I can answer that one....it's because the pr0n-lords are smart enough to come up with a business model that adapts to the nature of the internet and the needs of the customers.
They charge a reasonable rate for access to their (and often times several partnering) websites...usually $10-$20 for a month's worth of unlimited downloading of pics, movies, etc. Then they keep rolling out new material to keep people coming back. They have different websites to cater to peoples' different tastes, be it asians, blacks, gay, fat chicks, or what have you.
If the RIAA, or better yet the individual artists, would open their eyes and follow a similar model, I think everyone would be a lot better off for it. Yeah there are a lot of charlatans out there, but many of the people running the pr0n companies are smart, smart businessmen. (and women)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Thank you for stereotyping all Europeans. Besides, your last comment largely confirms the American stereotype.
I think the internet has become quite an interesting beast today.. it certainly looks a lot different to the internet I used for the first time in 1996.
The best thing for me about the internet as it is today, is that it has matured a little. It has given the chance for the big companies with a great product (Google for example), and companies with great business models and online stores the chance to get going and become popular. I was really surprised on a recent visit to Yahoo auctions to discover they had shut up shop and advised former Yahoo auctioneers to visit eBay.
Of course the downside to the internet.. now that the technology has matured it has made higher power technology available to people who only want to abuse it. Carding, hacking, and DoSing all seem to be pretty rife today. And not to mention the spam.. thankfully I only get a small amount to my few different email addresses, but I would much rather get none - I *hate* spam!
My other hate about the internet are huge corporations who feel they can get in and police the internet according to their own standards. Companies like Disney who have forged 'relationships' with government members, who barely have any grasp on the technology they want to censor.
I dunno.. I think the net needs some kind of revival. I think I am ready for the next big thing.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
These 3 succeed because they serve their customers. The others are basically doing a terrible job at understanding what the customer wants and providing it at a reasonable price, under reasonable terms.
This is quite obvious. The customer wants it. Someone has it. And the price seems to work out. And the terms are usually pretty good, too (e.g. we're in a different country than your law enforcement, so they can take a hike).
First, understand that the customer is not the one getting the mail. The customer is the one paying the spammer to send mass mail. The price is way cheaper than snail mail spam, so the spammers are succeeding and meeting what their customers want.
The customer in this case is the fraud perpetrator themselves. The victim is not the customer. So in a sense this works, too, when the perpetrator gets away with the booty.
Perhaps internet gambling should be included here, too. It's not as big as porn, but from what I hear, it's nearly as successful. Vice does tend to be a good business model. I'm sure once they have the technology to download matter replication (if there is some kind of digital rights management for it), there will be plenty of places to get marijuana and drugs online. They'd do it if they could, because this is a massive market. Also, knives, guns, bombs, and maybe even nuclear material might be sold this way. You can bet the government would have a fit if the technology allowed this to go on without them being able to trace it all.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You missed an important reason why porn and fraud have done so well on the internet: anonimity. In the case of porn, it is anonymity form the buyer's point of view. You don't have to go to a video store and admit to a bitter store clerk that you need your porn fix, you just get it deliverd to your home from a faceless company. In the case of fraud, the scammers feel like (and generally are right) that it's easier not to get caught since it's more anonymous and law enforcement is still scrabbling to keep up.
That looks like Latin to me.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Just curious, what is the alternative?
Evolution or what?
Evolution basicly states that we came from rocks. Yea Yea I know primordial soup... But where did the soup come from? Rain for millions of years breaking down the rocks to... You guessed it soup!
Or the rock from space carrying bacteria... Hmmm... How did the bacteria form on that other world?
So what do you believe?
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
I just email back the previous person's email. Maybe they can help each other out and make themselves rich? After all, we're taking about a figure close to the whole GNP in stuck dead relative's money.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I'm sure that there must be some free porn companies that don't spam. Yeah, sure, and they make a living off of each others banner ads, that's the ticket!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Your comments just gave me an idea for an Internet moneymaker: e-lotto. Imagine being able to get Your Chance at BIG BUCKS!!! without having to leave the comfort of your house/trailer/projects. This would be like current Internet gambling, only with a state agency guaranteeing that the game isn't rigged and that your credit card info won't be stolen by some Bad People hosting their site from the Cayman Islands or somewhere.
Been there, done that...
http://www.google.com/search?&q=e-lotto
Results 1 - 100 of about 4,210. Search took 0.33 seconds
Take your pick...
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
That's kind of what I meant, though not so much in terms of the store clerk than the law enforcement. But you're right, that is certainly one aspect of it that influences how readily people might buy. That and, someone might recognize them in the store (especially in a smaller community) or their car in the parking lot. I wouldn't worry about that as much at my grocery store, whereas delivery of food by a truck meant having to be home whenever the trick might arrive.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
People have been scrutinizing stories of alien landings at Roswell for quite a long time. Just because the "faithful" refuse to see logical counter arguments, doesn't make the fantasy more true.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"We will lose the Internet if we don't save it." and "civil society" has broken down online... probably not it's just that people know that they can currently get away with doing stuff, and the net still being in its relavtive infancy, people know that they'll be able to do whatever they want until push comes to shove and the governments themselves catch up with technology.
And what if "governments themselves catching up with technology" amounts to taking that technology out of the hands of the citzenry and reserving it for themselves?
The rhetoric now emerging and being bandied about by the talking heads of hollywood isn't new. It was a precursor to prohibition back in the early 20th century, it was a precursor to the War on Drugs in the late 20th century, which continues to this day (now financing terrorism where previously it merely financed crime lords and thugs), in short, it has been a precursor to every act of government which has taken freedom from the people in the name of 'civil society', 'common decency,' and other such tripe. Indeed, whenever anyone hears the words 'common decency' they should look around and determine where the next attack on their civil liberties is going to come from, since what is commonly decent recreation to one person is commonly indecent to another, and any effort to put such terms into legislation by definition means someone's notion of commonly decent is about to trample someone elses.
The government cannot take the internet away from the people outright and publicly admit that they are doing so to prop up the profit margins of dinasaur entities such as the MPAA and the RIAA, nor can they admit that they'd like us all to shut up and get back on the couch, where they can conviniently spoonfeed us what they'd like us to think without the annoying backtalk.
Does this mean they don't plan to take the internet away from us (or do so effectively by reducing it to just another home shopping network)? Hardly.
What it does mean is that they need to manipulate the popular perception of the internet, until they can build up sufficient support, particularly in the easy-to-manipulate and already-well-organized religious right, until such a point where they can point to some kind of popular demand to take away the internet as we know it "for our own moral good."
That is what this rhetoric is all about. It is a precursor, and an opening salvo, in the effort to institute digital prohibition in America. It frankly amazes me that no one on slashdot, where we've seen all the pieces of this puzzle presented to us time and time again vis-a-vis the lobbying of Hollywood, Microsoft, and the Recording industry to restrict our digital rights, can see this coming.
It is all about information, and the government would like to control that information. Dealing with entrenched media oligarchies, while imperfect, facilitates this. The Internet on the other hand will never be ameanable to this sort of thing, unless is it changed radically, or eliminated altogether.
Indeed, the government's lust to do so grows with their beligerence in foreign military theaters. But to be fair it isn't only the government that lusts after such control: most large businesses do likewise (how better to quiet criticism of a new product or a profitable business model that may not be so optimal, like say, Monsanto dumping toxic chemicals into the groundwater of a small southern US town).
Couple that with the desire of four very strong entities (the RIAA, the MPAA, Microsoft, and, lest we forget, the baby bells who fear VoIP more than anything) to cripple and control the internet or, failing that, do away with it altogether, and you have a very strong group with the will, and the power, to take away our digital freedom.
The only problem is how to make such a power grab into our personal lives palitable to the majority of Americans. How fortuitious for them that the educational level of America has declined so much over the last four decades, and that by playing the morality card they'll have a large portion of the population on board with nary a thought about the underlying issues, or very real consiquences, of such a move.
Indeed, policymakers already know this works. It allowed them to gut the most potent civil protections of the constitution in their persuit of their War on Drugs, and to continue doing so even after failure upon failure. Should it be of any surprise to any of us to see them doing it again as they try to put the digital genie back in the bottle and deny us our digital freedoms?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Good grief what a troll!
Comparing a collection of documents that have been around between 2000 and 4000 years is simply wrong.
You know even if you don't believe in God or Christianity or Judism you could learn a few things from the Bible, such as respect for other people's beliefs.
The Anti-Blog
You MUST be young.
0 44.htm
The porn business really took off around 30 - 40 years ago after several court decisions made most porn legal (in the US.) With the advent of the VCR, porn exploded. It has NOT "always been so."
And YOU must be pretty young yourself.
Porn was pretty big before the 1940's (when the film ratings boards came into existence). Hell, do you think the Nickelodeons were exclusively devoted to cartoons Charlie Chaplin flicks? A big business at that time was stereogram (the cross-your-eyes 3D) porn (which makes me ponder the distinct lack of 3D porn magazines today. And I'm not talking POSER porn exclusively). Just because you don't know how to search for "silent movie" porn and "vintage" porn then do not claim to have all knowledge on something which anyone over 65 (and plenty of folks like me that are under 65) knows about.
http://www.drinkingandthinking.com/archives/00000
Among other things contained within, there was a DVD - and let me tell you that it was the best 21 bucks I have ever spent. What could this DVD possibly contain that would make me - a known cheapskate - spend 21+ bucks? Well folks, let me tell you: It was vintage erotica from 1930's France. Would you like me to repeat that? Okay... It was vintage erotica from 1930's France - aka PORN.
According to one of the reviews of this DVD on Amazon:
"A joyous celebration of unimpeded, unhindered sex. This DVD consists of 24 short silent B&W films from 20's and 30's France featuring various singles, couples, and groups in -- well, almost every possible combination, actually. Sure, they're just ordinary people, with the lumps, cellulite, and excess hair that ordinary people have; as such, I found it a pleasant antidote to the ridiculous excesses of modern porn. It also gives some explanation for the French reputation as lovers: every straight coupling starts with getting the woman off. Now that's what I call feminist!
Be warned; it's very explicit and includes lesbian, gay, straight, and group situations, as well as quite a number of cum shots. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)"
So what do you think of that? Personally, as an expert on erotica (READ: Porn) I found the actual content of the disk quite interesting. It shows how little sex (or at least porn) has changed over the years. Much of the content is quite explicit and only suffers from the underdeveloped film and camera technology of the time. In fact, I think that this porn is BETTER than most of the crap being produced today. I mean... this stuff turned me while most porn just makes me laugh my ass off. Now only if the shaved way back then, it would be even more enjoyable.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
The internet is a case of CB vs HAM vs Cell.
:). There's little regulation and controls and everyone knows it. If you don't know it, you'll find out soon.
CB and Single Side Band(aka dial-up and DSL) is a relative low quality, extremely cheap, but usable media. However since it's so cheap everyone can join in.
Ever listen to channel 14 on a CB around 8:00pm? You'll hear stuff that would make some of these porn producers blush
HAM and Shortwave Radio This a licenced media on a seperate frequency. This is probly where Internet 2 will be going. Internet 1 has reached it limit. Internet 1 will soon be written off as reaching it's point of limited return. In other words we're very close to the point that it costs more to get more out of Internet 1 then it is to move to Internet 2.
To get on the 'real' pipe you will have get licenced. If you violate the regulations your licence and IP will be pulled and you'll be dead in the water. Thats where you get the real control on copyright material control.
Cell Phone Finally came a useable Peer2Peer media, cell phone. Cell phone is a simplified communication system; flip and talk. It's a cheap, resonably good quality, well maintained communication media.
Cell now allows you to filter calls based on the name(phone number) of the caller via a universal ID system.
Internet 1 will always have it's dark underside. It will not get better. They, goverment and corperate enities, will let it get worse to force you to new mediums.
Internet 2 will be a closely controlled network but the need for regulations will keep many people off.
A middle ground will be a moderately regulated and controlled peer to peer medium. This new medium will grow for the rest of the world.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Is it really useful to group spam and fraud along with porn? Fraud and spam are inherently harmful. Porn may be de facto harmful in its production, but there is an important distinction. Now, if only the porn distributors would stop spamming everyone!
Actually, current theory, as I understand it, posits that lightening, which was highly common during early times on the earth, triggered chemical reactions in your so-called primordial soup, which lead to the development of the first RNA molecules. From there, it's basic biology...
Of course, there are alternative theories (for example, the "seeding" theory you cite), but the origin of these molecules is more or less then same... chemical reactions occuring on other planets or in interstellar space, triggered by exposure to some form of energy (ie, radiation, etc).
The advertising model COULD have been made to work. Perhaps it would never work quite as well as some had hoped for, but I do believe it can work better than some are now claiming.
One of the ways it failed is due to an expectation that wasn't realistic. Unlike other forms of advertising, such as radio spots, TV commercials, and blocks or pages in a newspaper or magazine, the web/internet came with technology that could gauge a response when people clicked on the ads. The reason this fails is because too many people just don't click on the ads. Now I have clicked on a few, even here on Slashdot, but that was only when it was a combination of something I was really intersted in, and I happened to be bored at the time. When I'm not bored, I have goals, such as reading the interesting article. I still see the ads, but I move on.
The brightest green laser pointer around is now at ThinkGeek.
The correct way to do advertising on the web, and the way it will work, is to expect them to work the same way they work in other media ... make impressions. Banner ads, and even the hated big box ads can have that effect. And small text ads can have that effect, too. But what the ads writers/creators have to do is make the ads impressionable. The ones that say "Click here for the best home mortgages" don't do any good to create a brand impression. Instead it should give the mortgage company name along with words that say what is being offered, e.g. lower rates, loans to those with poor credit, no down payment loans, or whatever. Don't depend on people to click through today, but make sure they know your name so they will seek you out when they are in the need for your product or service.
integrate. collaborate. accelerate. SourceForge 3.1, from VA Software.
Because advertising and marketing executives were so interested in this new technology to allow them to track click throughs, they forgot about what makes advertising work in the first place, which is a combination of simple information and brand recognition. Making them obtrusive may have some negative impact, but when advertising is done on the old tradition impression basis (which is still going to work because the audience is still the same species that it has worked on before), even small text blocks used to separate sections or stories can have as good an impression as that big annoying box, and work out as a better compromise between an advertiser seeking more returns for a smaller investment, and a publisher seeking larger revenues while retaining and growing an audience to deliver to that advertiser.
Smart mass putty. Bounce, stretch, contort, relieve stress. At ThinkGeek.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
.. it should not be okay to do in an online store either.
My particular pet peeve is online stores that require particular browsers and settings, or they don't work. B&M stores, and traditional mail-order retailers, know it's good business practice to never piss off more than a max of 5% of potential customers. Yet online stores think nothing of artificially limiting their customer base by 30% to 80%, due to designing for whatever browser the webmaster uses, or whatever glitz the webmaster is in love with this week.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
And YOU must be pretty young yourself :) What's the name of that classical Greek play (from some centuries B.C.) that's really just a porn flick, minus the cameras?
There's been porn as long as there've been humans and the desire to be an audience. Who knows, maybe some prehistoric cave paintings of bears had a punchline: "You don't come here to *hunt*, do you!"
BTW, thanks for the link/review -- sounds much more interesting than the common run of pr0n!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The real goal is to stop the spam from coming down the pipe.
Your method is potentially good for the end users, but you guys are still footing the bill for abuse to your network.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
It should come as no surprise that the NY Times, who's principle readers are retired or elderly, would print an article bashing how dirty, sinful, and dangerous the internet is. It's stories like that that elderly people use to justify not learning how to use email, "That internet thing . . . it's all just porn, spam and scams."
Human nature just dictates that people will always like sex, advertisers will always cram ads down our throats, and criminals will commit crimes, no matter what the medium is.
Ignorance on that many levels is the reason we have the word 'stupid'.Being uninformed is naive, making uninformed decisions is stupid.
If you want to be fair, you might say that some of the people had that ernest combination of gulibility, wishful thinking and innocent ignorance... but 500,000 people. That is a clear indication of a stupid people doing stupid things.
Here in CA where I am, property owners have NOT paid for their PO boxes in 5 or 10 years. Don't think even renters do. This happened specifically because the residents live too far from the PO for street delivery to be practical, so the free PO box is the substitute. It would probably take several full time employees to wander these dirt roads. This is supposed to be a national policy. Ask about it.
Infuriate left and right
And as my luck would have it, I happen to have 5 points right now, and I see stories I'd rather post replies for. And no, I am not advertising them for sale; don't even think about it. I'll find a way to use them.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Ah, I get it.
Topic: Fraud and Spam
This is on topic.
And this is not.
Is hypocrisy considered fraud? Because if so, discussing the moderation of this thread is about to be on topic.