Online Porn - The Technology Testbed?

DaveAtFraud writes "USA Today is running a only slightly tongue-in-cheek article pointing out that the on-line porn industry has become the technology testbed for innovative content delivery. On-line delivery of 'adult' content has been wrestling with issues such as digital rights management, video on-demand billing, wireless services, and geo-location software since long before these became issues for 'mainstream' content providers. Maybe having an adult content provider listed on your geek resume isn't so bad after all."

Comments

Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[Valegor]

As much as some people would like to deny it Porn built the internet. Before that it fed the BBSes. It seems kind of obvious to me that despite what we have been told the first network was actually built because one geek called the other up and said, "Hey I got this great picture of a naked chick. You wanna see?" Porn, e-mail, and Wolf ET. Life can't get much better than that.

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[Anonymous Coward]

Before that it fed the BBSes

Ahh.. downloading pr0n at 2400bps. Those were the days... Wait a minute... those days sucked.

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[The Only Druid]

Actually, forget BBS. Porn was a driving force in every single growing means of mass-communication. One of the first things printed in mass-form after the Bible was a series of pornographic images and texts; organized phone-sex programs drove pay-phone systems (i.e. 1-900 or 976 numbers); Playboy TV was one of the first premium channels, not to mention those pay-per-view channels.

Face it: sex is the driving force behind our [and every] species, so its no surprise that almost all of our cultural structures seem to largely depend on it somehow.

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[Florian Weimer]

As much as some people would like to deny it Porn built the internet.

UTMS is a failure in Europe, despite early announcements of porn content.

It's true that the porn industry has been more open to technology changes than the rest of the content industry. But I believe that thanks to P2P, there's a measurable fraction of Internet traffic which isn't either DNS or porn. (Yes, you can share porn over P2P networks, too -- but let's be honest, porn is not everyone's favorite content. 8-)

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[Delphiki]

Have you ever actually checked to see how much porn is on p2p systems? Trust me. Porn is a lot of peoples' favorite content.

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[Total_Wimp]

Nothing like good old ASCII art porn. In color no less with ANSI art. Yes, there's noting like a geek in heat to push the envelope of eye-squinting hottness.

TW

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[WorkEmail]

Just to point out another fact of life. I think a lot of peoples reason for getting high speed internet is pornography. I used to work for Qwest, and all of the time people talked about upgrading from dial-up to highspeed so they could watch "streaming video" online. And I really doubt they meant going to mtv.com to watch backstreet boys videos.

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[Shadarr]

Porn always leads the way. From film to video to DVD to the internet. The only thing that's new with the internet is that there are new things happening all the time, and if you pay attention to what the porn sites are doing you can see what the other commercial sites will be doing in 6 months. Whether you talk about annoying popup ads, search engine optimizing, streaming video or p2p, if it can be done it's being done with porn.

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[rampant mac]

"Face it: sex is the driving force behind our species, so its no surprise that almost all of our cultural structures seem to largely depend on it somehow."

Amazingly, 99.9% of Slashdot community will have no dependancy upon it, whatsoever.

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[shpoffo]

"One of the first things printed in mass-form after the Bible....."

this satement would seem to contradict the notion that porn is that driving force of technology. That religion is the driving force of technology is not so unbelievable - science is itself a kind of religion, one that has supplanted (to many) the 'mystical' religion of the shamen. And science has 'created' technology - and certainly drives it. Most tech comes from the ivory tower of academia, the training ground of the scientific religion. Sexual drive has, in most religions, been the underdog/dark side. Lucifer in Christianity; absenance has long been a holi practice, even in shamanic cultures. Control of the sexual function is at the root of most religions, and the antithesis of most religions is that free and unrestrained expression of that drive. Even in sciences it is stated that unchecked growth is a fundamental hazard.

I almost feel like this is a chicken/egg argument.... Shamanism had the market cornered for Visioning practices (psychedelics et al), which has popularly been supplanted by visualization technology. There is more......

-shpoffo

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[VivianC]

It seems kind of obvious to me that despite what we have been told the first network was actually built because one geek called the other up and said, "Hey I got this great picture of a naked chick. You wanna see?"

Are you sure???

"Hey, Bill? I have this great picture of a naked chick. Wanna see?"

"Sure, Al. But it had better not be Tipper again."

Re:Porn built the internet(not Al Gore)

[mph]

with the possible exception of the telegraph.

OH YES STOP HARDER STOP LIKE THAT STOP OH BABY STOP YES STOP

(The lameness filter is lame. Ignore this parenthetical remark.)

Online Porn

[DarthVeda]

Online Porn is lending a hand to the rest of the industry...

Re:Online Porn

[cgranade]

Online Porn is lending a hand to the rest of the industry...

Yes. Yours.

Re:Online Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kind of worried by the article summary. What do they mean by "tongue-in-cheek"?

Maybe it's because of their audience

[Stevyn]

Unlike viewers of corporate or media websites, these people won't complain if something doesn't work properly. No one's going to make a stink if their favorite porn website's flash animation isn't working properly, at least not publically.

Re:Maybe it's because of their audience

[fatquack]

Being an adult webmaster myself I can assure you that our customers complain if something is wrong. But all the free porn makes up for a lot :-)
And it pays well too, so it should be a career option for all techies out there, seeing the current techjobmarket.

Re:Maybe it's because of their audience

[rampant mac]

"And it pays well too, so it should be a career option for all techies out there, seeing the current techjobmarket."

I agree, to an extent. I'm an adult webmaster, and it is an interesting line of work. It's a fairly close-nit community and it does have it's downsides.

When I started out, getting ANYONE to do business with us was next to impossible. Banks wouldn't allow us to open accounts, online merchants wouldn't accept us, etc etc.

It has gotten more "friendly" over the past few years, but it certainly isn't a market I recommend to just anyone. Building user contacts and networking is always hard, but in the adult industry people seem more guarded.

And honestly? The web visitors are always pompous, condescending assholes if you don't provide them with what they want, when they want it. I must get 50 emails a day with complaints about various miniscule bullshit.

I still wouldn't trade it for the world though. :)

Re:Maybe it's because of their audience

[M. Baranczak]

The web visitors are always pompous, condescending assholes if you don't provide them with what they want, when they want it. I must get 50 emails a day with complaints about various miniscule bullshit.

Interesting. I have a friend who used to be a clerk in a porn shop; he absolutely hated the job, but he said the best part of it was the fact that the customers were too intimidated just by being in the place to give him any shit. I guess the anonymity of the internet gives your customers the courage to act like assholes. Maybe you should start replying to complaints by calling them at home?

Re:Maybe it's because of their audience

[rampant mac]

"So here's an awkward question. How does one become an adult webmaster. I mean, aside from making a webpage and setting up the merchant stuff. Do you actually do shoots of the girls? Or do you just buy them from stock image porn dealer? The reason I ask is that I've seen many girls passed off as amateurs that are obviously not that I've seen all over the place on different sites, with different names. I'm really curious how that works. Also, how much money are we talking here? 6 figures? Upper 5 figures? Are there um...."fringe benefits"? I've searched around and have yet to find any kind of personal accounts of people who run these websites, but I am very interested in it."

Ok, I'll try to answer this...

To become an adult webmaster, don't do it for the money. It has to be something you're interested in (ha ha, joke's on me! Who isn't interested in porn?). Honestly though, you need to be passionate about the subject, otherwise it WILL get boring. There are thousands of TGPs & MGPs out there, so try to come up with something "different" to build hits.

Photo shoots are "interesting" to say the least. I have only been on one, and basically, it went like this:

Me: "Hi, glad you could show up. This is the photographer. Do you mind if we stick around for the shoot, to provide input?" (I was ABSOLUTELY lying through my teeth. I just wanted to see her naked.)

Her: "No."

"Ok, have fun!" At that point I had to leave the room. Stock images are great for original content, but they can be expensive. Photo sets range from $20 to $50+ per set, and buying new content on a daily basis is immensely expensive. If your sponsor/advertiser revenue can support it, no problem. I usually hit usenet for image sets, as I can get untagged images for free.

Strippers are seriously one of your best points of contact. They have no problem taking off their clothes, and usually aren't afraid to pose in front of a camera. Usual billing rates are $100 to $300+ per hour, depending on the "talent".

No webmaster wants to talk about revenue, but IF (and that's a HUGE if) I filled all my advertising slots, I would clear in excess of 22k per month. I have NEVER come close to filling my advertising slots, so for now, the point is moot.

No, there are no "fringe benefits" that I know of. Other webmasters may operate differently from myself though. I'm married, and the very thought of John Wayne Bobbit brings up horrific images. You do the math on that one.

It's always been that way

[Anonymous Coward]

The VCR, the camcorder, and now the Internet. Heck, I bet the second thing Gutenberg did after printing a Bible was to make a book with naughty woodcuts.

Re:It's always been that way

[blamanj]

Probably not G. himself, but others certainly did.

With the invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johann Gutenburg (Kapr 1996), publishing and distribution written erotic works became much simpler. Adrian Johnswrites of the early printing houses, "Learned scholars andgentlemen alike had to commit their tomes to be printed in themidst of almanacs, pamphlets, and (in the case ofNewton's Principia) pornography."

Re:It's always been that way

[kfg]

Pretty much, yeah. And what do you think drove the "woodcut industry" in the first place? Why, those same naughty woodcuts. What do you fueled the translation of the world's literature into European colloquial languages? Check out the unexpergated version of the Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night (The Arabian Nights to you and me), available at . . . .Project Gutenberg, in seventeen volumes. What do you suppose they were doing some of those nights?

Naughty Woodsman stories have always been the staple of the printing trade.

Naughty figurines go back as far as man made objects. What do you suppose drove the world porcelain trade, tea cups? The Victorian "gentleman" had a fine taste for delicate China dolls that had a "surprise" when you upended them.

Who woulda thunk that a species which reproduces sexually and without "season" would be eternally mindful of sex.

And woulda thunk that such would become pornography and "obscene"?

Gimme that old time religion.

Let us pray with Aphrodite
Let us play with Aphrodite
She wears that see through nighty
And that's good enough for me!

KFG

Google

[savagedome]

And guys at Google right now are wondering why are so many people interested in Gail Harris.

Re:Google

[Elwood P Dowd]

Yeah. Gail Harris was fucking rad.

Tongue in what?

[Anonymous Coward]

a only slightly tongue-in-cheek article
...ewww

Who pays for Porn?

[CowboyTodd]

I always hear about how amazingly profitable the porn industry is. My question is who pays for all this porn when there is more than enough free stuff out there to meet anyone's needs. Just my observation...

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[Cpl Laque]

That would actually be a good /. poll.
You pay for internet porn...
Always
Never
Sometimes
I think of CowboyNeal when I masturbate(ewwwwww)

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's a question of statistics.

Let say that 10 million people come to see your free stuff. From past studies, you can approximate that 0.1% of viewers will take the "3 day trial membership", and 25% of these will forget to cancel in time there membership.

You end up having 10 000 people paying for a 3-day trial, and 2500 paying the full monthly charge. Now how much does it cost to produce the material?

These numbers are just from the top of my head, but you can guess that just bringing a lot of people to a site, even a free one, can be quite profitable.

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[alienmole]

I think of CowboyNeal when I masturbate(ewwwwww)

Where's the -1, Seriously Disturbing Imagery mod option when you need it??

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[gl4ss]

I much suspect that the real reason is that there's shitloads of people who just want the porn and don't want to jump through hoops and wander around meaningless shitlinks for 'free pron' they never seem to get to(also, hunting down some spesific pics of a spesific girl from a spesific site WILL be bitchy compared to just paying few dollars).

I'd guess fetish sites are the winner in all this, just general 'naked chicks' for little hanky panky is very easy to find by almost anybody, but spesific videos or picture sets are not that easy to find just when you 'need'..

also there's lots of dumb fucks who waste their hard earned cash on some payphone dreams, so there must be 'few' willing to do the same thing online(camwhores).

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[CrankyFool]

Well, for one, I do. Specifically, I pay for two types of porn:

A) Broadcast porn (i.e. "stuff on the television") because 1. It's of a higher visual quality than the standard net stuff; 2. I don't have to hunt around for it; 3. Unless I'm traveling, I like watching porn on my TV more than I like watching it on my computer. Yes, I could use either my PS2 or my XBOX to stream porn from my desktop, but when I want porn, I don't want to have to go and boot up one of these systems.

B) Truly excellent or unusual online porn. I have no problem using my money to encourage people out there who do good work and who cater to my (shamefully, these days, pretty vanilla) tastes. I pay for Red vs. Blue even though I could get it for free -- why not porn?

Lastly, to be honest, I've found porn downloads via, say, Kazaa to be fraught with disappointment. For one thing, there's the horrendously slow speeds often times; also, the unclear (or outright deceptive) descriptions can be a bitch. I still do it every once in a while, but for visual porn, my TV's a primary source these days. One exception to this is written porn -- www.asstr.org is your friend, and I use them pretty much exclusively for my written porn.

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[Monkelectric]

I think porn supports the storage industry. I'm not kidding :)

One day I was walking into a Fry's (think circuit city but 10x as large and somehow more evil) and a guy was waiting in line to buy two 120gb drives (this was a couple years ago when that was HUGE). I walked up to him and said, "OHHHHHHHH those would hold ALLLOT of porn wouldn't they!?" The dude just turned bright red and didn't say a word :)

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[CrankyFool]

Of course the RIAA has a viable market without having to worry about file sharing. All they need to do is offer me music that is:
1. Decently priced;
2. Priced a-la-carte;
3. Allows for me to archive and re-present it however I wish with minimal limitations.

Ever heard of iTMS? :)

Oh, and the shower? Get off of it. We keep making jokes about porn, and you know the vast majority of us actually look at porn, but as soon as someone says, soberly and reasonably, "yes, I pay for porn and this is why" you flip?

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[Stuart Gibson]

Especially when there are excellent specific sites like Suicide Girls that treat the people paying well and have a brilliantly laid out site.

No, I don't subscribe, but if I ever wanted to pay for porn they would be the first to get the cash.

Goblin

Re:Who pays for Porn?

[gl4ss]

sure you find 20+ pics of any known porn actress easily but thats just about it, also good luck finding high resolution pictures. and did you read my post even in which I said that finding the stuff for free can be a hassle, even if it relatively easy at times?

google images is hardly a comparision to a proper site(sure they're great for general boob pics or whatever like that, and probably for pics of jenna jameson and other stars of that caliber, for fetish pics forget about it). also a lot of the easily available stuff is specifially made to be teasers of fuller content.

why do you even have a credit card if you're so suspicious? pay by paypal or something, or cash or whatever the high quality sites offer for options.

oh my god as soon as you pay for something _they_ _know_ what you're doing!!!! oh please.. if you assume that then you could just as well assume that they know which websites you're searching, in fact the guys at google might spot your search on their screen as well. sure there's people who wouldn't ever pay for porno but are willing to consume it anyways, just like there are dozens of people who wouldn't ever pay for mp3's(or even cd's, even if they could easily afford them) if they can download them for free, no matter the legality. however, some people are willing to change the hassle for the 'luxury' of being treated like a proper customer like on the better sites you would be.

This author is a GENIUS!

[Anonymous Coward]

What an excellent excuse for visiting porn sites at work!

Damn...I wish I was a writer...

Also ahead on the spam/marketing trends.

[DroopyStonx]

Yes, they are definitely ahead of the times compared to most others when it comes to technology, but they are also ahead of the times in the nextgen marketing/spam department.

Pop-ups? They did it first. Pop-unders? Did it first. The messenger exploit? Guess who.

God knows what else is brewing in the labs as we speak..

Porn pulls more traffic than god

[Melvin Daniels]

If you want to test a particular platform for scalability, have a porn outfit try it out.

It only makes sense, considering how rooted in sex we human beings really are. I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of, and if as a race we could be more open with our sexuality, it wouldn't cause so many other problems.

Porn and technology

[awkwardone]

Saw an interesting feature on a Dateline-type TV news show for my Cyberlaw class. It said that pornography has driven not only the Internet (streaming video, credit card verification, broadband, etc.), but also technologies like the VCR (instead of going to the sleazy adult theatre, you can watch skin flicks in your own home) and even cable television. It was said that the number of adult movie screens in this country (indeed, around the world) has gone up exponentially since the introduction of the VCR, and it hasn't decreased since. It takes away the need for people to go out and buy porn in a semi-public fashion.

Just think, if it weren't for our baser instincts, we'd never have advanced as far technologically as we have. Who knows what the future holds...

I had a professor...

[Trolling4Dollars]

...in college who did his doctoral o this exact subject. He later went on to work for ABC television. His basic gist was that it's the porn industry that actually works out the practical logistics of any new medium. At the time he was talking about the porn industry building the VHS video industry. A lot of movie studios were reluctant to put movies on VHS since they feared it would destroy their industry. But the porno business had nothing to lose as they were relegated to booths and shady theaters. So... they put ALL of their movies out on VHS. All those people out there who would NEVER be caught dead in a porno movie house or booth suddenly had access in their own living rooms and [BAM!!!] a new empire was born. Too bad porno movies soundtracks are so bad, otherwise the porno industry would probably have the online music distribution down pat in a short time.

Re:I had a professor...

[ExMember]

Too bad porno movies soundtracks are so bad, otherwise the porno industry would probably have the online music distribution down pat in a short time

While searching for books on tape in numerous truck stops across the continent, a friend of my pointed out that most truck stop carry erotic material on audio cassette. There is little demand for audio-only porno, but where the demand exists, they were there to satisfy.

Test bed...

[Rexz]

...test garage, test rocky outcrop, test limosine, test swimmingpool, test swing, test kitchen counter...

I wish all industries were so dedicated to testing.

The *internet experience* lends well to porn...

[gringo_john]

The internet seeems to lend itself well to porn. It provides all the ingredients to deliver pornographic content well:

- percieved anonymity
- convienence...content delivered on demand
- privacy of enjoying content in own home

I wonder how many people would pay a porn site to download content, but will not be willing to go to an "adult bookstore" to buy the same content?

Will people still visit porn sites if their employers knew what sites they visit?

Pioneering porn

[metal_priest]

Porn industry is quite responsive to new technology. Subscription models, streaming video, mobile content, all of these seem to make it in porn, but not the rest of the industry(not as easily).
ISPs also love hosting porn sites due to the highbandwidth, expensive accounts that these sites get. It's quite at how successful porn business is as compared to "decent" business models.

A known consensus eons ago

[Eberlin]

When the web started, these were the folks who mostly implemented the whole credit card/password access thing. They "stretched" graphics, streaming (uh huh huh) video, audio, and any other multimedia applications out there.

They've gone after the broadband crowd long before everyone else relied on it, and in a sense, continue to push the whole Internet-based "entertainment" stuff. Yeah, they innovate, can't deny that. They've always been in the fringe -- and everyone else just kinda looks on to see what does and doesn't work.

Hmmm, maybe they're the "military" of the Internet -- the technology gets designed for their purposes first, then once it's tested, goes on to find applications for the general public.

Innovation Driver: Porn vs. Military

[G4from128k]

This means that the adult entertainment industry and other fast-paced private industries have supplanted the military as a driver for leading-edge tech. The long procurement cycles for weapons and government programs mean that they use older tech. In fact, it is a real problem for vendors because the government wants specs on stuff to be delivered in 18-24 months (its hard to spec a PC 2 years in advance).

Although the military will always be the driver for some technologies, commerical enterprise, with its much faster innovation cycle time, seems to be taking over as the key driver for innovation.

Re:Innovation Driver: Porn vs. Military

[Lord_Dweomer]

" This means that the adult entertainment industry and other fast-paced private industries have supplanted the military as a driver for leading-edge tech. "

I think it would be more accurate to say that the military is still the leader in DEVELOPING such technology, while the porn industry is the leader of finding innovative uses for such technology. The porn industry didn't invent the VCR or the net, they just figured out some awesome ways to use it.

Best Job Ever.

[Talinom]

Maybe having an adult content provider listed on your geek resume isn't so bad after all."

The only thing better than surfing the internet for pr0n is getting paid to put it there.

Interesting...Porn isn't a "resume stain" anymore?

[eric434]

I find it interesting that the article suggests that having experience in the online adult industry would be beneficial to one's resume. While technology may be driven by porn, I suspect that most subsequent employers would not be enlightened enough to see past the "porn" part of it...

Full Steam Advertisement

[powerpuffgirls]

As you can tell I don't view porn, but is the Porn Industry doing full content streaming yet?

The advertising industry nowadays wants/tries to do something more than just plain banner ads on the website, but have they found a way to do a full streaming efficiently?

IS PORN TECH THE ANSWER? :)

Old News

[njcoder]

This is old news. Some of the big companies don't admit it but the reason we can have some great technologies available and the amount of scalability in some frameworks is because of porn.

I doubt I'd find it if I tried but I remember reading an article about a year or more ago from a big porn site operator taking about the advantages of using J2EE technologies in their high traffic sites. There were also comments about companies using them to fine tune their frameworks because of the real world load they had. I found this article when I wanted to find out more about competing technologies. I specifically wanted to find what the porn industry was using for their websites knowing how much traffic they get. So I stuck with jsp/servlet programming. If it's good enough for half naked women with fake boobs, it's good enough for me!

Unfortunately, people might not go to well for the slogan "Java & J2EE, we help you get sticky."

Porn has helped innovate many industries. It's a shame there's too much of a stigma associated with it and they don't get the recognition they deserve.

Porn driving technology

[El]

Well, it's certainly the driving force behind the devlopment of one-handed input technology!

Very true

[sjhwilkes]

The company I work for hosts some of the largest porn sites on the web - we have 4 gigs - Internet, and all the latest Cisco toys: iSCSI SANs, 6500's with load balancing, IDS, and firewall modules, gig E everywhere, real-time geographical load distribution, you name it.

My last two gigs were Universal and Sony (I'm in LA) and both were tiny Internet environments compared to this.

Our SAN has 7TB of content so far & we're adding 1/2 a TB a month...

Re:Very true

[Gr33nNight]

You hiring?

Re:Very true

[Tackhead]

> The company I work for hosts some of the largest porn sites on the web - we have 4 gigs - Internet, and all the latest Cisco toys: iSCSI SANs, 6500's with load balancing, IDS, and firewall modules, gig E everywhere, real-time geographical load distribution, you name it.
>
> My last two gigs were Universal and Sony (I'm in LA) and both were tiny Internet environments compared to this.
>
> Our SAN has 7TB of content so far & we're adding 1/2 a TB a month...

/squirms in chair awkwardly

So, umm... got, uh... any pics of the server room? Webcam in the colo so's we can watchen das blinkenlights at night? Man, I love the sight a nice rack.

It's a cliche, but true...

[ChiralSoftware]

Porn moves technology forward. Who would pay $2,000 for a VCR when there are no movies to rent? Guys who want to watch videos in their own homes. Who would put up with expensive ISPs, difficult modems and slow computers? Guys who want to see porn on their computers. The future is wireless porn according to Larry Flynt.

It is a great market for testing many things because it is such a commoditized and competitive market. The material is all the same boring stuff, so they need to explore new ways to market it. Is there a porn version of Netflix yet? Who is going to be the first in wireless porn?

--------
Create a WAP server

Porn built the internet AND DVD

[MukiMuki]

I'd also like to note that a couple of DVD features, such as multiple angels, were pretty much implemented thanks to the porn industry.

Think that's BS?

How many movies have multiple angles that DON'T involve storyboards?

How many PORN movies have multiple angles? (not that I personally know or anything...)

Yeah, thought so.

Re:Porn built the internet AND DVD

[bsartist]

I'd also like to note that a couple of DVD features, such as multiple angels

Nah. The "multiple angels" fantasy predates DVD by quite a bit. It's been the #1 male fantasy since porn was invented.

Re:Porn built the internet AND DVD

[Tackhead]

> > I'd also like to note that a couple of DVD features, such as multiple angels
>
> Nah. The "multiple angels" fantasy predates DVD by quite a bit. It's been the #1 male fantasy since porn was invented.

God: "So, Number Two, what would you do if you had a million bucks?"
Lucifer: "Two angels at once."

Re:Porn built the internet AND DVD

[wideBlueSkies]

Nothing like a couple of strategically placed mirrors to keep things interesting and fresh.

So THAT's what they look like from the side when they bounce......

wbs.

Power to the pornsters...

[Supp0rtLinux]

Still wondering why I can stream Debbie Does Dallas (the original) to my Zaurus over 802.11b faster than to my PC with a 1GB ethernet adaptor.

Something the article fails to mention is the money behind porn. The porn industry is the *only* industry that has never suffered financially. There have never been layoffs. And while mostly privately held (after all, who wants their investment portfolio filled with smut companies), its one of the best funded industries out there. The porn industry has the $$$ to make things work, but they don't always share their technologies. The majority also use some form of *nix in their infrastructure... very little M$ found in the porn industry. And from a dot-bomb perspective, I made a killing as a 21-year-old making over $150K a year in the dot-com era. When I finally got laid off, I went to Vivid Video. While all my other over $100K a year friends and co-workers are now averaging $80K to $90K, I'm now making over $200K. There's something to be said for working in an industry with money. And, no, I'm not an actor, but I do get to watch whatever I want... and occasionally some of the girls need a little relief. :)

The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers

Re:Power to the pornsters...

[Supp0rtLinux]

Also worth pointing out... the porn industry's innovation is self serving. ie: if some porn guys get together to work on content delivery, they do so because it will directly affect sales of their product. They already know people want porn. There's no need for marketing. The demand exists. So they simply work on technologies, protocols, and implementation of existing tools to meet the demand. Commercial interests vary a bit in this regard. Take M$, for example. They always develop new stuff (yeah, I know... and they also borrow ideas). But once its created and appears to then be working, they still have to market it. They have to tell people its out there so people will know to buy it and use it. With porn, this isn't the case. People go looking for porn... it doesn't come looking for them. And when they see its available in a simple format, they get it. Also worth noting, most porn viewers won't complain when they're streaming video fails. They might cancel their $20/month subscription, but most are too embarrassed to admit viewing it, so they just don't complain. As such, when porn content delivery fails for the average user, we don't hear about it.

Little trivia note: ever see the movie Anti-Trust? If you get beyond the drama and look at the goal of the software company goals, it was about content delivery. I know from personal experience that the writers of the movie spent about 2 months talking to porn industry people before writing this portion of the script. They did so because they knew that porn companies were using technology that the mainstream wasn't and therefore could offer it as *new ideas* in the movie, but not ideas that were too far fetched to believe. In fact, everyone at my studio got a free advance screening.

The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers

Re:Power to the pornsters...

[gopherdata]

An interesting theory, but incorrect. While people do seek out porn, there are so many competing adult companies that advertising is extremely important. Content and delivery methods are far less important than traffic. Most online adult companies spend the lions share of their budget on advertising.

Apply the "porn rule" to your business plan

[Soylent Moose]

Perhaps an offshoot of saying Porn is a testbed, but I've always thought of Porn as the measure of a viable business plan. Are you building a technology that can arguably be used for Porn? If the answer is "yes" then build it! If not, don't bother.

Okay, I'm also being touch-and-cheek but I think the Rule of Porn mostly works. Can you use Google for porn? Yep, must be a good technology. Can you use faster Internet access for porn? Yep... and so on.

Porn Experts?

[Lucky Tony]

Quote from article: "...online-porn experts say." Isn't every male an online-porn expert? How does one become an 'online-porn expert'?

Soooooo original

[benploni]

Like this is the first article to point out that porn is often used for testing beds!

Diamong Water Paradox

[agslashdot]

Porn is that perfect equilibrium point on the chart that economic theorists dream about - the ultimate cash nexus, where the supply demand curves collide in ecstatic harmony.

Consider - there is enough technical info on the internet to perform nuclear fusion, harness solar energy to power your homes, run your car on biofuel from corn instead of gasoline, create immense wealth from freely available portfolio management techniques, crack the genetic code, break RSA crypto, find the next largest Mersenne prime, or maybe just find a new home, repair your microwave, hawk your old CDs.....or even build yourself an H-bomb & blow up this planet to bits.

Yet, what is the most sought after commodity on the net ? Porn !

Why is that ?
In "The Wealth of Nations", Adam Smith explains the "Diamond-Water paradox". The most useful, valuable, life-sustaining entity on the planet is water - yet, it has practically no price, since supply is free ( it rains ! ). The least useful frivilous commodity is the diamond, but it has enormous, immense value in the eyes of man.

So, Smith says, an economist must never attempt to tie value with price, since they don't have much of a relationship. Porn on the net is much more valuable than all the useful techie manuals & MIT courseware put together, because Porn is the ultimate diamond.

Re:Diamong Water Paradox

[buck_wild]

The sad thing is that if folks visited some of the other informational sites that engaged the brain in an effort to educate it in the ways of attracting the opposite sex, sex would be arguably free.

(Yes, I understand that much of the money made on the internet by the 'fringe' segments of the sex market, namely the fettish sections.)

In essence, there would be no need to buy a diamond, because you could simply just pick one up off the ground.

Re:Interesting...Porn isn't a "resume stain" anymo

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

It's all in how you write your resume. "Commercial internet based multi-media provideer" sounds much better than "systems administrator for Sluts-R-Us.com."

I can get it for you wholesale.

Re:Duh.

[SeinJunkie]

People don't develop better video codecs so they can email their moms home movies.

Depends on where you grew up and how freaky your mom is.

Re:porn is like information .. it wants to be free

[CrankyFool]

I remember my daddy telling me when I was a child "go ahead, look at porn as much as you'd like, but I better not catch you paying for it!"

To this day, his stance is that the two things in life you don't pay for are porn and fire extinguishers*.

*Long story

So THAT'S why Beta lost...

[finelinebob]

Sony should have invested in the porn industry....

Re:So THAT'S why Beta lost...

[sprior]

They could have done much better if they had introduced master beta.

Oh come on, you laughed...

Re:So THAT'S why Beta lost...

[sTalking_Goat]

There's actually truth in this. They refused to lisence the Beta technology to Porn Producers. So they industry went to VHS. The rest is history.

PoultryCam vs. PussyCam

[dspyder]

True story...

We were developing (back in the dot-com days, a moment of silence please) a desktop collaboration software (think NetMeeting, WebEx, etc.) but we had a way-supeior codec and way of doing things.

Along came a company, that wanted to use our server technology to stream video. Interestingly not a porn company, but none other than those fine friers of chicken, KFC. They wanted to wire up all their stores and stream their security monitoring cameras back to HQ security. We called the project ChickenCam...

Coincidentally, a few weeks later we were approached by a company out of the LA area (where else) who wanted a surprisingly similar implementation. They were a little sketchy about the details in their first call, but eventually they let on that they wanted various video channels to stream to their users. It was then that we decided to rename the ChickenCam project to PoultryCam to match this PussyCam project. We didn't think CatCam and ChickenCam was nearly as much fun.

In the end, the PussyCam ended up going operational, but the thick client install and configuration made it less than successful (as I had originally predicted). We did sell the PoultryCam, but they only ever implemented it in one store and then gave up on the whole idea.

Those were the days...

--D

p.s. Any porn companies currently hiring?

Ah yes, my porn days....

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

A lot of people have this idea that most porn is run on flaky servers in big server farms by shadowy sleaze bags. Form my experience working for Internet Entertainment Group, only one of those things (run by sleaze bags) was true. We ran IEG out of half a floor in a glass tower next to Pike Place Market in Seattle. We had 2 OC-3 lines and a few T-1s running from our studios in Capital Hill, 9 SGI servers running IRIX, and a RAID with terabytes before people tossed that term around much. Totally "state of the art". The boss, Seth, however, was a sleaze of the first level, and now resides in Thailand (for some reason, he fears coming back here, pissed off a few people).

Boring image search results

[77Punker]

Find the name of a model, especially one knows to pose nude. Now type it in on Google image search. Now you have a page full of way more porn than you can usually get, usually much higher quality than searching for "porn".

This is Slashdot so

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

"from the sound of one hand posting stories-dept"

Guttenberg too...

[turnstyle]

You don't think Guttenberg only printed bibles, do you? ;)

Re:Guttenberg too...

[Gorobei]

"Watson, I need you."

"Watson, tell me what you're wearing."

Pr0n Leads the way

[GeorgeH]

Originally posted at http://george.hotelling.net/90percent/linkage/pr0n _leads_the_way.php:

I found a pretty insightful rant (safe for work) copied from the business guy at the altporn site Suicide Girls. I wish the RIAA would start tracking how people hear about the albums that they buy, so that they could stop freaking out.

Porn has a long history of figuring out how to use new media to their advantage. Perhaps because porn is driven by our basest instinct we understand it on far deeper levels than widget building, and can apply that understanding to things that we don't fully comprehend intellectually. Maybe it's just because there's such intense competition in the industry that forces companies to innovate. I'm sure there's a "free hand of the market" joke in there, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

The VCR was largely decried by the MPAA because they saw it as cutting into their profits. When the VCR was still new, MPAA president Jack Valenti said the VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. (which of course means that he wasn't opposed to the VCR). A driver of early VCR purchases was being able to watch porn movies without having to go to theaters filled with creepier people than you. Fast forward 20 years and that Boston strangler makes up a huge portion of movie studio profits.

While I'm skeptical that porn can drive any technology - who really needs porn on their cellphone at blazing speeds - the porn industry typically ahead of the curve. Let's hope the RIAA realizes this and stops suing 12 year old girls.

Why to buy porno; prono for the people

[strider_starslayer]

I'm seeing a lot of questions out there for 'who would actually buy porno', and I'm suprised that no one is stating what (to me at least) would be the obvious answers

I'm going to point out that I heavily considered positing anonomusly cause I'm a coward; but decided not to.

1-People who want to dictate things; most porn sites mention that when your a paying member you can request seeing your faviorate 'actress' in different scenarios- If you've got a fetish for a green haired version of your faviorate internet-porn actress in a pumpkin patch (most ridiculus but likely to take place example I could come up with) and your a paying customer; you can get it.

2-People who want to get involved in things, at least superficially (being a 'web cam director at a 'mere 2.95 a minute on top of your regular membership')

3-For the really creepy stuff; buying things that your faviorate porn actress has worn (lots of porn sites advertise this bizarr activity; then again, apparantly they sell worn girls panties in vending machines in japan)

4-Full Length Videos; Ignoring illegally downloading them off of P2P networks, if you like videos signing up to these places is often the way to go; even over P2P networks the video's are often portions of larger clips

5-Video Purchase (though this often dose not nessessitiate being a member; there is often a discount that makes it worthwile if your going to buy a few); because eventually your going to run out of hard disk space from downloading, or want 3 hours of solid girl on girl action on DVD.

I should point out that a casual porn store will be able to facilitate a few of those; but I imagine what you get from a website is more 'amature' or 'girl next door' then what you'd get in professional porn.

USENIX knew this years ago

[Frisky070802]

The 1998 USENIX Annual Technical Conference had an invited talk entitled Succumbing to the Dark Side of the Force: The Internet as See from an Adult Web Site . It was a huge, packed room; I felt sorry for the poor geeks talking about 64-bit address spaces in the other room!

... All 20 of them.

The elusive step 2?

[mdfst13]

1. Brilliant idea
2. Apply to porn industry
3. Profit!

Re:pr0n poll

[joshwa]

where do you get BT porn? i've looked, but not found. I'm all about apps and tv shows via BT, but I'm still stuck on USENET for porn.

Future porn technologies

[Lord_Dweomer]

Ok, I'll start it, feel free to add on. Porn has already led the way for print, VHS, the telephone, and the internet. Where are they going to lead us next? The following are some areas I think will be thrust into the mainstream (no pun intended) thanks to pr0n:

-Androids
-True virtual reality
-Smell-o-vision/Taste-o-vision
-Small, cheap personal video players
-Stain proof clothing
-Genetics

Re:Future porn technologies

[cruel_elevator]

I have different ideas about this.

First of all, porn isn't meant to be as realistic as possible. We watch porn being fully aware that this stuff isn't real. It's a way to experience fantasies... it kind of ends there. Porn does not replace real sex all together - it complements it.

Let's look at your points:

1. Androids - We already have Real Dolls. A reporter actually had sex with a real doll and documented his feelings in nerve.com. No, I won't post the link - go look it up there if you're interested. Bottom line - it's weird and freaky. If it moves and talks, it's going to be outright scary.

2. "True" Virtual Reality - Maybe, but it's not going to replace 2D porn in a hurry. I'd keep an eye on this one though.

3. Smell / Taste - I don't think so. Is there anyone else who finds the concept of smelling / tasting another unknown person (although a celebrity) gross? FYI, flavor and beauty may not be correlated.

4. Personal Video Players - We already have this stuff. What we don't have is a good quality, consumer grade "personal display", i.e. stuff like the Xybernaut (TV screen in your sunglasses). I believe that personal displays will bring about a revolution but porn would have little to do with it.

5. Stain proof clothing / Genetics - WTF?!

Looking at your point 1, 2 and 3 it appears that you're trying to get replace sex completely. That is not the main concept here. I think that the development in porn industry is going to be not technological. It'd more towards the "subject" of the content. Examples:

a. Customized porn: Some sites offer this. It's like you choose the theme, setting, models, dialogues, name of characters and the story. They act this out for you. Right now it's quite expensive and is only offered by sites that has really weird content (fetish / bondage). I guess this will pick up.

b. Similar to a, but more "community" oriented. Maybe some sort of an moderation style system where the best user-submitted story gets acted out. Or, photo shoot for models / themes with top votes from users. Scoop / Slashcode anyone?

c. Porn for couples: Eventually people get laid. Till date, porn is mostly a guy thing. Now what happens when you feel like watching porn with your S/O? You're not going to watch "4 on 1 DD sluts" with your girlfriend, right? It think the next trend is going to be porn for couples.

d. End of stereotyped porn as we know it. Girls won't keep their high heels on, all acts won't have oral sex, guys won't look like zombies grown in vats, and the movie won't end with money shots. There's too much content in this theme and nobody would be willing to pay for this anymore.

Re:Innovation Driver: Military lost it in 1990s

[G4from128k]

The military may use old technology now, but at the time those machines are designed for the military they are the highest of high-tech.

You raise some very good points. I think the change-over from military applications being the leader to being the follower occured on the last 10-15 years. In the mid-80s the DoD adopted a COTS (Commmercial Off The Shelf) strategy to help reduce systems costs. Bad press about $600 toilet seats and $2000 screwdrivers made them shift from custom-designing and building everything to buying off the shelf.

I remember studying the synthetic aperture radar system for the F-15. It had a 500 MFlop-equivalent processor for doing FFTs and came out in the mid-60s -- definitely way past the leading edge. Then I noticed that the F-22, being designed in the 90s was only going to use a 20MHz i860. At the time, commerical CPUs were pushing past 100 MHz and the F-22 wasn't even first flown until 1997 and won't be in routine service until 2005. Now I'm sure they've upgraded the avionics for faster CPUs but I'd bet that when it enters service it will be at least 2 to 4 doublings behind commerically-available hardware.

Looking at current IT, I'd say that the military has contributed little to the most recent advancements in CPU and communications (how much of does Intel get from govt contracts vs. commercial sales? How about Cisco? or Nokia?). I'm sure the government buys lots of stuff from these vendors, but I'd also bet that its a minority of these company's business volumes and strategic concerns. Intel & Cisco design their new products for the commercial market, not the military market these days.

Yes, the military played a huge role in getting tech off the ground in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. But somewhere in the late 80s and 90s, commerical applications became the driving force in tech. The DoD's move to COTS and the mass-adoption of tech in everyday life has put the military in the backseat on mainstream tech development.

Re:Correction

[symbolic]

Face it: sex is the driving force behind our [and every] species, so its no surprise that almost all of our cultural structures seem to largely depend on it somehow.

I'd argue that sex itself has nothing to do with it - it's the incredible preoccupation and obsession with it that comprises this "driving force."

I'm still trying to figure out what's 'adult' about most 'adult' content, since much of it depicts a complete absence of restraint, common sense, and reality in general - all the things we're told are important while growing up. Either we're massive hypocrites, or they really are important.

There's this guy who sits close by where I work - I get the impression that he thinks he's a real savvy dude. What he doesn't know is that I know everything he does on the network- including all the hardcore porn sites he visits. It's sad, but I get a good laugh out out of it.

Re:Correction

[The Only Druid]

This is off-topic, dont bother modding me down for it, I just want to comment on Symbolic's sig:

Slashdot must not ever have editing of posts for one simple reason, that it would remove accountability (and be psychotic if it allowed mod'ed posts to be edited). Imagine trying to understand a nested message board like this, with comments about parent posts, etc., when people repeatedly edited their posts? It would become impossible to understand what was going on...

Worse, what if your post was modded to 5, then you edited it to be innappropriate? The entire point of moderation - to bring good ideas to the forfront - would be ruined.

Porn just made it what it is today

[coughski]

The porn industry has always been a driving force in widespread adoption of technology.
Think VCRs, would they be so popular without porn?

Porn certainly didn't invent or build the internet but it exposed the internet to households across the world that otherwise would never use it.

Without porn the internet would be used by geeks in a very limited niche of technology.

Porn brought the internet to the massess

cough

Advice to aspiring porn god.

[Civil_Disobedient]

How does one become an adult webmaster

There are a couple of ways to do it. The first method involves having a very willing girlfriend that has a lot of friends who aren't afraid to take their clothes off. If you date a stripper or a wanna-be porn starlet, you're set.

The second method is more difficult now, but basically, find a niche and fill it. Unfortunately, most of the common fetishes (big breasts, asians, lesbian, blonds, etc.) are already represented by some very well-established sites, so what you're left with is catering to the Fat Asian Foot-Fetishists out there. Not very enjoyable work, and hard-as-hell to get content.

Personally, I worked with a photographer for a few years, and we did a number of shoots for strippers who wanted to become models. The problem is, most strippers simply don't have the right looks or height to be a model. But we would shoot them regardless, since they paid our bills.

We decided to offer free publicity shots (since we kept the publishing rights), and word got around. Mind you, Joe Photo won't be able to pull this off. The key to being a successful photographer is looking like a successful photographer: plenty of strobes, lots of tripods hanging on the walls, a proper studio, tearsheets casually tossed about, etc.. The photog I worked with probably had a hundred grand invested in equipment.

The nice thing about strippers is that they tend to be a bit crazy to begin with, and if you're reasonably cool they won't have a problem doing crazy shit in front of a camera. In their minds, it beats having to ass-grind some fat slob at a club any day of the week.

This can get expensive, however, depending on location. Which is the next point: go where the talent is. We worked on the East Coast, and there's just not a lot of girls going into porn over here. And the strippers? Well, your standards tend to drop when you have a real-flesh-and-blood girl dancing for you, but for an online audience the bar is raised considerably. Your girls either better be extremely attractive, have enormous breasts, or be willing to do some pretty extreme stuff if you're going to keep up with the competition.

So, if you really want to be a PornGod, here's my advice. First, move to L.A. -- there's a lot more "talent" (ha!) to be had for a lot less dough. Learn some basic studio photography, then shell out a couple grand for a prosumer digital camera and some strobes. Rent a studio someplace that's easy to get to by public transportation (bus, train, whatever). Or, make friends with a photographer that's already established and shares your enthusiasm for naked chicks and doesn't mind ruining his professional career (i.e., his day job). That's not to say that your name will get dragged through the mud if you go into porn, but it's a risk.

Once you've got that, set up a website with a host that won't boot you for hosting porn. Set up your site, plan what kind of market you're aiming at, and start filling it with stuff you find on USENET. Yes, it's not really legal, but if there's no (c) on the picture, and you're still small-time, you can consider it fair game. Now comes the fun part...

Head down to your local strip club. You're not going for a lap dance, so try and be professional and curteous. Really look at the girls -- don't just oggle their nakedness. If you don't see anyone that catches your eye, move on to the next place. Try to remain as objective as you can (it gets easier the more you do it). If you find a couple of girls you like, approach them after a routine when they're walking around the club. Tell them your name, what you would like to use them for, and hand them a business card. Look at her eyes, not her tits, and you're more likely to be taken seriously. Tell them how much you're paying for a shoot, and ask them to pass along the information to anyone they think might be interested.

Don't engage them in a long conversation, since they're technically on the clock and y

Porn on Wall Street?

[ziggr]

If porn is a recession-proof industry, why are so few porn companies listed on the stock market? I would *much* rather see my retirement money being used to produce something of value like this, than wasted on WorldCom and Enron scandals.

By searching boycott lists from religious fundamentalist groups, it is possible to find some publicly traded porn companies. There is also the Vice Fund, but that is mostly drinking and gambling, not airbrushed silicone.

Where is the Vangard T&A 44DD Fund when you need it?

Re:pr0n poll

[slaker]

I have a number of fairly normal desktop machines (mostly Athlon64s) that happen to have around 900GB of disk space. It's not a big deal. A terabyte of disk space costs about $1000. I've acquired around 2TB of space just in the last year. All told I'm a hair over 5TB among my various machines (some of that space is redundant storage in arrays).

No. I don't invest very much actual time on downloads. I wrote some scripts to grab content from various places on the web. I look at a few "favorite" sites daily, but that's not a large investment in time. Maybe 15 minutes. I usually find new sites serendipitously, and they if they appear to update content with any frequency, I add 'em to the script.

It's pretty typical for me to pick up 300MB of stuff in a night from scripts. Sometimes I'll subscribe to a pay site and grab the whole thing.

I'm a general-purpose media collector. I own maybe 3200 CDs (all classical music), about 1000 (video, non-adult) DVDs and collections of paperback novels, magazines, sheet music and comic books. I have a complete-except-for-three-issues collection of Playboy magazines, for example.

I got interested in video capture hardware seven or eight years ago, when my Pentium Pro machine was a fantastic powerhouse, just to see what I could do with it. I started doing my home movies, then tried commercial tapes... which didn't work, because of macrovision. But a porn tape did, so I started duping the oldest tapes my local video store had (the ones I liked best). Not long after I picked up an affordable CD-R drive and I started making VCDs that I sold on ebay. From there I started getting requests, and then the hunt was on for stuff I couldn't get locally and... wham. I had a collection.

So I'm a media geek of some kind. I re-wired my whole house for media access about three weeks after I bought it. I can watch my DVDs or listen to my music in any room. If I have some kind of OCD, it's probably deeper than just downloading/collecting porno. I *do* take 200mg of Zoloft a day, which I know is used to treat OCD among other things (severe depression in my case).

For the other thing: there's this. She didn't mind playboy stuff, and she actually _liked_ dirty movies, although ironically she had me pre-screen to make sure there WASN'T g/g activity... which itself led to a great deal of knowledge about the movies and the people in them (for example, a movie with Tera Patrick is a good bet for straight M/F sex. I haven't seen her with a girl yet).
Anyway, she was more annoyed with the amount of space my collections took up than anything else. At the end of our time living together, she asked me for specific things to take and share with her girlfriend (in case you were wondering why I need the Zoloft).

I can't judge how other people react. I'm not good at that sort of thing. But it's not like I'd talk about it in front of other real-life people. But here I can be at least be honest about such things.

To get sex

[Ossadagowah]

Every invention of the 20th century has been in some way related to sex.

Cars. Drive off somewhere to get sex, or have sex in a private portable room.

Phones. Call people, arrange to meet them. Have sex.

TVs. Watch people having sex. Boobs, too.

VCRs. See TVs.

Internet. Watch people having sex. Contact people around the world in order to meet and have sex with them. Also, look at porn.

DVDs. See VCRs, only with multiple camera angles for Matrix-style camerawork during porn scenes.

Drive-by porn, a new hazard for drivers

[ArseneLupin]

DETROIT, Michigan (AP) -- Andrea Carlton hadn't planned on telling her daughter about the birds and bees until she was 8 or 9. But that changed the night 4-year-old Catherine spotted a porno movie flickering on a screen in a minivan nearby.

"Just like there's no windows in a strip club, you shouldn't be able to see inside windows in a car when they're watching X-rated movies," said Carlton, a 26-year-old from Gurnee, Illinois.

More and more Americans are buying vehicles with DVD players, usually to keep the kids entertained. But an increasing number of other people on the road are catching a glimpse through the windows of more than just "Finding Nemo" and "SpongeBob SquarePants."

Depending on where they are driving or parked, motorists could face fines and even jail time for screening X-rated stuff. But where the law may not be clear, some are calling for tighter regulation.

"Residents should not be subjected to those obscenities," said Flint City Councilwoman Carolyn Sims, who is examining whether an ordinance packing a $500 fine is needed. "They do have a right to have peace and tranquility and not to have this exposure to sex in their face."

A driver in Schenectady, New York, was arrested last month after rolling past police with a DVD titled "Chocolate Foam" playing on the passenger-side sun visor in his Mercedes-Benz, authorities said. The movie also was rolling on screens set into the car's headrests.

The driver was accused of breaking state laws prohibiting watching TV while driving, as well as another law making it illegal to exhibit sexually explicit material in a public place.

"The detective had a clear view of what was playing through the window. Anyone walking by on the street could have seen it," Schenectady police Lt. Peter Frisoni Jr. said of the nighttime traffic stop. "If he had dark, tinted windows where you couldn't see in, that wouldn't be a public display."

As for Carlton, she was driving in the Chicago suburb of Buffalo Grove with her daughter when Catherine glimpsed the sexually explicit movie. The experience last fall upset the girl and angered Carlton.

Carlton and her husband sat down with Catherine and offered the best explanation they could. Since then, Carlton has spotted other motorists with explicit movies playing, including a couple watching from the back seat of their car in a store parking lot.

"You're not allowed to have sex in your car, so why are you allowed to watch it?" Carlton asked.

Most states, including Michigan, have laws that make it illegal to watch TV while driving. Laws governing the exhibition of pornography vary by state, but experts say they could be applied to drivers as well.

"I think those restrictions would apply if the content is located in a vehicle," said Jeff Matsuura, director of the law and technology program at the University of Dayton. "You have effectively moved beyond the privacy of your own home."

During the day, it is often difficult to see what is playing inside another vehicle. But at night, the screens are easily visible from a passing car or a vehicle stopped alongside at a traffic light. The screens are also getting bigger.

In Flynt, Sims took up the issue after hearing from a woman who was driving with her 5-year-old when she spotted porn playing on a vehicle's 13-inch TV screen. A police officer who happened to see the display pulled over the driver, Sims said, but let him off with a warning.

To Sims, a 23-year police veteran who retired in 2001, playing an explicit movie in view of other motorists or pedestrians is akin to flashing or having sex in a public place.

But Michigan State Police, who have not had any cases of in-car porn, say playing an X-rated movie might not be easy to prosecute unless it can be proved that the motorist intended for others to see it.

Rocks in your bed.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know your a geek when .......
you've had more computers than girl friends.

Re:pr0n poll

[slaker]

What's your definition of "quality"?

My tastes actually run to softcore photos rather than out-and-out porn.

Here's a decent set of recommendations.

In the movie department there are a lot of variables. I'll restrain myself to movies you might find on the shelf at your local shop.

Movies from Private usually have unenhanced girls doing nasty things with guys who don't look like they just got out of prison. Quality is generally very high there but no single movie stands out.

Wicked's films usually have something resembling a plot. I like Brad Armstrong's work almost universally. "Not a Romance" is a recent standout.

Vivid has all the "name" performers. Chances are, if there's a starlet you're into, she works for Vivid. Vivid's movies are reasonably well-made, but photography isn't ever great and they use the same four former inmates in every movie. On the plus side, they (and Wicked and things fom Adam and Eve productions, also) tend not to veer off into anything particularly nasty, so they're a little more S.O. friendly. One of my favorite recent Vivid movies is "Roommates", which happens to have the best plot I can think of in a movie from the '90s. It actually manages to be a little bit thrilling in a "thriller" sort-of way, and there's a sense of "real life" about it, too.

Andrew Blake and Michael Ninn both make heavily stylized, beautifully filmed material. Pornographic art-movies, really. Their movies are less about the sex act and more about the image on the screen; comparing a Blake movie to something from Vivid is like comparing "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" to "The Tuxedo".

I avoided Hustler's video line for a long time because, well, it's Hustler. I don't like the magazine, it's too crude for my taste. But I got a copy of "Barely Legal #1" about a year ago and, with the unfortunate exception of the director's urine fetish, it was good. "Barely Legal" is young girls and the inmates who love them, but it's well-photographed, stocked with really cute natural-type young women and consistently hot sex. I actually like "Hot Showers", the all-girl series a little better, since it maintains the otherwise high-quality of "Barely Legal" and completely avoids the knuckle-dragging simians. I think "Barely Legal on Vacation" is probably the best of the series.
I mentioned softcore: I like Playboy videos. Over time a decent number of high-quality vignettes have been produced to show between movies on the Playboy channel, which have been collected on DVD as "Erotic Fantasies" and "Inside Out" They're short and steamy. Me and my ex- used to love 'em.

Is that enough or are you looking for something in particular?

Re:Correction

[Tassach]

There's a very simple solution.

There should be 3 things that make a post uneditable:

1. Someone responds to the post
2. Someone moderates the post
3. A hard time limit passes

A time limit alone isn't good enough. Once someone responds or moderates, a post should be set in stone.

Re:Correction

[greenhide]

The difference is that despite what some people here on Slashdot think, the important thing *isn't* your karma or the moderation -- it's the comments themselves. I think it does make sense that if no one has "acted on" a post, you can assume that changing it would not be that different from if the poster had simply hit the "Preview" button instead of the "Submit" button, edited the previewed message, and hit "Post". Once a message has been acted on in some way, however, *especially* if someone has responded to it, then changes should not be allowed. Why? Here's an example:

First Version:

Porn is for Losers!
by Some_Jerkface on Friday March 12, @12:00 AM (#12343242)
You are all wrong, porn has never been a source of innovation, only the growth of perverts! Anyone who has ever looked at porn should go to hell!

Well...
by Some_Other_Jerkface on Friday March 12, @ 7:00 AM
Well, as someone who frequently looks at these sorts of images, I can tell you that I don't necessarily consider myself a loser. The human body is a beautiful thing. ;-)

After edit:

Concern over Child Pornography
by Some_Jerkface on Friday March 12, @12:00 AM (#12343242)
One thing that concerns me is the growth of child pornography over the Internet. Again, the porn industry (in this case, the child porn industry) is more techonologically advanced than the government that is trying to stop it. Ultimately, the only thing that will end child porn is if every loser that looks at these photos is sent to jail.

Well...
by Some_Other_Jerkface on Friday March 12, @ 7:00 AM
Well, as someone who frequently looks at these sorts of images, I can tell you that I don't necessarily consider myself a loser. The human body is a beautiful thing. :-)

Obviously, you can see the sort of confusion that could result from posting edits. Moderation is just the tip of the iceberg. Once you edit a comment, replies to it could make no sense, or have a completely different meaning!

If you post something and it has a goof in it, I'd just laugh it off.