the escort business is illegal Actually the escort business is not illegal. Prostitution (the exchange of value for sexual actions) is illegal in most jurisictions in the U.S. As long as the "escort agency" makes no promises to do more than have someone come visit you it is hard to prove that they were furthering prostitution. The usual result is that the "independant contractor" (the woman working for the service) gets arrested and the business claims they had no idea what was going on, did not control their contractors, etc. While I would find it easy to believe that most people running these businesses are scummy (no personal knowledge!) it seems a rather broad fishing expedition to buy up a web site to check for suspicions of federal crime. Maybe they were looking for slavery as the orginal post suggested, or maybe money laundering. Still this seems like a waste. By the way, I just checked - decadentcity.com is available now for any entrepeneur who wants to restart the service.
There is already a large amount of "virtual property" floating around. Indeed it is on of the marks of an advanced economy that value is represented by intellectual properties that have little or no intrinsic worth, and could be duplicated by anyone with access to the appropriate technology. Legal systems then are built up to protect this "wealth" that has no intrinsic value. The result is that the economy now has ways to store value that can later be turned into actual consumables that a person would want or need - food, shelter, entertainment of ones self and others, etc. The earliest case was money. Early in its development only those with access to, first, metal stamping, later printing technologies, could reproduce money. To prevent unauthorized individuals from creating money counterfiting laws were created. Today anyone with a source of high quality paper and a 1200dpi inkjet can create a facsimile of money - but it ISN'T money because money is not a physical "thing" it is a virtual one! Today computer software is valuable because it takes skilled workers to create it and it can be substituted for other, more expensive, workers and equipment. But it too is a virtual good which exists only because of an advanced legal system. Ultimately its value will be what can be done with the software, not its existance. The people in China are no richer because (due to the lack of effective laws) they can have lots of cheap software. The warez doodz who crack programs just for the fun of it do not create wealth for themselves just by breaking the protection on a program they have no use for. The wealth comes from providing something that another values more than you value that time it took to create it. And then using the resources recieved to create more of a valuable item in an even better way. Spain was not made wealthy by the gold of the Aztecs, but Britain was made wealthy by machine made cotton and wool cloth. I see no real difference between buying software and buying a game character, both of which took some time and skill to create, and is therefore scarce, and which allows an individual to have fun, and is therefore desireable. This will last as long as there is someone to authenticate the "ownership" and laws or procedures exist to handle disputes. The best wealth is created by a network of people all producing small amounts of betterment for themselves and resulting in a betterment of the community which benefits all. Finally, a reply to Dr. Sp0ng: allow trading in your game. Even encourage it. This will create a commitment to your game by people who will see it as even more than entertainment. Ultimately everyone benefits from the community effect, even you (just like Open Source).
Unfortunately pattern recognition for something as variable as a face has not yet reached the API level. To do something like you suggest one would have to 'roll your own' with fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms for improving the weights, neural nets for feature extraction, etc. Doable, but not an evening programming project. It would be a lot easier to pick an IR diode or filter microphone input to get an ultrasonic signal. Once we have packages that encapsulate proven facial pattern recognition, sure. Just ask for the face in the field of view and compute it's position.
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the escort business is illegal
Actually the escort business is not illegal. Prostitution (the exchange of value for sexual actions) is illegal in most jurisictions in the U.S. As long as the "escort agency" makes no promises to do more than have someone come visit you it is hard to prove that they were furthering prostitution. The usual result is that the "independant contractor" (the woman working for the service) gets arrested and the business claims they had no idea what was going on, did not control their contractors, etc.
While I would find it easy to believe that most people running these businesses are scummy (no personal knowledge!) it seems a rather broad fishing expedition to buy up a web site to check for suspicions of federal crime. Maybe they were looking for slavery as the orginal post suggested, or maybe money laundering. Still this seems like a waste.
By the way, I just checked - decadentcity.com is available now for any entrepeneur who wants to restart the service.
There is already a large amount of "virtual property" floating around.
Indeed it is on of the marks of an advanced economy that value is
represented by intellectual properties that have little or no intrinsic
worth, and could be duplicated by anyone with access to the appropriate
technology. Legal systems then are built up to protect this "wealth"
that has no intrinsic value. The result is that the economy now has
ways to store value that can later be turned into actual consumables
that a person would want or need - food, shelter, entertainment of
ones self and others, etc. The earliest case was money. Early in
its development only those with access to, first, metal stamping, later
printing technologies, could reproduce money. To prevent unauthorized
individuals from creating money counterfiting laws were created. Today
anyone with a source of high quality paper and a 1200dpi inkjet can
create a facsimile of money - but it ISN'T money because money is not
a physical "thing" it is a virtual one!
Today computer software is valuable because it takes skilled workers
to create it and it can be substituted for other, more expensive,
workers and equipment. But it too is a virtual good which exists only
because of an advanced legal system. Ultimately its value will be what
can be done with the software, not its existance. The people in China
are no richer because (due to the lack of effective laws) they can have
lots of cheap software. The warez doodz who crack programs just for the
fun of it do not create wealth for themselves just by breaking the
protection on a program they have no use for.
The wealth comes from providing something that another values more
than you value that time it took to create it. And then using the
resources recieved to create more of a valuable item in an even
better way. Spain was not made wealthy by the gold of the Aztecs, but
Britain was made wealthy by machine made cotton and wool cloth.
I see no real difference between buying software and buying a game
character, both of which took some time and skill to create, and is
therefore scarce, and which allows an individual to have fun, and is
therefore desireable. This will last as long as there is someone to
authenticate the "ownership" and laws or procedures exist to handle
disputes. The best wealth is created by a network of people all
producing small amounts of betterment for themselves and resulting in
a betterment of the community which benefits all.
Finally, a reply to Dr. Sp0ng: allow trading in your game. Even encourage
it. This will create a commitment to your game by people who will
see it as even more than entertainment. Ultimately everyone benefits
from the community effect, even you (just like Open Source).
Unfortunately pattern recognition for something as variable as a face has not yet reached the API level. To do something like you suggest one would have to 'roll your own' with fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms for improving the weights, neural nets for feature extraction, etc. Doable, but not an evening programming project. It would be a lot easier to pick an IR diode or filter microphone input to get an ultrasonic signal. Once we have packages that encapsulate proven facial pattern recognition, sure. Just ask for the face in the field of view and compute it's position.