The point is that YOUR opinion should be the one that you are considering at the polls. What affects YOU. You shouldn't give a damn what anyone else thinks or what the majority thinks. That's the ideal. If you side with the majority, then you're giving something up. I side with what is personally beneficial to me, even though that is apparently very far out of sync with what the average American wants. I swear if I can get the funds to leave this godforsaken hole in the next decade, I'm gone...
You bring up a very important point. In today's world is it impossible to get unbiased data as a voter. Some of what you get from the web might be unbiased, but not enough to really make you vote for what you really believe in. This is a huge problem and it has no solution. Just settling for what is available online is the easy answer but it's not the perfect answer. However, I think I prefer it when fewer people are involved in politics and voting who might actually have the time and resources to dedicate to real, reasoned voting. I think a big part of the problem lies in just how connected things are today and how everything you do can affect you without your even realizing it. Think about how many businesses the provide goods or services that you rely on day-to-day and can't live without. Then consider how many of those businesses might be paying to support legislation or politicians who are doing things that are not in your best interest. You COULD try and stage a boycott, but if what you believe in just isn't that important to others, it won't affect the company much and you have no influence. You could try to buy from a competitor, but considering how many companies support things that are NOT in the best interests of the average person, you probably won't get far. You're basically stuck in a prison. There is no way to change this and it's by design. America has become the land where only the rich and the powerful have any real control on the direction of the nation.
...is that the web makes EVERYONE who buys in feel like they are "informed voters" no matter how misleading and self-serving the web resources they access may be. Higher voter response is NOT a good thing when the majority of the mobilized voters are voting simply based on emotional reactions rather than looking at the real issues and analyzing the impact of a vote for a candidate or issue. On the left you have people reacting to information stating that voting for issue or candidate X is a vote against the environment. On the right you have people reacting to the "OMG teh gheys want to get married and it will make my marriage worthless" propaganda without thinking about how it really affects real people (yes gays are real people). For the third parties, they all have their echo chambers telling them that "this is the year that the third party candidates will take the world by storm"!!! So everyone votes for or against things without really understanding the implications.
Well, I sure don't want Vongo. Not only because they reject non-Windows users, but also because their selection is terrible. I'm a foreign/independent film fan myself. Sadly, there is nothing that caters to people like me other than regular video rentals if you're lucky enough to have a local video rental outfit that specializes in those films. While a good book is satisfying, it sure isn't when you want to watch the latest foreign and independent films. Especially if you are a movie buff.
Overnight is spot on. The MPAA would lobby to make it a crime punishable by death to use or distribute files in that format via any medium or form of electronic communication. They'd get the law passed and then they'd execute a bunch of old ladies on the Whitehouse lawn to prove the point. They'd also probably eat a few babies as well to make doubly sure that the message comes across loud and clear.
I didn't know who Mark Cuban was. Then I went to Wikipedia to learn more. I see he is an Ayn Rand devotee. Loosely translated for normal people this means he's a "rational self-interested" dickhead who puts himself first above all else. Not the right way to live really. It might be the path of least resistance in terms of being relatively easy to do, but it sure produces nothing but assholes. Not to mention, Ayn Rand followers are about as "rational" as L. Ron Hubbard dupes in that goofball religion Scientology. Objectivism THIS dickheads!
Wow! Two responses from you. You must REALLY love abuse. And here you thought *I* was the emo fuck who likes to cut. So, let's find out more about you then geekoid... how long have you been cutting yourself and why do you do it? Is it because you feel you have no self worth and need to be an attention whore?
Cut? What are you some kind of psycho? Why on earth would anyone cut themselves? Oh well... if the thought of that makes you feel better, I'm sure you have some middle school kids on your IM that can feed your fantasies. Go talk to them instead of posting on Slashdot.
More attempts to brand me emo? Hehe. Keep it up childrens. I'm getting immense amusement out of this new tactic. If you knew me in real life, you'd know how far from the truth you are. Now shut the fuck up and bring your asshole over here so I can brand you with this soldering iron.
Who in the FUCK modded me down as overrated?! I was making a valid point. as immature as it may seem, when it comes down to money in "grown up" life, it seems that the jocks who make it big STILL like to pound down the geeks. Do you honestly think there would be business people into computers if it wasn't profitable? They buy into the internet thing because they suddenly developed brains, they got into it because it's where the money was. Where as the geeks (guys like the two that started Google) got into it for the love of computing. But as soon as it all becomes VERY profitable, then the idiot jock hordes come in to get their slice of the action and they try to make sure that the geeks get "put in their place". I speak the truth and you fucks who mod me down know it. That's why you're modding me down. Fuck you! Fuck you with a red hot soldering iron!
Geeks (Google) vs. Jocks (Mark Cuban AKA Penishead). Ever since the days of the dotbombs, I've noticed that in the end every battle comes down to loud, boistrous, idiotic guys (Ballmer, Cuban, just about any for profit business man with an arrogance problem) vs the quiet, thinking man. I mean look... Scifi Channel used to be for geeks, now the suits (typically ex-jocks) have bastardized it.
Well you're not far from right, but... you imply a third party (not in terms of political parties), who has the ability to control both government and business and put limits on both. Ideally that third party SHOULD be the average person. But how? The voting system clearly doesn't work. Neither does investing unless you have a LOT of money and your pullout would be dmaging to the company. The construction of any third system of oversight for government and business is a chilling thought since the question arises... who would control them? The reason I see government and business as separate is that one exists purely for economic reasons (business) and the other exists purely for fair regulation in society (government). Both are severly broken today. Business is driven so hard to constantly make increasing profits rather than just being operationally profitable, that through various levels of obfuscation, they do VERY bad thing to many powerless people. The obfuscation ensures that the people who work in these companies are kept unaware or only vaguely aware of the negative impact their business has on others. This allows them to work "guilt free" feeling that they're doing the right thing and anyone opposing them is just plain evil. In terms of the government, the system is broken because the same cutthroat business approach has been applied to government and politics by career politicians.
In my state (Ohio) this past election, there was an "Issue 3" on the ballot that would have allowed limited gambling in my state (slot machines among other things). But the publicity made by the supporters of Issue 3 was HIGHLY dishonest. Every piece of literature that I saw had pictures of young, happy people from grade school to college standing in nice looking surroundings on sunny days. The young adults were wearing mortar boards. The little kids were on school playgrounds. All of the imagery meant to connote better schools and education. There was little mention of that in the text though. The test only alluded to that as a small side benefit of the passage of Issue 3. The main benefit that was touted, which is especially nasty considering the number of lost jobs here, was that the passage of Issue 3 would create several thousand new jobs. NONE of the literature made mention of the "limited gaming" at all. The signs plastered EVERYWHERE simply said "YES! On Issue 3" with a graphic of a mortar board. If the races were done properly, these tactics would be illegal. It was a highly deceptive campaign and fortunately one that the religious right (who I NEVER normally side with) was highly opposed to, so it didn't pass. But it's just one example of people who want to game the system for their benefit. Someone (I suspect local organized crime), really wanted this to pass and was dumb enough that they felt that the average person would fall for these tactics. But, there are other similar tactics employed at other levels which DO fool the public into supporting the wrong things. And that's why I say government control BY the people is damaged as well.
You're looking at it too simply. The power on the part of the state and the money on the part of business makes each one attractive to the other. But either side, depending on which one has more power or more money respectively, is going to be the one running the show. The key is to make sure that businesses never make too much money and governments never have more power than they need to control business and the population. If governments had very little power over business, then business would run roughshod over every consumer. In other words, who protects us from the will of the corporations? You KNOW that businesses when they are driven by profit are never going to take into account every negative impact they have on others. It's just not profitable. And in the end I think that the corporations would wind up owning the public anyway. So really it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. The main difference being that businesses NEVER do anything positive for the public. Governments have been known to. Take a look at public libraries for one thing. If a business were to make a contribution to a public library it would come with strings attached. Ideally strings that benefit the business. If a government allots money from taxes to a library, it's coming from the people and going back to the people. Sure it may not get allotted perfectly, but at least there are few if any strings attached. That is why I side with the government before I side with business.
They don't have to be, but it is the State that creates these secrets, not the company. Total BS. The state creates laws like the prohibition of reverse engineering because the state serves business far more than it does the people. And THAT'S because companies have been allowed to grow unchecked in terms of money and political clout. In an ideal situation, business should have NO political power at all. Governments should have no incentive to create laws in exchange for various favors from wealthy companies. And, realisticaly, there should be limits automatically imposed on the size and wealth of a company to prevent them from becoming more powerful than government. Either concentration of power in is a problem, but I'd still trust government to do the right thing before I'd EVER trust a private business. Currently the only reason for being in business is top make money. It's not to improve the quality of life for customers no matter what a company claims. They could start out that way with well intentioned people, but once they grow to a size where they are publicaly traded, the good of the customer is replaced by the good of the investor. The customers then become the product that the company is selling to the investors in the form of ever increasing profit. Even if there is a realistict limit to how profitable a company can be, the investors will always demand more or else they'll drop the investment. And THAT is the true problem. What it forces many business to do is find ways to make more money with no regard for how they operate in terms of ethics. Don't blame the government for the problem. It's a complex mix of interrelationships between business (the more powerful entity) and government (the more desperate entity) being driven in the end by the investors (the ignorant entity in terms of what's happening unethically behind the scenes to benefit them). Oh, and Ayn Rand was a knob.
This is why the market is great -- people work hard to make more efficient products.
This is also why the market tends to fail miserably once certain people (Company X) have a lot more money than anyone else. Instead of working hard to make their product more efficient. They work HARDER to make the perception of their competition's product appear less efficient by playing with numbers and spin. If you've got money and really great PR, you can make people buy shit instead of shinola.... Which means that the capitalist marekt falls victim to the same exact flaw that communism did: Some pigs are more equal than others. In this case it's the pigs with the cash instead of the pigs with political power.
Heh. No. Only four years. I have just always had a huge interest in sex and sexuality and how its effect on human behavior. I've been studing sex since I was about 10. I'm 36 now. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a very liberal community with an excellent library stocked with everything from "On Human Sexuality", "The Joy of Sex" and "The Joy of Gay Sex" as well as the Whole Earth Review which gave me a great perspective on the world. That's where my varied knowledge comes from. Where it should: the library.:)
Actually, I think of it in almost the opposite way... Why isn't the base OS kernel sitting on an eeprom on the MoBo talking directly to hardware and thereby completely obviating BIOS? I remember back on my Atari ST, they had a 512k ROM that had GEM/GEMDOS in it. If I didn't pop a floppy into the drive, the system still booted to a desktop using the ROM image. If I did pop a floppy into the drive, then the OS loaded off the floppy. The main point being that all interfacing to basic hardware on the ST was handled by the OS itself. There was no BIOS. I remember being very confused by this when I moved to the PC. I turned it on expecting to get a Windows 3.1 desktop that I could then use to format the HD and install the OS with, or as a second best option, a DOS prompt that would allow me to format/partition/install the OS. I remember when I turned it on and all I got was a "NO ROM BASIC" error, I called the store and complained that they'd sold me a damaged system and the OS seemed to be missing from the motherboard. I was incredulous when they told me that I actually needed to boot an OS from a floppy. That seemed so backwards based on where I was coming from.
Fast forward 12 years and here I am a big *nix head and everything... I can chuckle about my misconceptions to an extent. But I STILL to this day believe that the OS kernel should talk to and provide low level support for the MOBO components. Yeah, it would make the OS more complex, but I think it would also allow great flexibility and longer life to a system since many of it's functions would be in software with fewer limitations imposed by BIOS.
Considering the wide array of the kinds of porn and pecadillios out there... I'd say that the study is very likely flawed. To some people, the following are pornography:
1. Bare tit 2. Celebrity nipple slips 3. Non-detailed butt/bum shots 4. Up the skirt panty shots
To others who are more extreme in their anti-porn views, the following would qualify:
1. Females under the age of 18 wearing skimpy clothing and too much makeup on MySpace 2. Anything with a female of any age wearing clothing that starts above the knee and doesn't cover the legs, or exposes the midriff 3. Anything that celebrates female sexuality in terms of sexual pleasure. It's OK to celebrate it, if it's related to child bearing. Witness the number of couples who tell all their friends and family "we started trying to have a baby a few months ago" without batting an eye, but you wouldn't see them saying "we started trying to increase the quality and frequency of orgasm for both of us a few months ago". With "both" implying that she gets to have a lot of fun too.
The two groups above very likely would comdemn people to death for looking at images of activities like:
1. Gay/Lesbian Sex 2. Orgies 3. Bondage and Dicipline/Sado-Masochism 4. Female Domination 5. Infantilism 6. Furries/Yiff (sexual scenarios utilizing anthropomorphic animals in cartoon form) 7. Bisexual activity of any kind (forced homosexuality in the domination scene all the way to "lesbian" activity in the swingers scene) 8. Cross dressing 9. Extreme body play (super large anal and vaginal insertions. Think: bowling ball in ass or eggplant in vagina. It's been done. Many times. You'd be amazed at how much human tissue can stretch without breaking) 10. Nullo (the voluntary or involuntary removal of genitalia) 11. Amputation (removal of limbs for sexual pleasure) 12. Scat (sexual activity focused on fecal matter) 13. Bestiality (sexual activity with animals) 14. Hentai (anime with a strong sexual focus possibly even including "tentacle sex" and mutilation (typically of females)) 15. Hirsute women (women with a lot of body hair who don't shave it off. As some men put it, "wool panties") 16. God/Goddess/Wife worship (people who literally worship their masters, mistresses and spouses in the BD/SM scene and take the worship very seriously) 17. Swingers (real people who engage in free exchange of sexual partners. Typically lots of straight couples and singles with bisexual activity between women. There is very little homosexual activity between men and some groups discourage it due to health concerns based around the lie that AIDS is a "gay" disease.) 18. Cybelle (Wife as goddess figure. Husband must submit to being a literal "human toilet" and ingest urine and feces of wife. Husband is also cut off crom all sexual contact with wife, while wife has right to take many lovers. Husband is also in financial bondage and all money he earns go to wife for her use only. Hehehe... I expect some guys here will say that that's why they got divorced in the first place.;P) 19. Foot fetish 20. Hotwife/Cuckold culture. Wives sleep with other men and their husbands photo/video them for sharing on the net both free and pay. The cuckolds never get to have sex with their wives.
And that's just a smattering of what I've scene in my 16 years on the net as an amateur sexologist/enthusiast. All of the above activities/groups publish photos and text online that the simpler folk of our society would find appalling and unacceptable. Hell, even I was shocked when I found the Nullo, Amputation and Cybelle stuff. But, then after looking at these things I realized that this stuff has ALWAYS been around long before the first bits poured out onto the internet. And as long as humans exist, these things will continue to be around. In the past people did this stuff underground and kept their images, written words and fantasies to themselves. If they were caught, they were likely i
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The point is that YOUR opinion should be the one that you are considering at the polls. What affects YOU. You shouldn't give a damn what anyone else thinks or what the majority thinks. That's the ideal. If you side with the majority, then you're giving something up. I side with what is personally beneficial to me, even though that is apparently very far out of sync with what the average American wants. I swear if I can get the funds to leave this godforsaken hole in the next decade, I'm gone...
You bring up a very important point. In today's world is it impossible to get unbiased data as a voter. Some of what you get from the web might be unbiased, but not enough to really make you vote for what you really believe in. This is a huge problem and it has no solution. Just settling for what is available online is the easy answer but it's not the perfect answer. However, I think I prefer it when fewer people are involved in politics and voting who might actually have the time and resources to dedicate to real, reasoned voting. I think a big part of the problem lies in just how connected things are today and how everything you do can affect you without your even realizing it. Think about how many businesses the provide goods or services that you rely on day-to-day and can't live without. Then consider how many of those businesses might be paying to support legislation or politicians who are doing things that are not in your best interest. You COULD try and stage a boycott, but if what you believe in just isn't that important to others, it won't affect the company much and you have no influence. You could try to buy from a competitor, but considering how many companies support things that are NOT in the best interests of the average person, you probably won't get far. You're basically stuck in a prison. There is no way to change this and it's by design. America has become the land where only the rich and the powerful have any real control on the direction of the nation.
Yes... why do you think I put that there in the first place. Sharpened blades from Damascus anyone???
...than a packet of greased up Yoda Dolls on a Saturday night at Karl Rove's place when Jim Jeff comes over. Wootz!!!
...is that the web makes EVERYONE who buys in feel like they are "informed voters" no matter how misleading and self-serving the web resources they access may be. Higher voter response is NOT a good thing when the majority of the mobilized voters are voting simply based on emotional reactions rather than looking at the real issues and analyzing the impact of a vote for a candidate or issue. On the left you have people reacting to information stating that voting for issue or candidate X is a vote against the environment. On the right you have people reacting to the "OMG teh gheys want to get married and it will make my marriage worthless" propaganda without thinking about how it really affects real people (yes gays are real people). For the third parties, they all have their echo chambers telling them that "this is the year that the third party candidates will take the world by storm"!!! So everyone votes for or against things without really understanding the implications.
Well, I sure don't want Vongo. Not only because they reject non-Windows users, but also because their selection is terrible. I'm a foreign/independent film fan myself. Sadly, there is nothing that caters to people like me other than regular video rentals if you're lucky enough to have a local video rental outfit that specializes in those films. While a good book is satisfying, it sure isn't when you want to watch the latest foreign and independent films. Especially if you are a movie buff.
Overnight is spot on. The MPAA would lobby to make it a crime punishable by death to use or distribute files in that format via any medium or form of electronic communication. They'd get the law passed and then they'd execute a bunch of old ladies on the Whitehouse lawn to prove the point. They'd also probably eat a few babies as well to make doubly sure that the message comes across loud and clear.
If your ass is that numb, then you've had far too much pleasuring. No soldering iron for you! Now off to sleep!
I didn't know who Mark Cuban was. Then I went to Wikipedia to learn more. I see he is an Ayn Rand devotee. Loosely translated for normal people this means he's a "rational self-interested" dickhead who puts himself first above all else. Not the right way to live really. It might be the path of least resistance in terms of being relatively easy to do, but it sure produces nothing but assholes. Not to mention, Ayn Rand followers are about as "rational" as L. Ron Hubbard dupes in that goofball religion Scientology. Objectivism THIS dickheads!
Wow! Two responses from you. You must REALLY love abuse. And here you thought *I* was the emo fuck who likes to cut. So, let's find out more about you then geekoid... how long have you been cutting yourself and why do you do it? Is it because you feel you have no self worth and need to be an attention whore?
Ooohhh.... thizzle!! You tell it like a pro girl! How long have you been gay?
Cut? What are you some kind of psycho? Why on earth would anyone cut themselves? Oh well... if the thought of that makes you feel better, I'm sure you have some middle school kids on your IM that can feed your fantasies. Go talk to them instead of posting on Slashdot.
More attempts to brand me emo? Hehe. Keep it up childrens. I'm getting immense amusement out of this new tactic. If you knew me in real life, you'd know how far from the truth you are. Now shut the fuck up and bring your asshole over here so I can brand you with this soldering iron.
Woohoo! Now THAT's the spirit! Idiot #1 responds! Do I hear any other takers?
Who in the FUCK modded me down as overrated?! I was making a valid point. as immature as it may seem, when it comes down to money in "grown up" life, it seems that the jocks who make it big STILL like to pound down the geeks. Do you honestly think there would be business people into computers if it wasn't profitable? They buy into the internet thing because they suddenly developed brains, they got into it because it's where the money was. Where as the geeks (guys like the two that started Google) got into it for the love of computing. But as soon as it all becomes VERY profitable, then the idiot jock hordes come in to get their slice of the action and they try to make sure that the geeks get "put in their place". I speak the truth and you fucks who mod me down know it. That's why you're modding me down. Fuck you! Fuck you with a red hot soldering iron!
Geeks (Google) vs. Jocks (Mark Cuban AKA Penishead). Ever since the days of the dotbombs, I've noticed that in the end every battle comes down to loud, boistrous, idiotic guys (Ballmer, Cuban, just about any for profit business man with an arrogance problem) vs the quiet, thinking man. I mean look... Scifi Channel used to be for geeks, now the suits (typically ex-jocks) have bastardized it.
Well you're not far from right, but... you imply a third party (not in terms of political parties), who has the ability to control both government and business and put limits on both. Ideally that third party SHOULD be the average person. But how? The voting system clearly doesn't work. Neither does investing unless you have a LOT of money and your pullout would be dmaging to the company. The construction of any third system of oversight for government and business is a chilling thought since the question arises... who would control them? The reason I see government and business as separate is that one exists purely for economic reasons (business) and the other exists purely for fair regulation in society (government). Both are severly broken today. Business is driven so hard to constantly make increasing profits rather than just being operationally profitable, that through various levels of obfuscation, they do VERY bad thing to many powerless people. The obfuscation ensures that the people who work in these companies are kept unaware or only vaguely aware of the negative impact their business has on others. This allows them to work "guilt free" feeling that they're doing the right thing and anyone opposing them is just plain evil. In terms of the government, the system is broken because the same cutthroat business approach has been applied to government and politics by career politicians.
In my state (Ohio) this past election, there was an "Issue 3" on the ballot that would have allowed limited gambling in my state (slot machines among other things). But the publicity made by the supporters of Issue 3 was HIGHLY dishonest. Every piece of literature that I saw had pictures of young, happy people from grade school to college standing in nice looking surroundings on sunny days. The young adults were wearing mortar boards. The little kids were on school playgrounds. All of the imagery meant to connote better schools and education. There was little mention of that in the text though. The test only alluded to that as a small side benefit of the passage of Issue 3. The main benefit that was touted, which is especially nasty considering the number of lost jobs here, was that the passage of Issue 3 would create several thousand new jobs. NONE of the literature made mention of the "limited gaming" at all. The signs plastered EVERYWHERE simply said "YES! On Issue 3" with a graphic of a mortar board. If the races were done properly, these tactics would be illegal. It was a highly deceptive campaign and fortunately one that the religious right (who I NEVER normally side with) was highly opposed to, so it didn't pass. But it's just one example of people who want to game the system for their benefit. Someone (I suspect local organized crime), really wanted this to pass and was dumb enough that they felt that the average person would fall for these tactics. But, there are other similar tactics employed at other levels which DO fool the public into supporting the wrong things. And that's why I say government control BY the people is damaged as well.
You're looking at it too simply. The power on the part of the state and the money on the part of business makes each one attractive to the other. But either side, depending on which one has more power or more money respectively, is going to be the one running the show. The key is to make sure that businesses never make too much money and governments never have more power than they need to control business and the population. If governments had very little power over business, then business would run roughshod over every consumer. In other words, who protects us from the will of the corporations? You KNOW that businesses when they are driven by profit are never going to take into account every negative impact they have on others. It's just not profitable. And in the end I think that the corporations would wind up owning the public anyway. So really it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. The main difference being that businesses NEVER do anything positive for the public. Governments have been known to. Take a look at public libraries for one thing. If a business were to make a contribution to a public library it would come with strings attached. Ideally strings that benefit the business. If a government allots money from taxes to a library, it's coming from the people and going back to the people. Sure it may not get allotted perfectly, but at least there are few if any strings attached. That is why I side with the government before I side with business.
They don't have to be, but it is the State that creates these secrets, not the company.
Total BS. The state creates laws like the prohibition of reverse engineering because the state serves business far more than it does the people. And THAT'S because companies have been allowed to grow unchecked in terms of money and political clout. In an ideal situation, business should have NO political power at all. Governments should have no incentive to create laws in exchange for various favors from wealthy companies. And, realisticaly, there should be limits automatically imposed on the size and wealth of a company to prevent them from becoming more powerful than government. Either concentration of power in is a problem, but I'd still trust government to do the right thing before I'd EVER trust a private business. Currently the only reason for being in business is top make money. It's not to improve the quality of life for customers no matter what a company claims. They could start out that way with well intentioned people, but once they grow to a size where they are publicaly traded, the good of the customer is replaced by the good of the investor. The customers then become the product that the company is selling to the investors in the form of ever increasing profit. Even if there is a realistict limit to how profitable a company can be, the investors will always demand more or else they'll drop the investment. And THAT is the true problem. What it forces many business to do is find ways to make more money with no regard for how they operate in terms of ethics. Don't blame the government for the problem. It's a complex mix of interrelationships between business (the more powerful entity) and government (the more desperate entity) being driven in the end by the investors (the ignorant entity in terms of what's happening unethically behind the scenes to benefit them). Oh, and Ayn Rand was a knob.
This is also why the market tends to fail miserably once certain people (Company X) have a lot more money than anyone else. Instead of working hard to make their product more efficient. They work HARDER to make the perception of their competition's product appear less efficient by playing with numbers and spin. If you've got money and really great PR, you can make people buy shit instead of shinola.... Which means that the capitalist marekt falls victim to the same exact flaw that communism did: Some pigs are more equal than others. In this case it's the pigs with the cash instead of the pigs with political power.
Heh. No. Only four years. I have just always had a huge interest in sex and sexuality and how its effect on human behavior. I've been studing sex since I was about 10. I'm 36 now. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a very liberal community with an excellent library stocked with everything from "On Human Sexuality", "The Joy of Sex" and "The Joy of Gay Sex" as well as the Whole Earth Review which gave me a great perspective on the world. That's where my varied knowledge comes from. Where it should: the library. :)
Actually, I think of it in almost the opposite way... Why isn't the base OS kernel sitting on an eeprom on the MoBo talking directly to hardware and thereby completely obviating BIOS? I remember back on my Atari ST, they had a 512k ROM that had GEM/GEMDOS in it. If I didn't pop a floppy into the drive, the system still booted to a desktop using the ROM image. If I did pop a floppy into the drive, then the OS loaded off the floppy. The main point being that all interfacing to basic hardware on the ST was handled by the OS itself. There was no BIOS. I remember being very confused by this when I moved to the PC. I turned it on expecting to get a Windows 3.1 desktop that I could then use to format the HD and install the OS with, or as a second best option, a DOS prompt that would allow me to format/partition/install the OS. I remember when I turned it on and all I got was a "NO ROM BASIC" error, I called the store and complained that they'd sold me a damaged system and the OS seemed to be missing from the motherboard. I was incredulous when they told me that I actually needed to boot an OS from a floppy. That seemed so backwards based on where I was coming from.
Fast forward 12 years and here I am a big *nix head and everything... I can chuckle about my misconceptions to an extent. But I STILL to this day believe that the OS kernel should talk to and provide low level support for the MOBO components. Yeah, it would make the OS more complex, but I think it would also allow great flexibility and longer life to a system since many of it's functions would be in software with fewer limitations imposed by BIOS.
Considering the wide array of the kinds of porn and pecadillios out there... I'd say that the study is very likely flawed. To some people, the following are pornography:
;P)
1. Bare tit
2. Celebrity nipple slips
3. Non-detailed butt/bum shots
4. Up the skirt panty shots
To others who are more extreme in their anti-porn views, the following would qualify:
1. Females under the age of 18 wearing skimpy clothing and too much makeup on MySpace
2. Anything with a female of any age wearing clothing that starts above the knee and doesn't cover the legs, or exposes the midriff
3. Anything that celebrates female sexuality in terms of sexual pleasure. It's OK to celebrate it, if it's related to child bearing. Witness the number of couples who tell all their friends and family "we started trying to have a baby a few months ago" without batting an eye, but you wouldn't see them saying "we started trying to increase the quality and frequency of orgasm for both of us a few months ago". With "both" implying that she gets to have a lot of fun too.
The two groups above very likely would comdemn people to death for looking at images of activities like:
1. Gay/Lesbian Sex
2. Orgies
3. Bondage and Dicipline/Sado-Masochism
4. Female Domination
5. Infantilism
6. Furries/Yiff (sexual scenarios utilizing anthropomorphic animals in cartoon form)
7. Bisexual activity of any kind (forced homosexuality in the domination scene all the way to "lesbian" activity in the swingers scene)
8. Cross dressing
9. Extreme body play (super large anal and vaginal insertions. Think: bowling ball in ass or eggplant in vagina. It's been done. Many times. You'd be amazed at how much human tissue can stretch without breaking)
10. Nullo (the voluntary or involuntary removal of genitalia)
11. Amputation (removal of limbs for sexual pleasure)
12. Scat (sexual activity focused on fecal matter)
13. Bestiality (sexual activity with animals)
14. Hentai (anime with a strong sexual focus possibly even including "tentacle sex" and mutilation (typically of females))
15. Hirsute women (women with a lot of body hair who don't shave it off. As some men put it, "wool panties")
16. God/Goddess/Wife worship (people who literally worship their masters, mistresses and spouses in the BD/SM scene and take the worship very seriously)
17. Swingers (real people who engage in free exchange of sexual partners. Typically lots of straight couples and singles with bisexual activity between women. There is very little homosexual activity between men and some groups discourage it due to health concerns based around the lie that AIDS is a "gay" disease.)
18. Cybelle (Wife as goddess figure. Husband must submit to being a literal "human toilet" and ingest urine and feces of wife. Husband is also cut off crom all sexual contact with wife, while wife has right to take many lovers. Husband is also in financial bondage and all money he earns go to wife for her use only. Hehehe... I expect some guys here will say that that's why they got divorced in the first place.
19. Foot fetish
20. Hotwife/Cuckold culture. Wives sleep with other men and their husbands photo/video them for sharing on the net both free and pay. The cuckolds never get to have sex with their wives.
And that's just a smattering of what I've scene in my 16 years on the net as an amateur sexologist/enthusiast. All of the above activities/groups publish photos and text online that the simpler folk of our society would find appalling and unacceptable. Hell, even I was shocked when I found the Nullo, Amputation and Cybelle stuff. But, then after looking at these things I realized that this stuff has ALWAYS been around long before the first bits poured out onto the internet. And as long as humans exist, these things will continue to be around. In the past people did this stuff underground and kept their images, written words and fantasies to themselves. If they were caught, they were likely i
...welcome our new tumor causing overlords!