I'd like to see this square-wheel-robot in action, but the link to the video on the site has obviously been slashdotted, or else they're running the whole site off a dial-up modem. Anyway, according to Firefox, it's going to be another 12 hours before I can see the video. Any chance anybody saved it before it got slashdotted and can post a mirror somewhere? Here was the original link:
http://www.globalcomposites.net/Reinventing%20the% 20Wheel%201.mpg
If we did this, then we wouldn't have novels or music either
OK, I apologize in advance. I don't usully feel the need to flame people, but...
This is just a stupid thing to say. We had music, literature and art LONG before we had copyright, or even money for that matter. What we in today's society seem to completely miss is that many people do these things because they enjoy doing them, not because they want a payoff. Being a musician myself, I can spek first hand. I don't take money for performances. I have a "real" job which pays the bills, and I perform on the weekends for fun. In fact, dispite a high level of talent, I made a conscious decision NOT to go into music as a profession for that reason. In the old days people used to write books because they had something to say, not because they thought it would do well with the 18-25 year old male demo. Shakespeare didn't put his works in front of a focus group because if he "tweaked the ending a little bit, he'd probably appeal more to the older female audience."
This will all work itself out in the end. Art will not cease if people suddenly stop paying for it. Sure, much of the crap we hear today won't be around, because it's not written for the love of the artform. But quantity does not equal quality. The artistic geniuses will still paint. Gifted writers will still write. People will still create music.
Very nice rebuttal. I was unclear in my original post. I wasn't really trying to defend this idiot that wants to shut off SETI. I guess I was merely trying to point out that if they want to get past our defenses and they are sufficiently advanced, they will do it no matter how hard we try to prevent it, probably using a vector that hasn't even occurred to us. SETI isn't really a security risk, because the only way to have true securtity from these "bad aliens" is to remain invisible to them, and we're currently sending enough radio waves into space to announce our presence to anyone who really wants to find us. If they can travel faster than the speed of light, there is really no way we can possibly resist them.
So I agree with the main point of your post. Why do we even care? If they have a need to conquer us and lack the ethical principles that wouild prevent them from doing so, then I, for one, want to be the first to praise our gracious alien overlords!
You're using the mindset that these ET's are of similar intelligience to humans. We tend to do that as a species. But imagine, if you will, a civilization that is only 2000+ years more advanced that us. And realistically, and civilization advanced enough to receive our radio waves and respond is likely greater than 2000 years more advanced than us. Consider how very short 2000 years is in a universal timescale. To this advanced civilization, our advanced code is nothing more than a toddler's plaything. We can't even begin to fathom the ways in which they could potentially expolit our security.
It's like if the Romans built a huge wall and said "That will keep out anyone. It's not possible to breach it." Using our technology, which is 2000 years more advanced, (less, actually) we could fly an B2 bomber over the city and drop a couple 2000 pound bombs. The pinnalce of their most advanced security would last less than 10 seconds against the most basic of our assaults.
I know this is a little different when talking about computer security, but just as the Romans couldn't even imagine in their wildest dreams a B2 bomber, let alone how it could possible get past their impenetrable wall, we can't conceive of the technology that could be used to "infect" our computers. In 2000 years, who knows what kind of power we would have to defeat such a system? We can't know because it's beyond even our wildest imagination.
When figuring the TCO of an operating system, must you also consider the hours spent pouring over productivity reports in order to determine the TCO? I, for one, sucked at Calculus...
There's really no difference. In this case, newegg.com is the "OEM" in question. They order those processors in mass quantities. (I don't think anybody, not even Dell, orders 50 million processors, but let's say 50,000) If they have them in stock, that means there is no shortage, on their order at least.
Wait... I stand corrected. AMD has approx. 80 processors at newegg.com and 3 are out of stock. Intel, on the other hand, has 62 processors listed, 8 of which are out of stock. Just how is AMD not meeting demand? Well, I guess if you want to plunk down $1350 for an Opteron 275, you'll just have to wait. That, or buy an Intel... um... wait... they don't have anything comparable. Never mind.
That's awfully strange... I just ordered 44 Athlon 64 processors and 6 Opteron processors and had them all within a week. In fact, if I go to newegg.com, every current AMD processor is listed as in stock.
Don't believe everything you read. They might be falling short on a few select processors, but as a company, they are having no difficulties meeting most demands.
I don't know. I quite like the fact that when I click on a link, it opens in a floating window that I can than pin to the main page. With Google, I have to navigate away from the main page to see what might amount to a 3 second headline.
Nice intuitive interface, but seeing the significant difference in size, I'll stick with google ATM.
In looking at these plans, I can't imagine how this is not a hole-in-one for NASA. It goes along with the less-is-more approach that made three astoundingly successful Mars rover missions. The shuttle was great and all, but I don't understand people saying "This is like taking a step back." If it doesn't blow up, then I'd say it's taking a huge step forward. And this new design has (potentially) five times the cargo capacity of the shuttle. This is enough to get me excited about the space program again.
So how long until a horrible computer malfunction causes the holodeck characters to come to life and start taking people hostage?
BTW, I wonder if such malfunctions ever happened on the holographic brothel on DS9? It wouldn't be so bad if all the hot sex-loving women came to life, would it? But no, it's always gangsters or evil dictators or Dr. Moriarty...
Sweet, then I'll just pirate Windows, and when it asks me, I'll purchase at the discounted price.;)
Microsoft's missing out on a golden opportunity here. They should let you go about your business with your pirated copy, then after using it for about 6 months, the update will pop up a screen offering to sell you a copy at a heavily increased price. "Hehehe... Now we have your data. Your pirated copy of Windows will be locked until you purchase our Windows XP PE (Pirate Edition) for a nominal cost of only $999."
OK, now to all of you Microsoft guys reading this post, I claim ownership of this idea. If you use it, I want 20% of the take.
Before you go off praising yourself for being so technically savvy, you really should RTFA. Most of these uses were addressed.
1. In the article, system boot time went from approx. 15 seconds to approx 10 seconds. Hardly seems worth it.
2. Specifically addressed in the article. 32-bit Windows XP Pro can only handle 4GB of RAM total (including swap file.) Why not just max out your system with 4GB of physical ram and kill the swap-file altogether? You wouldn't need to buy a $150 card and bottleneck all that memory bandwidth through a SATA controller.
3. SQL databases and transaction logs may show some notable improvement. (this was NOT addressed in the article.) but again, you have to consider that Windows and SQL server already attempt to cram (or cache, as they call it) as much of the database as possible into RAM. I've seem more than a few systems where SQL server is using up 3.5 GB of RAM just caching databases off the disk. Again, 32-bit Windows can only handle 4GB of memory. Sure you could make the argument that enterprise or data center class devices might see a potential benefit from this, but then you're hardly talking about a mainstream device. Any machine that would rightly be used to run these massive operations would likely cost tens of thousands of dollars and would not be purchased by an average consumer. And again, when you're spending all this loot, why not just max out the system RAM.
4. Other things. I'd be willing to engage in reasonable debate on these other ideas you have.
I think this is a phenomenal idea however in its current form it borders on useless. (essentially $510 for a 4 GB drive that makes your OS boot up 5 seconds faster. The price/performance ratio is way off.) I'd like to see the manufacturer make some improvements (more banks for RAM, larger theoretical capacity, faster interface) and this could be a truly useful product. (BTW, I don't claim credit for most of this post. It was all in the article.)
Sure, there may be ways to do this, but it's tricky. (That's not to say impossible.) If a public company breaks the law, is it fair to punish the unknowing shareholders by "suspending operations" of the company? Can a shareholder actually research the company enough before investing to ensure that they are not participating in illegal activities, thus protecting their investment?
The corporate equivalent of jail time would have to be heavy fines, but it's tough to levy a fine. If it's too big, it amounts to a "death penalty" for the company. If it's too small, it amounts to a "justifiable expense" for the company. I would love to hear some good arguments on both sides of the issue so I can solidify a position. I do think, however, that corporations should not be exempt from breaking the law, and when they break laws, they need to be punished accordingly. If I knew the answer, I'd start my own counrty and everyone would move there because it would be better than the one we live in now.
Mostly, no. I'm not saying that some of them didn't make it into my system indirectly, (restaraunt food, egg byproducts, etc.) however, I only consciously purchase certified organic eggs and milk. Sure, they're $2-$3 a dozen and $6 a gallon, respectively, but I don't use many eggs or milk, so it doesn't factor heavily into my budget.
Unfortunately, in the US, companies are NOT treated with similar rights as people. For exactly the reason you stated above (who do you punish?) corporations are often given MUCH more leeway to vio;ate the law than individuals. The sentence against Bernie Ebbers (Worldcom CEO) two weeks ago was a rare victory for the little guy, but in reality this was a sentence against one man for crimes that were orchestrated and carried out with cooperation and knowlege of hundreds if not thousands of people.
Using this same logic companies every day spew out unfathomable amounts of illegal toxins. If they are caught, they pay a fine, (which they have already budgeted for) ratchet back their emissions, wait for a little while until the EPA gets off their backs, then resume their polluting. A factory farm here in Ohio (Buckeye Egg Farm) did this for over ten years amidst hundreds of complaints and clear violations of environmental laws before they were finally ordered to shut down operations. An individual in the US could not knowingly violate the law, all the while reaping huge profits, only to be told to stop after 10 years of activity. Corporations are given too much criminal protection.
I don't understand this. I thought that the record companies were supposed to be the shining beacons of morality! What with all their protecting the rights of the innocent and defenseless artists, they'd HAVE to be completely upright businessmen.
I guess the moral is that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Meanwhile, I'm going to start downloading music again.:)
I REALLY want to kill my floppy drive. I hate it. Floppy disks are so incredibly unreliable. They are corrupted on the whim. Hell, even putting a floppy next to a cell phone can provide sufficient magnetic field to erase its contents.
However, I just built a new set of servers for my company, and we had to put floppy drives on all of them. The BIOS on the motherboard we used supported booting to a USB device, but if you didn't want to boot to it, it wasn't recognized. In order to load the SATA RAID drivers for Win2k3, we had to have a FDD in the machine. It sucks. Also, recently, I made a customization of the Ultimate Boot CD and I needed every friggin' floppy disk that I wanted to put on there, because there's no easy (and free) way to make an image of a boot floppy without using the actual disk. I had copies of all the compressed images, but since they were compressed, I had to copy them onto a floppy, then re-create a non-compressed image using FloppyImage. (There are commercial programs out there, but who wants to pay $30 for WinImage to create 5 images when FloppyImage is free)
So what's the solution? Will motherboard BIOS manufacturers just standardize the practice of putting NON-BOOTABLE USB support in the BIOS? I can fit every image to every floppy disk I ever owned onto one 512MB USB drive. What does it take?
The Atari 2600 (Then known as the Atari VCS) cost $199 when it was released in 1977. That's $645.75 in 2005 dollars.
In fact, here is a price list of some major consoles released in the past 20 years, in 2005 dollars:
Atari VCS (2600) ($199 in 1977) - $645.75
Intellivision ($299 in 1979) - $846.68 (Holy Crap!)
Colecovision ($199 in 1982) - $403.70
NES ($249 in 1986) - $426.54
Sega Genesis ($199 in 1989) - $310.19
SNES ($199 in 1991) - $280.82
Playstation ($299 in 1995) - $372.01
I think that shows that video games have come down drastically in price over the last 20 years. But the geniuses over at Sony (and Microsoft) know that the market should easily tolerate a $400 - $500 console.
about the Newton. Truth is, it was a device far, far ahead of its time. Palm admittedly used it as a model for the first Palm Pilot. Even though Palm simplified the Pilot, eventually, it evolved into a machine that is much like the original Newton, in concept. I'm sure Apple would've made it smaller if technology permitted, but at the time, VHS size was the best they could do. Had they come out with at the same product 10 years later, (smaller form-factor, of course) it would've taken off. Timing is everything.
But what is porn? Who decides what qualifies as porn? How about I open a lingerie shop that only sells panties. Then I put up a bunch of pictures of topless women. I am operating a legitimate business. So what if I get a bit of extra traffic. That's not my business. Should I have to move to a.xxx domain? On the opposite side, parents would have a legitimate complaint if they found their 8-year old looking at my panties-only site. But where is the line? Who decides what's "decent?" Sounds like more government oversight into our private lives.
Another very real-world example: What about realdoll.com (intentionally not linked. Cut and paste, you pervert...) They sell a legitimate product, but you could still wank off to their website. Putting them on a.xxx domain could cripple their business, and they don't even have pictures of (real) naked people on their site.
I'm just playing devil's advocate here to spur some discussion, but you have to be careful when you ask for government for oversight. It's like making a wish to the Devil. He's crafty enough to take your wish and end up distoring it to screw you over...
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to see this square-wheel-robot in action, but the link to the video on the site has obviously been slashdotted, or else they're running the whole site off a dial-up modem. Anyway, according to Firefox, it's going to be another 12 hours before I can see the video. Any chance anybody saved it before it got slashdotted and can post a mirror somewhere? Here was the original link: http://www.globalcomposites.net/Reinventing%20the% 20Wheel%201.mpg
OK, I apologize in advance. I don't usully feel the need to flame people, but...
This is just a stupid thing to say. We had music, literature and art LONG before we had copyright, or even money for that matter. What we in today's society seem to completely miss is that many people do these things because they enjoy doing them, not because they want a payoff. Being a musician myself, I can spek first hand. I don't take money for performances. I have a "real" job which pays the bills, and I perform on the weekends for fun. In fact, dispite a high level of talent, I made a conscious decision NOT to go into music as a profession for that reason. In the old days people used to write books because they had something to say, not because they thought it would do well with the 18-25 year old male demo. Shakespeare didn't put his works in front of a focus group because if he "tweaked the ending a little bit, he'd probably appeal more to the older female audience."
This will all work itself out in the end. Art will not cease if people suddenly stop paying for it. Sure, much of the crap we hear today won't be around, because it's not written for the love of the artform. But quantity does not equal quality. The artistic geniuses will still paint. Gifted writers will still write. People will still create music.
Very nice rebuttal. I was unclear in my original post. I wasn't really trying to defend this idiot that wants to shut off SETI. I guess I was merely trying to point out that if they want to get past our defenses and they are sufficiently advanced, they will do it no matter how hard we try to prevent it, probably using a vector that hasn't even occurred to us. SETI isn't really a security risk, because the only way to have true securtity from these "bad aliens" is to remain invisible to them, and we're currently sending enough radio waves into space to announce our presence to anyone who really wants to find us. If they can travel faster than the speed of light, there is really no way we can possibly resist them.
So I agree with the main point of your post. Why do we even care? If they have a need to conquer us and lack the ethical principles that wouild prevent them from doing so, then I, for one, want to be the first to praise our gracious alien overlords!
You're using the mindset that these ET's are of similar intelligience to humans. We tend to do that as a species. But imagine, if you will, a civilization that is only 2000+ years more advanced that us. And realistically, and civilization advanced enough to receive our radio waves and respond is likely greater than 2000 years more advanced than us. Consider how very short 2000 years is in a universal timescale. To this advanced civilization, our advanced code is nothing more than a toddler's plaything. We can't even begin to fathom the ways in which they could potentially expolit our security.
It's like if the Romans built a huge wall and said "That will keep out anyone. It's not possible to breach it." Using our technology, which is 2000 years more advanced, (less, actually) we could fly an B2 bomber over the city and drop a couple 2000 pound bombs. The pinnalce of their most advanced security would last less than 10 seconds against the most basic of our assaults.
I know this is a little different when talking about computer security, but just as the Romans couldn't even imagine in their wildest dreams a B2 bomber, let alone how it could possible get past their impenetrable wall, we can't conceive of the technology that could be used to "infect" our computers. In 2000 years, who knows what kind of power we would have to defeat such a system? We can't know because it's beyond even our wildest imagination.
Serious question:
When figuring the TCO of an operating system, must you also consider the hours spent pouring over productivity reports in order to determine the TCO? I, for one, sucked at Calculus...
There's really no difference. In this case, newegg.com is the "OEM" in question. They order those processors in mass quantities. (I don't think anybody, not even Dell, orders 50 million processors, but let's say 50,000) If they have them in stock, that means there is no shortage, on their order at least.
If you think that's bad, just imaging trying to use the thing to surf the Internet for porn...
Wait... I stand corrected. AMD has approx. 80 processors at newegg.com and 3 are out of stock. Intel, on the other hand, has 62 processors listed, 8 of which are out of stock. Just how is AMD not meeting demand? Well, I guess if you want to plunk down $1350 for an Opteron 275, you'll just have to wait. That, or buy an Intel... um... wait... they don't have anything comparable. Never mind.
That's awfully strange... I just ordered 44 Athlon 64 processors and 6 Opteron processors and had them all within a week. In fact, if I go to newegg.com, every current AMD processor is listed as in stock.
Don't believe everything you read. They might be falling short on a few select processors, but as a company, they are having no difficulties meeting most demands.
I'd put down my life savings right now that says US hospitals (even the poorest and most destitute) will continue to buy the $30,000 one.
That's what's wrong with the US healthcare system. "Why do something cheap when we can spend even more money for something just as useful?"
I don't know. I quite like the fact that when I click on a link, it opens in a floating window that I can than pin to the main page. With Google, I have to navigate away from the main page to see what might amount to a 3 second headline.
Nice intuitive interface, but seeing the significant difference in size, I'll stick with google ATM.
In looking at these plans, I can't imagine how this is not a hole-in-one for NASA. It goes along with the less-is-more approach that made three astoundingly successful Mars rover missions. The shuttle was great and all, but I don't understand people saying "This is like taking a step back." If it doesn't blow up, then I'd say it's taking a huge step forward. And this new design has (potentially) five times the cargo capacity of the shuttle. This is enough to get me excited about the space program again.
So how long until a horrible computer malfunction causes the holodeck characters to come to life and start taking people hostage?
BTW, I wonder if such malfunctions ever happened on the holographic brothel on DS9? It wouldn't be so bad if all the hot sex-loving women came to life, would it? But no, it's always gangsters or evil dictators or Dr. Moriarty...
My wife can do all those things, plus cook dinner. :P
OK, I know it's 3 days later, but did you read my origianl post?
Notice the "Again" in the part you quoted. Might that have been a hint that I was referring to a point I made previously?
Stupid people piss me off...
Sweet, then I'll just pirate Windows, and when it asks me, I'll purchase at the discounted price. ;)
Microsoft's missing out on a golden opportunity here. They should let you go about your business with your pirated copy, then after using it for about 6 months, the update will pop up a screen offering to sell you a copy at a heavily increased price. "Hehehe... Now we have your data. Your pirated copy of Windows will be locked until you purchase our Windows XP PE (Pirate Edition) for a nominal cost of only $999."
OK, now to all of you Microsoft guys reading this post, I claim ownership of this idea. If you use it, I want 20% of the take.
Before you go off praising yourself for being so technically savvy, you really should RTFA. Most of these uses were addressed.
1. In the article, system boot time went from approx. 15 seconds to approx 10 seconds. Hardly seems worth it.
2. Specifically addressed in the article. 32-bit Windows XP Pro can only handle 4GB of RAM total (including swap file.) Why not just max out your system with 4GB of physical ram and kill the swap-file altogether? You wouldn't need to buy a $150 card and bottleneck all that memory bandwidth through a SATA controller.
3. SQL databases and transaction logs may show some notable improvement. (this was NOT addressed in the article.) but again, you have to consider that Windows and SQL server already attempt to cram (or cache, as they call it) as much of the database as possible into RAM. I've seem more than a few systems where SQL server is using up 3.5 GB of RAM just caching databases off the disk. Again, 32-bit Windows can only handle 4GB of memory. Sure you could make the argument that enterprise or data center class devices might see a potential benefit from this, but then you're hardly talking about a mainstream device. Any machine that would rightly be used to run these massive operations would likely cost tens of thousands of dollars and would not be purchased by an average consumer. And again, when you're spending all this loot, why not just max out the system RAM.
4. Other things. I'd be willing to engage in reasonable debate on these other ideas you have.
I think this is a phenomenal idea however in its current form it borders on useless. (essentially $510 for a 4 GB drive that makes your OS boot up 5 seconds faster. The price/performance ratio is way off.) I'd like to see the manufacturer make some improvements (more banks for RAM, larger theoretical capacity, faster interface) and this could be a truly useful product. (BTW, I don't claim credit for most of this post. It was all in the article.)
Sure, there may be ways to do this, but it's tricky. (That's not to say impossible.) If a public company breaks the law, is it fair to punish the unknowing shareholders by "suspending operations" of the company? Can a shareholder actually research the company enough before investing to ensure that they are not participating in illegal activities, thus protecting their investment?
The corporate equivalent of jail time would have to be heavy fines, but it's tough to levy a fine. If it's too big, it amounts to a "death penalty" for the company. If it's too small, it amounts to a "justifiable expense" for the company. I would love to hear some good arguments on both sides of the issue so I can solidify a position. I do think, however, that corporations should not be exempt from breaking the law, and when they break laws, they need to be punished accordingly. If I knew the answer, I'd start my own counrty and everyone would move there because it would be better than the one we live in now.
I'm not afraid to admit I don't know the answer.
Mostly, no. I'm not saying that some of them didn't make it into my system indirectly, (restaraunt food, egg byproducts, etc.) however, I only consciously purchase certified organic eggs and milk. Sure, they're $2-$3 a dozen and $6 a gallon, respectively, but I don't use many eggs or milk, so it doesn't factor heavily into my budget.
Unfortunately, in the US, companies are NOT treated with similar rights as people. For exactly the reason you stated above (who do you punish?) corporations are often given MUCH more leeway to vio;ate the law than individuals. The sentence against Bernie Ebbers (Worldcom CEO) two weeks ago was a rare victory for the little guy, but in reality this was a sentence against one man for crimes that were orchestrated and carried out with cooperation and knowlege of hundreds if not thousands of people.
Using this same logic companies every day spew out unfathomable amounts of illegal toxins. If they are caught, they pay a fine, (which they have already budgeted for) ratchet back their emissions, wait for a little while until the EPA gets off their backs, then resume their polluting. A factory farm here in Ohio (Buckeye Egg Farm) did this for over ten years amidst hundreds of complaints and clear violations of environmental laws before they were finally ordered to shut down operations. An individual in the US could not knowingly violate the law, all the while reaping huge profits, only to be told to stop after 10 years of activity. Corporations are given too much criminal protection.
I don't understand this. I thought that the record companies were supposed to be the shining beacons of morality! What with all their protecting the rights of the innocent and defenseless artists, they'd HAVE to be completely upright businessmen.
:)
I guess the moral is that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Meanwhile, I'm going to start downloading music again.
I REALLY want to kill my floppy drive. I hate it. Floppy disks are so incredibly unreliable. They are corrupted on the whim. Hell, even putting a floppy next to a cell phone can provide sufficient magnetic field to erase its contents.
However, I just built a new set of servers for my company, and we had to put floppy drives on all of them. The BIOS on the motherboard we used supported booting to a USB device, but if you didn't want to boot to it, it wasn't recognized. In order to load the SATA RAID drivers for Win2k3, we had to have a FDD in the machine. It sucks. Also, recently, I made a customization of the Ultimate Boot CD and I needed every friggin' floppy disk that I wanted to put on there, because there's no easy (and free) way to make an image of a boot floppy without using the actual disk. I had copies of all the compressed images, but since they were compressed, I had to copy them onto a floppy, then re-create a non-compressed image using FloppyImage. (There are commercial programs out there, but who wants to pay $30 for WinImage to create 5 images when FloppyImage is free)
So what's the solution? Will motherboard BIOS manufacturers just standardize the practice of putting NON-BOOTABLE USB support in the BIOS? I can fit every image to every floppy disk I ever owned onto one 512MB USB drive. What does it take?
Go to an online inflation calculator.
The Atari 2600 (Then known as the Atari VCS) cost $199 when it was released in 1977. That's $645.75 in 2005 dollars.
In fact, here is a price list of some major consoles released in the past 20 years, in 2005 dollars:
Atari VCS (2600) ($199 in 1977) - $645.75
Intellivision ($299 in 1979) - $846.68 (Holy Crap!)
Colecovision ($199 in 1982) - $403.70
NES ($249 in 1986) - $426.54
Sega Genesis ($199 in 1989) - $310.19
SNES ($199 in 1991) - $280.82
Playstation ($299 in 1995) - $372.01
I think that shows that video games have come down drastically in price over the last 20 years. But the geniuses over at Sony (and Microsoft) know that the market should easily tolerate a $400 - $500 console.
Inflation, Ain't it a bitch?
about the Newton. Truth is, it was a device far, far ahead of its time. Palm admittedly used it as a model for the first Palm Pilot. Even though Palm simplified the Pilot, eventually, it evolved into a machine that is much like the original Newton, in concept. I'm sure Apple would've made it smaller if technology permitted, but at the time, VHS size was the best they could do. Had they come out with at the same product 10 years later, (smaller form-factor, of course) it would've taken off. Timing is everything.
Decent idea
.xxx domain? On the opposite side, parents would have a legitimate complaint if they found their 8-year old looking at my panties-only site. But where is the line? Who decides what's "decent?" Sounds like more government oversight into our private lives.
.xxx domain could cripple their business, and they don't even have pictures of (real) naked people on their site.
But what is porn? Who decides what qualifies as porn? How about I open a lingerie shop that only sells panties. Then I put up a bunch of pictures of topless women. I am operating a legitimate business. So what if I get a bit of extra traffic. That's not my business. Should I have to move to a
Another very real-world example: What about realdoll.com (intentionally not linked. Cut and paste, you pervert...) They sell a legitimate product, but you could still wank off to their website. Putting them on a
I'm just playing devil's advocate here to spur some discussion, but you have to be careful when you ask for government for oversight. It's like making a wish to the Devil. He's crafty enough to take your wish and end up distoring it to screw you over...