If flight simulator X is any indication (a game that should have been easy to parallize) this conversation happens all the time and games are launched taking advantage of only one core.
How about Adobe Creative Suite 3? The professionals using it are the most likely to buy quad- or 8-core systems, but CS3 only supports up to two cores.
It is not difficult to justify parallel programming. Ten years ago, it was difficult to justify because most computers had a single processor. Today, dual-core systems are increasingly common, and 8-core PC's are not unheard of. And software developers are already complaining because it's "too hard" to write parallel programs.
Since Intel is already developing processors with around 80 cores, I think that multi-core (i.e. multi-processor) processors are only going to become more common. If software developers intend to write software that can take advantage of current and future processors, they're going to have to deal with parallel programming.
I think that what's most likely to happen is we'll see the emergence of a new programming model, which allows us to specify an algorithm in a form resembling a Hasse diagram, where each point represent a step and each edge represents a dependency, so that a compiler can recognize what can and cannot be done in parallel and set up multiple threads of execution (or some similar construct) according to that.
You might be able to write an application in AJAX that takes advantage of a webcam, but I don't think anyone is going to write a webcam driver in anything other than C or assembler any time soon.
Frankly, if your computer is set up in such a way that device drivers can be written in AJAX, either you have a very strange operating system, or you're running an unpatched version of Internet Explorer and the device driver is taking advantage of a security flaw to execute arbitrary code.
Any crop produced in any kind of modern way uses enormous petroleum and natural gas inputs; pesticides, fertilizers, tractors, transportation, irrigation.
That's a problem with how biofuels are produced, not a problem with the biofuels themselves. Here's what I think we need to do:
Give up on pesticides. The pests are just going to evolve resistance to the pesticides, and we'll just end up poisoning ourselves. Besides, understanding an ecological system is an incredibly complex problem--we can't wipe out all pests and expect things to be great from then on. Every time we've tried that in the past led to disaster.
Give up on synthetic fertilizers. Other approaches, such as biodynamic farming, provide excellent crops in a sustainable manner. And if we can't feed the world without petroleum-based fertilizers...well, we're already screwed.
Run the farm equipment on renewable energy sources. Obviously, if you're going to run farm equipment on biofuel, that farm needs to be able to produce more biofuel than the equipment uses. Or maybe we should bring back oxen--they are far more energy-efficient than any man-made machine in the history of the world.
Buy and sell locally-grown crops (and biofuel). Transportation costs will be vastly reduced if you don't have to ship over vast distances. Frankly, when I travel from California to Lousiana, and I find myself eating produce that was imported from California, something just isn't right!
Grow crops that are adapted to the climate of the farm. Stop trying to alter the climate to fit the crop.
The greenhouse emissions of oil and biofuel are not equivalent. By far most of the mass of a plant is made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen that was extracted from the air. So when you burn the plant matter as fuel, you're putting a net total of ZERO greenhouse gases into the air--aside from a few trace elements, all the stuff you're putting into the air came out of the air!
As far as I can tell, the only time this breaks down is when oil-powered farm equipment is used to grow crops for biofuel. And, of course, if the crops are grown in such a way that the soil becomes depleted, you won't be able to make more biofuel and you're pretty much just as screwed as you were with oil (probably more so, since you won't be able to grow food, either).
First, corn is NOT the only way to make biofuel. Sugar cane has already been used successfully elsewhere (it just doesn't grow well in the U.S.). It looks like switchgrass may be another. Corn is not strictly necessary; it just happens to be plentiful in the U.S.
Second, I have to wonder if changing our farming practices might allow for a high enough sustainable yield to feed people AND power vehicles. The Native Americans of Peru were able to build farms that remained fertile for over 4,000 years, WITHOUT industrial farming tools, and they were able to adequately feed their ENTIRE population (at least until the Spaniards showed up). We know how they did it (we call it "biodynamic" farming), and it's clearly superior to our current practices, but nobody's doing it. Why not?
Third, it seems like everyone who detracts biofuel is stuck in a "central supplier" mindset. Oil only exists in certain parts of the world, but anyone with some land can grow some sort of crop that can be turned into biofuel. So why do we need centralized production? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have lots of small, independent biofuel producers that each serve a small geographic area, instead of a few large producers that have to transport their stuff over thousands of miles?
A while ago, I compared the cost of my local cable provider to the cost of iTunes. I figured that the most comparable level of service to iTunes was the one that includes a DVR and a few of the premium channels, which I think cost about $60 per month. Then I looked up on the iTunes Store the shows my family actually watches, and calculated how much each show would cost per month (obviously, I needed to do some conversions, since most shows are sold by the season rather than by the month). I omitted all shows that are in reruns, since I decided that if I were to drop my cable service, I would be more likely get such shows on DVD (either buy them or rent them e.g. via Netflix).
Some of the shows we watch aren't offered on iTunes (including MythBusters!!!), but when I calculated how much we'd spend if all the shows we watch were offered, I found that the worst-case scenario was still less than half the cost of the comparable cable service. Furthermore, iTunes offers a variety of advantages (no commercials, and we can watch purchased shows whenever we want) that no cable service provides and can't easily be translated to a dollar value.
My opinion, therefore, is that video through iTunes and similar services, while not as well-developed as video through cable or satellite, has the potential to be a significant competitor to traditional cable or satellite services.
"So, right, stealing is a bad thing. First you'll need to learn to pick locks so you can do it lots and not get caught. But we're going to give you lessons on doing it - we're even going to practice in class to make sure you know how to pick the locks, we're not actually going to let you steal though. Now, of course it's illegal for you to steal. But, if you wear gloves and a hoodie then you probably won't get caught. If you do get caught well just let us know and we'll get you out of prison the next day."
Not the same thing at all. Learning how to pick locks doesn't make you better able to use locks. But there are plenty of other things where knowing how they work DOES make you safer. Sex is one such thing; understand the risks and you can protect yourself against them (face it, most people can't or won't abstain from sex). Securing your computer against hackers is another; if you can hack a computer, you can protect your computer against the techniques you use. Even driving a car counts; know what the car can do and you can be safer by not trying to do things that it can't do.
During a class on child development I took last semester, everyone had to do a presentation in front of the rest of the class on a particular topic. Most people crammed all the information on the slides and read them verbatim, much like you describe. My group, on the other hand, just put a few bullet points on each slide, and interspersed them with visuals that helped convey the points I was making. I also threw in a few exercises where the class could participate, such as a sequence of pictures where the class tried to remember as many of them as possible and tell me what they saw after the last picture went away.
I feel pretty confident that, while the information in other presentations was at about the same level of difficulty as ours, the class learned more from our presentation than any other. All because I actually knew how to make a good PowerPoint slideshow.
Therefore, my feeling is that PowerPoint and similar programs aren't necessarily bad for learning, but they're often horribly misused. Since it offers such a user-friendly look and feel, many PowerPoint users underestimate how much care needs to go into a good slideshow.
The fact that corn was a staple of Mesoamerican civilization until the arrival of European conquerors illustrates that corn can be healthy, when treated and consumed properly. Corn tortillas (where the corn is processed with alkali) are healthy, and when paired with beans are an excellent source of vegetable protein. Sweet corn (i.e. the soft kind you can eat straight off the cob), corn syrup, corn-based animal feed, and most other products made from corn today are not so healthy.
And, of course, government subsidies pretty much guarantee that the business model being used by these farms is unsustainable.
thanol is not the answer. It takes more energy to produce than it yields. If you factor in the ammonium nitrate (fertilizer, made from, you guessed it, oil), the fuel burned to harvest it, transport and refine it, there is a net 54000 BTU loss per gallon.
No fuel is 100% efficient. It is a fundamental law of nature that some amount of energy will be lost in any conversion process.
The key to sustainable biofuel, as I see it, is that the crops used to make biofuel need to be grown in a sustainable way. We know that it's possible, because the native Americans of Peru had farms that were in continuous use for over 4,000 years, and we now know how they did it. The challenge is to change our own farming practices to be as sustainable as theirs, while still producing enough to feed everyone (I don't know how the crop yields per acre in Peru compared to what we would need today).
It is also important to remember that there is no proverbial silver bullet. Biofuels will not solve all our energy problems. They need to be used in conjunction with other renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, and hydrogen. Yes, none of them are 100% efficient, but as long as they are renewable and don't cause global climate change, they're still immeasurably better than the fossil fuels we're using now.
ICPC has had this problem before. Four times in my direct experience, most notably ICPC World Finals 2000 at which they refused to acknowledge their error until weeks later.
I can tell you from personal experience that, in the Pacific Northwest regionals (I was part of the team from Sonoma State University), we had a similar issue this year. Problem H ("And now for something completely different!") had a problem where the specification was ambiguous (I'm not sure exactly where, since my team didn't attempt to solve it), to the point where the team that took first place (from the University of British Columbia) submitted and resubmitted it at least four times, and apparently was wrong every time.
No way. You can be sure that some politician would find a way to award a no-bid contract to Diebold (or Diebold's successor) to build that voting site. And then for all matters technical, the big-business party would ALWAYS win.
If I were left alone with [insert unpopular U.S. official here], and if I were inclined to do so, I could kill him with my bare hands. Does that mean that hands are a threat to national security? Should we force people to wear padded mittens at all times, so they can't kill with their hands? Should we cut off people's hands if they break the mitten rule?
Senators who don't keep file sharing software away from classified files (or don't actively restrict the software from sharing those files) are a security threat?
I'd take it a step further. Before politicians are allowed to vote on an issue, they should demonstrate a minimal level of competence in what they're voting on. I say that any politician who wishes to vote on any computer-related matter should be put in front of a computer and given 60 seconds to figure out how to make the words "Hello world" appear on the screen. If they can't do it, they are obviously ignorant of technology, and should not be allowed to vote on this stuff.
The downside, of course, is that if Ted Stevens is any indication, there'd be nobody left in the U.S. Government to vote on technical matters if we had this kind of policy. But if the last several years are any indication, anarchy probably is better than the incompetence we have now.
This is much worse than talking on a cell phone. Why? The single most important sense for driving safely is vision. With a cell phone, at least you can keep your eyes on the road. How can someone expect to drive safely while looking at the display of a BlackBerry (or any other portable gadget with a display)?
Driving while using a BlackBerry is so idiotic, if it weren't for the high probability that these people would kill innocent bystanders, I'd recommend them for Darwin Awards.
I have two thoughts. First, if an online show (on YouTube or elsewhere) is popular enough, maybe viewers would want to (try to) produce their own online shows (remember, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery)? If so, you might argue that the show implicitly advertises whatever equipment is used to produce it, and assuming the imitators would want to have the same equipment as is used by the original show (to achieve the same level of technical quality), the company that makes the equipment would benefit by supporting the show financially.
Second, I seem to remember listening to a few old radio shows (circa 1950) were able to run with only a singular sponsor. The Burns and Allen Show, for example, was sponsored by Maxwell House (the coffee brand), and every so often the characters would talk about why they drink Maxwell House coffee, how it's "good to the last drop", etc. No other advertisements or product placements Perhaps in this age of multi-million dollar TV shows, where fully 1/3 of your average TV show is commercials, the public has forgotten that it used to be possible to produce quality entertainment for much less, even when inflation is accounted for.
Disclaimer: I am not an MBA, I am not in the Entertainment industry, and I am not old enough to have listened to Burns and Allen when they were new.
The second biggest problem is that the Federal Government has set up a hostile enviroment to discourage Security Research. Security researches are threatened with prosecution, jail time and civil lawsuits that can bankrupt them. The common occurance is when a Researcher reports a problem with a flaw in a product. There are no Safe Harbor procedures or provisions in any Federal law which allow this to happen so that society in general can benefit.
At my university (I won't say which one), a computer science professor decided that it would be a good idea to teach a class on computer malware. He offered a solid rationale, which could be paraphrased to that computer science is the only field in which research into potentially dangerous materials (code) is actively discouraged. In fact, I'm taking an introductory biology course right now where one of the lab exercises involves E. Coli!!! Nobody seems to be freaking out over that!
So what was the fallout of this idea? Several companies (including some of the large antivirus companies) have stated that they will not hire anyone who takes this class. And we recently determined that someone who came in on the first day of class, supposedly to offer test preparation for entry into graduate school, was actually a mole for an as-yet-unidentified organization (thus far we've determined that the company she claimed to work for does not exist). And it seems like everyone who can actually see the logic in his argument is too scared to say anything.
Sheesh, no wonder the U.S. is taking such a beating from foreign hackers.
There are no computers at Crawford Ranch. A few minutes after Bush was inaugurated, the computers were found to contain spyware, and he had them sent to Gitmo.
Religion appeals to lots of people who can think rationally--Carl Sagan, for example. The difference is that someone who can think rationally would not try to force his/her own religious views onto others.
Hence, it is irrational religious people who are harmful to out society, not religious people in general.
Religions are (or at least were) born out of people's desires to know why they exist, and to be able to answer other great philisophical questions. When they had no way of finding the truth, they made up stories that seemed to fit what they could observe. Hence, stories to explain such things as the origins of life on Earth, why we have day and night, and so on.
The problem, as I see it, is that some people take these stories as literal, unquestionable truth, even when the facts show that the stories can't possibly be true. Combine this with how certain religious leaders will pick and choose amongst the messages within their religion to create the illusion that their ambitions are condoned by said religion, and religions tend to morph over time into various kinds of confidence schemes.
I am not a lawyer, but shouldn't MySpace have been able to claim that they are a neutral carrier, and thus not responsible for what people use their website for?
Admittedly they probably lost that option as soon as they started actively monitoring for predators (thus making themselves non-neutral), but I would think that having such a stance from the beginning would have allowed them to have 99.999% or so of these lawsuits thrown out almost immediately.
Slashdot Mirror
How about Adobe Creative Suite 3? The professionals using it are the most likely to buy quad- or 8-core systems, but CS3 only supports up to two cores.
It is not difficult to justify parallel programming. Ten years ago, it was difficult to justify because most computers had a single processor. Today, dual-core systems are increasingly common, and 8-core PC's are not unheard of. And software developers are already complaining because it's "too hard" to write parallel programs.
Since Intel is already developing processors with around 80 cores, I think that multi-core (i.e. multi-processor) processors are only going to become more common. If software developers intend to write software that can take advantage of current and future processors, they're going to have to deal with parallel programming.
I think that what's most likely to happen is we'll see the emergence of a new programming model, which allows us to specify an algorithm in a form resembling a Hasse diagram, where each point represent a step and each edge represents a dependency, so that a compiler can recognize what can and cannot be done in parallel and set up multiple threads of execution (or some similar construct) according to that.
You might be able to write an application in AJAX that takes advantage of a webcam, but I don't think anyone is going to write a webcam driver in anything other than C or assembler any time soon.
Frankly, if your computer is set up in such a way that device drivers can be written in AJAX, either you have a very strange operating system, or you're running an unpatched version of Internet Explorer and the device driver is taking advantage of a security flaw to execute arbitrary code.
That's a problem with how biofuels are produced, not a problem with the biofuels themselves. Here's what I think we need to do:
Any questions?
The greenhouse emissions of oil and biofuel are not equivalent. By far most of the mass of a plant is made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen that was extracted from the air. So when you burn the plant matter as fuel, you're putting a net total of ZERO greenhouse gases into the air--aside from a few trace elements, all the stuff you're putting into the air came out of the air!
As far as I can tell, the only time this breaks down is when oil-powered farm equipment is used to grow crops for biofuel. And, of course, if the crops are grown in such a way that the soil becomes depleted, you won't be able to make more biofuel and you're pretty much just as screwed as you were with oil (probably more so, since you won't be able to grow food, either).
Three things:
First, corn is NOT the only way to make biofuel. Sugar cane has already been used successfully elsewhere (it just doesn't grow well in the U.S.). It looks like switchgrass may be another. Corn is not strictly necessary; it just happens to be plentiful in the U.S.
Second, I have to wonder if changing our farming practices might allow for a high enough sustainable yield to feed people AND power vehicles. The Native Americans of Peru were able to build farms that remained fertile for over 4,000 years, WITHOUT industrial farming tools, and they were able to adequately feed their ENTIRE population (at least until the Spaniards showed up). We know how they did it (we call it "biodynamic" farming), and it's clearly superior to our current practices, but nobody's doing it. Why not?
Third, it seems like everyone who detracts biofuel is stuck in a "central supplier" mindset. Oil only exists in certain parts of the world, but anyone with some land can grow some sort of crop that can be turned into biofuel. So why do we need centralized production? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have lots of small, independent biofuel producers that each serve a small geographic area, instead of a few large producers that have to transport their stuff over thousands of miles?
A while ago, I compared the cost of my local cable provider to the cost of iTunes. I figured that the most comparable level of service to iTunes was the one that includes a DVR and a few of the premium channels, which I think cost about $60 per month. Then I looked up on the iTunes Store the shows my family actually watches, and calculated how much each show would cost per month (obviously, I needed to do some conversions, since most shows are sold by the season rather than by the month). I omitted all shows that are in reruns, since I decided that if I were to drop my cable service, I would be more likely get such shows on DVD (either buy them or rent them e.g. via Netflix).
Some of the shows we watch aren't offered on iTunes (including MythBusters!!!), but when I calculated how much we'd spend if all the shows we watch were offered, I found that the worst-case scenario was still less than half the cost of the comparable cable service. Furthermore, iTunes offers a variety of advantages (no commercials, and we can watch purchased shows whenever we want) that no cable service provides and can't easily be translated to a dollar value.
My opinion, therefore, is that video through iTunes and similar services, while not as well-developed as video through cable or satellite, has the potential to be a significant competitor to traditional cable or satellite services.
Not the same thing at all. Learning how to pick locks doesn't make you better able to use locks. But there are plenty of other things where knowing how they work DOES make you safer. Sex is one such thing; understand the risks and you can protect yourself against them (face it, most people can't or won't abstain from sex). Securing your computer against hackers is another; if you can hack a computer, you can protect your computer against the techniques you use. Even driving a car counts; know what the car can do and you can be safer by not trying to do things that it can't do.
During a class on child development I took last semester, everyone had to do a presentation in front of the rest of the class on a particular topic. Most people crammed all the information on the slides and read them verbatim, much like you describe. My group, on the other hand, just put a few bullet points on each slide, and interspersed them with visuals that helped convey the points I was making. I also threw in a few exercises where the class could participate, such as a sequence of pictures where the class tried to remember as many of them as possible and tell me what they saw after the last picture went away.
I feel pretty confident that, while the information in other presentations was at about the same level of difficulty as ours, the class learned more from our presentation than any other. All because I actually knew how to make a good PowerPoint slideshow.
Therefore, my feeling is that PowerPoint and similar programs aren't necessarily bad for learning, but they're often horribly misused. Since it offers such a user-friendly look and feel, many PowerPoint users underestimate how much care needs to go into a good slideshow.
The fact that corn was a staple of Mesoamerican civilization until the arrival of European conquerors illustrates that corn can be healthy, when treated and consumed properly. Corn tortillas (where the corn is processed with alkali) are healthy, and when paired with beans are an excellent source of vegetable protein. Sweet corn (i.e. the soft kind you can eat straight off the cob), corn syrup, corn-based animal feed, and most other products made from corn today are not so healthy.
And, of course, government subsidies pretty much guarantee that the business model being used by these farms is unsustainable.
No fuel is 100% efficient. It is a fundamental law of nature that some amount of energy will be lost in any conversion process.
The key to sustainable biofuel, as I see it, is that the crops used to make biofuel need to be grown in a sustainable way. We know that it's possible, because the native Americans of Peru had farms that were in continuous use for over 4,000 years, and we now know how they did it. The challenge is to change our own farming practices to be as sustainable as theirs, while still producing enough to feed everyone (I don't know how the crop yields per acre in Peru compared to what we would need today).
It is also important to remember that there is no proverbial silver bullet. Biofuels will not solve all our energy problems. They need to be used in conjunction with other renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, and hydrogen. Yes, none of them are 100% efficient, but as long as they are renewable and don't cause global climate change, they're still immeasurably better than the fossil fuels we're using now.
I can tell you from personal experience that, in the Pacific Northwest regionals (I was part of the team from Sonoma State University), we had a similar issue this year. Problem H ("And now for something completely different!") had a problem where the specification was ambiguous (I'm not sure exactly where, since my team didn't attempt to solve it), to the point where the team that took first place (from the University of British Columbia) submitted and resubmitted it at least four times, and apparently was wrong every time.
No way. You can be sure that some politician would find a way to award a no-bid contract to Diebold (or Diebold's successor) to build that voting site. And then for all matters technical, the big-business party would ALWAYS win.
If I were left alone with [insert unpopular U.S. official here], and if I were inclined to do so, I could kill him with my bare hands. Does that mean that hands are a threat to national security? Should we force people to wear padded mittens at all times, so they can't kill with their hands? Should we cut off people's hands if they break the mitten rule?
I'd take it a step further. Before politicians are allowed to vote on an issue, they should demonstrate a minimal level of competence in what they're voting on. I say that any politician who wishes to vote on any computer-related matter should be put in front of a computer and given 60 seconds to figure out how to make the words "Hello world" appear on the screen. If they can't do it, they are obviously ignorant of technology, and should not be allowed to vote on this stuff.
The downside, of course, is that if Ted Stevens is any indication, there'd be nobody left in the U.S. Government to vote on technical matters if we had this kind of policy. But if the last several years are any indication, anarchy probably is better than the incompetence we have now.
This is much worse than talking on a cell phone. Why? The single most important sense for driving safely is vision. With a cell phone, at least you can keep your eyes on the road. How can someone expect to drive safely while looking at the display of a BlackBerry (or any other portable gadget with a display)?
Driving while using a BlackBerry is so idiotic, if it weren't for the high probability that these people would kill innocent bystanders, I'd recommend them for Darwin Awards.
If we can put barbecued chicken on a pizza, can we put a man on the moon?
<Dr. Phil>How's that working for ya, America?</Dr. Phil>
I have two thoughts. First, if an online show (on YouTube or elsewhere) is popular enough, maybe viewers would want to (try to) produce their own online shows (remember, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery)? If so, you might argue that the show implicitly advertises whatever equipment is used to produce it, and assuming the imitators would want to have the same equipment as is used by the original show (to achieve the same level of technical quality), the company that makes the equipment would benefit by supporting the show financially.
Second, I seem to remember listening to a few old radio shows (circa 1950) were able to run with only a singular sponsor. The Burns and Allen Show, for example, was sponsored by Maxwell House (the coffee brand), and every so often the characters would talk about why they drink Maxwell House coffee, how it's "good to the last drop", etc. No other advertisements or product placements Perhaps in this age of multi-million dollar TV shows, where fully 1/3 of your average TV show is commercials, the public has forgotten that it used to be possible to produce quality entertainment for much less, even when inflation is accounted for.
Disclaimer: I am not an MBA, I am not in the Entertainment industry, and I am not old enough to have listened to Burns and Allen when they were new.
At my university (I won't say which one), a computer science professor decided that it would be a good idea to teach a class on computer malware. He offered a solid rationale, which could be paraphrased to that computer science is the only field in which research into potentially dangerous materials (code) is actively discouraged. In fact, I'm taking an introductory biology course right now where one of the lab exercises involves E. Coli!!! Nobody seems to be freaking out over that!
So what was the fallout of this idea? Several companies (including some of the large antivirus companies) have stated that they will not hire anyone who takes this class. And we recently determined that someone who came in on the first day of class, supposedly to offer test preparation for entry into graduate school, was actually a mole for an as-yet-unidentified organization (thus far we've determined that the company she claimed to work for does not exist). And it seems like everyone who can actually see the logic in his argument is too scared to say anything.
Sheesh, no wonder the U.S. is taking such a beating from foreign hackers.
There are no computers at Crawford Ranch. A few minutes after Bush was inaugurated, the computers were found to contain spyware, and he had them sent to Gitmo.
Religion appeals to lots of people who can think rationally--Carl Sagan, for example. The difference is that someone who can think rationally would not try to force his/her own religious views onto others.
Hence, it is irrational religious people who are harmful to out society, not religious people in general.
By your logic, we should ban the unregulated sale of kitchen knives, since it can lead to the wrong people getting hold of those knives.
Religions are (or at least were) born out of people's desires to know why they exist, and to be able to answer other great philisophical questions. When they had no way of finding the truth, they made up stories that seemed to fit what they could observe. Hence, stories to explain such things as the origins of life on Earth, why we have day and night, and so on.
The problem, as I see it, is that some people take these stories as literal, unquestionable truth, even when the facts show that the stories can't possibly be true. Combine this with how certain religious leaders will pick and choose amongst the messages within their religion to create the illusion that their ambitions are condoned by said religion, and religions tend to morph over time into various kinds of confidence schemes.
I am not a lawyer, but shouldn't MySpace have been able to claim that they are a neutral carrier, and thus not responsible for what people use their website for?
Admittedly they probably lost that option as soon as they started actively monitoring for predators (thus making themselves non-neutral), but I would think that having such a stance from the beginning would have allowed them to have 99.999% or so of these lawsuits thrown out almost immediately.