How to Build a Fad Website: AmIHotOrNot 300
webword writes: "Web Techniques is running an interesting article written by James Hong, one of the masterminds behind AmIHotOrNot.com (now known as HOT or NOT?). Before you decide to skip over this, consider that Hong and company used Apache, PHP and MySQL to build their site. They found that these open source tools ran much better on a 700-MHz Pentium III than a quad processor Sun E220. Hong also covers their moderation system, advertising arrangements, and how they were able to scale to handle 1.8 million page views per day after being in operation for a mere 8 days."
Trollin (Score:3)
Get them posters goin'
Get them posters goin', Slashdaaaaaaaaaaaaht
Don't try to understand 'em
Just keep the trollin' random
Get them in a flamewar nice and haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaht
By rig-ging mo-der-a-tion
We cause our de-va-sta-shun
How long til Tac' and Hemos finds our plaaaaaaaht
Post it up, mod it up, troll along, mod it down
post it up, mod it down, slash-dot
Mod it up, reel 'em in, mod it down, flush 'em out
Post it up, troll a-long slash-daaaaaaaaaaaaaht!!
Slashdot!
And then there's... (Score:2)
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
Re:Faster on the Pentium??? (Score:5)
This gets to the fundamental thing people don't understand about measuring the abilities of computers. There are two ways to measure the capability of a systems: speed, and power. They are related but not closely. See, a 5-year-old SparcCenter 2000E with 20 quite slow CPUs and a few gigs of memory is more powerful than the latest and greatest dual 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 peecee and will almost certainly remain more powerful than even the most expensive and fancy peecee for many years to come.
More powerful. Not necessarily faster. Power measures how much work it is possible for the machine to do in a given amount of time. Power is a general measure that assumes you are running a wide variety of different kinds of jobs, or perhaps a large number of similar ones. When measuring power, you must assume that the load of a system should be at least 0.9 per CPU all the time, and that large amounts of data may need to be moved around. Moving data and sustaining high loads for long periods of time without degradation of responsiveness is an indication of power. That SC2000E can serve many millions of pages a day without breaking a sweat. That's power.
Speed, on the other hand, is a concrete measure of the time it takes to run a certain single linear task, such as a kernel compilation or serving a single page to a single client. This measure rarely places any premium on scalability or the ability to move data. Instead, this measure is typically dependent on the speed of the single fastest CPU in the system. Peecees have great speed - the CPUs are clocked very high and execute very complex instructions. Sun systems do not generally fare very well in this area, especially compared to cost.
The design goals of a Sun are evident from the specifications of the systems - buses are wide, not fast. Latencies can be quite high. CPUs are clocked fairly low and execute simple instructions. The system is designed to allow tremendous throughput - power. Load up on memory, disk controllers and storage, and CPUs, and the huge buses will deliver data well as the load rises. For a web server, for example, serving a single page to a single client is fairly slow compared to a machine with greater speed - remember, a single linear task. But serving one more page beyond the 5000 already being served is where the Sun will really shine. The peecee's memory bus will be saturated quickly; it is clocked fast - much faster than the memory itself in most cases - but is fairly narrow, and the system buses contain bottlenecks. The system was designed for speed, not power. The Sun, meanwhile, can serve the 5001st page nearly as quickly as the 1st. That is the difference between speed and power. The inability or unwillingness to understand the difference between the two is the *only* reason there are peecees in server rooms.
Every system has certain design goals. Peecees and peecee-like systems are designed for single linear tasks - the kind you find desktop computers generally do. Because people - especially traditional nontechnical peecee users - generally do not multitask very well, there is no sense designing their architecture for power. Instead, designing for speed makes more sense. In the server room, however, the exact opposite is true. Unless you're expecting very light use of services, the speed of a system is meaningless; power should be the main design criterion. Using an architecture designed for a completely different problem space just because it happens to look cheap (I won't even start on TCO issues with peecee servers...) is entirely inappropriate. I would fire a sysadmin who recommended peecees for a server environment.
and solaris is a bloated pig.
Yep. For systems with four or fewer CPUs I generally recommend linux. Linux on Suns is as stable as solaris if not more so, and the scalability issues don't generally come into play until 6-8 CPUs or so (with recent kernels). For larger configurations, the very design characteristics that make solaris such a dog on smaller boxes make it outperform linux. It all depends on the goals of the system. In most cases, a larger number of smaller systems is more reliable, less expensive, and more responsive than a small number of large systems. Thus, for example, a web server farm might be better designed as a load balancer and 16 Sun 420s running Linux than as a single E6500 running solaris. But that's another issue altogether...
Re:Faster on the Pentium??? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Should this really be an example? (Score:2)
For a limited time...--Neil Peart (though he got the line from someone else, i think...)
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You gotta get up real early around here if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Re:A problem with HOTORNOT moderation (Score:2)
When I'm on hot or not (which I am very little: it's a major time sink) I rate some people as a 1 either because they're just hidious (which is rare and I assume not the case with you) or because their picture didn't load. Now, that's the real geek in me. I try to rate people based on all available information, and typically just a jpeg doesn't tell you that much about someone, but if it's hosted on a server that can't stay up or handle that much traffic or I don't know what else, then that to me is a very unattractive feature about the person. Besides, they're essentially asking me to rate their appearance blindfolded - what else am I suppose to do? Rate them a 5 I suppose, but what if they're really ugly? I don't know. And I suppose they're some satisfaction in inflicting some statistical anomaly as I find it really amusing when I do this to someone that others rate at like a 9.9 .
So is rating them based on the server that serves up their jpegs any more shallow than hot or not in general? For the uninitiated, that's a retorical question. And incidently, I don't think shallow == bad, but that's a lengthy commentary that I won't even bother to get into (and I suppose that's even more shallow of me). The only other thing I'll say on that subject is that people around here need to lighten up. Enjoy life some more - it's Friday night - have some fun.
Peace,
-"Zow"
Re:Am I Hot Or Not sends the wrong message (Score:2)
OK, so I'm falling for a troll again.
Let us put this in perspective.
This is consenting men and women subjecting themselves to being rated by sex appeal.
This is not rape and murder of women.
Even the slipperiest of slippery slope arguments doesn't connect the two as a matter of fact.
Maybe it's just me being weird, but the older I get, the less stuffy I become about things like pornography, strip clubs and the like. Maybe it's a fundamental realization on my part that most people should just mind their own fricking business.
ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Re:Should this really be an example? (Score:2)
There can be only one, McCleod!
Re:IsThisPostInterestingOrNot (Score:2)
I think trying to tie together rape and sexual attraction is a mistake. It has been shown time and again that rape is a crime of violence, an assault, with sex only being the means, not the goal. Even smart women, ugly women and elderly women get raped. But I suppose I shouldn't confuse you with the facts.
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:4)
Oh, give me a break! As if women aren't human beings and are incapable of protecting themselves. Oh yes, let's all get around in a circle and protect the pure delicate women from the sexually crazed, "hungry", men. Gack!
Re:Faster on the Pentium??? (Score:2)
Re:Porn is wrong. (Score:2)
Another question: What does the fourth commandment have to do with this? First off, a superficial discrimination isn't nessicarily "body worship". Secondly, there isn't nessicarily any coveting going on here; you can have an opinion on the attractivness of an individual without "wanting" them. And finally, a large percentage of the world population does not believe in the tenants of religions based in judiasim. Just because they don't agree with you doesn't make them wrong.
Your
Don't worship these hypocrites. (Score:2)
19. Can I have your CGI scripts? Can I license your code?
No, and no.
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Re:Trollin (Score:2)
Still, the meter needs some work.
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Re:Porn is wrong. (Score:2)
The more important question... (Score:3)
I'd think this is a question
Any stories, advice?
Kevin Fox
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:My scoring system (Score:3)
blurred picture: -2
picture too small: -4 (amazing how many pictures can't be made out)
headshot: +2 (you can see her face better)
animal in picture: -2 (she's obviously obsessed or weird)
kids in picture: +2 (shows she is warm and caring)
alcohol in hand: 0 (How could that possibly matter?)
alcohol in my hand: +2 (if I drank while I surfed I'm sure they would be more attractive)
can't see face: -4, she sees herself as just a sex object, or has something to hide
looks angry or pouty: -3 (I don't know where the moronic perception that that is attractive came from).
smiling: +1... I don't care what she looks like...
obviously having fun: +1
I guess I have different priorities. All in all, I'd rather surf http://freshmeat.net.
Rick
Re:Our "sick" country? (Score:2)
Re:Can there ever be another success? (Score:2)
Well.... to that I say.. of course!
They paved the way with their concept, and they deserve to reap the benefits from it, whatever that might be. This doesn't stop anyone from competeing if they want to, but if they choose to compete on common ground, they should expect to come up short, as they're going to compete against the the incumbant.
Its VERY difficult to unseat the first to bring the niche to market. It takes a company with the power and influence of Microsoft to accomplish this. This is why AOL is still the most prominant internet service provider, and why Intel is still the premiere maker of x86 chips, even if they're more expensive.
However, there is an infinite quantity of new ground to cover. Of course, its hard to say what exactly this would be because nobody has implemented it yet. To succeed you need a little bit of marketing intellegence and a whole lot of luck, but it can happen. From first glance, the amihotornot concept does not seem to be anything that isn't intuitively obvious, but it has the advantage of not offered before with the proper mixture of smoothness and addictiveness. Thus it made it big. If its success has crippled the potential success of "me too!" followers, so be it.
Dream up your own concept. Don't keep scratching the itch that has already been scratched... find a new itch.
-Restil
Re:Wow (Score:2)
A "Redundant" third post. Is this some sort of Slashdot record?
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You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
Re:FAT people piss me off! (Score:2)
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You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
Re: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife (Score:2)
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You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
Re:IsThisPostInterestingOrNot (Score:2)
Faster on the Pentium??? (Score:3)
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
- - - - -
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
... looks like "Religion/Ethics/Sociology/Animal Husbandry Major" got moderator points.
- - - - -
You're an old Fuddy Duddy (Score:2)
Yes, it DOES fill a need (Score:2)
To answer the eternal (and inherently stupid) "do we really need this" question: Yes there is a need. It's hard to find out what people think of your appearance. If you're ugly, no one will tell you. If people tell you you look good, they might be lying. Uncertainty breeds insecurity. Here you can get an objective measure. If it's high, you can stop worrying. If it's low, you can do something about it. Knowledge is good.
I submitted some pictures and learned that I got much higher ratings when I smile. May sound obvious, but good to learn anyway.
you COULDN'T care less, you mean... (Score:2)
The error notwithstanding, if I had to rate your posting on a 1-to-10 scale, I'd give it a 7.
I'd probably give you a 9 if you were a girl.
monetization of internet fads... (Score:4)
But authoring a fad is an almost impossible task. It would seem that most cases were accidental.
It seems that certain outfits have positioned themselves rather cleverly to monetize some of the fads. Take ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com]. They very recently rolled out an "All Your Base..." t-shirt. One would assume from the prominent placement of the t-shirt on their website and their recent catalog (I'm on the mailing list) that they are selling rather well.
ThinkGeek obviously didn't create the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" phenom, but they acted very quickly once it was clear it achieved a sort of critical mass. But fads of this sort (based on peculiar, specific in-jokes between net nerds) are very certain to have very short half-lives. As a result, those who author such fads (accidentally or intentionally) don't seem as likely to be positioned to benefit from their own success.
On the other hand, consider the situation of Matt Parker and Trey Stone. They created a South Park short-film, which became a "must-see" piece of entertainment on the Internet. The media began to report on it. Then Comedy Central scooped it up, made the two creators multimillionaires, and rolled out one of their highest-rated series. In this instance, it was transplated from the Internet into the old media system of cable television- then hyped, milked and heavily merchandised.
I think we can expect to see repitions of both of these types of scenarios- essentially, Internet fads that fade as quickly as they came, and Internet fads that become the foundation for a serious commercial enterprise.
Re:don't forget (Score:2)
(See SourceForge [sourceforge.net] for the code!)
Re:How much $? (Score:2)
If they were wise, they would cash out right now, while (pun intended) their site is still relatively hot. That is the trick. It is like hitting the lottery with a very limited window. You rise to the top, then cash out before you fall. If not, then you deserve to fail.
Do you think that this is what Slashdot did? Did they sell out at the right time? What do other folks think? First, did they sell out? Second, if they did sell out, did they do it at the right time?
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Now here is the trick. Will they be able to cash out on this? In another post, someone asked if they made money. They also asked how much. Those are good questions. If they were wise, in my opinion, they should sell out right now. Sell out and run with the cash.
This is their one opportunity to make serious cash. Not many people get more than one chance and I doubt that they will. Sure, they might get fat on 401(K)'s in the long run, but this is their lottery ticket. They should cash it in while the numbers match the glowing letters on the display...
What do you think they will do? Get rich or end up in the land of FuckedCompany?
Re:A problem with HOTORNOT moderation (Score:2)
Or maybe there's some people who feel that if you're not an Adonis or Pamela Lee, you're butt ugly. The whole site is about being shallow.
Or maybe someone just wrote a Perl script to vote 1s or 2s or 7s, and to copy the pictures of anyone who is consistently rated a 7, 8, or 9. Maybe they ran overnight and skewed the results for that day.
This is a fad site, and the metrics are entirely subjective and non-scientific. Don't analyze the data. And if you're bemoaning a few 1s or 2s on your own photo, they've got you right where they want you: The whole site is about being shallow.
Re:you COULDN'T care less, you mean... (Score:2)
A few words in defense of "I could care less."
www.m-w.com [m-w.com]: According to one theory, it's because I could care less has an emphatically sarcastic ring to it when spoken. Since it's difficult to sound sarcastic in print, the older I couldn't care less continues to be used there. But that's pure conjecture.
AUE FAQ [alt-usage-english.org] has some other opposite idioms and their etymology.
Re:Porn is wrong. (Score:3)
Oy, the Old Testament is Immutable arguments.
Maybe you haven't read this letter to Dr. Laura Schlessinger. It's been all over, with some alterations, amplifications, and amendments, but for geek-name-dropping-value, I'll provide the link to the version on Richard Stallman's Personal Home Page. (This is also the top link Google gives me, looking for "dr laura leviticus", by the way, beating out Dr. Laura's own home page.)
http://www.stallman.org/dr-laura.html [stallman.org]
An excerpt: [Dr. Laura,] I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
Re:Porn is wrong. (Score:2)
Oh wait, were you talking about another religion? My bad, I always get my mythical beings mixed up. If only one of the damn things would show themselves already so we don't have to keep track of so many...
Deosyne
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
A problem with HOTORNOT moderation (Score:3)
I think that there may be a problem with their moderation system. Most of my 'ranking' fell in a bell curve around 7. However there was an outlying spike at 1 or 2. Now this could indicate two types of rating styles, perhaps. However given the fact that the site reports back to a user what their percentile ranking is (i.e. where they stand relative to other hotornot-ers) this could be an indication that some people are trying to boost their own scores by giving other people bad ones.
Any good moderation system would need to find some way to prevent that- i.e. but ranking a group of several girls 1st second third, etc.
I realize that this would probably make the whole thing less fun, and it isn't supposed to be scientific to begin with. But if it were 'just a site about rating women' then it wouldn't belong on Slashdot, would it?
*ahem* (Score:2)
The Print Edition [mbhs.edu] of my school paper [mbhs.edu] (I work with both Print and Online) did a feature a couple issues ago about this phenomenon [mbhs.edu].
It's nothing special, just thought I'd give you another perspective on it.
Personally, I'm kind of ambivalent. I had a brief amihotornot addiction (I used it to keep myself awake when doing homework late at night), but eventually grew disgusted with it. I find myself smirking at diehard users, but I really don't care that much.
For those who care about such things, this story ran on the "front page" of the features section, which always has an "outside the box" design. In this case, that page editor took the obvious route and made it up like a web browser (note to self... figure out way to get spiffy page designs into online version). I made some cute browser buttons (in the GIMP ;) ). I don't know where I'm going with this paragraph.
-J
Re:Porn is wrong. (Score:2)
The fact is AMIHOTORNOT is no less then a work of genius :)
Re:Should this really be an example? (Score:2)
:)
Re:Simple (Score:2)
Gotta face the reality here that its mostly men putting up pictures of women:)
Re:don't forget (Score:5)
For the href paranoid: http://www.amiallyourbaseornot.com/?pic=CABG
I almost fell out of my chair when I saw:
Re:Should this really be an example? (Score:5)
So are the other 90% immortal? =]
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
And I wanna see Cowboy Neal nekkid (Score:2)
Re:Porn is wrong. (Score:2)
Now, that may sound like an adminition not to put clothes on your neighbours spouse when she is running around the yard naked but what it actually means is that if she creates an act of performance (a song or music), you should not attempt to perform it yourself.
This is why the Jewish run entertainment industry pushes so hard for expansion of copyright laws. It's in their holy book you see. (Technically Christians too but to most Christians, the old testament is just a trailer for the good stuff)
Rich
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
So you're saying that naked girls are hotter?
That's a hell of a thesis statement. Anyone care to dispute it?
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Re:Am I Hot Or Not sends the wrong message (Score:2)
It's hardly a "bizarre power". It's neither bizarre, nor a power.
How is it any different than walking down the street and commenting to a friend "Hey, she's a hottie?"
As to power, please explain how this power manifests itself.
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quad proc Sun E220? (Score:5)
Re:Open Source Software,... (Score:2)
Alister
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<?php include('sig.txt'); ?>
Context in distributed trust metrics (Score:5)
However, HotOrNot is a "context free" metric. You look at a single picture and decide that the person is hot or not. Unfortunately, this isn't all that useful as the answers tend to be very close to either "1" or "10" A much better implementation would be just "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." K5 [kuro5hin.org] also suffers from this problem when it asks users to rate comments on a scale of 1 to 5. Keeping it simple would make the ratings much more effective.
Pick the Hottie [pickthehottie.com] on the other hand implements a contextual metric. Instead of rating a picture on it's own you look at two pictures and click the one you think is hotter. It's much easier to decide between coffee or tea than it is to rate coffee on a scale of 1 to 10. Effectively the site is sorting pictures using human judgement for the comparison function. This way you get much more useful results. With this system you can get the "Top 10 Hotties." With HotOrNot there are probably thousands of images that are 10.0 or 9.9.
Justin Chapweske of Open Cola [opencola.com] gets the credit for pointing out this one.
burris
Hot or Not the problem here? (Score:2)
Regarding your 'AM I HOT OR NOT LEADS TO RAPE. REALLY!!' babble (I can't even classify this as an assertion), my advice is to consider a career in mainstream journalism where there exists a DESPERATE need for your brand of scare-mongering America's dearly beloved soccer moms. Yes it is possible to use Linux or apache for purposes you may not like (Oh my God! Child pornography!! Horrors!! Quick, let's ignore the fact that slaking people's lusts only makes realworld harm LESS LIKELY and go on a jihad against Gnutella, brother!). This does not justify your trying to stampede the herd in a damnably Quixotic fashion - I would be willing to bet my entire next year's paycheck that Am I Hot or Not has caused, to date, absolutely zero rapes. Not to mention that rape is not a buzzword that automatically makes you right to any of the people you're talking to (ie, people who might conceivably agree the service is immature in nature). I think you need to lay off the katie.com pipe here. Small hint: just in case you're new to the game, this kind of behaviour will NOT get you laid. The demographic of women reading slashdot is the same demographic that tends to prefer thoughtful, intelligent people who are capable of maintaining an open mind to a topic. I know this from first hand experience.
People go 'out' in the real world for the sole purpose of rating other people. Rape occurs here all the time precisely because it is the real world and the insulation of the Internet is removed. You sound like you could stand to get out a litte, by the way.
--Ryvar
My girlfriend (whom I met over the 'net) and I wrote this in bed on my, er, laptop, after some really great consensual rape.
my site is getting hits! (Score:3)
Wunder why?
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
Every page of your site, or at least the dozen or so I just looked at briefly, has a left side navigation frame that seems to be cartoon-style depiction of you, naked, except for your hat, collar, wrist watches, jewlery, and some surreal and colorful high-tech body implants; where the nagivation elements cover your breasts and other parts of your body. Your bio page [jinwicked.com] contains an sketch that also appears to be a depiction of you, wearing a thong. On your writing page [jinwicked.com], the navigation element that covers the depiction of your breasts is in fact a purple-tinted close of a woman's bare breasts (where a javascript onMouseover turns it to the word "Essays"), and likewise a red-tinted photo of a bare bottom appears on the third navigation link.
Re:My scoring system (Score:5)
A great body: +3
Showing some cleavage: +4
Voting your ex-girlfriend a 1: Priceless
There are some things money can't buy...
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This troll is 5.5 on a scale of 10. (Score:2)
Creativity : 5
Believability : 7
Language : 5
Topic : 5.5
Re:Simple (Score:2)
Re:Can you say misconfiguration? (Score:2)
Rate me on Picture-rate.com [picture-rate.com]
Re:Porn is wrong. (Score:2)
Insightful=3, Interesting=4
Either moderators have a sick sense of humor today, or the problem of antisexuality & antipleasure is bigger than I thought. How is this post any different from someone (say, the Taleban) advocating putting woman in veils, to avoid "temptation" of the flesh?
This troll doesn't surprise me, it's not creative or original in any sense. But that it was moderated up for its insightful/interesting content by 7 people -- that just blows me away.
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Re:HAVE YOU NOTICED (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:Hot or Not the problem here? (Score:2)
/Brian
Fad websites... (Score:2)
But how will these sites fare in the long run? At this point, it's difficult to tell. Some detractors would argue that these type of sites are nothing more than a passing fancy. However, the Web is a revolutionary alterance in the existing capacity for communication; it allows people to network and fads to begin in ways that our current social understanding may not be prepared to accomodate.
Thus, supporters say that these types of fads are signs of an important step forward for computing and society. With previous information storehouses, users could not take advantage of the most important technological benefits gained from modern-day information research. The Internet, they say, opens the proverbial floodgates by bringing the production of new memes out of Hollywood and into the homes of the every-day user.
There is some probably some merit to both viewpoints. Certainly, society as a whole will encounter some friction as it shifts to accomodate the new types of social leadership provided by the Internet. However, the end result may be worth the infrastructural shifts; existing memes may soon be fated to wither away.
Will these fads sink or swim? The question is still up in the air; with many unique forces and viewpoints at work, we'll likely see many interesting challenges and confrontations for the pioneers in the Internet field. Whatever the final result is, it's sure to give the key players on all sides of the issue a trial by fire.
Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Skipping over (Score:2)
A view... (Score:2)
However, this is not why I'm posting a comment... but I want my viewpoint on this subject to be clear before I begin.
One of my cousins was browsing a similar (not AmIHotOrNot) site and was rating the people as they came up. You know how it goes. I was sitting next to her watching her do this. She told me it was "fun." She was rating attractive girls (not models mind you) very low, at least according to the scale she was given. When males came up, she was rating them far better, even if they were not the most attractive people. Perhaps I was biased because I am a male and thus found the females proportionately more attractive. But it seemed to me she was somewhat critical of the girls even though they were not unattractive (she was rating what I considered (using the scale, which I think we can argree is arbitrary) 5/6 girls as 1/2/3).
I sat there and watched this for a while, and didn't say much. Finally she tired of it, and said she should put her picture up, along with a friend of hers (they are attractive women). I told her not to. She wanted to find out how people would rate her, and I told her that she didn't want to know. Not because she wasn't attractive, but because people would rate her as she had rated others.
In her case, the concern is not that she (or her friend) will be rated poorly and become depressed. They are old enough to know that they are attractive (according to societal/cultural/psychological/etc standards). The concern is that young girls will browse the site and see them (possibly rated poorly) and compare themselves. If they are "as attractive" or "less attractive" than the pictures they see, and those people are rated poorly, what is the logical reaction of those young girls?
Not good. Don't forget that those kind of sites can hurt those with pictures on the site as much as those who view those pictures and compare themselves.
My cousin decided not to put their pictures on the site.
Re:you COULDN'T care less, you mean... (Score:2)
You're very correct! Doh! Probably should've re-read my post before hitting the "Submit" button. Ah, the eternal problem of Slashdot.
The error notwithstanding, if I had to rate your posting on a 1-to-10 scale, I'd give it a 7.
I'd probably give you a 9 if you were a girl.
LOL!
Time to do my taxes.
Re:Porn is wrong. (Score:2)
The Fourth Commandment says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife'.
So as long they are no ones wife it is okay then? Thanks for the info.
Re:Faster on the Pentium??? (Score:2)
REAL
Re:Should this really be an example? (Score:2)
No fact here, just my best guesses.
Re: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife (Score:2)
And while we are at it, what proof do you have that there is a God?
And while we are at it, what proof do you have that my neighbor has a wife?
And, for the neighbor on the other side, what proof that I covet my neighbor's wife? (Of course, if she knew this, she wouldn't let him go outside dressed like that, but I digress.)
Re:we evolved different than God's other animals (Score:2)
Because homo sapiens evolved differently than the way the rest of God's animals evolved.
Because raising children is almost beyond the resources of a single individual. Humans make a huge investment in their offspring.
Therefore, mothers who are able to keep a husband around are more successful at reproduction. Therefore, males who mate with these more successful females, in order to be successful themselves, must have some evolutionary pressure to be monogamous.
It is in the female's best interest to mate with a male who will give her the best genes, but to live with a male who will provide her the resources to raise her offspring. This is why females have an incentive to be unfaithful, but try to stay in a relationship with a good provider. (i.e. gold digger) The best provider of resources and the best provider of genes, are not necessarily the same male.
The incentive for males to be unfaithful is obvious. Having vast amounts of disposable sperm, it is in the best interest of males to copulate with as many females as possible, but to have as few wives as they can support with their resources. Hence kings have harems, and poor people have one wife. The mistress has pressure to try to get the guy to leave his wife, or at least divert some resources from the wife to herself. The wife has an interest in keeping the male faithful in order to prevent the potential loss or diversion of his resources.
Females who try to trick someone other than their biological fathers into raising their child are looked down upon. We invent all kinds of horrible terms, like whore, etc. for behavior that we detest, because we ourselves wouldn't want to be tricked in this way.
What has not been satisfactorally explained is why a very small percent of people are gay? I don't buy that it's genetic, as this doesn't make sense. Perhaps a genetic defect. Perhaps a congenital defect. (Maybe defect is the wrong word here, but since I'm not offended by using it, nobody else should be.) I still suppose it's environmental. But there doesn't seem to be any agreement on this.
Too bad wives don't send their husbands out to be serviced by an expert when they have a "headache". They don't stand to lose any resources to a "mistress" who is a guy.
Re:Hot Or Not discriminatory (Score:2)
Maybe your concience would feel better if you didn't look at women.
There is a little control that lets you choose to see men or women. You could choose to view only men. (Like I do.
I can say from experience that the men don't seem to get rated by how much flesh they expose, but by how potentially yummy they look. My view on this seems to be supported by the fact that others' votes agree with mine.
Re:Childish & Juvenile behavior, like trolling? (Score:2)
childish and juvenile behavior, like trolling on Slashdot?
Re:Should this really be an example? (Score:2)
Do we really need this [slashdot.org] kind of site? Is it constructive like other sites without trolls?
Look at the facts:
- 10 % of all North American teenagers jack off regularly.
- 99 % will go blind from it.
The last thing we need is a web site which allows others to post their trolls for 'approval', only to find themselves modded down to a 3 or 2 while others occupy the 50 point karma cap.
Re:Opposite sex is wrong. (Score:3)
Estimation of the opposite sex!
Oh no! Why didn't someone tell me this before I spent so much time there?
Open Source what...? (Score:2)
Re:Fad websites... (Score:2)
How much $? (Score:2)
Re:How much $? (Score:2)
Can you say misconfiguration? (Score:4)
FUCKED COMPANY.COM (Score:2)
Quad 220? Ever hear of 64bits (Score:2)
don't forget (Score:2)
amigothornot.com
ruhotornot.com
ratemypet.com
ratemyrack.com
amiallyourbaseornot.com
I'm sure there are more too; pretty much ratemyxyz.com is all registered domains already.
FAT people piss me off! (Score:2)
Second the physicaly fit human body is beautiful. There is a reason DaVincci's David is a classic. If you're fat and don't have the will power to lose weight than deal with that fact, don't call me evil or shallow. If your ugly, well that does suck, but you should accomidate it with your figure and personality, and save your money becasue plastic surgeons are doing AMAZING things with lasers nowadays.
Don't be so uptight.
IsThisPostInterestingOrNot (Score:5)
One of those is more shallow than the other? They are both one-sided representations of people, and both are poor substitutes for actual human interaction. They are simply aimed at different demographics.
I don't see an enormous difference between posting this on Slashdot and then waiting to see how it gets rated, and posting a picture of myself on RankPeople. You're just getting ratings on different aspects of yourself, that's all.
-Keslin [keslin.com], the naked nerd girl
Re:Simple (Score:3)
Let's look at the facts for a moment. Geocities gives away free webspace and offsets the cost with banner ads. I am referred to Geocities by HotorNot and set up a dummy account with nothing but a jpg of myself in my Geocities directory.
HotorNot then pulls my jpg off of Geocities server, costing Geocities money and bandwidth in the process, and imbeds the image into a page served by HotorNot.
Since the html file was served from HotorNot, they're the ones racking up banner impressions and revenue, while not a single Geocities banner gets served in the process.
Geocities is still providing the disk space and bandwidth, but they're losing out on the banners, which are their primary source of revenue.
Care to explain how that's beneficial to Geocities, tough guy?
If it looks like FUD, Smells like FUD...
Simple (Score:5)
Simple. None of the images are hosted on their site. They encourage users to sign up for dummy accounts with Geocities and such to host the jpg, and foot the bill for the bandwidth. Each HotorNot pageview only amounts to a 4 or 5k script for formatting and to access the DB. Contrast that with the fact that when slashdot serves a comments page, it's pulling several hundred k from the MySQL database and over the 'net.
When you think about, HotorNot's scheme is quite brilliant. A little shady, but brilliant.
If they're smart ... (Score:3)
If the purveyors of hotornot and similar sites were smart, they would parlay their site's popularity and sell out to the personal care/comsetics industry quickly. Imagine hotornot "augmented" with:
This is a would-be goldmine for predators of the insecure.
Can there ever be another success? (Score:3)
But as much as I love amihotornot, I have to wonder: is its unabashed success a good thing?
In every man's generation, there can only be a small handful of success stories. When slashdot won Wired's "Best Sites of 1994" award, it proved it was a damned good site. The fact that we're all reading this article here proves my point.
But the success of one site can often come at the expense of others. When readers' itches are scratched, they might not wonder whether the scratching implement is the most elegant or the most aesthetically pleasing. This is true of amihotornot.
The truth is, amihotornot has so dominated its niche that there cannot be another successful community-oriented mass-voting site. As if to add insult to injury, the same people who run amihotornot have also started other sites like amigothornot in order to deter what little competition may have otherwise arisen. In any other industry, that would've been antitrust. In the pinup industry, it's par for the course.
Could the world have been a better place if amihotornot had never existed? We may never know.
My scoring system (Score:3)
headshot: -2 (gotta see the whole package to judge fairly, ie ass width, boob size, etc)
animal in picture: +1 (shows she is warm and caring)
alcohol in her hand: +2 (self-explanatory)
kid(s) pictured with the girl: -4 (sorry mom!)
apparent boyfriend also pictured: automatic score==0, no exceptions!
Should this really be an example? (Score:4)
Do we really need [planet-therapy.com] this kind of site? Is it constructive, like other fad web sites such as slashdot?
Look at the facts:
- 1% of all North American teenagers have eating disorders.
- 10% of these teenagers will die.
The last thing we need is a web site which allows teenage girls to post their pictures for "approval", only to find themselves rated as a 3 or a 2 while airbrushed professional models occupy all of the higher ranks.
Couldn't we have a story on a successful fad website, like kuro5shinz?