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Altough my screen name is trollish, the question I'm about to ask is not.

Do you consider this picture (warning: Goatse link!, but this is my point) to be pornographic?

Let's get through it: Shocking? Yes. It's the intended purpose. Graphical? Yes. Disgusting? well, the first time, it sure is. Sexual? This is where I don't know.

I truely desire to have an answer to this question: is the goatse pornographic? and... btw... please state whether you own a cat or not while answering.

This is here.

29 August 2007: In the weeks preceding the 2001 attacks on America, there were very significant financial warning signs that something big - and bad - could be about to happen. Huge surges in purchases of "put options" on stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines, the two airlines used in the attacks, and "put options" on Merrill Lynch & Co., and Morgan Stanley, stocks of two financial services companies hurt by the attack were noted. Put options are essentially "bets" that a stock or stock index will drop on or before a certain date; the larger the drop, the bigger the gain for the purchaser of the option.

Fast forward to the present day, and we have the same type of trading that took place in the days that preceded the 9/11 attacks - but on a larger scale. Nearly $1 billion of "put options" have been purchased, basically betting that Standard and Poor's 500 index will fall significantly by the third Friday in September. A large number of these options have also been purchased calling for 50% decline by September 21, 2007. For example, a 5% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be the current equivalent of about 670 points. A decline of 11% would equal about 1,470 points in today's market. Obviously, larger drops, such as a 50% decline, would cause an unprecedented market collapse. Money would be made for the purchaser(s) of the put options - but the same purchaser(s) stand to lose over $1 BILLION in the investment if the market remains relatively static through September 21, 2007.

The questions are: who can stand to lose $1 BILLION, who will gain in the wake of such a devastating collapse, who are the investors, and what do they know that we don't?

Although he is innocent, ten years ago Kenneth Foster was sentenced to death. If the state of Texas doesn't admit to its macabre mistake, on August 30th he will be executed, never having committed even the slightest crime.
YOU have the power to make that stop... or not to care.

I had to save this before it got canned by Kuro5hin's pruritans...

By dylank in Internet
Wed Jul 18, 2007 at 09:22:40 PM EST
Tags: pr0nfest, technology (all tags)

Ten years ago it seemed that the adult industry was a major force driving Internet technology. Somehow they slipped behind the curve as the various Web 2.0 buzz-words took off, offering the same types of sites with nothing more than glitzier graphics, despite fundamental changes in the way people were using the Internet. That's finally beginning to change, however, with a new crop of adult-oriented sites which finally realize that the Internet is not simply a tool for pushing their content to consumers.

The first example is a search engine, EveKnows.com. Like Google, it uses a spider to gather content, so it's not (yet) become a haven of spammers. It sets itself apart by using RSS to distribute search results. Users can type in any term imaginable (and thanks to the Popular Search Cloud, you can see there are some pretty... erm... interesting... things people are searching for) and use their browser's RSS reader to watch for updates to the search results. For something like adult models, this seems to be a singularly well-suited tool, but it's surprising that larger engines haven't picked up on this. Using Web 2.0 technologies, EveKnows has changed the search engine from something you visit into something that (unobtrusively) visits you.

Another site to see the shift in usage is PornoTube, essentially a version of YouTube for, well, porn. Unlike EveKnows, the emphasis here is on user-supplied content--the same focus which drives the majority of mainstream Web 2.0 sites. PornoTube doesn't really break any new ground technology-wise, but it is a great example of the adult industry struggling to catch up to the way people expect modern web sites to behave.

Two other sites are also basically copies of popular mainstream pages: SocialPorn purports to be the Digg of adult content, while WikiAfterDark is closely modeled on the ubiquitous Wikipedia. Much like with PornoTube, these of-age dopplegangers show the pervasiveness of user-centric, Web 2.0 interaction.

Conspicuously absent from this list are non-free sites. Granted, the idea of nearly-viral, user-submitted content doesn't jive with the practice of monthly subscription costs, but this may also illustrate a rift between the old-school, big adult entertainment players and new, tech-savvy upstarts. Whether these new sites take off and replace the traditional, static model of adult pay-sites remains to be seen, but it should be an interesting fight. If nothing else, we all stand to gain some free pr0n from the deal. ;)

I just changed my .sig, feel free to re-use the previous one:

Hi, I'm the.SIG goatse.cx Virus, put me in yours. :)