A NY Times article (no registration required thanks to the NYTimes Link Generator ) states the next big thing in adult entertainment could be live video sex on demand. With computer users already able to send text messages to performers, companies like Video Secrets (contents safe for work, but may trip your net nanny) are looking at the next step - "the jump into hotel rooms." With more and more computers integrating with TVs and vice versa, and an increasing demand for adult entertainment (despite the vocal minority), could this really be the future of pr0n? And how long would it be before the cable industry catches up?

The NYTimes tech blog has an article that pretty much debunks the claims made in a news story by WFAA News in Dallas/Ft. Worth. According to the news article, parents should be careful of the PS3 and Wii "because the Wii, the PS3 and other game consoles have Internet access, it's easy for kids to access porn." Other reasons are that the adult content sites are rewriting their content to be more "Wii friendly" . The NYTimes blog does a great job of deconstructing the news article and pointing out that one of the most damning quotes ("The first thing I thought of when I downloaded the Wii browser was also porn.") was not written by a child as claimed in the article but by an adult.

and the flames grew higher and higher.

so lets address them one by one shall we?

1. i would say that i am cold hearted. but i believe that people who deliberately put themselves in harms way shouldn't be spared the pity.

2. the government has been trying to get rid of the squatters who live along the coastline for almost three decades. these attempts have been unsuccessful for many reasons. primarily the squats are a haven for the goons and thugs the parliamentarians use. the squatters have resisted every attempt to move them. the government has provided them with land in the central areas, many of them sold teh land and came back. the government then provided them with an apartment complex in the city. they sold THOSE and came back. there was a time when the squatters have taken over a road reservation. the government gave them land AND money. for every squatter that left, two took their place. hey .. free money.. encroachers have also taken over private and government lands by force (a'la mugabe's kenya). they have also taken over forest preserves, destroying what little forest cover we have. they are egged on by various "human rights" NGO's who claim that they have a right to live where they please.

3. these squats have become a haven for crime. muggers, thieves, thugs for hire etc etc. there was a time when you couldn't walk along the beach without a significant probablity of getting mugged and/or raped

4. the coastline has been attacked by storms, and all kinds of other natural disasters. yet these people come back, take wahtever aid they get and move in.

5. people in the area have been building houses with low quality materials. if you look at the houses you'll see quite a few standing while the next one to them is powder. this is not a tornado that hits on a point level. this was a frikken WAVE. some houses stand because they were built well. not with flimsy materials that coould be knocked down with a good kick

6. a lot of deaths happened with rubberneckers. people were jamming the streets after the first wave to see what this tsunami was about. if you look at teh TV coverage, you'll see that. and they got caught to teh second, much larger, wave. darwinism is a bitch

do i feel sorry for the people who died through no fault of their own? yes and no. i didn't know them, and a natural disaster is.. natural.. you can't predict when it will hit or how. if you gotta die, you gotta die.

i gave my share of aid, its the human thing to do. but i really don't feel anything

atb

Suchetha

may be you should explore a little further.
http://www.bootsnall.com/travelstories/asia/dec00khajuraho1.shtml has a good description of the temple carvings
http://faculty.sxu.edu/~rabe/khajuraho/part_one.html is more academic and NSFW

tourism is doing well NOW. but ask any westerner about the wonders of india and they'll mainly talk about the north.

and the stories are mainly from anecdotal evidence, but there are certain scholarly sources that cite it.
http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/SEN/CH10.HTM about 2/3rds down (search for "india")

atb
Suchetha

Our favourite browser Firefox has finally gone to version 1.0. Releases are available for Linux, Windows and Mac. Official announcement is here. Release notes are here. Congratulations and thanks to the team from a very grateful internet.

In anticipation of a slow news day i would like to direct the Mongol Tartars at Akiyoshi Kitaoka's Optical Illusions page at http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html . The page also also has explanations on why/how they occur (in icky-poo PDF format).

the page is on a .jp uni server so they SHOULD be able to handle the herd of rhinos that is ./

Business 2.0 is running a column that speculates that the negative publicity surrounding the Google IPO may be part of a Wall Street campaign to stop more companies from using the Dutch Auction system and bypassing the banks. It quotes such people as Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com , who relates what happened to them when they decided to follow the dutch auction method for their IPO.

A recent American Psychological Association (APA) site has a synopsis of a study on online sexual abuse found that despite what the news organisations and various other screamers and shouters may want us to think, online sexual abuse cases are NOT characterised by deception, abduction, or force. In short most of those "abused" went consensually, knowing what was going to happen.
Also note the similarities between what was studied and what REALLY happened to Katie Tarbox

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