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Slashback: Flesh, Porn, Smells 177

Yahoo! says No! to Porn!; the iSmell fades away after lingering long; two books you might want to read (or think again about reading); and What Not To Do Should You Become A Corporate PR Flunky. All below, all in tonight's Slashback.

But quality movies like "Ishtar" are still available. After last week's (somewhat) surprising public announcement that Yahoo! would straightforwardly feature a section of pornographic movies in its online store, it seems that quite a few readers were disappointed enough to send in news that it was not to be.

phunk, for instance, writes: "Swamped with thousands of complaints from users, Yahoo! Inc. said Friday it will stop selling X-rated videos and other pornographic material on its Web pages. The flap comes at a difficult time for Yahoo, which had been one of the biggest Internet success stories but is now struggling to make money and just announced layoffs."

I'm surprised they didn't simply rebrand that part of their site and quietly subsidize the rest of the company with it.

When you practice to deceive, plain text is a good format. Spatula writes "Hidden in the bowels of their media update on the security vulnerability in their DSL modems, Alcatel makes some very revealing statements.

Alcatel recently came under fire over a security vulnerability in one of their DSL modem products that could potentially allow a hacker to gain full control over a user's Internet experience. Many were shocked by Alcatel's subsequent remarks, especially that the company had no plan to release a patch for the flaw, suggesting only that users run firewall software.

In a "media update" MS Word document, one can view the changes that were made before the document was released to the public, which includes some interesting remarks, such as "What are you doing to provide a legitimate fix?" and "Why don't we provide this level of security for all our customers?" morons.org has all the details."

Printed because printed matter matters. Mark Harrison writes: "The Central Europe Review has an interesting review of Stanislaw Lem's newest book, Okamgnienie (A Blink of an Eye). Lem has been writing interesting and provocative works for the past 50 years. Many slashdotters should be familiar with his works such as the Cyberiad, which narrates the adventures of constructor robots Trurl and Klapaucius, and which inspired Sim City. According to the back cover of this newest book, it addresses questions such as "Is final knowledge of the processes which led to the genesis of life on earth possible? Will science bring us immortality? Are we alone in the Cosmos? What are the odds of meeting an extraterrestrial civilization? Is Nature an evolutionary monopolist? What do cloning and genetic engineering portend? Will humans produce artificial intelligence? What will be the consequences of the lightning-fast unfolding of communication technologies?""

And fishbonez points out this NY Times " book review of "Republic.com" by Cass R. Sunstein. In his book, the Sunstein argues that the Internet makes it possible to customize media experiences, which has the effect of limiting knowledge and narrowing readers' minds. Does this customized news effect apply to /.? Or does the ability to read numerous viewpoints overcome it? As a side bar, it would be interesting to know which filters are the most popular."

That stinks. An Anonymous Coward writes: "Remember when it was the iSmell that /. was asking for one-liners for?

Well it looks like they are going to have to go back to using good old-fashioned soap and water.

No more money and they where oh so close to shipping."

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slashback: Flesh

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward
    What if we threw an indignant tantrum and nobody came? Pornography doesn't hurt anyone, and it is laughable in this culture of freedom and open-mindedness that we still have people saying they are protecting people who want no protection. If you want to live in a culture where people do not have the freedom to make, sell, and look at pictures of sex, please move. You should be ashamed of yourselves for abusing the clout of the moral minority to restrict the freedoms of others. The majority of people are not against pornography, and while democracy provides for protection of minority views, that does not extend to the minority stifling the majority when no harm is done to that minority.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    hey dipshit, women look at porn too. idiot.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    This is all true, to be sure, but I think it would be nice to achieve the point in society (if we ever come to it) where people can just accept the fact that other people are different and have different interest then themselves, and not have them birth a bovine and start wreaking havoc all over the place just because others have access to things that they themselves would never view (because they are "moral" and decent citizens).

    It is like they are protesting freedom of thought that they want to limit the world to their tint on life. And these are the decent people, who would on a whim deprive others the ability to choose for themselves? Is it their goal to make it harder for these people to find what they seek? Well guess what, being Christian doesn't mean you are any better then anyone, and in fact most Christians don't practice many of the ideals of there religion in the first place.

    I myself am Christian, but I don't see it as my mission to wipe out all alternate beliefs. And what if, for some strange reason, a person would be better off with another religion or belief? Are you, in order to keep face of your religion (which isn't at risk in the first place as far as that goes), going to sacrifice that person for the sake of your religion? Do you have so little faith in your religion that everyone must know and practice it thus reinforcing your views? I understand that some of you actually enjoy your religion, and would like to share it with others in good faith so to speak, but shoving it down others throats who aren't willing seems like an act of desperation.

    I am shoving my belief down your throat, but my belief is that you should believe what you want, and leave the dissemination of the data stream for others to analyze.

    And I know this post wasn't about religion, but religion is the biggest factor for people trying to take away other's ability to judge and analyze for themselves. For example, these Christian movie review sites that talk about movies with violence, sex, and blasphemy. They say that you shouldn't watch them because they are evil or such, so are we supposed to not have an opinion of our own?

    And no, I am not dim of the fact that access to this material is easy for children, I just believe that this is not the way to solve the problem. I think that the parents are the solutions, but I could be wrong...
  • by Anonymous Coward
    This whole thing about yahoo selling porn makes me sick. Why the hell shoulden't they be able to sell porn? you can buy A Clockwork Orange [yahoo.com], which violently depicts womem bieng raped and beaten, or Fight Club [yahoo.com], which is about the joys of beating the shit out of people, but 2 people having sex and everyone is up in arms. What a sick and twisted society we live in where it's more acceptable for a man to shoot a woman in the head than it is for a woman to give the guy some head or vice versa.. my 2 cents..
  • by Anonymous Coward
    On your left is a link to slashdot's hall of fame [slashdot.org]. Anne Marie (whom you dub 'the Bonobo lady') has one of hers in there which got 62 bites.

    Top 10 Comments

    5
    Thanks for all the support [slashdot.org]
    by btempleton [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @12:37AM EST

    attached to Rec.humor.funny Threatened by MasterCard [slashdot.org]
    posted on Tuesday April 10, @06:45PM EST by michael

    5
    Some screenshots [slashdot.org]
    by Twid [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @12:37AM EST

    attached to Return Of the Lost Server [slashdot.org]
    posted on Tuesday April 10, @10:10PM EST by Hemos

    5
    Yahoo changes name to OhYeahBabyYeah! [slashdot.org]
    by tenzig_112 [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @12:31PM EST

    attached to Yahoo! To Start Selling Porn [slashdot.org]
    posted on Wednesday April 11, @11:48AM EST by timothy

    5
    Interesting [slashdot.org]
    by watanabe [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @12:12PM EST

    attached to Bob Young Responds Personally, Not Officially [slashdot.org]
    posted on Wednesday April 11, @11:00AM EST by Roblimo

    5
    Re:This is a moral outrage! [slashdot.org]
    by SamBeckett [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @12:01PM EST

    attached to Yahoo! To Start Selling Porn [slashdot.org]
    posted on Wednesday April 11, @11:48AM EST by timothy

    5
    This is a moral outrage! [slashdot.org]
    by Anne Marie [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @11:59AM EST

    attached to Yahoo! To Start Selling Porn [slashdot.org]
    posted on Wednesday April 11, @11:48AM EST by timothy

    5
    Porn is Big Business [slashdot.org]
    by Mittermeyer [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @11:54AM EST

    attached to Yahoo! To Start Selling Porn [slashdot.org]
    posted on Wednesday April 11, @11:48AM EST by timothy

    5
    The most important point in that interview: [slashdot.org]
    by CokeBear [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @11:43AM EST

    attached to Bob Young Responds Personally, Not Officially [slashdot.org]
    posted on Wednesday April 11, @11:00AM EST by Roblimo

    5
    Back to the Future, Again [slashdot.org]
    by ChaoticCoyote [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @11:27AM EST

    attached to Bob Young Responds Personally, Not Officially [slashdot.org]
    posted on Wednesday April 11, @11:00AM EST by Roblimo

    5
    Re:can someone explain... [slashdot.org]
    by clare-ents [mailto] on Wednesday April 11, @11:18AM EST

    attached to Europe To Adopt Strict Internet Copyright Law [slashdot.org]
    posted on Wednesday April 11, @09:59AM EST by timothy

    generated on Tue Apr 17 17:08:11 2001

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:27PM (#287361)
    Another way to look at this is that one great travisty of democracy and capitolism, no matter how much we love them, is that a tiny, but vocal minority can influence the lives of the majority. Worse, the people who did this didn't stop Yahoo because the availability of porn harmed them, but rather because the freedom of others to buy it is an affront to their sensibilities. N. J. Fuzzy fuz@raisingcain.com
  • Remember this, kids: we don't have to protect the popular things from censorship and removal. It's the unpopularthings that we need to stand up for, because sooner or later, they're going to come gunning for something that you care about.

    Like porn? Although I'd have a tough time calling porn unpopular...

    Still, this is a dangerous way of thinking, perhaps even more dangerous than the people who seem to think I'm not qualified to run my own life. You can't protect everything. If you don't choose your battles wisely you risk losing your voice entirely (when you become one of those people who are always protesting, no matter what the cause is). Personally I'd prefer it if people focused their energies on copyright law reform and repeal of the DMCA rather than yet another porn store online. Hint: they aren't hard to find, Yahoo links to a lot of them.

    Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
  • iSmell is gone, and that makes me sad. It would have been amusing to hack. I even had an entrepreneurial idea for it. But I'll never actually do it, so I'll set it free:

    Motivation: Dogs spend all day alone, and they are bored and don't have anything to do except be lonely and pee on stuff.

    Goal: Keep dogs occupied in some mindless way -- like video games, except that dogs have less brains, so it has to be a really stupid video game.

    Problem: Dogs don't seem to enjoy TV much, and they don't even have thumbs.

    Solution: Give dogs what they really want -- not visual stimulation, but olfactory stimulation. Using whatever the heck iSmell was going to use, you create a machine that puts out strange and interesting smells. Maybe the dog would have to scratch at it, or maybe a sound would go off and it would emit a smell for a short while. Just give the dogs interesting smells, and just enough other stimulous to keep the smells from getting old.

    You could sell little smell cartridges with different smells -- dead animal smells, a variety of urine packs, doggy treats from around the world, etc. -- ensuring future income (as well as variety for the dogs). The smells would all be subtle and difficult for humans to detect.

    I think there's money to be made there. Well, at least it's a better business plan than iSmell had.

  • Well, from a Christian point of view participating in pornography _does_ harm others, as well as yourself.

    First of all, if I want to do something that you think is causing harm to me, THAT'S MY OWN DAMN BUSINESS AND NONE OF YOURS! If I want to star in a porn movie, that's my own decision. If I want to buy a porn movie, that's also my own decision. I don't go around trying to keep people from adhering to certain religions even though I think that many of them (christianity included) can be quite harmful to people. It's an individual's decision. As long as nobody is forcing someone to do something they don't want to do, I don't have a problem with it.

    I criticize intolerance, because the "tolerance" crowd is often incapable of seeing any point of view but their own, and quite often the "tolerance" crowd is anything but.

    The "tolerant crowd" would be advocating minding your own business. Quit trying to get legislation passed to prevent consenting adults from engaging in this or that activity that you don't approve of. The "tolerant crowd" isn't trying to outlaw religion. They're trying to prevent religion from encroaching on the lives of people who don't want to have anything to do with those religions.

    For example, isn't it ironic that when the Boy Scouts want to exclude openly gay leaders from their organization (as protected by the First Amendment) it's called "unfairly imposing their morality on others", but when pro-homosexual people demand that they "tolerate" people who openly engage in behavior that is believed to be immoral, it's called tolerance.

    I don't think that private organizations should be compelled to include anyone that they don't want to include. As long as the organization doesn't receive any public funding or other benefits, then they can do as they like as far as I'm concerned. But since gay people pay taxes just like everyone else, I'd be pretty ticked if a publicly funded organization tried to exclude them.

    When is the last time you saw a movie or TV show that promoted chastity or modesty?

    Nobody forces me to watch crap like that. Nobody forces you to watch something you don't like either.

    When was the last time you heard a politician claim that we need to protect the rights of heterosexual people who want to live their lives a certain way (not to suggest that's needed)

    As you say, it's not needed. Nobody hassles heterosexuals for being heterosexual. They don't need to have their rights protected any more than they already are. We happen to need extra protection for gay people because their rights are quite likely to be trampled all over simply because someone's religion says that homosexuality is bad.

    when was the last time you heard someone say that if you don't want AIDS, don't have promiscuous sex, rather than perpetuating the myth that condoms, which do a really poor job of preventing pregnancy overall, are any better at prevent the transmission of disease?

    I hear this all the time. I think it is only one possible solution. Perhaps it's one of the most effective, but it is also not likely to be useful to many people. For many people, it's like saying that if you don't want to get sick, you should encase yourself in a sterile plastic bubble. It's just not practical. You believe your religion is The Truth. This religion says that premarital sex is bad. That's fine for you. Many other people don't believe it. Nor have they seen any good evidence either. It's called "faith" for a reason. So, these people deal with live their lives as best they can. They have human needs and urges. Sometimes they may decide to supress them if they feel they might endanger themselves. Other times they feel that the risk is not that great. Some people just aren't educated about such decisions in the first place. They don't understand the risks. They should be educated rather than preached at. Unfortunately many christians seem to see AIDS as as an opportunity to enforce their morals on others rather than a disease that requires caution and education to prevent.

    See? The intolerance and moralizing go both ways. It's amusing how many people fail to see that.

    What's amazing to me is that you fail to see the difference between allowing people to do what they want as long as they aren't harming others, and forcing people by law or coercion to conform to your morals and beliefs.

  • Pornography certainly falls into that category, whether it's the thousands of people exploited by the industry or the millions of customers who would rather see other human beings as a series of moist orifices rather than people. It's this attitude that (some) people are just meat for our entertainment that is harmful.

    I don't know who you think you're representing with those words, but it's not anyone that I know. Those are real people who pose nude or have sex in front of a camera. I don't think of them as anything but real people. In fact, if I didn't see them as such, I probably wouldn't have any interest in porn. Maybe you find it convenient to portray people who enjoy seeing people's bodies or watching them have sex as just seeing those people as "a series of moist orifices", but I find it to be a straw man that should be left out of the discussion. You obviously have absolutely no idea what I think about the people I see in porn movies or pictures. You have simply decided that this is what I think in order to give yourself an easier time attacking me for it. The sad thing is that a lot of people will fall for this. The ironic thing is that you will probably continue to make that kind of statement in the future, regardless of whether it's accurate or not.

    I understand perfectly what his _point_ was. His _point_ was that he thinks Christians are idiots and their views are stupid because he disagrees with them.

    Whoa. Bigtime wrong answer there. That's not what I think at all. I certainly don't think that all Christians are idiots. I know many who aren't. While I might not agree with their views sometimes, I don't believe their views are stupid. Let me explain what I DO think. I think that Christians should be allowed to believe what they like and live according to those beliefs. I think that we all live in a world where people around us do things that we don't agree with. I think that we should all live our own lives and make our own decisions, as long as those decisions don't have as a substantial effect the harming of others or the removal of their freedoms.

    I understand that your beef with this statement is that people have different ideas about what harms others.

    Pornography certainly falls into that category, whether it's the thousands of people exploited by the industry or the millions of customers who would rather see other human beings as a series of moist orifices rather than people. It's this attitude that (some) people are just meat for our entertainment that is harmful.

    As I stated earlier, it seems that only Christians (or others who are against sex or porn) believe that people watching porn see the people they are watching as "meat." I find that somewhat disturbing. I also don't think that the porn industry exploits people any more than most other industries. Hell, organized religion has exploited people for centuries! That's the way most of the world works.

    It would be nice if it wasn't that way, but even if you could end the exploitation, there would still be many many people who want make or watch porn. Go to any number of amateur (i mean real amateur, not corporate-owned amateur) sex websites. There are people making their own movies in their own bedrooms to sell to others. You could kill the "adult film industry" tomorrow, and it would simply pop right back up again. People like sex. People like having sex. People like watching sex. Many people sometimes like to be watched when they're having sex. That's all it takes. Human nature.

    Gee, I thought a community that prides itself on holding sacred the free exchange of information would practive what they preach.

    If /.ers didn't believe in such things, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Your post would have been deleted and your point of view erased from existance here. Perhaps you are confusing disagreement with censorship. Understandable since many prominent Christians seem to think those things are equivalent. If they disagree with something, they believe it should be censored so that nobody has access to it.

  • Again, you are "dictating" the morality that everone should leave everyone else alone, unless they are causing harm to others. Now there's nothing wrong with that as long as you realize that it is morally equivalent to some Bible-thumper (or me) "dictating" that you should use pornography. What's the difference here?

    I see your point. My participation in this thread was a result of weston claiming that people interested in porn somehow lacked integrity. Then you claimed that one of the posts responding to weston was anti-Christian. Thus began my argument that the idea of leaving others alone unless they are harming someone else is a better one than the idea of basing our laws on religious beliefs. I don't have a problem if some laws happen to correspond with certain religious beliefs. Outlawing murder is something that I can get behind for purely secular reasons.

    It seems that the real problem I have is with people advocating laws based on their religious beliefs and seeming to believe that I should readily understand that something is bad because *insert deity* says it is bad. We are supposed to have freedom of religion in this country, so it seems to me that if one religion manages to get enough influence in our government to change the law to reflect its own beliefs, it renders freedom of religion a meaningless right. I'm not trying to bash Christians or anyone else. It just happens to work out that way since Christians are by far the most numerous and vocal religious group in this country and seem to have a real determination to make the laws of this country match those of their religion. Witness the various Christian organizations that are very heavily involved in politics and constantly push for new censorship and decency laws and such.

    Sorry for the confusion.

  • However, I think your perception of Christians is based (as is our perceptions of most groups) on a vocal minority that doesn't necessarily represent the group as a whole (or even any significant faction thereof).

    This is a good point. I don't really mean to imply that all Christians are the same. I know too many that aren't. My mom happens to be a devout Christian. Her particular group doesn't want to have anything to do with politics though. I wish more Christians were like that ;) I know other Christians who actually are the "live and let live" type. So I'm sorry if I seem to be characterizing all Christians this way. However, if you listen to some of these groups that are quite vocal, they often claim (or at the very least imply) that they speak for all Christians rather than their group. I also know that a lot of Christians buy into this or at least let them continue to make such claims. But in the end, it's the vocal groups that I have the real problem with, not Christians in general.

    Similarly, if you consider the effects of laws called for by these people (decency laws, etc) are merely attempts to codify laws to protect people just like laws against pollution, murder, etc, then you will see that they are not trying to take over your lives (well, some might be...) but ratehr trying to look out for society's well being.

    True, it may be well-intentioned, but I still think it's wrong. Not wrong that they are proposing laws, but the tactics they use to get them passed. They don't seem to want to live with people who don't believe in their religion. They turn it into a Christians vs. heathens battle every time. I've seen this quite recently in my own town. There was a topless strip club here that some people decided was too close to their church. It was in compliance with city zoning laws, so they decided to change the law. This place was not an eyesore. It looked like any other club or nice bar really. Clean and nothing offensive about the exterior or even the name of the club. Yet they claimed that they needed to shut the place down to protect their children from the "filth" that takes place in the club. They picketed outside with signs that said as much. How the heck is that? What would children be doing in there anyway? How would they get in? It's not like you can just walk into a place like that without being carded at the door. It's ridiculous, but they use the tactic to manipulate people. They eventually succeeded in getting a zoning change that made it illegal for that club to sell liquor. Thankfully the club owners didn't take this persecution lying down. They simply changed from a topless club that sells alcohol to a completely nude club that is BYOB. The church members were not amused, and are now trying to get more changes made to the law to drive the club out of business.

    This isn't even a very egregious example. (the vocal minority of)Christians often decry others as being "tools of the devil" (another great line from the picket signs) or cache all their grievances in "for the children" manipulative nonsense, as if every place in town should be a suitable place for children. How does one make a rational defense for themselves in the face of other people's unflappable devotion to their religion? I don't believe in their religion, so why should I be subjected to the same rules? They often seem arbitrary and silly. Nudity is bad? According to the Bible, humans were created nude. Lived that way until they got tossed out of the garden. We are born nude. Many people don't have a problem with it. Some religions even embrace it. Yet Christians (using my town as an example) seem to want to shut down any place that allows people to see nudity. They try to shut down strip clubs. They try to shut down adult video stores. They go after any place that sells adult magazines, even from behind the counter. The bad thing is that they succede sometimes. Not every time, but they are nothing if not persistent. I sometimes wish God would have given them something useful to do with their time rather than try to make the rest of the world conform to their beliefs.

    I know you're thinking that it's just their view of how the world should be vs. my view, but I still think there is an important difference. I don't advocate trying to take away the places and things that they enjoy. I don't advocate tearing down the bible book store. I don't advocate the paving-over of churches. I don't attack the things they want to have. If I don't like what is said or done in churches, I simply won't go there. Unfortunately there seems to be no room for compromise with them. As far as they are concerned it's their way or the highway. Why can't they understand that not everbody believes what they believe and simply leave us alone as well? Perhaps you can't answer that unless you are such a person in the first place, in which case you probably wouldn't answer it anyway. While I believe you're right that it is a vocal minority that causes people to bash Christians in general, I wonder why Christians don't make it known that these groups don't speak for all Christians. Otherwise, like anything else, Christians in general will take heat due to guilt by association. If I were a Christian, I'd probably be quite annoyed with some of these groups and make that known to them and everyone else. I haven't really seen that happen, which is probably why I assumed that Christians in general must agree with these vocal groups.

  • Uh, hello, anyone home? Here is what the morons.org people think of slashdot [morons.org].
  • ... after all, twenty years ago was when John Waters' movie "Polyester" came out, in Smellovision ...

    http://us.imdb.com/Title?0082926
  • Sorry to interrupt, but you were looking for Goat Sex pictures a while back. Well, I found you one:

    http://www.cpu.lu/gka/erpan.htm [www.cpu.lu]

    We return you to your usual slashback...
  • Whenever I'm forced to use Word, I select everything, then copy to a newly opened Word window. Of course, YMMV.
  • Come on now. Who wants to live forever? Don't get me started on the religous argument against this.

    Well, assuming that the mind as well as the body is preserved, I certainly would want to live forever! Why would anyone *not* want to, unless they have been brainwashed to think that this is an evil thing to want?
  • And stop modding this troll up!!!!!

    <RANT>

    Your offended sense of morality has now deprived me and my wife of our right to buy films featuring naked women getting pounded by men who have units too large to fit into their pants. While you cry "Success for Free Market" and blather on with your rablming post, I now have lost a new place to expand my purchasing power, and obtain Yahoo! Points in the process, giving me the opportunity to eventually get a free T-Shirt.

    </RANT>

    But seriously, why is it that the Religious Right decries things such as this, because god forbid we let our kids be exposed to it (um, watch your kids on the internet and talk to them about Penises without turning all red and stuttering and stuff, and maybe they'll respect your opinion); these free markets of sin and depravity are becoming the death of our society. But let them force someplace under, and all of a sudden it's "Up with Free Market! Hooray, this is what our country was founded on!", forgetting that the same right that allows them to protest said place of business also gives that place of business every right to remain open, regardless of what their morality tells them. If you don't like it, don't patronize them, and let the people who do like it enjoy the same freedoms that let you keep your children locked up in a box for the first 16 years of their life, only to have them break out and shoot 100 kids in their high school because they have lost every expressive outlet that kids for the last 100 years had.

  • Did you say ablism?

    YOU PEOPLE NEED TO GET OVER IT!!!!

    It's a disability. Or a handicap. Or someone is retarted. And so, we discriminate against people who are disabled, handicapped, or retarted. We don't need to make up words to hide the fact that someone is disabled, or handicapped, or retarted.

    This is the same mentality that keeps our children from being exposed to anything even slightly outside of the "norm". No Geek Clubs in high school (Integrate, integrate, integrate!). No drawings showing that pain-in-the-ass teacher hanging by a rope (Murderous tendencies must be squashed!). No sex on TV (*gasp* Perverts!). Then, when they've spent 18 years in their little bubble, and something pops it, they have no coping mechanisms in place, because Mommy and Daddy always made sure that nothing would offend "widdle Johnny". So he grabs a gun and kills 10 people. Or drives Daddy's new Range Rover into a McDonalds. Or jumps off of a bridge. All because his girlfriend broke up with him or something equally stupid.

    You can't solve the world's problems by imposing your moral values on everyone and keeping them away from society until they're old enough to make their own decisions. Because when they can, they will rebel even more than they would have out of curiosity, and in 10 years, we're gonna see a generation of kids who may as well stay in a closet, because they won't socalize normally, interact normally, communicate normally, deal with stress normally, and won't react to external stimulii (sex, violence, people) normally. Good job, keep it up, thanks for your good work....

  • I started to post about then/than and that would have meant having to point out even "than" isn't used with "different", "from" is, and that it's "interests", not "interest", and then I spotted "there religion" which should have been "their religion", and decided to skip it and just say "nice post" (referring to the ideas expressed, not the minor mistakes in the expressing of them).

    Besides, any post pointing out that many errors of grammar and usage is bound to contain at least one of its own (and probably misspelled at that), which of course would be blindingly obvious the picosecond after I clicked "Submit".

    Nice post.

  • I hear that MSN doesn't move to fast to close those kinds of sites down.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/15881 .html [theregister.co.uk]

  • What does integrity have to do with not using the internet (or the Pony Express, for that matter) for something in which one (referring to those "some people") has little or no interest?
  • They really had something, especially when those videos were teamed up with my Fleshtonic video card [bbspot.com]. You just gotta get one.


    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
  • Last week I succinctly explained why Yahoo's initial plans were a blight upon the consciences of the public.

    Actually, troll, I believe the moderation you received wasn't "succint", it was "funny".

    Which is all you really are; a funny example of post-Nazi fascism.

    You're not even a very good troll.

    -
  • If anybody is reading this and wants some advice on how to deal with Anne Marie, here're my tips:

    1) Remember, if you reply, you can't moderate.

    2) "overrated" lowers the post, but doesn't lower your karma in pro-troll metamoderation.

    3) "overrated" also doesn't change the "category" of the moderation, so if you can catch it when it's on "funny" you can get "-1 funny" with enough moderations.

    Also, I shouldn't have to say this, but evidently I do; Anne Marie is a troll. "she" probably isn't even a she, and "she" probably surfs porn in between these diatribes. "she" is trying to get you to post lengthy replies, and laughing when you do. Stop taking "her" seriously and "she"'ll go away.

    -
  • Yahoo didn't "publicly announce" that they were going to start selling porn. The LA Times "exposed" it.

    I know that the /. editors don't read the comments (or even the links), but I'd think they could at least read their own summaries...
  • by woggo ( 11781 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:01PM (#287382) Journal
    After last week's (somewhat) surprising pubic announcement

    Ha! Wow, /. is clever and hilarious.

  • Since I am currently studying for my Social Psychology exam that deals with such issues, I must ask: Where is the evidence for the claims you make? We were taught to be very critical of one person experiences like the one you relate, and look for true scientific evidence.

    What you are saying sounds much like the theory of catharsis which was originally proposed by the Greeks and popularized by Freud. It's the old argument that watching violence is a release that reduces violent actions. Unfortunately, my textbook describes study after study that prove that violence breeds violence -- even if it was just something passively seen.

    Now, I completely realize the studies I am talking about deal with violence and not pornography. More experiments need to be done to see if long term pornography use leads to damaged male-female relationships, derregation of women, and/or violence toward women. There are studies that show violent pornography does increase violence to women, and even non-violent pornography can lead to the objectification of women.

    If you're interested, I can provide references for some of these studies. But maybe not until after my exam!

  • Remember correlation is not causation!!

    Good point, but many of the studies I was referring to were not corelational studies but true experiments involving the random assignment of subjects to porn and no-porn conditions.

  • You forgot that various anti slashdot trolls almost invariably get marked up.

    And where does this legend about pro-microsoft people getting modded down come from? Far, far too many of the highly modded posts are just (well written) pro-microsoft trolls.

    And let's not forget the whole group who always say, "this post will be modded down" so that they don't get modded down.

    Of course, posts like this one, which point out that, do get modded down.

    It almost is enough to make one think that there really is a conspiracy among the trolls.

    Of course, the editors around here don't help, with their near-constant falling into trolling themselves (their remarks usually seemed to be designed to elicit comments from people such as you remarking on the /. bias).

    Slashdot is going to hell, but it isn't the /. users, it's the editors. They're the ones who all have opinions of nearly complete selfishness and try to push this assanine "point of view" on everyone else. Who knows. Maybe they go around with unlimited moderator points and mod up anything that would start a flame war in an attempt to get banner views. I'd almost go so far as to suspect them of posting the various trolls, except that most of the trolls are written in english far better than what Comander "I never use windows except for all of my games" Taco.

    If we had a real set of editors, rather than the arrested-in-tenth-grade guys we have now, slashdot might be what it once was.
  • I find the whole story only mildly funny (the blunder part) and not shocking at all. The sad part here is, that everyone already knows he's lied to and still buys the stuff. The people even expect to be lied to. The truth would be really shocking here, something along the lines of: "Well, all we want is your money anyways. Since you already bought our product we only want you to be quiet about it's shortcomings and the cheapest way to buy some time here is obviously a pressstatement. And please understand we treat businesses different, because they might pay some lawyer and really raise a fuss". Now that would've been some story.

    Even though this is exactally what is going on, I doubt you will ever see it written that way, even in internal documents. In my limited experience most times decisions like this get made the person is not actively trying to be evil, they are just looking out for Number One. I would bet that if you took your (IMHO correct) interpretation of this document to the author they wouldn't believe it. People who do stupid evil things many times use doublethink and rationalizations to justify their actions with logic that defies all explination.

    Just my $0.02

  • Whereas Source Code and MPEG Audio must never be restricted in any way, shape or form - lest society as we know it collapse, digital images of titties and beavers must never be seen by anyone. Lest society as we know it collapse...

    Hands up if you're a hypocrite!
  • Um. Maybe -- this might be too much of a stretch now, but it's possible -- these people didn't NOTICE yahoo was selling porn banner ads because they didn't type in any sexual terms.

    It would require integrity, but it just might be possible that some people don't use the internet for porn at all, you know....

    --
  • The only freedom that was excercised here was the freedom of a vocal minority to bully a company into arresting themselves and their law abiding consumers

    You mean, the freedom of someone to say "I think porn is bad" and the freedom of someone to say "We value your patronage. We won't sell porn" should be curtailed?

    Perhaps I shouldn't be able to express my ideas about pornography?

    Perhaps yahoo should be REQUIRED to carry porn?

    Some people expressed their viewpoint -- legally and probably ethically. Yahoo responded as they saw fit -- legally and probably ethically. You're welcome to express your viewpoint to Yahoo, too.

    because of some all-too-deeply entrenched american belief that the human body is a disgrace, and that human sexuality is even worse.

    Not everyone who thinks that porn may be a negative thing thinks that the body or sexuality are bad. There's room for a viewpoints other than that stereotype/strawman.

    --
  • Maybe "homogeneity of attitude" might have been a better phrase. What I meant by integrity is "wholeness" ... probably a little closer to its literal meaning than its general meaning. Thus, the yahoo users/customers who complained about porn present on yahoo were but not links or banner ads were not hypocrites. They simply didn't know the ads/links existed precisely because they were consistent enough in their attitude towards porn they never stumbled upon them. "Consistent throughout", "integrity", "homogenous". Rather unlike hypocrisy, in fact.

    BTW, what is a "Hypocratic public"? Perhaps one commited to universal health care? You'd best look in Canada or Europe for some such thing.

    --
  • Not a bad meta-logical troll. :)

    But just in case you're serious....

    What alternatives are you actually suggesting? The only way to change the situation in question that I can think of:

    1) require that people cannot express their views to Yahoo

    2) require Yahoo to carry porn, regardless of how they feel about it ethically, or as a business move, or from an image standpoint

    If you can think of anything else, great, but I can't see how doing EITHER 1 or 2 wouldn't be a greater travesty of justice than missing out on some porn.

    "When you're hungry, do you go and stare at a picture of a steak?" -- Bill Cosby

    --
  • Do you feel the same way about sweatshop-shoestore boycotts?

    One-click patent boycotts?

    Any boycott?

    These people thought something was wrong, they voiced their opinion and their plans. That's what a boycott is Yahoo responded. Nothing wrong here any more than boycotting Amazon or Nike. The problem seems to be that you don't agree with their idea of wrong. So call up Yahoo and let them know they messed up and you want to see porn back on the site, and what harm did it ever do anyone anyway. But don't expect other people to stop expressing their views, and don't expect Yahoo to have to agree with yours.

    Anne Marie's post, btw, was obviously a troll, so I don't blame you for getting riled up.

    BTW, The federal government is perfectly within its rights to offer/deny any funding it has based on conditions it sets. Whether or not they have the right to COLLECT the money from us is what I'm more concerned about. Especially this time of year. :)


    --
  • People like you should not be allowed within 50 yards of a soapbox.

    My. We're not advocating censorship, are we?

    Arrogant, moralistic, self-righteous bastard. I
    wish people like you would leave the rest of us the hell alone. If I want to buy porn and other people want to be paid for making it and starring in it, then who the hell are you to say that we lack integrity?!


    I didn't mean to imply that you or even anyone else who views porn lacks integrity. I simply meant that if the people who our top level poster called the "hypocratic [sic] republic" had integrity, they probably never would have noticed the porn banners. And thus weren't hypocrites at all. See my other post [slashdot.org] for further such clarifications.

    I could say you lack intelligence for believing in a bunch of religious tripe.

    I could say that you assumed you knew my background and what I had to say before you read carefully and therefore missed my actual point and got incensed about nothing at all. I would probably be more correct in that assertion than you are in yours by several orders of magnitude.

    But do I go around doing that? No.

    Um, well, actually, you just did "that."

    I leave you the hell alone and would appreciate it if you would do the same.

    Your post consists of exactly the same level of invasiveness into my life that mine did to yours. I think we're both OK.

    Unless I've been trolled....

    --
  • Yep:

    <Ctrl-A>
    <Ctrl-C>
    <Ctrl-N>
    <Ctrl-V>
    <Ctrl-S>
    filename
    <Enter>
    <Alt-F4>
    <Alt-F4>

    Who says you need a mouse in Windows? :)

    This is also good for fixing strange formatting errors that you just can't seem to get rid of.
  • he discovered that it was perfectly okay to like gay pornography. Now he works as an NT administrator.

    Is it just me, or have the last couple of days been classics for trolling?

    Dave
  • The Syrian guy was good

    Fuck yes! And I quote: "Moderation Totals:Flamebait=3, Troll=4, Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=2, Funny=9, Overrated=3, Total=23.". I mean, Insightful? Where does he buy crack?

    Oh, but I exceed myself for the Bonobo lady. I can't help but feel what we're missing here is some new part of slashcode. It should be possible to issue a query for total moderations every half hour or so and do a slashbox on the front page. Something along the lines of:

    Hottest Trolls:
    Bonobos are more than that; they're people too (27)
    Red Hat, the only serious distribution (23)

    And so on. Hmmm. How to do this remotely. You're right about the archive.

    Dave
  • ethics major, sociology major... same guy you say?
  • ...and this post's parent is the embodiment of typical American anti-Christian self-righteous intolerance. I think the scales about balance out. Do you think?

  • In a democracy, the people determine the course of action the government takes through elections and petition, etc. Isn't is interesting that when it's for racial issues, or especially here on Slashdot, intellectual property issues, it's called "speaking out", but when it's about issues that you don't agree with, it's "bullying". A double standard by Slashdot posters? How quaint (or it would be if it weren't so pandemic).

    I understand perfectly what his _point_ was. His _point_ was that he thinks Christians are idiots and their views are stupid because he disagrees with them. He's entitled to his opinion, and so am I.

    If you actually knew anything about Christianity, you would realize that it is not inconsistent with your 'each to his own' philosophy, but rather disagrees with what "negatively affects" other's live. Pornography certainly falls into that category, whether it's the thousands of people exploited by the industry or the millions of customers who would rather see other human beings as a series of moist orifices rather than people. It's this attitude that (some) people are just meat for our entertainment that is harmful.

    I am extremely tired of the fact that people on Slashdot can pontificate until they are blue in the face, but when someone else does the same thing, he or she is put down as being "intolerant" or "self-righteous" and are worthy of scorn. Gee, I thought a community that prides itself on holding sacred the free exchange of information would practive what they preach. But then it's clear most of the posters here (and I'm not referring to anyone in particular) are a bunch of snot-nosed, self-absorbed but clueless college students who have no clue about what the real world is like. As former snot-nosed, self-absorbed, but clueless college student, I can recognize the signs.

  • So let me get this straight, people should be left alone unless they are harming others. Well, from a Christian point of view participating in pornography _does_ harm others, as well as yourself. I criticize intolerance, because the "tolerance" crowd is often incapable of seeing any point of view but their own, and quite often the "tolerance" crowd is anything but.

    For example, isn't it ironic that when the Boy Scouts want to exclude openly gay leaders from their organization (as protected by the First Amendment) it's called "unfairly imposing their morality on others", but when pro-homosexual people demand that they "tolerate" people who openly engage in behavior that is believed to be immoral, it's called tolerance. As a Christian, I would say I have more of a claim to being tired of non-Christian values being foisted upon be because they are so pervasive. When is the last time you saw a movie or TV show that promoted chastity or modesty? When was the last time you heard a politician claim that we need to protect the rights of heterosexual people who want to live their lives a certain way (not to suggest that's needed), when was the last time you heard someone say that if you don't want AIDS, don't have promiscuous sex, rather than perpetuating the myth that condoms, which do a really poor job of preventing pregnancy overall, are any better at prevent the transmission of disease?

    See? The intolerance and moralizing go both ways. It's amusing how many people fail to see that.
  • Again, you are "dictating" the morality that everone should leave everyone else alone, unless they are causing harm to others. Now there's nothing wrong with that as long as you realize that it is morally equivalent to some Bible-thumper (or me) "dictating" that you should use pornography. What's the difference here? You want to change people's behavior either way, even if one is more subtle than the other.

    The fact of the matter is that ALL law is forcing people to conform to a certain set of morals or beliefs. It's just that the morality imposed (at least in the U.S. and other democracies) is a subset of morality as espoused by the major religions that is generally accepted by the population at large. If outlawing pornography is forcing your morals on someone, isn't outlawing murder also? Let's set aside for the second that you consider pornography to have no negative impact on society... I bet you could find the extreme case of a person who would argue that murder does not have a negative impact on society. Oh, wait, that's not so extreme after all when you consider the abortion supporters.

    In any event, I just want people to see that communicating how you think the world should work is no more an attack when you are espousing that homosexulaity is wrong than when you are espousing that "Information wants to be free". It's all just words, and since we live in a democratic republic (at least in the U.S., et al), if a majority of people want to create new laws, we must rely on the wisdom of the legislators and the protections of the U.S. Constitution (U.S.-centric views here, sorry) to make sure those laws respect our rights. Now this is often a very grey area, but no matter how secular a government is (and the U.S.'s is codified to not favor any religion over another), you cannot escape the fact that all law is based on morality and there is no stronger influence on morality throughout history than religion. You might want to pull down copies of the Ten Commandments from the courtroom walls, but you cannot discount the profound and far-reaching effect they (as well as many other religious tenets) have had on modern law.

    Again, I have never argued with your statement about "anything you want as long as you don't harm others"... in fact I support it. However, we disagree on what harms others, and since no one lives in a vacuum, harming yourself always has an indirect effect on others, and I would argue that it can't be good. It may be a subtle distinction, but I think it is important.

  • Hey, no problem. However, I think your perception of Christians is based (as is our perceptions of most groups) on a vocal minority that doesn't necessarily represent the group as a whole (or even any significant faction thereof).
    However, as an example, if you take the given (and I know many people don't, but bear with me) that abortion is killing an innocent human being, then calling for an end to legal abortion is as morally justified as calling for an end to slavery was 140 years ago. Similarly, if you consider the effects of laws called for by these people (decency laws, etc) are merely attempts to codify laws to protect people just like laws against pollution, murder, etc, then you will see that they are not trying to take over your lives (well, some might be...) but ratehr trying to look out for society's well being. Just because you think someone is wrong doesn't mean you should see that person as bad. I wish more people would understand that.

    A lot of people will bash the Christians for doing the same kinds of things they (the bashers) are doing, simply because they don't agree with them, and don't realize the double standard they are applying. It gets tiring after a while, but that's what happens when the level of public discourse, as evidenced by many politicians and many other vocal citizens is reduced to the intellectual level of a peanut butter commercial ("Choosy voters vote for Senator Bedfellow!"). It is great that there are forums like Slashdot where people can converse in more depth.

    Rick

    Diversity of ideas includes those ideas that are _not_ unpopular or prejudiced against.

  • probably something to do with the trolling bible [demon.co.uk] coming to public attention.

    matt
  • Here's the best thing [snowfox.net] that every came from DigiScents. Also appearing here [m1crosoft.org].

    ---
    My opinions are mine.
  • If you're going to report on technical matters, you should have a technical review.

    They actually don't know why the alcatel modems would ship without firewalling for non-home users.

    Of course, you can imagine how happy your average network admin would be if his/her shiny new 6Mb/s DSL line was filtering packets without any input from them ;-)

    No, they are doing the right thing for the various markets. I would argue that a detailed discussion of the security risks involved should also be shipped to their corporate customers, but that would be a bit more faith in customer cluefullness than any hardware vendor has.
  • Ack!!

    uh ... I guess I let the towel drop on that one.

    And as the scotsman said, "Aye laddie, it depends on the saize iv yer perch!"

    timothy

  • I have on my desk next to me a 20oz plastic bottle of Coca-Cola. On the side ingredients, phosphoric acid is indeed listed.
    Just an FYI,
    KM
  • smell aids memory retention. Dont you want to remember blasting some guy with a nailgun?
  • Thanks for forcing your ethics on everyone else. Too bad we don't have an America to ship your kind off to...

    - - - - -
  • thics major, sociology major... same guy you say?

    Don't forget "religion major"


    - - - - -
  • by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:42PM (#287411) Homepage
    Hmmm... just last week, you said that porn is wrong [slashdot.org]. Now, apparently, it's manna from heaven. How's the school experiment going?

    - - - - -
  • Wow, so the morality you prefer is along the lines of "we do anything to make a buck, if it means dumping our plans to avoid bible fanatics raising a fuss then even that." or what? To sell porn films over the internet was a very straightforward business plan. Everyone knows sex sells on the internet, so why not on yahoo?

    Now let's quote some of your other article (modded 5 Funny) to get some taste your kind of moral:
    "Pornography is indistinguishable from rape."
    "If we let Yahoo sell pornography like this, then it's a slippery slope down to having them sell videos of executions."
    "... criminal activity such as this ..."
    "Pornography kills women's souls. Pornography burns men's souls."
    "... men universally crave and devour pornography." (Lets ask those men from Sirius)

    All this is intermixed with some stuff about the bible and the ten commandments. The morals behind this? If we look away it (pornography) doesn't happen? Sex (outside marriage) is bad? Everyone has to live the way i do? Men are swine all over the universe?
  • What you demand is, that people tolerate other viewpoints. I don't have a problem with a statement like "I think porn is bad". I tolerate that viewpoint, and that it's expressed in a way that marks it as a personal opinion. Someone who thinks that way is free not to buy pornography all his life.
    What i have a problem with (and aparently i'm not the only one) are people applying their personal opinions on other peoples lifes. Demanding that pornography shouldn't be sold is intolerance. Anne Marie obviously doesn't tolerate people with other morals than her own and fluxrad is happy there are places which aren't affected by such intolerance. Now you demand we have to tolerate Anne Maries intolerance (please read her other article for more intolerant statements).

    Well, i think intolerance is not to be tolerated.
  • by gotan ( 60103 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:38PM (#287414) Homepage
    It's no news, that customers are presented with corporate doublespeak to make even the worst blunders look like it's in fact even an advantage for them ("because you now get that extra special service ..."). These documents obviously have to have some revision history, most of it probably dealing with how big a lie the customers will accept without laughing out loud. So you have to read between the lines, and to figure out the facts by searching for what is left out in the text. Now someone blundered (nothing new there either) and we get to read the revision history filling in all those little omissions in the document text.

    I find the whole story only mildly funny (the blunder part) and not shocking at all. The sad part here is, that everyone already knows he's lied to and still buys the stuff. The people even expect to be lied to. The truth would be really shocking here, something along the lines of: "Well, all we want is your money anyways. Since you already bought our product we only want you to be quiet about it's shortcomings and the cheapest way to buy some time here is obviously a pressstatement. And please understand we treat businesses different, because they might pay some lawyer and really raise a fuss". Now that would've been some story.
  • 1. Aren't a good number of FPS game scenarios set in sewers or full of some pretty rank-smelling demons? Might be a little too real for me.

    2. Porn + iSmell might be pretty cool, but I can already see somebody coming up with an appropriate scent for the obligatory goatse.cx link.

    3. Don't you think that it'll all devolve into a smell-script kiddie contest to make the worst smell ever?

  • That's a perfect idea. Those who don't like pornography can have the commitment and strength of will not to look at it. Meanwhile, everyone else will go on doing what they like.
    --
    Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
  • by zorgon ( 66258 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:18PM (#287417) Homepage Journal
    Solaris! He should sue Sun, many similarities apply: Big as a planet, slow and ponderous, plays with your mind. All of those things apply to SunOS 5 as well as the planet in Lem's novel ...
  • What good is a home-user and a firewall if the Alcatel 1000 is STILL directly and brokeningly accessible from world-wide Internet full of hackers?

    Not unless there is some special firewall router box has TWO DSL ports in which one can drop between the CO and the crappy Alcatel 1000, you're better off replacing the whole thing.

    It's not Efficient, if it isn't from Efficient [efficient.com]. Excuse me for the sappy plugin, but as a security specialist, this is one of the better ones.

    Must be those French mentality mindset. Moron n'importe qui? [altavista.com].

  • The secret ingrendient in Coke is Phosphoric Acid (very small quantities). No joking.
    --
  • Well, it's a word that sounds similar to "Hippocratic," the adjective relating to Hippocrates, most often used in the phrase "Hippocratic Oath," the inaccurately attributed oath that aspiring medical practitioners take. This is clearly a call out to the M.D.s of the world, who have a deep grasp of human anatomy, and therefore enjoy a professional enlightenment brought about by good smut. I'm sure it was just a simple phonetic typo made by a rather rushed poster who didn't have the time or desire to preview.

    Nothing more to see here. Move along.
  • I heard an interview with Dr. Sunstein on the radio recently, and most callers expressed the same skepticism. The 'net makes it possible to get more detailed and diverse information, not less, they argued.

    Sunstein argued back, I think convincingly, that a certain segment of the population will seek out like minds and ignore everything else. This seems to be especially true of white supremecists, conspiracy theorists, and other close-minded fringe dwellers. I agree that the /. community is very good about tracking down the whole story. Most stories have very helpful links to the other side's view included in posts. But I think there is a certain kind of person who wants to hear people agree with him, and doesn't want to hear information that contradicts his opinions.

    Sunstein argued that there are two points to consider: is this a problem, and if it is, should we or can we do anything about it. He thinks the answers are yes and yes. I'm more inclined to yes and no. His solution involves mandatory linking to opposing viewpoints on news websites. This solution seems to me to have a host of problems, such as who decides what is an opposing view, and who decides what is a "news" website. It is an interesting idea at least.
  • *sigh*

    If you ask any ISP administrator what the single-most-popular activity is on the net, it's porn. Why? It's because _people like it_ in spite of what some holier-than-thou fascist academics/activists/whatever seem to think is somehow anti-woman, misogynistic, neanderthal behaviour.

    Some people like it. Big woop. Live and let live. Why should a vocal minority have power over what a store/website sells? There's no victory here, except for the people who can't seem to untwist their undies. Their problem, though is that this won't satisfy their thirst to get everyone thinking in their little narrow myopic ways.

    Some of the more educated female friends of mine happen to be big fans of "good porn". We trade "the good stuff, here, check it out". I find this give-and-take gives me a much deeper perspective on the female psyche than I would have if we had never done this.

    The reason for porn's existence is that it's *human* to like sex. The absolutely horrid example set by the anal-retentive (Gotta love Freud) among us in society as to how we should treat our fellow human beings just floors me. People are brought up to think that sex is dirty, evil, whatever, only (if they're lucky) to find that it was all lies, all of it. All the guilt, heaped upon someone's soul for feeling *human* for no purpose at all except to satisfy someone else's twisted/perverted views on sex is enough to drive some people nuts (I've seen this first hand).

    It's about power folks. It's about the power to make someone else feel like crap because they have human urges/desires. Once you can do that, you have power over other facets of their lives. It's the power to make a company do something completely opposite of what their real customers want, simply because it's not "politically correct". What a travesty.

    --
    BMO
  • by Speare ( 84249 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:42PM (#287427) Homepage Journal

    Timothy: After last week's (somewhat) surprising pubic announcement that Yahoo! would straightforwardly feature a section of pornographic movies in its online store, ...

    "A Freudian slip is when you say one thing, and mean your mother." --Anonymous

  • by Speare ( 84249 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @06:11PM (#287428) Homepage Journal

    Freudian slip? (Score:3)
    by woggo (slashdot@woggo.org) on Mon 16 Apr 07:01PM EST (#1)

    Doh. I can't believe a First Post was on topic and actually read the whole writeup beyond the 'fold' on the front page!

  • by downix ( 84795 )
    Yahoo: We have material describing hatred, destruction and genocide: Good thing We have material showing off the naked female body: bad thing Does anyone else find this humerous?
  • Pr0n is by far the most profitable business on the Internet today.

    If you're a Yahoo shareholder, you should be thoroughly pissed off.

  • What about the goats? No one ever stands up for the goats...
  • by DESADE ( 104626 ) <slashdot@nOsPAm.bobwardrop.com> on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:14PM (#287437)
    I just love how people will complain that Yahoo started selling porn, but don't complain that they sell porn banner ads based on keyword searches for for sexual terms. If you're in the smut biz, your're in the smut biz. What's the difference?

    Friggen hypocrites.
  • This wasn't a troll. I thought it was funny. I liked her comment, thought it was on the money and the most useful comment that I had read in a while.

    I posted in with my name on it, my company name, etc., hardly trolling. However, have no fear, the moderaters took it as such and knocked it down.

    However, I was amused in writing it, even if my typos and grammatical errors made it a bit gross.

    I don't really want to discuss the merits of trolling, but I thought that I'd comment on my take of the Slashdot viewpoint as of late.

    Alex
  • I'm not supporting the view. I am however supporting Yahoo's decision to not alienate a core product. Yahoo should not be marketing and selling pornography and trying to market itself as the friendly face of the Internet.

    They should redirect all the traffic they want and do it under another name. The Yahoo brand has value.

    Anecdotal evidence: My girlfriend is reasonably intelligent, pretty savvy Internet user. She was looking for some specific hair gel or whatever online, and saw one of them was a Yahoo store. She figured that it seemed reputable because of Yahoo's name. I laughed and explained what Yahoo store was.

    However, she made a purchase because Yahoo being in the name lent it credibility. They shouldn't try to leverage the name in the pornography business.

    America is a very religious, Christian country. I myself are neither extremely religious, nor a Christian. However, I understand and respect that a large portion of this country is in this group.

    Doing something that would tarnish your name to this crew is silly.

    My other point, I hit Yahoo maybe 2-3 times a week, it is occaisionally useful for finding corporate sites quicker than google. I bet that I hit Yahoo a LOT more often then most Slashdot users.

    This is NOT the core demographic. This group will never use Yahoo, and certainly won't buy porn there (I guarantee that most users that traffic in porn here find free stuff via IRC or use hacked password lists). Yahoo pleasing this crowd is silly, as it is extremely unlikely to put its money where it's mouth is. Indeed, even companies that FULLY support Linux (VMWare) feel the wrath of the open source community that wants to rewrite their product and give it away. There is no way to extract money from this crowd. Even hardware is a tough sell, as they are convinced they can pricewatch it cheaper.

    I think that Yahoo made the right decision.
  • by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:50PM (#287441)
    You have zero right to go to Yahoo and purchase pornography. Nobody had ANY right to post OT III, a copyrighted document, to Slashdot's site.

    These are not rights.

    Yes, this was astroturf, and they should know better.

    BTW: for those who aren't political junkies, a layman's def. of astroturf. Well, when people act, it is grass-roots, right? So grass-roots lobbying involves inflaming people to get them involved and cause fear. You generate a genuine interest, perhaps enough to shift opinion polls 5-10 points. This terrifies politicians, because that is a margin of victory. Astroturf = fake grass roots. Nobody actually cares, but a handful of people make a lot of noise and TRY to pretend to have grassroots support. They make no change in the numbers or the poll results, but they generate a lot of letters/emails.

    However, I think that we should support the AFA's right to freedom of expression. The AFA is entitled to its opinion, as are the members of it (actual people, not conceptual people, they just don't share your views).

    Yahoo realized (correctly, IMO), that porn sales through Yahoo may or may not make a lot of money. However, tarnishing their brand would not be worth it. Yahoo is seen as the nice way to reach the Internet. If this group and others like it boycott Yahoo, etc., then Yahoo is in trouble.

    Quick show of hands, of all you libertarian, "open-minded", anti-religion Slashdotters, how many of you go to Yahoo?

    In middle America, G-d-fearing country, these are Yahoo's users. Offending their target market to please people that won't use their products? Not a good plan.

    Now, I would argue that Yahoo gets a LOT of searches for sex from the unknowing, and they need to profit off that. However, tarnishing their brand is wrong. While the same people might protest the sex site and use it, you don't offend those people by attaching your brand to sex.

    Keep it separate.
  • When I read about Yahoo! selling porn, the first thing I thought, was wow, what a smart business decision Yahoo! made. The online porn industry has and will remain to be the most successful e-commerce industry that exists on the internet. Yahoo! deciding to discreetly sell legal porn shows that they are serious about maintaining the financial health of the company. If I had stock in them, I would be relieved. Of course, my relief wouldn't last long because by giving up selling legal porn, alot more of their staff are going to be handed pink slips and the company is going to struggle.

    Selling porn can be both a legal and very profitable business regardless of how anyone feels about it, myself included. I think porn is boring and contrived so I don't look at it or buy it but I don't see why my lack of interest in or distaste for porn should have any influence on a company's business decisions.

    I really hate Steven Segal movies so does that mean Yahoo! shouldn't sell them either?

    - tokengeekgrrl

  • They've already demonstrated their total lack of respect for women.

    Says you. I like people who take "logical leaps" and come to such conclusions. Ask the women that appear in pornography whether they feel like they're being disrespected. They chose to join the profession -- it's not as if they had no other choice and it's not as if they're being forced into it. They're choosing to enter the profession. The only person showing a lack of respect for women is you: you are arguing that these women are incapable of making such decisions by themselves and that they need your protection. You're arguing for nothing less than the disempowerment of women on the grounds that you know better about what they should do, than they know.

    If you're going to be preaching a Christian fundamentalist male-dominated society -- and you are -- at least have the decency not to lie to everyone and pass it off as you protecting women.

  • http://clubs.yahoo.com

    Has a very interesting phenomenon going on: Some of the clubs that are in it are supposedly going to be shut down because of their content, not for child pornography, but the legal kind of pr0n. The interesting part is that the Sex and Romance section has deleted the links to their picture exchange sites, and the club search tool seems to be under heavy renovation while Yahoo seems to be preparing their servers for (??). Actually, you can't search for clubs at all unless you use the indexed links, so deleting those links has presumably kept new users from entering p0rn clubs because they can't *find* them.

    Looks like the guys at Yahoo were thinking of slashing back the *free* Yahoo pr0n to promote their for-pay material.
  • Not true scientific evidence, but at least a one-nation experience: Pornography was decriminalized in Denmark many years ago (1969?), and the crime rates seem to have been on level with our neighbours. Porn is freely available, also "alternative" styles like gay, S/M, and so on. Pedophilia was recently criminalized, mostly to protect the models used in the production of such. Even when that discussion was on its hottest, the small minority that wants to limit pornography did not manage to come up with conclusive studies showing much ill effects of porn.
  • After two years of selling it, they let a little publicity scare them...

    Selling Porn: As long as it's hidden, it's not an issue. But, under scrutiny, it's indefensible. No surprise here.

  • Thanks.

    It's nice to know i can go to certain places without the fear of seeing someone with your moral vigilantism(sp) present.

    you know, places like Barnes&Noble, 7-11, Border's Books, and, of course, any video store other than Blockbuster (of course, they also contain some soft-core, so i doubt someone with an asshole-pucker factor as large as yours would be caught there).

    The only freedom that was excercised here was the freedom of a vocal minority to bully a company into arresting themselves and their law abiding consumers because of some all-too-deeply entrenched american belief that the human body is a disgrace, and that human sexuality is even worse.

    you call it freedom, i call it part of what's wrong with america. I'd give you the rest of the rant about minding your business, but it's obvious that you're too busy minding everyone else's.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:50PM (#287462) Homepage Journal

    Here's a little background for this Slashback: Yahoo! selling porn [slashdot.org] | Alcatel DSL holes [slashdot.org] | iSmell one-liner contest [slashdot.org]

    I couldn't find anything for the book reviews though.

  • It's the economic driver of the Internet. We should be thanking God that people can somehow get off from images on a small dim screen. Why else would He create us with such drives, if not to facilitate the early adoption of new technologies?
  • I wonder...what happens if enough people get together and complain that Yahoo! is selling, say, bibles. Or that they have religion oriented clubs. Will they stop carrying them, too?

    Remember this, kids: we don't have to protect the popular things from censorship and removal. It's the unpopularthings that we need to stand up for, because sooner or later, they're going to come gunning for something that you care about.

  • Just goes to show the dangers of closed document formats.

    Nah, this doesn't just happen with closed document formats. It happens anytime people confuse the representation of the document on the screen for the document itself. For example, it seems like a high-profile misunderstanding of PDF happens every few months, too. And I'm sure we've all found "interesting" stuff commented out of websites, even though HTML is about as transparent as you can get, short of plain text.

    What is the standard way to make sure that no revision history is contained in a Word document?

    I would be suprised if there was one. It wasn't that long ago that Word documents routinely included whatever splooge happened to be on the sectors of your hard drive before Word allocated them. The program is quite good at what it's good for, but painfully bad as a document interchange format. It's a damn shame it gets used as a document interchange format.
  • After two years of selling it, they let a little publicity scare them...

  • Obviously such a snafu as allowing a document out with such damaging comments can be attributed to incompetency.

    But there is also the possibilities that someone who did know better let it out in the vulnerable format, knowing that someone would discover the hidden comments.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • . . . which has the effect of limiting knowledge and narrowing readers' minds. Does this customized news effect apply to /. ?

    I can't say that I have ever seen this. Slash dot readers go out of their way to be fully informed and to achieve a thorough and comprehensive understanding even of viewpoints and organizations that they disagree with.

    As noted: "Professor Sunstein began to theorize that a communications system granting ordinary individuals unlimited power to filter information threatens to excessively fragment and polarize citizens -- a poisonous condition for democratic self government."

    I can't say that I have seen anything remotely coming close to this over even the past month or so.

    ;-)

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • Got to love America man. It's the only country I know of where everyone believes that they have this right to regulate what other people can do in their private lives. And it's the only country I know of that let's you sue people for doing something incredibly trivial, or for using public specs.

    You have zero right to go to Yahoo and purchase pornography. Nobody had ANY right to post OT III, a copyrighted document, to Slashdot's site. Bull. You've got every right if it's available. And as for OT III, it's out there, period. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the document is available to anyone interested in potentially joining the 'Church' of Scientology - which is, by the way, crap. I can understand Christianity and Jewdaism (hope is spelled that right) as they have some history or at least a claim to it for those who don't believe in it. But 'worshipping' crap somebody made up isn't really a religion. Heck, the whole Scientology thing sounds like the the story line from StarCraft.

    I'm not protesting Yahoo!'s decision, I'm protesting the morons that think they have some right to control people's private lives. Ant last of all, consider that it's legal to have sex at any age, but illegal to see pictures of it until you're at least 18. Stupid, isn't it?

    REAL /.ers only have a karma of 49...

  • by sulli ( 195030 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @04:10PM (#287492) Journal
    They got 100K astroturf emails from the American Family Association and backed down. I think they made a big mistake, because now every Tom, Dick, and Harry that wants to influence Yahoo (e.g. the French government? who's next, China?) will just flood them with angry email.

    Well, even Slashdot deleted OTIII rather than fight the Scientologists. So I guess corporations only stand up for their users' rights for so long.

  • The saddest part about the iSmell is that the damn thing actually worked. I've seen and smelled a working unit. They actually had a scented version of Quake at GDC. Their smell of hot brass was friggin amazing. It smelled *just* like spent casings.

    If the bubble had lasted another 6 months, this product would be on the market and we'd have smellovision. But instead, I'm afraid that investors will look at the DigiScents story and mistakenly blame the product and the idea, rather than the market, for its failure.

    It may take another 15 years for someone to try, but I'm sure I will see this sort of product in my lifetime.

  • I swear it's true. In preparation for its switch to Yahoo's sexy new self, they had some logo alterations done. A logo job, if you will.

    I saw it here. [ridiculopathy.com]

  • I'm not into porn, But I think porn is an option for the people who want to see it, thus it is a free option. I don't understand why in the US the nudity/sex theme is treated as a taboo, c'mon guys this is the 21st century. Live and let live, if you don't like porno don't buy porn.
  • Sunstein argued back, I think convincingly, that a certain segment of the population will seek out like minds and ignore everything else.

    He is a bit late here and his proposed solution is a non starter. The hate sites don't want to hear other views and there is no way to force them.

    Hate sites are not devoid of all links to opposing material, it is just that the links they provide are chosen to reinforce their case. There is no way to disprove a case of someone who is prepared to manufacture as much 'evidence' as they need.

    In fact the sustein remedy would force the mainstream to link to the hate group sites. The society for the advancement of science would be forced to link to every crackpot creationist site. The ACLU would be forced to the Phelps anti gay bigotry site. The anti defamation league to the neo-nazi league.

    The problem with the sustein inanity is that there are simply too many ways to argue against the meme. You can argue against his stupid premise or his equally loopy solution.

    The underlying falacy behind Susteins whacky scheme is the belief that this type of people respond to reasoned argument. The fact is that the whackos in the extreemist movements simply don't have either a belief system rooted in reality or care about rational argument. In fact that is what makes them extreemist whackos in the first place.

    Sustein's scheme is not new by the way, it is exactly what Chairman Mao's 're-education' was meant to be, returning disident believers to the mainstream. Well sometimes the mainstream belief is wrong - segregation in the US south, any dictatorship you care to name, sexism, anti-gay bigotry.

    Need a divorce? Go to http://www.a-fool-and-his-alimony-are-soon-parted. com

  • I don't get it, the people responding to argue seem a little hypocritical to me. Banning porn in the country, making it illegal -- that would be a reason for anger. I don't think Yahoo would've gone back on it if plenty of people hadn't said their piece, and I love the person who posted this for pointing out the importance of individuals over business. You can get porn in plenty of places, why is it so horrible that people who were active enough to voice their opinion won the day? Personally I do wish the country were a hundred times more open about sex, and I don't agree with equating porn to evil, but I think this is still an important thing [slashdot.org] (blatant self-promotion), as far as the power-struggle goes.

  • <yahoo>
    phunk, for instance, writes: "Swamped with thousands of complaints from users, Yahoo! Inc. said Friday it will stop selling X-rated videos and other pornographic material on its Web pages.
    Odd that Yahoo even with the complaints stopped from going forward. One thing I would think is, most of these complaints came from people in the US, since Europe has lighter views on nudity, porn, etc., maybe what they should have done is gone with softcore porn. (Wasn't there an arguement between college students, and faculty about the right to search for xxx related articles?) To each their own, and IMHO, Yahoo should've proceeded with their plan, by creating an adult section restricted (points and laughs) to minors.
    </yahoo>

    <ismell>
    Well it looks like they are going to have to go back to using good old-fashioned soap and water. No more money and they where oh so close to shipping."
    Its about time VC's started focusing on real advantages of spending money on tech that could actually make a difference for a change. Its a shame that companies with the most moronic ideas screwed things up for other companies with real insights and ideas.

    I'm glad iSmell went out, personally I wouldn't want someone I pissed off sending me data that smelled liked shit.
    </ismell>

    packet rape [antioffline.com]

  • Religious freaks should not be able to control our lives. A few people should not be able to stop Yahoo from selling porn to the masses. Who cares if its not "moral", this is a democracy, not a theocracy, laws are not made upon what is moral or not but what should be legal and non-legal.

    Weak-minded people will always be moronic and the morones should never rule the world.

    -----
  • Now he works as an NT administrator. My counselling helped him greatly.

    Uh... if that's what you call helping, remind me not to ask you for help :)

    Ryan T. Sammartino

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire

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