General

Olympics! In just a few more hours.  Whee.

Sad.  ArsDigita Shut Down [Slashdot]

And people keep saying that we don’t need a strong military.  Geesh.  Olympic fortress: Pentagon pulls out stops for safe Games [CNN Top News]

I hate spam.  I’m all for tracking it down and shooting the senders.  MSNBC: Tracking spam to the source. We’ve never heard of most of the companies sending the e-mails, and many of the offers are for products and services we don’t need. Almost all end up in the electronic trash can moments after we read the subject line. Still, we’re curious. Who is sending this stuff? [Tomalak’s Realm]

Now we’re talking.  Kerri needs one.  Wi-Fi is Watching You: D-Link wireless camera: talk about opportunistic networking.  [80211b News]

I did not watch this.  However, I wish that I had.  I will point out that if people want to watch porn, so be it.  Who am I to censor what my neighbor does in the privacy of their own home.  ‘American Porn’ on Frontline. Last night my local PBS station aired Frontline’s American Porn, an hour-long piece on the current state of the adult entertainment industry. As one might expect, there is much more to the pornography industry than could be summarized in an hour, so the reporting concentrated on brief interviews of producers, directors, actors, public prosecutors, and a brief history of sexual entertainment in America to better contextualize their comments. The report offered an interesting thesis: that a slacking off in the federal prosecution of obscenity laws during the Clinton administration (1992-2000), coincident with the new distribution channels offered by the Internet, has brought hardcore porn from the backalleys of big cities into the living rooms of suburban America. And to help make this possible, several large-scale information providers with familiar brand names have teamed up with the porn studios, unable to resist the high margins and never-waning demand for more sexually-oriented material. [kuro5hin.org]

Worth exploring.  Just added to my todo list.  TextAds ::: “Welcome To TextAds This is the official homepage of TextAds. TextAds are a simple, polite, and inexpensive alternative to banners and other online advertising. TextAds provide all of the benefits of other forms of online advertising without the annoying downsides. There has been a considerable amount of backlash by users as many online advertisers have resorted to more and more desperate attempts to capture user’s attention. Pop-up ads, Pop-under ads, full-page ads. These are just a few examples of advertising that many users find to be intrusive. So much so that several companies have begun distributing software that lets users block all traditional forms of advertising. TextAds, by comparison, are small, effective, and most importantly, respectful of users. They cannot be blocked by ad filtering software and have proven to be quite successful. “