] It is estimated that Americans now spend somewhere around
] $10 billion a year on adult entertainment, which is as
] much as they spend attending professional sporting
] events, buying music or going out to the movies.

“It employs an excess of 12,000 people in California. And in California alone, we pay over $36 million in taxes every year. So it's a very sizeable industry,” says Bill Lyon, a former lobbyist for the defense industry.

Then there are the big hotel chains: Hilton, Marriot, Hyatt, Sheraton and Holiday Inn, which all offer adult films on in-room pay-per-view television systems. And they are purchased by a whopping 50 percent of their guests, accounting for nearly 70 percent of their in-room profits. One hotel owner said, "We have to have it, our guests demand it.”

Very interesting 60 minutes article on the state of the porn industry. Brings up an interesting point concerning obscenity prosecutions: What community standard do you apply when the porn doesn't make it to the community-- ala individual distribution?

And beyond that, considering something like 70-80% of americans partake in porn, what are the current community standards anyway?

CBS News | Porn In The U.S.A. | November 25, 2003 12:55:49

The Internet Worm case.

United States v. Morris

re:If they are going to shop around for juries who will execute their bidding instead of REALLY turning to the community, then they aren't actually running jury trials. So, what is the point of participating if its just for show?

I guess, though with more forsight than biology, social systems still are fairly limited to evolve mostly from their previous form... sort of like how nature doesn't produce animals with wheels since it has a lineage of only bones and muscle to work with.

Executed Offenders - Last Statements

] So maybe we can stop having the tiresome argument over
] Big Government vs. Small Government. The Republicans have
] shown themselves to be no different from the Democrats on
] that score.
]
] The argument was always a little off-point anyway. The
] size of the government matters, but not as much as
] something else - whose side the government is on. Does it
] work for the general public or the favored few?

DesMoinesRegister.com | Opinion: Editorial: A short history of government

Rattle wrote:^

Great link, as well as that "operation clambake" link mentioned in it. This email exchange found there is such a wonderful example of theoretical parasitic memes in action:
http://www.xenu.net/archive/free_speech/fool.html

MemeStreams - It's Raymond Re-Run Good.

this is so fucked up and sad...

suicide

] let me just say that, as a slashdot troll, i have a
] firewall which allows me to dynamically modify my o/s
] fingerprint, a highly adaptive cookie manager/poisoner
] that can decode many cookies in realtime (stop using
] urlencode!), a browser plugin that lets me modify my
] entire http header including user agent, a
] database-driven transparent proxy tracker which harvests
] new proxies 24/7, scripts to generate free email accounts
] by the 100's, good web scripting skills, and on a good
] day around 500 moderation points on slashdot from over
] 1,000 monitored accounts.

This is a really great discussion between a troll and a sysop. It really speaks to the fact that governance of an internet community is a very complex problem that shares many of the social dynamics of governance of a IRL community.

Trolls vs. Sysops...

Despite the dotcom boom and bust, the computer and telecommunications revolution has barely begun. Over the next few decades, the internet and related technologies really will profoundly transform society

Finally, someone who gets it.

We've only just begun