Porn. Pron. Bewbs. Art. Thursday night.

Whatever you call it, you look at it. It consumes your soul, and beckons your eyes and your body to find more. Or not.

The internet is flooded with pornography sites, but one writer has created a new theory: illegal music downloading sites are more of a security risk than internet porn sites, giving rise to spam, bots, worms, trojans, viruses, and exploits. As programmable viruses can be inserted into mp3s and other media files, illegal music is considerably dangerous when compared to a few dozen pictures of a Hot Carl or Spraydini.

Read here for the full opinion.

As if internet porn didn’t need any more help in pioneering technology, Aperio Technologies Inc. has utilized the multi-featured TIFF format to produce a one trillion pixel image (that’s a size of about 1,000,000 X 1,000,000 pixels!) of 225 copies of a slide that shows breast cancer. This 1 terapixel image is over 4GB, which used to be the ceiling limit of the TIFF format.

This advancement was accomplished by using Aperio’s powerful scanner technology:

Aperio’s ScanScope® slide scanning systems create digital images of entire microscope slides at gigapixel resolution in minutes. These digital slide images are very large, with dimensions that routinely exceed 100,000 x 100,000 pixels. The TIFF standard is perfect for storing digital slides - it is an open standard supported by a large number of applications on a wide variety of platforms. Until recently TIFF files were limited in size to 4GB, or about 30 gigapixels. With BigTIFF support it is now possible to store images of all sizes, including those larger than 4GB, in the TIFF format. The BigTIFF design was first proposed in 2004 by Joris Van Damme of Aware Systems, and has been refined in online discussions on the TIFF message boards.

The picture of the one trillion pixel breast can be found here.

[Via medgadget]

Earlier this week, the porn industry waited as the vote for the approval or denial of the much discussed .xxx domain loomed overhead. The plan has been torn apart several times by opposition, including both religious groups and porn moguls, and the final vote was a 9-5 decision against the creation of a domain specifically for internet nakedness.

While this is the third time that this domain has been rejected, ICM Registry’s president and chief executive Stuart Lawley claims that his company is “extremely disappointed by the board’s action today,” and went on to say that the decision “is not supportable for any of the reasons articulated by the board, ignores the rules ICANN itself adopted for the RFP (request for proposal), and makes a mockery of ICANN bylaws’ prohibition of unjustifiable discriminatory treatment.”

Either way, creating a domain centered around kids instead of a domain that is designed for pornography seems like the best plan, and the argument over the proper way to protect children from the internet may go on for quite a while. The choice is as simple as this: make a red-light district for adults to visit (which is rather hard to control since there will probably still be .com porn sites) or create a place for kids to enjoy within one domain, allowing for a much more streamlined method of blocking and protection.

I’m just happy that this got pushed back down, since this whole plan is a poor way of dealing with underage porn viewers.
(Time to dance)

As millions of people across the United States begin to gear up for the intense discussions and arguments that will arise during the primaries and eventual presidential election that will come in fall 2008 (inset_name_here FTW), one particular vote has been largely forgotten.

This week, there are plans to vote on the controversial .xxx domain, which, if passed, will create a brand new domain solely designed for online porn (and ultimately not affecting what you do at night ;)). While religious groups argue that creating a .xxx domain will not only legitimize large online pornography circulation, they claim that doing so will also essentially double the amount of porn, since most major sites will probably keep their .com address as well (isn’t this a good thing?).

ICM Registry, the main company behind the push for adoption of the .xxx domain, believes that creating this new domain will allow parents to block porn in a much simpler manner than before, by simply blocking the string ‘.xxx’ from the URL field. Of course, this argument is more off-base then the people who visit AdultSheepFinder.com (probably OKFW-ish). Everyone who has ever taken a crash course in Internetology knows that the actual word representation of a domain address is just an alias, and one can simply use the actual IP address to navigate to a specific web site (providing that the site is on a dedicated server, otherwise it gets more complicated).

Besides the opposition from the porn industry and religious groups, which is ironic at least, there are representatives from the Free Speech Coalition that suggest creating a domain directed towards children’s websites would be better. Using this method seems much more appealing, since blocking .xxx isn’t completely safe and blocking everything but a kids domain would be relatively simpler.

With the vote to happen within the next few months or even this week, the decision will surely be against creating a .xxx domain. Personally, creating a kids domain seems like a better plan altogether, since the ICM Registry company is really only trying to make some quick money. What do you think?

[Via technnewsworld.com]

Johnny Abbatiello aka winner of the most likely to get pwn’d on ‘How to catch a Predator’ has just tied the noose and kicked the chair.  It appears that the young college student majoring in Advanced Ancient Roman Practices 102, has outed himself on a shared iTunes network across his dorm.  Further inspection into the site Yay Hooray shows a link to Johnny Abbatiello’s MySpace profile, which, of course, has been deleted.

One other quick note: If you have a friend or classmate that listens to to Alanis Morisette and Barenaked Ladies, he might also be housing underage porn.

[via Yay Hooray]

I’m still bitter about Sony killing off QRIO and Aibo but now more than ever fans around the world are celebrating them in way that 10 years from now, will turn them into pop-tech icons.

Will Murai composed one of my favorite images that define our time, this one he calls Asimov pinup. Here the ubiquitous QRIO is at his girlfriend’s side but it looks like his curiosity algorithms are a little out of hand. Not only that but it looks like ole’ girl is using one of those uber-lusted after iMacs. This digital painting totally says circa 2006 and I love the classic pinup art style.

[via one digital life]

In a valiant attempt to prove sex will sell anything from a loaf of bread to a used bag of medical waste, I4U shows us the old trick of the trade is as prominent as ever in tech ads. And just for clarification, I know those hotties have no idea what they are selling and I know that they are probably laughing at me behind my back.

That’s why I look and don’t touch, no broad is going to effect…my….holy crap is that chick playing a Wii? Damnit, where’s the closest ATM when you need one?

[via I4U, Digg]

You learn the darndest things when you go to wedding shows. I got married about nine months ago, and when I went to register for china at William Ashley – the biggest china shop in Toronto – I had to tote around a clipboard for writing down what I wanted. In fact, one time I was holding a brown clipboard, and the manager at the store got his panties in a bunch because it wasn’t the transparent plastic kind, and it looked uncouth. Seriously.

Fast-forward one year, and William Ashley has grown by leaps and bounds. Rather than a clipboard, they’re using the Nokia 770 internet tablet. You can write down what you want and it automatically updates your registry in real time. While you wait for your spouse-to-be to stop ogling the silverware, you can check your e-mail and surf to your heart’s content. I wouldn’t suggest looking at porn, lest your future marriage partner get as angry as a bull in a… well, you know.

From Metro.co.uk:

“After 36 years and billions of sales, the floppy disk is to join the video player, cassette deck and film camera on technology’s scrapheap.

The 9cm piece of plastic will no longer be available from Britain’s biggest computer retailer.

PC World announced last night it would stop selling the disks when stocks ran out.“

Oldies like myself remember the good ol’ days (they weren’t that great really) when we had to load Jazz Jackrabbit or crappy ass DOS programs onto our sideways PCs with monitors on top via hard pieces of plastic. We remember the times when you could only fit 1.3 MB of porn onto your friend borrowed disk and look at in the comfort of dad’s office. We’ll miss you floppy but not really.

[via Metro]

We’ve been going back and forth about whether or not porn would be allowed on Sony’s Blu-Ray format. I’ve seen reports going both ways. It’d be silly for Sony to ignore porn, like it or not the sexy time videos have helped push almost every breakthrough in home electronics, from camcorders to VCR’s. It’s one of the reasons Beta lost out to VHS back in the 80’s. Plus they’re great for viewing alone in the bedroom!

Well it seems like we may have spoken to soon about Blu-Ray and porn. Debbie Does Dallas is being released on both HD formats(Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) on March 28th. 30 year old porn ain’t cheap though, this sucker will set you back $39.99!
Fantastic! 1970’s era pubic hair in 1080p, just what the doctor ordered!

[HighDefDigest]