…You heard me. According to a story on XBiz (NSFW), a website called “My Young Friends” offers you a choice of 55 online chat bots to chat with about, oh, whatever comes to mind.
The bots are a form of artificial intelligence, said (by a publicist) to be the most advanced of its type in the world.
Said the company: “To make things interesting, agents have been created in the form of voluptuous young girls over the age of 18.”
Even better: “Each bot’s ‘brain’ is reportedly mirrored on the human brain with 20 million neurons, billions of neuronal connections and full memory, moods, intelligent reasoning and personality.”
A word to the wise: if one of these chippies asks you if you want to play a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War… change the subject.
Image: from their “boat disposal” page. Think they have any fun with these?
I’m pretty sure — no, I’m *absolutely positive* that all my problems in the whole world, ever, can be solved with the use of one simple, terror-inducing tool: The SlashBuster. I have never seen anything so beautiful, so magnificent, or so arousing in my whole life. I have decided to make it my life’s ambition to own not one, but several, and have them painted in Hello Kitty color schemes, possibly bedecked with Swarovski crystals. That’s where all the money from those blowjob books is going to after all — when I hit the big time, that is. Then there will be beer and parties, and we will see how long it takes to grind up a few DPT vehicles.
Oh wait — there’s a video of how long it takes to grind an entire fucking tree (!), and scroll down the page to watch the “automobile shredding“. Now *that’s* porn. (via Toolmonger)
Reuters reports on an Orangutan in Amsterdam who prefers blonde women, especially those with tattoos. Makes me wonder if he’s seen any of Eon McKai’s work. I don’t know whether I should blame the inexpensive drugs in Amsterdam or The Suicide Girls tour.
Personal aside: I won’t feel fulfilled until they do an “On Ice” version.
Image via.
Being a master of pointless segues, I move from appending our fearless leader’s new post on tinynibbles (NSFW) with a toy train fetish and a solo bubblewrap gadget. This leaves me at the foot (or hand) of the real subject of this post, which is little handheld devices. Specifically, I’m talking about cellphone jammers. Even the most rabid cellphone enthusiast has found themselves trapped next to someone we wish would shut-up, because everyone on the bus is getting a little uncomfortable hearing about Aunt Mina’s colostomy. A couple of nice little models have recently made their way onto the market; one from Brando (image via; be sure to hunt around that site for other great gadgets) and a charming “pack of cigarettes” device. I begin to giggle just imagining the havoc I can cause as I joyfully skip through the city armed with one of these and a TV-B-Gone. How can one be a luddite when all the best technology kills technology?
Now, this is interesting. Definitely best to appeal to try and make global privacy standards than American ones, that’s for sure… There’s more info in the pre-press about what Google had in mind to say at a friday Unesco meeting, but it looks like Google’s privacy chief Peter Fleischer did indeed go through with it and appealed to the UN in his speech. Snip from the pre-press piece, because it’s more detailed and mentions the current issue with Street View violating Canada’s privacy laws:
Google, the world’s leading search engine, is calling on the United Nations to help protect the privacy of web surfers around the world before the internet faces a crisis of confidence.
The dotcom company’s privacy chief, Peter Fleischer, will address a conference in Strasbourg of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) today and ask for governments and businesses to agree on international privacy standards.
Mr Fleischer said the rise of the internet meant that vast amounts of information were being shipped around the globe, often to countries with no official data protection. Without a new set of rules to apply worldwide, surfers could lose confidence in the internet and hamper its development, he told the Guardian.
“Three quarters of the countries in the world have no privacy regimes at all and among those that do have laws, many of them were largely adopted before the rise of the internet,” he said.
“It’s said that every time you use a credit card, your details are passed through six different countries. We’re talking about this to help set the framework for the internet of the future.”
Mr Fleischer will address the problem at the Unesco meeting, which is focused on the ethics of working in an information-based society. The danger of failing to address privacy on a worldwide basis, he is expected to say, is that the internet’s progress will be undermined by the rise in online crimes.
“A lot of data is being outsourced from Europe and the US to India, for example, but India doesn’t have any privacy regulation. Europeans and Americans want to know their privacy is protected, and Indians themselves, as they come online, will also want these protections.”
The company said it had already held discussions with some European privacy regulators, including those in Spain and France, and is encouraging either the United Nations or the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to take an active role in promoting global privacy standards.
Link.
No, really. It’s an actual Security Focus study, not some sexual compulsive religious nut (I mean, another dubious study fabricated by the American Family Association). Check it out and read the whole damning thing, snip:
School kids are more careful than community officials and policy makers imagine, according to a study funded by three top technology firms and released on Wednesday by the National Association of School Boards, a group representing almost 15,000 school boards in the United States.
The survey of 1,277 students (PDF) who regularly go online found that half of the students chat about schoolwork, while almost 60 percent of online students talk about education-related topics outside of school. The study — funded by Microsoft, News Corp. and Verizon — found that more than a quarter of all students post messages online, upload and download music, download videos and update Web sites on a weekly basis.
While many school officials and policy makers worry that students put themselves in danger online, only 4 percent of the students surveyed have had an online conversation that made them feel uncomfortable and only 3 percent of the students have given out their e-mail addresses, instant messaging nicknames or other personal information to strangers. While about 7 percent of students have had someone ask them for their personal information on a social networking site, only a single student in the survey admitted meeting someone from an online encounter in person.
“The vast majority of students, then, seem to be living by the online safety behaviors they learn at home and at school,” the report stated. The study found that more than half of school boards believe that students providing personal information online is a significant problem for schools, adding that “school district leaders seem to believe that negative experiences with social networking are more common than students and parents report.”
The study comes as policy makers are increasingly supporting legislation that attempts to combat the alleged dangers posed by the Internet to children, even though students have maintained that they are better versed in Internet safety than their parents and teachers.
Link.
I totally looked at the picture of these faith-based Samson and Goliath dolls about to hit the shelves at Wal-Mart and thought I was looking at a new Chi Chi movie (NSFW link) or new Rome versions of Over The Rainbow Billy. But no — they’re doing it for the children. Snip from BBC:
Instead of Spiderman or Bratz dolls, children in the US could soon be clutching a talking Jesus toy, a bearded Moses or a muscle-bound figure of Goliath.
From the middle of August, Wal-Mart, the biggest toy retailer in the US, will for the first time stock a full line of faith-based toys.
The Bible-based action figures will initially be given two feet of shelf space in 425 of the company’s 3,300 stores nationwide.
There, the Tales of Glory dolls will take on what their makers are calling “the battle for the toy box” with some of the nation’s most popular action figures.
Link.
I just *had* to make that bad joke. I am not sorry. So, a tiny, tiny fraction of a portion of the pr0n spam email we get at Fleshbot might see a decline as two dudes have been convicted of porn spamming — they were so stupid as to embed explicit images into the email they spammed out, while falsifying headers and (gasp!) using false info to register domains. They are facing some serious prison time, but mostly for money laundering. I wish I could find out who they were spamming for, just because I’d like to expose (and ridicule) porn companies who think spamming is a marketing tool. Snip:
A jury in the US District Court for the District of Arizona convicted Jeffrey Kilbride and James Schaffer on eight criminal counts.
The trial was the first to include charges under the anti-spam laws passed by the US Congress in 2003 in an effort to crack down on unsolicited commercial email.
The men made “millions of dollars by sending unwanted sexually explicit emails to hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including families and children”, Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general at the US Department of Justice, said.
Kilbride and Schaffer started their spamming operation in 2003, and the two made more than $2m by sending out spam emails advertising pornographic websites, the Department of Justice said. The two earned a commission for each person directed to one of the websites.
Hard-core pornographic images were embedded in each email, and were visible to anyone who opened the email, the department said.
Kilbride and Schaffer were convicted of two violations of the Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act. One violation occurred when Kilbride and Schaffer sent multiple electronic commercial mail messages containing falsified header information. The pair also broke the law by sending email using domain names that were registered using false information.
Link.
So let’s move on, shall we? Pictured: via the LA Times, an observer holds up his scorecard for how many times today Gonzales said “I can’t recall”. Hope he can remember where he parked his car. Snip:
But even conservative Republicans expressed outrage at how Gonzales had handled the issue, putting his continued tenure at risk. Sen. Thomas Coburn (R-Okla.) asked the attorney general, “Why should you not be judged by the same standards you judged these U.S. attorneys?” When Gonzales said, “We all make mistakes” and asked for time to correct his failings, Coburn replied, “Mistakes have consequences.”
Disavowing allegations of partisan motive in the firings — “I know that’s the politics of the blood sport that we’re playing,” he said — Coburn argued, “The best way to put this behind us is your resignation.”
Still, after the testimony, President Bush expressed continued confidence in his attorney general. “President Bush was pleased with the attorney general’s testimony today,” deputy press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. “After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the senators’ questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred.”
Noting that Gonzales “admitted the matter could have been handled much better,” Perino said, “The attorney general has the full confidence of the president.”
In a case-by-case litany, Gonzales was asked to explain why each of the eight attorneys was let go.
Of Carol Lam in San Diego, the attorney general said there had been complaints that she was not vigorously prosecuting gun and immigration cases. At a time when border security was a national concern, he said, “I felt we should do better, much better, in this effort.”
Of Daniel Bogden in Nevada, Gonzales said that in hindsight, his dismissal was “the closest call,” but the case fell on “concerns about the level of his energy” and “his commitment in pursuing obscenity.”
Link.
Invoking terrorism threats and child porn, the Department of Justice is back on the data retention warpath, this time proposing that websites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos. Last week, the DoJ held a private meeting (with no written proposals) to persuade internet industry executives — like AOL and Comcast — to keep records on users for at least two years, asking the businesses what it would cost them to implement data retention practices. There are a lot of scary aspects to this, like the possibility that photo-sharing and video-sharing site users wouldn’t even know they were being spied on. And let’s not forget that if push comes to shove, finding a web-savvy judge is not something anyone can count on, such as in the current Julie Amero case. McCarthy meets 2.0. Snip from Justice Department takes aim at image-sharing sites:
The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.
That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes. The discussions were described to News.com by several people who attended the meeting.
A second purpose of the meeting in Washington, D.C., according to the sources, was to ask Internet service providers how much it would cost to record details on their subscribers for two years. At the very least, the companies would be required to keep logs for police of which customer is assigned a specific Internet address.
Link.
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