Classic news story from 1993 about the Internet

Found this clip on The Break the other day. 1993 seems a long time ago now. Its funny to see the older computers and hearing the screeching when one guy is connecting to the Internet. The clip ends with a short cartoon arguing that the Internet is really only used for one thing...

Porn Percentages

It turns out there ISN’T as much sex out on the internet as some had thought. Only about 1 per cent of the web has sexually explicit material according to a recent study. The study by a University College Berkeley professor estimated the number of pornographic websites based on a random sample of sites catalogued by Google and Microsoft’s MSN.

• The study found that about 1.1 percent of the sites in the search engines’ indexes contained sexually explicit material.
• Also, filters blocked from 8.8% to 60.2% of sexually explicit material. However they often also block a lot of clean content — 0.4% to 23.6% sites blocked didn’t have any explicit material.

This does not mean that the Porn industry isn't doing well. AVN estimates US adult products market to generate $12.922 bln in 2006. Adult movies remain the largest sector at more than $3.6 bln or 28% of the adult entertainment market. Falling prices for adult DVDs caused a drop of 15% in revenue in that segment, but unit sales were up, indicating a continuing market for adult films. Distribution over cable channels showed strong growth in 2006 at 34%. AVN estimates the Adult Cable/PayPerView segment (home and hotel TV movies) now represents $1.75 bln in revenue, annually.

What is most notable is that Internet sales of adult content, which includes images, live-chat and live-streaming video, is the main growth area. In fact, AVN reports that in 2006, Internet Sales became the second largest adult entertainment segment, with 22% of the market or $2.8 bln in sales.

Dell Wifi Hotspot Finder

Last Feb I bought the Dell Latitude 610. Turns out the new model has included a unique feature called "Wi-Fi Catcher" located on the left side of the notebook. You can use this switch to turn off all wireless radios by putting it in the 'Off'position, but far cooler than that, push it all the way forward and it will blink green as it searches for a Wi-Fi network and if one is present it glows solid green, if none is found it shows orange. This Wi-Fi Catcher works whether the notebook is on, off or in standby mode. So there's no need to boot up and search for wireless networks, just push this button to find out.

More on this at... http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2846&laptop=Dell+Latitude+D620+Review

Securing your wireless network...alternatively

Just got Broadband in the house and have a wireless router broadcasting the signal around the house. I haven't bothered putting a password on it, so I suppose my neighbours could be having free access. I was thinking about this and came across a story of a guy who is securing his wireless network in an alternative fashion. Essentially, he is messing with the layout of the pages that his neighbours are browsing...their fault for piggybacking!!

New Year's Resolution(s)

The only one worth writing about is 'to complete at least one triathlon'. Booked myself in for one in Carrick-on-Shannon on April 22nd. Consists of 24 lengths of the pool(600m), 18km cycle and 5km run. Should be easy enough in theory, only I still can only swim two lengths and I've no bike.