Tuesday Tasting: XXXmas, In-Flight Porn, And Global Orgasm Gadgets
As the last installment on SuicideGirls, Tuesday Tasting will be moving to Shake Well Before Use in 2008.
Each week, Ariel Waldman serves a tasting of the latest in sex and tech.
Santa Brought Us Slutty Stocking Stuffers
Fleshbot posts ten XXXmas videos aimed to get you hotter than a Macbook on bare thighs. Naughty, video-loving vixens are decked out in reindeer hats and ready to ride your sleigh (at least on screen).
Yes, it's been well established that "Christmas porn" pretty much just means "babes in Santa hats," but it can also mean so much more. For example, sometimes the dudes are wearing the hats! Also, sometimes there's a tree in the background!
From "Three Tight XXXMas chicks share Santa" to "Hardcore Christmas party", the videos are definitely NSFW, but that shouldn't be a problem today.
Flying Home For The Holidays Will Still Suck
The friendly skies want to make sure they remain just that: friendly, but not of the fuck-buddy variety. Airlines are starting to open up to in-flight wi-fi and mobile phone service. Unfortunately, the possibility of porn is making many planes hesitant to allow unrestricted Internet access.
And there are going to be a ton of questions to answer. Will it be free? Ad-supported? Will there be a subscription charge? What if the guy in the seat next to you is looking at porn? Even worse, what if he plugs in a Skype headset and starts yakking away?
Personally, we'd much prefer an accidental glance at Britney's latest crotch shot on an adjacent laptop, than listen to someone ask what groceries are left in the fridge on our flight home.
362 Days Left To Stock Up On Gadgets For Global Orgasm Day 2008
Missed Global Orgasm Day last week, only to go directly to a thinly-walled, relative's home for the holidays? Thankfully, Gizmodo listed the top 10 gadgets you need for Global Orgasm Day, most of which you can order or make through the quiet convenience of a few clicks. If pink Japanese blowjob machines and Call Me Panties aren't your thing, then we can only hope your fingers and a fast internet connection help satiate next year's winter solstice.
And now it is time for this sexy geek to bid you adieu...
Your Phone's Off The Hook, But You're Not
This week I'm writing in from the SG Tokyo field office on an all expense paid trip to research the future of communication and global interconnectivity. OK, that's not entirely the truth, I am in Japan but that's about where the line to fiction starts blurring. A guy can dream can't he? Actually I am kind of researching communication but with a much more "how the crap do I stay in touch with my friends" approach rather than the "what does the future hold" perspective. Turns out it's both easier and harder than I expected.
If you've been following my columns here you know I'm kind of obsessed with communication to begin with and during ordinary daily life in Los Angeles I prefer IM and SMS to the phone, but would rather get a call then an e-mail. In planning this trip I knew a good bit of that was going to be thrown into an uproar, but was also excited to see what tools people I'd be hanging out with in Japan were using and how they were using them. Everyone I talked to prior to the trip said renting a mobile phone from a kiosk at the airport upon arrival was essential, so I assumed the bulk of contact would be SMS based and arranged for a phone to use during my trip.
Additionally I was curious how I'd stay in touch with my friends in the states. I've also got a friend from LA who is in Thailand right now and thanks T-Mobile she has free SMS coverage there which made contacting her from LA no problem, but a bit trickier from Japan where it's no longer a local number to send or receive from. How would all this play out?
Not surprisingly some contact forms didn't change at all, minor time zone differences aside. I could IM and e-mail with people the same as always. Site messaging (like mail here on SG) also worked the same as always and was really helpful. Voice to the states wasn't that tricky so long as I had a laptop thanks to several VOIP options. For a very small per minute fee I can use things like Gizmo Project or Skype to call any phone number on the planet. I can also sent SMS messages with Skype to US numbers for about $0.12 each, but people can't reply back to those. Both of those services also let you make calls to other people using them for free. You can also flex your inner nerd with gaming options like Teamspeak if you already use that, but I wouldn't recommend trying to set it up just for a trip.
As for in country communication, it's not SMS at all. In fact no one I know here is using SMS for anything. This doesn't mean they aren't using their mobile phones, they are - all the time actually - but instead all messaging is e-mails (or mobile mail) directly to the phones. This seems to skirt some kind of high SMS charge in some way. This is amusing actually because originally SMS gained popularity in many countries because it was much cheaper than voice calls. Interestingly enough nanoblogging service Twitter is benefiting here as well because of the mobile and direct messaging options. You can't use SMS for it, but you can use your mobile phone's browser and send direct messages through twitter to friends here in Japan (or anywhere in the world) for free. Several people I've talked to are doing this, as well as just keeping an eye on the mobile page to see where their friends are. Twitter actually solved the issue for my friend in Thailand. While it's not as direct as an SMS that she can reply to her from Los Angeles, we can still keep in touch easily and basically for free.
This is the trick, almost every single person I've seen has a phone, and it's usually out in being held in one hand and stared at. People on the trains, people on the streets, everyone. Conversely, I can probably count on one hand the number of people I've seen talking on their phones, and I'm including myself in that number. To add to that, there are signs everywhere prohibiting you from talking on your phone, so much of the text based mobile usage might stem from that as well. There are also pay phone booths everywhere but I haven't seen a single one being used yet which is certainly tied into the mobile aspect. If people aren't using their mobile phones to talk on, who might someone call from a pay phone? I've heard these are slowly disappearing as well, much the way they are in the US.
What does all this mean? It just means the way we communicate with each other, those next to us and on the other side of the world, is constantly evolving. I can't wait to see where we go next from here.
San Jose State University Bans Skype
According to Ars Technica, many universities are banning the use of Skype by their students, citing bandwidth and security concerns. The latest school to issue the ban is San Jose State.
In a memo seen by Ars Technica, the SJSU Office of Information Technology says that Skype and other applications which use "grid-computing-like" networking capabilities are to be banned, but VoIP applications such as Gizmo or Wengo are still permitted for use. The memo also states that Skype's EULA is far too broad, requiring users to grant Skype general "usage rights" to the SJSU networksomething that end users do not have the right to do, as it is not their network. OIT also says that the changes to the XP firewall "may prove to be an excellent vector for a worm."
At first glance, the policy seems arbitrary and draconian, especially when considering that a typical Skype packet is just 20K/sec, and users suck up tons more bandwidth than that in a typical gaming or streaming media session. However, the real concern appears to be preventing students from acting as a supernode.
[A]ccording to the Office of Information Technology, the chief problem comes when a Skype client acts as a "supernode" and makes itself available to relay calls made by other users. Having numerous supernodes on a school network increases bandwidth consumption and has a detrimental impact on connectivity, according to the memo. Anecdotal reports from individual Skype users reveal that bandwidth consumption can increase by as much as an entire gigabyte per month for a single Skype client when it acts as a supernode.
While it is possible to turn off supernode functionality, instructions to do so are not included in Skype's documentation, and require a search on the Internets, which is a series of tubes, and not like a truck.
Students looking to relive the glory days of the 1960s with a nice big Skype-related protest may be disappointed, however. The ban only applies to the tubes that go into classrooms and other official areas; dorms and public areas will continue to enjoy unfiltered access.