Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Stanford profs against SCAI
Scholars for peace in the Middle East has a new Stanford chapter with 40 tenured faculty participating. They lay out their ideas about why the charge of apartheid levelled against Israel is false. Link above. This was NOT reported in the Stanford Daily, although SCAI has been there several times.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
What can you do with a Stanford MBA? ONLINE PORN!
http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/culture-inc/arts/2007/10/15/YouPorn-Vivid-Entertainment-Profile/?TID=advert/drudge/YouPorn#page1
Stanford MBA went to a hedge fund, uses an alias, and either does or does not own Youporn.com,a free adult site, that he tried to sell for 20 million dollars (unsuccessfully). This is in spite of the fact that youporn.com is one of the 50 most visited sites on the web, by alexis.com, and rising.
I know what you are thinking. There are plenty of Stanford MBA's who are using their talents for moral pursuits, and one bad apple should not ruin the perception of the whole. Some of you think he should be admired because he makes money (except that is not clear either). Also, probably plenty of Harvard MBA's and Wharton types have gotten into porn.
However, what is clear is that Stanford is closer to the San Fernando Valley than the other two schools, and that Stanford does not condone porn. However, the association of Stanford with the startup ethos and technology and Silicon Valley has made this result inevitable. People become Stanford MBA's because they want to make bucketloads of money and people go into porn for the same reason.
What is wrong with this is that the site does not use age verfication. So, you.porn, a sort of adult version of you tube, allows anyone to upload graphic materials. This is terrible for established porn companies, like Vivid.com and others, sort of like Cargill dumping grain in Iraq is terrible for Iraqi farmers. (Except we are FOR Iraqi farmers and against Vivid, I think). So democratization is bad for the pron industry, and that is good.
However, its impossible for the people who run the site to monitor the ages of the models. They could upload a 13 year old and get it by the overworked censors. This has not been targeted yet by the government. This is criminal child abuse. What is more, anyone who downloads an upload of the 13 year old (who may look older) is a criminal child pornster also and can get sent up the River with the Stanford MBA. it depends totally on the mood of the prosecutor at the time. Unlike Vivid, which does careful age checks for its productions, youporn cannot because of the amateur nature. If you are one of the 90 percent of twenty somethings who have visited a pornsite at least once, you could accidentally download child images and be just as culpable legally as the pervert down the street who preys on Cub scouts and posts the images in the first place.
In fact, you might be more liable. The guy in the article claims at times he runs the site, but does not own it. His partner, who owns it, is Asian. I have no idea what legal risks Asians face in their home countries for peddling child porn, but it is likely that the Stanford MBA is trying to avoid responsibility or pass it off to his co-owner (assuming he actually owns a piece of you porn). So if the California prosecutor has trouble prosecuting an Asian porn peddler he will go after those who have images on their actual laptops. In your defense, as someone who has the odds in your favor but could get trampled, there is not much you can do. You can't delete images, we have known that for years. You could physcially destroy your computer against rocks, that might work. Otherwise you are dead.
Or, you could work for a hedge fund.
Stanford MBA went to a hedge fund, uses an alias, and either does or does not own Youporn.com,a free adult site, that he tried to sell for 20 million dollars (unsuccessfully). This is in spite of the fact that youporn.com is one of the 50 most visited sites on the web, by alexis.com, and rising.
I know what you are thinking. There are plenty of Stanford MBA's who are using their talents for moral pursuits, and one bad apple should not ruin the perception of the whole. Some of you think he should be admired because he makes money (except that is not clear either). Also, probably plenty of Harvard MBA's and Wharton types have gotten into porn.
However, what is clear is that Stanford is closer to the San Fernando Valley than the other two schools, and that Stanford does not condone porn. However, the association of Stanford with the startup ethos and technology and Silicon Valley has made this result inevitable. People become Stanford MBA's because they want to make bucketloads of money and people go into porn for the same reason.
What is wrong with this is that the site does not use age verfication. So, you.porn, a sort of adult version of you tube, allows anyone to upload graphic materials. This is terrible for established porn companies, like Vivid.com and others, sort of like Cargill dumping grain in Iraq is terrible for Iraqi farmers. (Except we are FOR Iraqi farmers and against Vivid, I think). So democratization is bad for the pron industry, and that is good.
However, its impossible for the people who run the site to monitor the ages of the models. They could upload a 13 year old and get it by the overworked censors. This has not been targeted yet by the government. This is criminal child abuse. What is more, anyone who downloads an upload of the 13 year old (who may look older) is a criminal child pornster also and can get sent up the River with the Stanford MBA. it depends totally on the mood of the prosecutor at the time. Unlike Vivid, which does careful age checks for its productions, youporn cannot because of the amateur nature. If you are one of the 90 percent of twenty somethings who have visited a pornsite at least once, you could accidentally download child images and be just as culpable legally as the pervert down the street who preys on Cub scouts and posts the images in the first place.
In fact, you might be more liable. The guy in the article claims at times he runs the site, but does not own it. His partner, who owns it, is Asian. I have no idea what legal risks Asians face in their home countries for peddling child porn, but it is likely that the Stanford MBA is trying to avoid responsibility or pass it off to his co-owner (assuming he actually owns a piece of you porn). So if the California prosecutor has trouble prosecuting an Asian porn peddler he will go after those who have images on their actual laptops. In your defense, as someone who has the odds in your favor but could get trampled, there is not much you can do. You can't delete images, we have known that for years. You could physcially destroy your computer against rocks, that might work. Otherwise you are dead.
Or, you could work for a hedge fund.
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