The computer industry (the non-gaming part) also seems to be warming up to gaming. Microsoft has the XBox, and is successful where no console manufacturer is: online gaming. I believe that their experience with networking was a great factor in this. IBM has several projects involving gaming (that we know of). It has a project on grid computing involving running PlayStation2 games on multiple PS2 chips, and they also have landed a contract to manufacture the PlayStation3. People at Sun are testing a massive multiplayer Java game server because they found out that a lot of problems that massively-multiplayer online games deal with are problems that entreprise environments face all the time . This is quite exciting news.

Now on the topic of porn: I have actually seen porn sites that have a layout similar to a blog. It's really weird, but fairly popular. It's not any different than traditional porn websites, but it feels more personal: everyday, there is an entry from the admin (I'm guessing) about what's going on on the website and/or about some random event happening in the admin's life. And of course, it's got tons of advertisement, which means that the website is probably making money. Will this change the way people browse for porn? Only time will tell.

Of course, the porn industry has always been on the edge of technological advances, and have been facing problems like media piracy, privacy issues, and data management before most of us did. I don' t think that the fact that they have the technology first puts them at an advantage, though. I think that it's the way they think that differentiates them from other industries. For example, on the topic of piracy, most major companies on the porn industry tolerate it because it's free publicity for their products. They effectively turn freeloader into subscribers. Talk about genius.

Then there is the matter of privacy. That's where we saw the rise of Net-Nanny-like software, anonymous file-sharing software come in the scene. Politically-aware people like L Flynt vehemently oppose any monitoring, and censoring of the Internet done by the government. With new technology, you alos need progressive thinking, especially if the technology is as disruptive as the Internet.