Google makes it official: no porn apps for Chromecast
gigaom.com
gigaom.com
Graphic violence seems to enjoy greater protection than nudity, both culturally and legally, in the U.S. For example, there's the variable obscenity standard, which shields children from sexual images but not images of extreme violence:
http://www.communitydefense.org/cdcdocs/obscenityman/ch10.pd...
But whatever. I'm sure this is going to keep kids from seeing "graphic" material, right? None of us ever went around our parents to see something we shouldn't have...
Chromecast lets you display arbitrary browser tabs, right? If so, same thing here.
It seems that it's not so much trying to play moral police as just not wanting to be to blame. People know that a web browser is just a conduit and that the device maker isn't responsible for what you browse. People don't have the same attitude toward apps, even though there's nothing fundamentally different.
I doubt Google cares about that. We live in a heavily secularized world today.
I hate the racist materialism of the Disney Channel, and the ecologically abusive NASCAR. Let's have Google ban that, shall we?
> I think its fine to watch porn.
and
> ... but even the "classy" stuff is unhealthy in my opinion.
Seem to be directly contradictory. Unless you're saying its a-okay to do unhealthy things every so often [which is also valid].
On the other hand, there's nothing abnormal about the desire to look at nudity or sexually explicit material.
Although I strongly agree with your general sentiment regarding the USA's backwards policies on sexual content, I'm not sure it's accurate in this particular case. From the article:
> Also verboten are hate speech, violence and bullying and online gambling.
It appears to me that Google is simply attempting to block all "R-rated content" as opposed to just nudity, sex, etc.
Middle-class parents in a low crime neighborhood don't really have to worry about young Sally growing up to be a psychotic warrior because they to occasionally watch blockbuster movies like 300 or Saving Private Ryan.
But if family movie night regularly included films like Eyes Wide Shut or Fifty Shades of Grey, one can certainly imagine it may influence a young adult's sexuality. And at a time when they are exceptionally impressionable and have particularly poor judgement no less. This is an unsettling thought to most parents.
That said, I do believe that Americans generally overexpose their children to bombastic, violent movies. I'm certain that this has something to do with our relatively higher violent crime rates. I'm not sure if our media shapes our collective consciousness or the other way around. I suspect it's both.
The distinctly American prudishness regarding sex is almost a mirror image of large parts of the world with respect to cinematic violence. It's part of why you can be so sure these west coast companies will never monopolise the market in Germany, for example.
This is just name calling, and Americans get shit on for being culturally insensitive...
Pornography is awful stuff. It exploits the way our minds work, and ruins peace and happiness. This isn't religiosity, I don't believe in the supernatural. It's just something I've come to learn as I've gotten older.
Is it OK for you to tell someone else what they are allowed to watch? That's the sticking point, and what is being done by Google (and so many others). You may not like porn, but there are a massive number that are OK with it. Is it right for you to impose your morals on others?
Definitely don't take this as inflammatory, but I personally (as an American) don't want my morals and beliefs forced on others. I think a lot of problems could be solved if everyone gave this a shot. Different strokes, etc.
Impossible. At the end of the day, all laws and rules come from someone's morals and beliefs, regardless of who that is or what they've named those morals and beliefs.
Morals/beliefs are a fundamental part of human thinking. Whether it's named, whether it comes from a religion or just a person's own experience in life, it always exists in the brain. That's kind of a fact. So, pretty confused about the downvote right about now...
While there are certainly buffoons legislating their morals on others, I think the greater chunk of modern legislation is corporate/profit driven rather than this pressing of morals you mentioned. There are, of course, exceptions, but I think your comments harped on only one motivator (of many) for legislation.
There's an inherent belief that the difference in society would be bad. Is that true? Bad is pretty qualitative, so it comes down to a belief.
> If we were allowed to cheat on our taxes without punishment, the system itself may collapse.
There's an inherent belief that "the system" is a good thing, and that we don't want it to collapse. But again, this is a subjective belief, not universally held.
Your comment is based on implicit beliefs of what is "best" for society (or even humanity) as a whole. I'm pretty sure you can't prove that your beliefs are "correct", because I'm sure most people would argue that subjective beliefs can't be correct or incorrect, they're just beliefs.
Unless you plan to cite some peer-reviewed research on that, you should probably not generalize to me and everyone else. If you find that porn is bad for you, by all means avoid it. But don't pretend that you know it's bad for other people too.
I'm in the "bible belt" (southeast US), and even here there's plenty of people who don't get too up in arms about this kind of stuff.
The internet has been the great equalizer for the younger generations. Smut, graphic video, violence, and all sorts of other things are only a keystroke away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Censorship_World_...
If Google and Apple feel the need to restrict adult content to the level they do it's not really a stereotype; it's a real problem.
Don't American blockbusters, chock full of graphic violence, do quite well overseas in general? That seems to imply that the attitude towards cinematic violence is not the same at all.
In France we don't have any special opposition to either sex or graphic violence in movies (if you check the minimal age required for some movies on imdb, you might be surprised by the amount of movies we put at 12 years old when other countries do 16 or 18), and Hollywood movie have become "tame" enough that dubber (movies are dubbed in french) often add swearing to make it sounds more realistic ...
Hell, even Die Hard turned PG-13.
I must say it quite surprised me this type of content was allowed/condoned.
And if you'd ask me about my opinion; I feel fine about them hosting it.
If you'd like to know the details of that, just ask! Just ask your nearest lamppost, garbage can, or alley cat. They're much easier to reach than developer support at Google, and they're almost as likely to give you a useful answer.
- The large percentage of people who like porn, plus...
- The smaller (but outspoken) percentage of people who don't like to be told what content they're allowed to watch on the devices that they've purchased.
We'll see if the market segment they're trying to attract with this policy (families with children, if I had to guess) will make up for this loss.
But you can still stream a Chrome tab, so... maybe they are not really preventing anything except good audio sync.
[1] http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/923540954/2013_Latest_High...
EDIT: the main issue is ARMs lack of anything remotely similar to a BIOS. That's sort of changing, linux now has some stuff in the kernel to help target various ARM chipsets, but it's still difficult. Would be cool to see a kick starter for an ARM Ubuntu TV Stick -- I wonder what protocol would be best for "flinging" content to it?
As for protocols, good question. I see the streaming protocols which work reasonably well, I keep hoping for something like the DisplayLink protocol over ethernet with say WPA2, basically "connect" have it show up as a frame buffer to your client. Then some software on the stick so that you could slide back and forth to different "screens" ala the Amiga with each one being connected to a different device. But that is just speculating on what might be possible.
Also, I just giggled, cause I just remembered we have "streaming" in X as is, from decades back... Though it's not quite the same thing I suppose!