Engineers, programmers and futurists believe that programmable robots that provide sexual companionship are likely to be commonplace in the 21st century, at more or less the same time as computers become able to process information as quickly as the human brain. The implications of tactile sexbots, likely to contain vibrators, sound systems and other equipment, are as significant as they are unexamined. If you thought the fight over the CDA was bad, wait till Rev. Falwell and his many pious friends in Congress discover Sexbots. For better or worse, computing might be breaking down another big wall.

Jim Burnes writes "A Federal judge has put a temporary injunction against Reno et al. to put the Child Online Protection Act (aka CDA II) on hold pending further judgement."

EngrBohn writes "CNN reports that a portion of the CDA dealing with adult cable channels is unconstitutional. Not only did the CDA place an undue burdon on adult-only content channels (eg, Playboy) that weren't on adult-sometimes content channels (eg, HBO), but the three judges also ruled that one of the underlying principles of CDA was unsupported: "the Justice Department presented 'no clinical evidence linking child viewing of pornography to psychological harms.'" "

ian writes "Under new proposed EU legislation, taping TV for personal use at home would be illegal, as would converting books into Braille. Makes the CDA look sort of nice and cuddly, doesn't it ?"

CDA II has been blocked until at least December 4th by a federal judge: the Justice Department has been issued with a temporary restraining order preventing them from inforcing the Child Online Protection Act (aka CDA II).

The lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others against CDA 2 will begin on Thursday. CDA 2 itself becomes valid on Friday. Ironically even the DOJ has doubts as to its constitutionality... could this mean that Clinton signed it into law expecting it to be defeated?

Welcome to Slashdot, wherein a technologically challenged media critic comes nose to nose with an army of Linux Geeks and lives to tell the tale...

ninster writes "Clinton signs the huge spending bill that includes the "Child Online Protection Act". Why do I have to live in this country? " proof positive that our government nothing but our best interests at heart.

Well, as I reported yesterday, the Tax Free Net Bill will be hitting the Senate floor today. However, it appears that two bills maybe potentially attached. The first, pushed by Senator Lott (R-MS) would repeal the approval Congress made of the domain name tax. Essentially, this would make it possible to sue and recover domain name costs (30$ collected by the NSF) -possibly rebating a big number of people. The other amendment that might be tacked on is CDA II. This would string out the political fighting that is occurring over the bill itself.

BOredAtWork writes "CDA II passed the House subcommittee. I can't help but notice that these are the same reps who happily posted the Monica and the Cigar saga all over the web. Can we say "hypocritical" boys and girls? " True enough-and for those who have not contacted your legislators, do so now.

An anonymous reader submitted a link to a Tasty Bits piece that talks about how 263 members of the House of Reps supposedly voted for both the CDA & the release of the Starr Report. Posting the Starr report to the internet could have had up to $250k fine or 5 yrs prison if the CDA had passed. Those wacky politicians... "

Kevin writes "ZD-TV is carrying a story about the FBI and their "Information Superspyway", basically it says the telecom industry wants more money to implement the FBI's plan to be able to "wiretap" anyone with the push of a few buttons, as passed by Congress in 1994 in the CALEA. People's privacy begins to diminish little by little. This surveillance net is supposed to be implemented on Oct. 01, 1998 [doubt they make it]."

ZDNet currently has an interesting poll online. The question is "Is Linux a threat to Windows?". Readers can answer Yes or No. Go see for yourself for the results so far.

While perusing Freshmeat, the title Anti-filter-proxy-proxy caught my attention. What it does is defeat the site-blocking functionality of censorware. This is cool because it neatly solves the CDA nonsense, and with a network of sites such as httpd-afpp's homepage it should also allow citizens of countries such as China and Singapore to get around state imposed censorware, keeping the internet a free-speech area.

Trepidity informed us that the Senate unamimously passed a spending bill with the "CDA II" amendments attached to it. These would make allowing children to view "harmful" material a crime. The amendments would also require schools and libraries to install censorware on all computers accessible to minors. If the bill were to pass the House and be signed into law, the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation have vowed to have it overturned like they did with the first CDA. Click below to read more...

The US Governement couldn't leave well enough alone. Not content in seeing CDA blown to bits by the Constitution, Dan Coats (R-Indiania) has tacked on to an Appropriations Bill what is basically CDA II. More details below.

Chris Carlin writes "The strangely fascinating saga of OurFirstTime.com continues. This article from ZDNet has the site administrators' sides of the story. They claim it's not a hoax after all and the show (as it is) will go on. Their side is here. "
However, the strange, strange story continues on with later news: pabs writes "A cracker broke into the DNS server for OurFirstTime and redirected requests to Disney, then the page was deleted and replaced with a message explaining the scam and making fun of the page's creator. Last time I checked, OurFirstTime was still down. Read the Wired article here. "

Upgrading to Windows 98 is not for the fainthearted, as it does not appear to be 100% compatible. In particular be aware that Windows 98 introduces a new driver model, WDM, which requires different drivers. The older VxD type may or may not work. I've heard this affects Philips CD-ROM drives using Adaptec drivers. W'98 also tries to emulate a Soundblaster card, which is rather difficult so it may not work with all games. Apparently there are also problems with older revisions of BIOS. Microsoft is also being swamped by customer service calls effectively requiring users to rely on each other and the media... If any of you do have to use Windows (My wife does for the student version of Maple V -- not available under Linux), then you have been advised. Of course you'll get the obligatory first viri but it won't be quite this bad I wonder how Windows 98 will score in ZD-NET's customer satisfaction survey.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of AOL today, and for once, a victory for AOL means good things for the rest of us. The lawsuit was about defamatory material on-line. In effect, the Court ruled that Internet service providers can not be held responsible for material posted on their systems. This upholds a prior federal court decision stemming from the CDA of 1996. This is very good news-meaning that the 1st Amendment can live another day.