pornography

application Still or moving images, usually of women, in

varying states of nudity, posing or performing erotic acts

with men, women, animals, machines, or other props. Some say

it degrades women, some say it corrupts young boys (who

down-load it from the World-Wide Web or exchange it on

floppy disks). Most of it is in the form of JPEG images.

There are many sites on the World-Wide Web offering porn of

all sorts, almost always for a subscription. It is said that

these are a driving force in the evolution of new technology

and techniques for the web. Advertisments for them certainly

constitute a significant proportion of all spam. There are

even pornographic computer games, an early example being MacPlaymate.

Beware - many institutions, particularly universities, have

strict rules against their computers and networks being used

to transfer or store such things, and you might get corrupted.

(2002-03-08)