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Graphics Software

Even More Porn Image Recognition Software 155

Posted by Hemos from the a-proc-mail-option dept.
Rob Pascual writes: "I thought this article was interesting. It's a review of software that analyzes pictures in email to see if they are porn. Not that it works too well, but it's interesting how it works, and has a lot of cool info on image recognition." See also this earlier Slashdot story about the same concept embodied in software from Exotrope and Eye-T, which seems mostly to illustrate how absurd it is.
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Porn Image Recognition Sofware More

Porn Image Recognition Sofware

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  • "Incidentally, PORNsweeper did successfully block the abovementioned gaping-bottom picture. I could tell you where to find it, but you don't want to. Trust me."
    --
  • Anybody who is morally-straight and nazi-ish enough to develop this stuff couldn't possibly test it on the real thing, because it would violate their beliefs.

    Why not? The people who ran the Spanish Inquisition seemed to have a detailed working knowledge of witchcraft and other (supposed) heresies, without violating their beliefs.

    But then, you weren't expecting that, were you?

  • The fact is, there are generally two groups of people who will read this:
    1. Those who recognize that a picture is just a picture, and a naked human body is just a naked human body, and there's nothing bad about naked human bodies. It doesn't matter if it's "art" or not. You make the good point that the line is impossible to draw, but the fact is where it's drawn is still irrelevant. (From a purely societal-engineering viewpoint, as well as a moral one, the only really threatening images are those depicting violence, brutality, masochism, etc... assuming we want our kids to have sex someday, then we won't be hurting them by letting them see what it looks like prematurely, any more than it hurts an eight-year-old to show them multivariable calculus. They may not understand it, but there's nothing in it which will hurt them.)
    2. Those who believe naked bodies are evil and will horribly corrupt innocent young minds. God made us enjoy sex so much, not because he wanted to give us something enjoyable (that's too simple), but to "test" us. Never mind that the whole goal of Christianity (and I pick on them, but include any other prudish ideologies) is to get to pleasure in heaven. (Real saints would be just as happy in hell, I think).
  • The obvious point being, of course, how silly is the idea of having such a magic filter in the first place.

    Getting back to the topic, what does this say about the claims of those who supposedly develop such filters?
  • I always get shitloads of porn spam when I'm doing tech-support at work through e-mail. But hey, every mail is supposed to be from a customer, and it isn't my fault if Britney's tits are causing BSOD's, now is it? I have to check out what the problem of the customers is and if possible, solve it, right? Not that I really care about said tits, but that's besides the point...
  • How much of a waste of time is that? Set your filter to "only gaze lovingly at myself"

  • Yahoo? [yahoo.com]

    It's not even a separate thing: This [yahoo.com] is just a few levels down in their hierarchically-organized index.

    When do I get my feeling of smugness?

    David Gould
  • Junkbusters.com

    and get the blocklist from
    http://www.waldherr.org/blocklist

    Sorted.
  • Another problem: Generally, this software is fairly expensive to buy and maintain. Do you really want *any* of your tax money going to buy a worthless product?
  • Maybe the Puritans need their OWN COUNTRY.

    Uhm, you do realize, the last time somebody said that to them, they left England and formed a colony in what is today the USA?

    -
  • possible yes. but not in our lifetimes, i'd bet.

    to create a computer with enough intelligence to recognize intent would be a large step beyond teaching a computer to think like a person, which itself would be a far step beyond teaching a computer to think, which itself is a goal that we're nowhere near reaching (Eudora's rude email filter notwithstanding).

    go read G.E.B.

    -c
  • Now hold on! I love porn, but I wouldn't want my 13 year old brother into the same crap I've seen on the 'net. If a client-side version of this thing actually worked, I'd recommend it to my folks.

    Not everybody who wants a way to prevent pornography is a nazi. As a matter of fact, jumping to conclusions and categorizing people like that would strike me as Hitler-worthy far more than a porn sensor...
    ---

  • More on art vs. pr0n, the line that doesn't exist (Score:4)

    by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @10:28AM (#622090)
    This issue really ruffles a lot of feathers with fine art nude photographers such as myself. Of all the potential for abitrary discrimination, people like me stand to take the worst blows.

    In this particular case, it comes down to whether I decided to shoot in B&W or color that day.

    As usual, the issue isn't what it is now, but what it has the potential to become. In as little as 10 years to two decades, we may have algs that are good enough to discern between hardcore pr0n and what most people consider to be 'art' photos. But in many cases, the line between art and pornography doesn't even exist.

    I just visted a fantastic art gallery in San Francisco featuring very expensive large format laser holography. In addition to gorgeous fine art nude holograms, he also had amazing holographic prints of various sex acts in action. Closeups of oral fellatio with both sexes and other interesting subject material. I consider these prints to be extremely beautiful, capturing a freeze frame of raw human lust in a way that has never been seen before. Point being, I very much consider these prints to be 'fine art' even though if you were to see the same thing on a 2D color photograph, you might deem it to be only of purely purrient interest. The only difference is the medium used.

    If I were to take some well-lit B&W's of two girls going at each other with their tongues, would it be art? Would the same thing be art if it was in color? Depending on who you are, how you were raised and where you are from, you might say that any picture depicting copulation is pornography. Others might say that sex is virulently beautiful in many forms.

    A good way to define art: Does it quicken your pulse? Does it turn you on? Then it's art for you. If you consider it tasteless and it doesn't do anything for you, then it's not very artistic in your eyes.

    More importantly: The whole idea of suing over email is a little ludicrous...if you are receiving pr0n images in email, who sent them? A friend of yours who accidentally put you in the CC? Does that warrant suing your COMPANY for failing to block it? Is ruffling through your personal mail looking for objectionable material part of a companies' responsibility? Do you want it to be? Does a whole company have to suffer out of fear that one or two people might be offended and lawsuit crazy? Have we completely lost out all our rights to the lawyers, who clean up on both sides of the equation?

    The question is, who is writing this software, and what are their beliefs? Do you want someone else deciding for you what is 'art'? What else are they going to decide is not in your best interests to view?

    ---Mike

    Watching the war over what combination of pixels we can look at and what combinations of pixels are 'bad' for us...


    Mike Massee

  • This [segfault.org] is alarming

    /mdroid
    ;-)

  • $1.9 Gazillion spent on defeating porn !!!! (Score:3)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @10:37AM (#622092) Homepage Journal
    Maybe the Puritans need their OWN COUNTRY. Or maybe they should become Amish and stop using the infernal Satanic computer. Then we could take all that money all that effort and all that energy and solve some real social problems. If you don't know what your CHHHHIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDRRRREEENNNNNNNN are doing then what the FUCK gives you the right to demand that someone or something else do that for you and for everyone else as well.

  • I have been wondering though how are these programs going to be able to tell the difference between an artistic nude and a pic of a money shot across a girls tits?

    There has been only one sure fire way I have ever been able to differentiate actual art from pornography.

    Pornography is the pictures I keep wanting to look at over and over and over and over again

  • Aah, so they're capatalists! That's even worse - somebody who does something they don't believe in so they can make money. Would you buy a Bible made by Arayan Nations, made for whatever purpose?
  • Still more a technological curiosity than a valid product. But interesting.

    Of course, according to the article it still can't distinguish the Mona Lisa from the goatse.cx guy. Back to the drawing board, folks...
    ----------
  • Another possibility is that the developers are not that morally straight, they just want to make money from the people who are stupid enough to buy this kind of software.

    It is hypothetically possible that the developers even believe that their software works (or could work) and that they make an honest effort to make it work.

    But then it defeats it's own purpose again, as you say. Anyone smart enough to make something like this work, would never develop such a thing for the intended use it is being sold for. But maybe for the uses of locating porn and generating porn. :-)
  • I'm sure that with a little fiddling, I can now use this in promiscuous (pun) mode on the Ethernet interface of my news server and save all PORN pictures to the hard drive.

    This is incredible technology guys. Can it differentiated between blonde / brunettes? Cup size? *drool*


    --
    Let's not all suck at the same time please

  • Is it an elephant or Ron Jeremy? Think of the fuzzy logic this thing has......
  • ummm bgrab works fine for that...
  • That's not a bad idea. Wonder how hard it'd be to implement.
  • I could tell you where to find it, but you don't want to. Trust me.

    I sure as heck didn't. Can anyone tell me why I'd care to see that? I immediately impemented a look-at-the-status-bar-to-see-where-the-link-reall y-goes-before-clicking style policy. Of course I haven't been bitten again.
  • Well, the company can't get sued for encouraging a hostile workplace with pictures of Brazil being displayed.

    The point being that wasted time wastes the company's money, but they have a simple mechanism for handling that. (Performance reviews, verbal warnings, etc...) Sexually explicit material also exposes the business to sexual harrassment lawsuit, which cost a lot more than an employee's wasted time.

    These censorware attempts are a way for a company to prevent the most expensive abuses, not to prevent all of them.

  • Re:Review done using the COMPANY'S server! (Score:3)

    by Kitanin ( 7884 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @11:00AM (#622103) Homepage
    Hello? You're testing censorware! I don't believe for a second that this company wouldn't be sleazy enough to hand-check the emails getting sent through the account. All they have to do is open the emails, look at them, and (inserting a few false-positives and negatives) manually tell the software whether or not to filter the image.

    Considering the no-brainer false negatives and false positives, I doubt very much that they were BSing. A red truck (from certain angles) is bad, but a blowjob is acceptable? The Mona Lisa is bad at 745 pixels across, but okay at 100 pixels across? Shrub and the Shrubette are obscene, but blatant penetration is okay?

    Never attribute to malice...


  • That's funny! Maybe the Puritans need their own country, alright. It's called the USA, you dimwit!
  • I think working on a program like this is a bit like a dream coming true: study thousands of porn pics, try to find ways to detect what they have in common, and get paid to do so :)

  • thinking too small. (Score:5)

    by Bad_CRC ( 137146 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @07:28AM (#622106)
    instead of hooking it up to BLOCK images in email, why not take the reverse idea, and hook it up to a search engine. You could electronically index the web, rate quality, etc.

    You'd be the next dot.com millionaire.

    Go where the market REALLY is.

    ________

  • No. I actually have a small C++ pre-filter for my mail, which preps it for my perusal later.

    Yes, mail.message is zero indexed, but the much later routine to sort the mail by field value is badly written and barfs on any 'nonexistant' string. The mail import function pre-pads the string with whitespace, so I'm not saving any of the real data. Yeah, I fucked the assignment too. Guess I subconciously didn't want to wipe stuff from the boss.

    I would have critiqued the destruction of mail.new in the process; A filler int and for loop would be the way to do it.

  • pr0n recognition? (Score:4)

    by markbark ( 174009 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @07:29AM (#622108) Homepage
    So in essence, the software is saying I may not know what pr0n is, but I know it when I see it?


  • How to distribute pr0n... (Score:3)

    by darylp ( 41915 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @07:30AM (#622109)
    1. Never send the files as raw Jpegs. (PNGs / GIFs / whatever) All it takes is one overzealous network adminstrator to take a peek at the images going through their server, and it's boot up the arse time.

    2. If this software works (which I severely doubt!), all you'll have to do is apply a 'negative' filter to the image, achievable in most basic art packages and/or the ppm tools. This will remove all the flesh tones, which is what these things normally check for.

    3. Add cryptography to taste.

    4. Get out more, your palms are growing hairy.

  • do bibles make the economy any better? has socialism ever done anything efficiently? can people be motivated by the thought of improving their economic status?
  • That's true too, I suppose. Profits are not a bad thing, however. They're what make the world go 'round.

    I think we are a long way off from a good porn-detection algorithm. If and when we get one, however, we can set up a worm to find all of it. :)
  • Hey - you realise that this means that I no longer have to wade through newsgroups; I just set this sucker loose, and have it send everything it finds to ~/.pr0n.

    Sweet!

  • Could it block out pictures that would make one self puke your guts out? You know, like 95% of stileproject.com's pictures.(just take out anything brownish colored and in a linear shape). If they had that selective blocking, I could visit that site safely at home.
  • Heh. Obviously the filter software reads at a threshold of -1 and clicks on links titled "i set up a mirror here"

  • Even if these did get to 95+% accuracy (conceivable in several years), primative encryption of the data defeats every on of these. I can easily imaging sending someone a encrypted data file, the java viewer, and a password embedded in the text of the email for decryption. Why do they bother with email???

    The same approach could be applied to the web, though it would be slightly harder to implement.

  • If this software were at all effective, I would expect an arms race to develop, with porn web sites developing different ways to disguise porn and have it descrambled via a plug-in on the user end. Simply inverting the colors in the image would probably get it past initial screening, it's trivial to write a plug in that would reverse it back.
  • It's called pine . [washington.edu]
  • This was posted ages ago... Old news.
  • (moderate this -1:Shameless Project Plug)

    And speaking of all that, go to Sourceforge and sign up for my new project called Pr0n-O-Matic.

    Not a joke! It's an image downloader that will use JPEG Sheriff CRC files to automatically download and build pr0n collections. I'm writing it in Python.

    Right now there's just a mailing list set up. More things to follow.
  • Am I the only one who thinks that the amount of media attention to these barely-working programs is a little suspicious?

    "Are you really going to write an article about another porn-filter?"
    "What?! Don't you care about our children?!"
    "Ah, yes.. But do these things ever work?"
    "Only one way to find out!" (locks himself in his office for the rest of the day)
  • Why not JUST use cryptography? Throw the porn into a ZIP file, PGP file the file and off it goes.
    Why bother? Just rename the file to, say, *.doc or *.xls or, most cryptic (guaranteed to foil the filter), *.c.

    --
    Americans are bred for stupidity.

  • Oh... man....

    That's one set of pics I'm going to be looking at over and over... drool...

  • Another way of generating porn, if you had a magic filter that could recognize porn, is to start with a collection of porn, and on each image start randomly altering the pixels, and see if the images still pass the filter test. Images that initially passed the filter's test will gradually evolve into something entirely different that still passes the filter's test. Of course, there's always brute force -- just start testing every possible combination of pixels through the filter -- occaisionally one will turn out to be porn.
  • Generating porn. That would be a nice thing. Then at least the moralists in my country would loose their argument - their argument is that porn-making is most of the time a bad workplace and not good for the women.

    Oh, and how would it generate porn? Wouldn't a 3D model of a generic human body, plus some randomization of the individual differencies, a physics-sim. plus some general rules about what's sex do it pretty much easier?

  • The Resurgence of Ascii-Art! (Score:5)

    by DrQu+xum ( 218745 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @08:01AM (#622127) Homepage Journal
    I'd wager they can't block this little tid-bit:

    Warning! Don't click here if you're under 18 or local regulations prohibit you from downloading pr0n, even ASCII-art. [pitt.edu]

    When looking at this pic, try setting your point size to 4 and make sure you're using a fixed-width font. Much more realistic.
    Thus sprach DrQu+xum, SID=218745.

  • Blocking software in general is vastly oversold. If censorware salespeople sold motor scooters, mining companies would be buying them, having been faithfully assured that a 50cc Vespa can carry 200 tons of iron ore up a 30 degree grade.With enough gears and reinforcment I can make that 50cc vespa tow your 30 tons of ore up that 30 degree grade. What, you want me to make the 60 foot trip before the end of the 26th centruary? Quit changing the requirements on me.

    Sigh, and then people wonder why enginneering projects are late. I'll find a solution to the problem you present, and you decide on a few new requirements that I can't meet.

  • "I don't know if it's porn, but I know what I like!"
  • What a boring use of this technology! Use it to create a massive set of links to porn - you'd be rich!
    "Hex, Bugs, and Rockn'Roll" --The Programmer's Digest [sufftech.net]
  • Perhaps some home users will install this to keep their children away from porn, but I'd be willing to bet the average Slashdotter won't install it. Well, maybe if he/she is really addicted and trying to stop.... Gee, I would have thought chafing would solve that problem...
  • The article refers to attempts to train neural nets to recognise porn. This requires many training images, including many porn images.

    One day, there could be people who get paid to surf the web for porn.

    (OK, so plenty of people surf for porn while being paid now, but it isn't quite the same thing.)

  • Why not use neural nets? They're deisgned for pattern recognition: this is exactly the case here. We can all tell that a picture in an anatomy text is not pornography, but one of a someone masturbating is. Simply put together a nice large net, assemble a bunch of testers and a large number of images, and go to it. It ought to be fairly simple to automate a lot of this, too: sites with pronography are fairly common; simply match every image within certain parameters as such, while a site like Slashdot or Yahoo could be scanned with the assumption that no images would be pornographic.

    This is, after all, what a neural network is for. Sure, writing heuristics for defining what genitalia look like from various angles is hard; so is writing heuristics for defining what faces look like. But neural nets do this well, very well. It's simple pattern recognition; this is why we cannot define porn, but `know it when we see it.'

    It'd take a bit of time to train, but I daresay a lot of the training could be concurrent--the testers would simply have their input queued up and the thing would automatically run through it 24/7. And once it was trained its state could simply be frozen and copied.

    So, who wants to start work on such a project?

    It's be great to open-source this; people could even submit URLs and ratings online. The only problem would be that it might be taken over my morons on either side of the aisle who'd want it not to work; I think that it'd be best to work with a small and trusted group.

  • EWWWW!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you're asking slashdotters to "bare it all" for the sake of scientific inquiry, you really need to rethink your request.

    Not only would it lead to an overall decrease in quality images, it would confuse the neural nets due to our extreme lack of flesh tones. Most of us just don't get enough sun.

  • Q: How does the program define an image as pornography?

    A: Using the same standards as the US Supreme Court, the software doesn't define it, but it knows it when it sees it.
    --

  • Looks like they left out a line of code: if (big_asshole_held_open) PORN = true; That is just wrong...
  • I don't even want to talk about the relative stupidity of posting a link to slashdot and then complain that the page was slashdotted, but could you at least put up a mirror on some geocities account?

    --------------------------------------
  • "The only other alternative is that they are hypocrites, who write this stuff on one hand and look at this stuff on another"

    I assume you considered the double meaning of this before you posted. I've been known to "type with one hand" occasionally as well, if you know what I mean?

  • Review done using the COMPANY'S server! (Score:4)

    by Eric Seppanen ( 79060 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @08:14AM (#622139)
    Go and read the article. To test the software, the reviewer has the company selling the software set up an email account for him on one of their machines. Mail sent to that account presumably passes through their magic program and then gets forwarded to another account belonging to the reviewer.

    Hello? You're testing censorware! I don't believe for a second that this company wouldn't be sleazy enough to hand-check the emails getting sent through the account. All they have to do is open the emails, look at them, and (inserting a few false-positives and negatives) manually tell the software whether or not to filter the image.

    This is a completely invalid test if the software is vulnerable to fiddling by the company during the test.
    --

  • They're not hypocrites or fanatics. They're businessmen. There is a market for this stuff.

    And hey, if you can fleece a bunch of control freaks and right-wing anal retentives in the process of making a living... Well, that's just another one of the perks of the IT industry.

    More power to them! Where do I apply?
    I'd love to work on a well funded, morally respectable, high-profile known-Death-March project. I'd love to laugh all the way to the bank while doing it in the name of the children...

    The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

  • a free feeling of smugness to whoever can tell me which of the large name-brand filtering companies also runs a big porn search engine thingy.

    anyone?

  • Thats easy man, just pickup and install aa-lib and when you compile the gimp (latest beta only) it will add that support automagically.
  • Anybody who is morally-straight and nazi-ish enough to develop this stuff couldn't possibly test it on the real thing, because it would violate their beliefs.

    What exactly makes them hypocrites or "nazi-ish"? Maybe they like looking at pr0n themselves on their own time, but want to keep it out of their workplace. You have no idea. Suggesting what you do about the makers of the software, with no knowledge of them personally, is what's hypocritical. Tools and their creators cannot be villified, only actions. Or at least that's the hue and cry when certain "hacking" tools occasionally come up for banning. Do you believe everyone who's written, say port scanning software, is a malicious hax0r? So why do you believe everyone who writes filtering software is a "hypocritical nazi"? You can't have it both ways.

  • I'd be happier if someone creates censorware that blocks us from J.H. Christ's lunatic legions...

  • Re:It's great all around (Score:3)

    by msuzio ( 3104 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @08:50AM (#622145) Homepage
    I can't say I agree with this assertion (that the worse the censorware works, the better for us). As you acknowledge, the false positives (Mona Lisa == pron, Dick Armey == naughty site) are what burns us. I would have to assume, given previous censorware policies, that these services are always going to err on the side of over-censoring. If they under-censor and junior gets to see a naked woman, they end up looking pretty stupid given their claims of accuracy. No one is going to buy something that 90% of the time screens goatse.cx... :-).

    No, I think we need to continue to point out that the claims these people make are not accurate, and that software is not the answer (and probably will never be the answer). The censorware makers need to be challenged -- I'm honestly shocked that they can continue to make the claims they do, given that Peacefire has proven countless times that these claims are categorically not true!
  • And sometimes its only a human interest story.
  • Or...

    Is that a man's hairy groin or Fidel Castro?

  • variations on a theme (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @08:26AM (#622157) Journal
    Obviously, I do not think this is going to work. There are no many permutations, that is nothing else, it would let through the more perverted stuff, such as the fetish material, S&M stuff with heavy leather.

    This may ultimately require an AI unit to do it correctly. If we do not corrupt the poor thing first with all that pr0n. :P

  • Great minds think alike (Score:3)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @08:28AM (#622159)
    instead of hooking it up to BLOCK images in email, why not take the reverse idea, and hook it up to a search engine. You could electronically index the web, rate quality, etc.

    This is exactly what I thought as I read this item. This is probably a good indication that someone somewhere is actually working on this.

    You'd be the next dot.com millionaire.

    I've just mailed my patent application to the USPTO. Now all I've gotta do is wait for the first infringment, and I can start building my mansion. :-)

  • Except the software sucked. (Score:4)

    by NetJunkie ( 56134 ) <jason.nash@nosPam.gmail.com> on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @09:02AM (#622161)
    If they cheated on this test, they need to find new cheaters.
  • That's what I'm talking about! You get it down to where it can recognize unique pr0n images, and then hell, you can make your own "pr0n objects" and code them together like Java pr0n!

    Throw in a force-feedback controller of some sort, an old Wolfenstein game engine, and then you'll just have to remember to leave the house ever so often to remind people that you're still alive ;)

  • There was something about George W. Bush and his wife that PORNsweeper didn't like, though.

    Funny.. more then PORNsweeper didn't like old Gorgey boy. From what I understand, exactly HALF of all Americans didn't like him. I wonder how the software voted in the election ;-)

    ------------
    CitizenC
    My name is not 'nospam,' but 'citizenc'.

  • From the article: (Score:5)

    by Kickasso ( 210195 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @07:31AM (#622170)
    "An infamous close-up picture of a man bent down in front of the camera and stretching his nether orifice wide enough to fit a tennis ball"

    Sounds familiar...
    --

  • Now all we need is advertisement recognition software.
  • There is a lot of similar work going on in the area of text recognition in web pages. Check out cora [whizbang.com] for a list of papers. Cora is a search engine that uses AI to deceide whether a paper is an AI paper or not.
  • Bill Gates was blocked? Just look at his smile, he's getting a b.j. right there. Hats off for the software programmers!!!
    They should just release software that recognizes B.Gates and blocks him always
  • Boss - "Ok, yea, i need you to install this software and look at a bunch of porn"

    Guy - "Porn?"

    Boss - "Yea, Now get to work"
  • Just add a little thing in Mozilla to refuse to load any image that is 468x60 pixels. That is the standard size for banner ads, and I'm sure that the HTML defines this size knowing that all the images standardize to that size. I'm tempted to actually do this myself, but I don't have what I need to recompile it for windows, which is the platform I spend most of my time on (not by choice).
  • The article talks about the really hairy math required for certain types of image-recognition, and says that makes it pretty unlikely that there will be a really useful porn filter any time soon. However, the product doesn't even begin to go that route - it makes some relatively intelligent guesses as to what constitutes pornography, and what doesn't. One can forsee a more accurate product which makes more and better guesses, using not-so-hairy math. There will never be a perfectly accurate product, but there may be one which pretty good without the really nasty math that an algorithmic approach would require. The article hinted at using neural networks to develop such algorithms and says that it would require a really large set of images for good training. How many slashdotters could provide that large training set?

  • It's great all around (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @08:35AM (#622187) Homepage
    Everybody's complaining about how this stuff doesn't really work - but look, if the tight ass blue noses complain to the local politico that kids are looking at (shhh!), the politico makes the schools and libs buy and install product-anti-X, the kids finds holes in it and if they can keep it secret the tight ass blue noses are happy, the politicos are happy, the software company is happy, the kids are thrilled - everybody wins! The only problem is when the Mona Lisa is blocked and someone has to get an adult to manually intervene, end of problem.

  • How this should be done (Score:3)

    by Markonen ( 56381 ) <marko@@@karppinen...fi> on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @09:21AM (#622193)
    Okay, send me a penny for every grand you make with this, promise?

    The Right Way to block offending imagery at the sender is to make an MD5 hash of the image to be sent, and then compare it to every image ever posted to any Usenet erotica/tasteless newsgroups.

    Everyone who has worked in a male-dominated office environment knows that 95% of this stuff originates from the Usenet, and that the remaining 5% will eventually end up on Usenet. So, basically this is a fool-proof way of blocking most of the stuff that gets sent, while maintaining an impressive 0% false-positive rate.
  • Blocks porno? Great! Make it into law. Every library should have it by the end of 2001...

    It does not block everything? Ok give 10 million bucks to perfect the soft. It is not a problem if a full dressed hot blonde is blocked while it will block even a half dressed Pamela Anderson.

    It blocks Art? Well it may be a problem somehow. But how many of that porno crap runs under the names of those Rembrandts, Bottlecellies and alikes? There was even that latino Michael Angelo who painted God almost nude... So that is not an issue altogether.

    It blocks your family pictures? My rosy little John IV in his 6 months. Well that's bad. It should be corrected. Anyway initial funding will be only 6 million. We shouldn't fat the guys...

    "Oh damn - and it blocks my secretary pics" - "Damn, I'll take the funding by 5 million to avoid risks..."

    IT BLOCKS THE PRESIDENT?????? Ooooooohhhh my!!!!..
    What to do? Well anyway the thing is promising... 2 million.

    Bill Gates is blocked????? They couldn't block anyone else??? Even our 1 million funding wouldn't cover court expenses!!! The thing is dead meat. Well anyway we shouldn't leave this alone. Let's give a US$10.000 dollar check and an award from The Fund for Clean Moral & Family Values. It will be a good incentive for future researches. Maybe, in the end, someone stops blocking my rosy nose from appearing in campaign sites...
  • The author hinted early in the article why this software will be successful. Our multiple personality government has created a situation where companies are responsible for things they have no control over, what gets sent from one employee to another through email. This sort of software give them cover, even if it's bullsh... and doesn't work. "But, your honor, we bought and installed blocking software. We've done everything in our power to block these activities."

    Remember, it's not how you treat people that controls your success. It's how people think that they've been treated.

  • The biggest coverup. (Score:3)

    by Bad_CRC ( 137146 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @09:36AM (#622197)
    I'd bet dollars to donuts the only reason this software exists is because an employee got caught by suprise as his boss walked in.

    "Johnson! What on earth are you doing with those pictures up on your computer at work?!?!?!??"

    "Um.... I'm writing some new censoring software, and I was just testing it's effectiveness"

    "very well... carry on. Make sure you prepare a full demonstration to present to the board at our next meeting"

    "*grumble* ... dammit ... *starts coding*"

    ________

  • If I get excited, it's Art
    If YOU get excited, it's porn


  • They embedded it into the copier, so I can't make copies of my ass anymore : (

    --

  • Heck, I'd rather use this thing to block everything but the porn coming into my email box!



    ...I get enough free mortgage spam as it is..

    :)
  • Nothing, nothing at all.

    However, many (most) companies don't enjoy pornography being distributed on their network, on their time.

    The target audidence is businesses, weather it be non-profit, for profit, schools, libraries, etc. Perhaps some home users will install this to keep their children away from porn, but I'd be willing to bet the average Slashdotter won't install it. Well, maybe if he/she is really addicted and trying to stop....
  • Even if the software could be improved to the point where it can recognize the shapes involved in a porn image and not the colors, why would you WANT the first random porn image that came through? The odds are slim that it would be APPEALING porn. What if it was goatse.cx? Or George W. Bush and his wife _naked_?
    --
    Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.

  • The point is... (Score:3)

    by BluedemonX ( 198949 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @09:40AM (#622211)
    Unless you're in the business of distributing art (in which case, given that you're peddling in fecal-matter portraits of the Virgin Mary, Mapplethorpe's Last Supper (complete with fisting) etc.) what do you care whether or not it blocks out the capacity to email the Mona Lisa at work?

    The point behind this software is to prevent people at work from sending pictures like the "Yes, you can park a Ford Expedition in me" guy on that infamous troll-loved web-site, to each other.

    I don't think too many people email each other pictures of the Mona Lisa at work. Baby pictures perhaps, but many companies prohibit personal use of company email and resources anyway.

    Then again, if you're sending an engineering drawing that for some reason has tons of flesh tones and it's blocked, you can always apply to the administrator to let it through.
  • Analysing image "pamela_anderson_XXX01.jpg"
    ......................................
    Image type: "Marine Advertising"
    Time Taken: 13667 seconds.
  • Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to sort the messages rather than deleting them? That way, if you're pretty sure it's not going to be porn, you can still go ahead and open the message. IANAL, but I would think that if someone opens a message in the "this is probably porn" folder, they can't sue for harassment if it is, indeed, porn.

  • Where can i find some OTHER pictures of that beautiful redhead ?

    --

  • Re:Give credit where due! retry (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    er... for some reason I deleted his last name when posting the last message. The above piece is "Meriday in the Morning" by Mike Jittlov.

  • Re:From the article: (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @07:37AM (#622228)
    You mean this picture [goatse.cx]?

    Wow! The first on-topic, non-troll goatse.cx post!
  • > So can it block out the picture of a guy's ass?

    G'day. I wrote the review (and submitted it, and got it rejected, as per usual :-).

    You'll be pleased to know that I did indeed try the famous goatse.cx image, and yes, PORNsweeper blocked it!

    I mention as much in the review, but I didn't actually explicitly mention, or link to, goatse.cx. Sorry :-).

  • An addition for my mailreader (Score:5)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Wednesday November 15, 2000 @07:40AM (#622232) Homepage Journal
    while (mail.new)
    {
    if (pron(mail.attachment)) strcpy(mail.priority, "Hella Important!");
    else if (!strcmp(mail.sender, my_boss)) mail.message[1] == '\0';
    mail.new--;
    }

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