« Quotable Quotes | Main | Pipped at the Post »

September 24, 2003

MSN vs chatrooms

For this post, I am not even going to think of doing my normal meticulous research.... NetNewsWire shows a reference to a BBC news item:

MSN shuts down its chatrooms
Microsoft's internet service, MSN, is closing all chatrooms on its global sites due to concerns about child safety.

Before looking at the article, I would like to take this opportunity to praise Microslosh on this bold initiative. They have finally realised that there are all these evil hackers talking about viruses and hacking M$ software in the MSN chatrooms. If they stop the talking, young impressionable children will not be subjected to suggestions about how even a 5 year old can write a virus. That should help to stem the flow and reduce the unreasonable media complaints about non-existant security in Microslosh products :-)

Of course, palladium (or what ever it gets call this week) will fix all this type of problem (both the imaginary one above and the real one in the article) because there will be no more privacy. You may not know that your 21yr-old / red-head / model / chat-friend is actually an FBI agent but Microslosh will ...

Naturally they would protect your privacy as they did with your credit cards (posting them on a publically accessible web server) and your Word documents (which contain random snippets of your hard drive) and only raise the issue of your identity when you fail to make your protection licence payments on time...

Posted by Ozguru at September 24, 2003 08:09 AM

Comments

They care! They really care! Won't somebody think of the kiddies?!!

Posted by: Raena at September 24, 2003 08:09 AM

Ummmm. Yes. They care about the kiddies but is it the "young people being preyed upon by sexual deviates" kiddies or the script-kiddies that they care about? Maybe it is just me, but I intend to teach my kids that the identity of people on the internet is not something you take for granted - in the same way that you don't believe every idiot that calls you on the phone. Unless there is some alternate verification, you need to be careful what you say and who you believe. For example, there is a weblog over here which is supposed to be written by a courier who lives in Canberra. Is that true? How do you know? I know (because he is my brother and we talk about it outside the web) that he is a courier and he works in Canberra but doesn't live there. How can you be sure? I guess the point is that shutting chatrooms is not the solution (and I don't use chatrooms and have no idea why anyone would but that is irrelevant). The solution is not the Orwellian paladium option either. Maybe the solution is to use some old fashioned common-sense (which is so hard to find today) and teach children some safety rules.

Posted by: ozguru at September 24, 2003 08:09 AM

Although there has been mention of the children, the word being spewed hereabouts is that the primary reason they're shutting down the chatrooms is to save money.

Posted by: Interested-Participant at September 24, 2003 08:09 AM

Blocus? There's a reason why the number of blogs I read daily is increasing exponentially - there is so much amazing stuff being written about in the blogosphere. I feel it would be very unfair on my part if I did...

Posted by: Jivha - the Tongue at September 24, 2003 08:09 AM

Blocus? There's a reason why the number of blogs I read daily is increasing exponentially - there is so much amazing stuff being written about in the blogosphere. I feel it would be very unfair on my part if I did...

Posted by: Jivha - the Tongue at September 24, 2003 08:09 AM