Phaedrus

Why on earth would you think that? There are independent MAs around who don't offer FS, and they remain popular despite the existence of independent SPs who do. The creation of brothels would in no way mean that MPs as they exist today would become extinct. As for the rest of your post... I really don't think that throwing allegations like that around is helpful. I have no idea of the truth of what you say; I do know that most folks here don't wish to see a fight started over it. Stop it.

Congratulations, Nicki!

This is worth the few minutes it takes to watch. Don't worry that there's nothing at the beginning. Shame about the wailing brat towards the end.

Congratulations, Emily

Yay! Awesomeness! Congrats!

This probably isn't relevant to this conversation, but it's about chocolate, so there you go :)

Ouarzazate, Morocco. Don't go, there's nothing much there.

And on that note... The Almighty - Jesus Loves You.... But I Don't

So, assuming that after whatever legal and legislative shenanigans remain to be gone through the bawdy-house law remains struck down, what do people think will actually happen? Just because something's legal, it doesn't mean it's unregulated. Look at SCs, for example: yes, they exist, and they're overt, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily easy to open one. Last I looked, the Ottawa bylaws were constructed so as to make it pretty much impossible to open a new SC, so we're stuck with the existing ones that were grandfathered in. I have no doubt that if brothels are legalized, a similar raft of hopelessly restrictive bylaws for licensing would arise. Many places might ban them entirely. Most would probably ban them from residential areas, or anywhere near schools or places of worship or youth clubs (and I'm sure there are others). I'm pretty sure you could make the rules come down to "sorry, there's nowhere suitable" without an explicit ban, if you chose. I can't imagine it'd take much effort. And so you'll end up with a situation that's still much like what we have today; many independent ladies will be working out of residential properties (whether it's actually where they live or a dedicated incall) and, although they will no longer be doing anything wrong under criminal legislation, will still be looking at a hefty fine if caught. Which they probably won't be, unless they're careless. So really, what will have changed? I should add that I'm far less cynical about the changes to the living off the avails law, as that seems to improve things for pretty much everyone without much downside. But I just can't get all that excited about the bawdy-house law being struck down, I'm afraid. I hope I'm wrong...

Yes, I see what you're getting at... but would it work? Most of us are sitting behind NAT - in which case, does the browser actually know its own publicly-visible IP address? Or would you just get a load of RFC1918 private addresses? I can tell you that the machine I'm using now has a local address in 192.168/16 and IIRC my ISP assigns addresses from 10/8... but this isn't terribly useful information to an attacker. If you want to find out who someone is, you're really after the address of their access point, and then you'd have to work backwards from there through ISP records or whatever. Obviously that bit isn't an issue for LE/governments/etc, but may be harder for the genuine bad guys...

Let's cross the world again... Victoria. You can choose whether you want to go to BC or down under. Hmmm.... did you actually visit Jaffa?

Young's Point. It's on the map that RG so kindly provided, so it'd be churlish to turn it down :)

Thanks for the lengthy and detailed reply! What I'm really concerned about/interested in is browser traffic (although you can obviously configure any app to use Tor, it does seem to be primarily aimed at use with a browser, and the fact that you're using it with a browser doesn't mean any other traffic in or out of your machine uses it, even other browsers). Would that actually work? Or would the phone-home also go over Tor, and have home appear to be the exit node again? You'd have to override the browser's current proxy config, which sounds less trivial (and also sounds like something you wouldn't bother with if you'd acquired that level of control in any case) Ya, noscript is a real pain in the ass, isn't it? :) FWIW FF's Tor plugin blocks flash and other directly-loaded content, so they seem to have thought of that...

The cups are unnecessary. Get 'em out the way!

Thanks for that, Backrubman - very interesting (especially Marlinspike's ppt). A question for you though: do MITM attacks such as those discussed have any means of directly determining the original source of the session if they're done at a Tor exit node? I'm talking about using the intercepted session itself, rather than anything gleaned from the compromised account on whatever service it happens to be, which is obviously an entirely different kettle of fish.

George Harrison (and other aging famous guys) - Here Comes The Sun

I have no idea whether or not it was deliberate, but I totally think she should keep it as is. Mucho publicity, and that can't be a bad thing... and it'd be very hard for any opponent to make anything of without appearing utterly frivolous.

Roppongi, Tokyo. Never been, alas...

A green day being one spent smoking weed. Which this song is definitely not about. Oh no. Definitely not about that at all. It's about assassins :) Hawkwind - Hassan i Sahba

I've got a bad feeling about this... Now, everybody - it's time to clean up your cookies!

The Offspring - Americana

Was your opinion asked for, or are you chipping in uninvited? Can you say nothing, or have you been put on the spot? Can you be tactful rather than brutally honest? What sort of relationship do you have with the person you're talking to? What sort of relationship would you like have with the person you're talking to? How much do you care about hurting them in the immediate future? And in the long run? How much do you care about their well-being, both now and in the long term? How good or bad will you feel about lying? Or getting the truth out there? Are we talking about an objective truth, or just your opinion? How much does it matter? To you? To them? To others? What are the likely consequences of the unvarnished truth, or tactful version of it, or a white lie, or an absolute whopper? And when you've answered all those questions... what makes you think I'll have a clue what you should do anyway? Or that the right answer for me is also the right answer for you? We all have to make these decisions, sometimes in a split second and without warning. Nobody said it was easy.