Bill Clinton Could Not Be Reached for Comment...

It's another sign of the Apocalypse. Chatroulette will implement Penis-Recognition Software to protect it's clients from online Wankers.

This is one piece of technology I'm all in favor of. I've never actually used Chatroulette, but from what I've seen of it it appears to be what Microsoft had intended for it's old NetMeeting software; you could chat with a bunch of people, and do so with text and voice-and-video links, and there were some really neat file-sharing programs, and even a Virtual Whiteboard for business meetings. It was pretty cool in the days when Win98 was considered "cutting edge".

I used to play around a bit with NetMeeting in my "Industry" days, and it had a lot of potential except that the bandwidth to make it really work well wasn't available to most home users, and there were some reliability problems that made it impractical for major business use. Right now, what's left of NetMeeting (does Microsoft even still support and market it, anymore?) appears to be the Remote Access features, which Tech Support uses to "take control" of your PC when they're troubleshooting it for you.

I could count upon NetMeeting to be a rather remarkable-but-not-quite-reliable piece of Gee-Whiz high-tech that was fun to play with, but it's major feature was that I could pretty much guarantee there wouldn't be any pedophiles playing Choke the Chicken on the other end, and offering me a peek.

Personally, it's exactly for reasons like this why I stay away from chat rooms of any sort (I went through my AOL chat room phase, thanks. No more!). The anonymity of the Internet gives these disgusting little perverts the opportunity to do that which they wouldn't have the balls to do in real life. It's a sad commentary on the culture when lonely men resort to showing their wankers to complete strangers on the Internet on the remote chance that they'll find someone willing to Indulge the Bulge while they Tickle The Pickle.

Sick bastards.

It's an even sadder commentary when a corporation that could be devoting scarce resources to improving their product or advancing the technology that makes it work, has to instead devote resources to the Problem of Unwanted-Penis-Over-IP.

(H/T Instapundit)