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Censorware Blocking Methods Using Akamai
Snatch Freedom writes "Peacefire has discovered a way to block censorware using Akamai's servers. For example you can see Yahoo! using http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/www.yahoo.com/. C|Net had a story about. Censorware cannot block akamai; that will piss off all the advertising people. Akamai says (in the cnet story) that they are not in the filtering business and they won't block anything. The makers of ``Bess'' wan't Akamai to filter it but Akamai says no. "
Now high school kids will have an easier time setting pornographic pictures to the backgrounds on library computers!
- Max
-- Oh Well
This doesn't mean that the fight against filtering software should stop - a worst case scenario could be where only those in the know can access information, with the rest of the world just being force-fed approved content.
Plus, surely if this is used in a big way it's going to severely increase the load on akamai's servers?
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
I'm not sure Akamai's refusal to implement blocking is so much "saying no" as "lauging their asses off." As far as I can tell, any solution to this problem would require Akamai to 1) engage in performance-degrading communications to ensure there's no blocking software on the computer making a request or 2) set up blocking software itself. And even with 1) there's always proxying...
So I'm pretty sure N2H2 goes on the clueless buffoon list for this one. This makes about as much sense as a parent going to congress and telling them the networks can't show sexual content because he's afraid his kid might see it. And it has about as much chance of... oh.
Well, as long as the government doesn't get involved, it's still stupid.
- Michael Cohn
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
You just really need to find a 'third party web-fetcher'/proxy to do this.
Popular services: Ask Jesus (Jesusifies the page though), Anonymizer (fee-payable).
I'm sure that there are many many many more (those are just two off the top off my head that I've used in the last 48hrs), but if you use different ones it'll make it even harder for censorship software to block - they can't know every single proxy system available to the public.
Richy C.
--
I hope it works with other address, or the religious zealots are going to have a field day.
BTW For the humor impaired. This is a joke :-)
I think there's a great deal of validity to Akamai refusing to filter content; why should they? Not only would you have the expected screams from their advertisers, think about what happens when Akami views "breast" or "penis" as a not bad word, and some right wing Christian group wants any reference to the human body removed; where does a content provider like Akamai draw the line?
Plus this doesn't seem so useful. The Akamai links look pretty complex; how are you supposed to know where web sites are? Hit and miss?
-- Talonius
My reality check bounced.
This seems to be a guide to circumvent censorship software, with detailed instructions. Since Peacefire is usually blocked who is it helping?
Translate from Polish to english, or some other permutation...
Gets mildly mangled, but beats the censorship remarkably well...
Gav
"There's no such thing as data that can't be manipulated"
Anyone know of pr0n sites that are served thorough Akamai?
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
How can this possibly be called hacking when it doesn't require altering or patching the filtering software at all and uses standard http requests to the net, just like accesses to any other non-blocked site. It's merely a demonstration of loophole in the censorware - that it doesn't examine the content of the page being downloaded, just the URL.
Making braindead products, suing everyone and pointing fingers at innocent bystanders - I guess the censorware industry makes perfect use of today's major business practices.
I think we should applaud 'em.
Real life is overrated.
Try it:
For example, someone surfing the Web with filtering software installed could access "sex.com" by typing:
http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/sex. com/.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
I'd expect that this hole will be plugged up by akamaitech as soon as they notice any kind of performance impact on their ad servers. There's no way they could afford to leave an exploit open like that if it could cost them money.
I miss Meept.
Haven't have the time to check if the story is true or not, but if it is, then, there is _still_ hope for integrity and guts in the cyber arena.
There have been too many sell-outs in the Net. Our privacy means nothing to the many purveyors with various intentions, and then there are "people" with "good intentions" out there who want to "prevent us from hurting ourselves" by reading things that "aren't suitable for us".
The Net is becoming more and more like the world out there - that is, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING, AND WE OUGHTTA THANKS THE BIG BROTHER BECAUSE HE IS PROTECTING US FROM ANY HARM.
If Akamai is doing what the story has stated, then, good for them !! And I hope that more people will do similar courageous things to make the lives of those people with "good intentions" as miserable as possible.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The internet should not be censored to "protect" anyone. If you don't like your kids seeing porn online, then you should stop them. Teachers should do the same. Review the history files afterwards also just in case, and let them know ahead of time you are going to check what sites the kids visited. I know that won't work against everyone but nothing is fullproof. Especially censorware.
It all goes down to our society not wanting to be responsible for anything. Parents want to blame video games, tv, the internet, music, etc. for how they fail to keep their own children in line. Smokers commit slow suicide by putting fire into their lungs, then sue tobacco companies because these people are too stupid to know better.
Sometimes I wish that some people would help us all out by killing themselves. If you feel that you can't be live up to any of your responsibilities and just want to cry how the world has done you wrong, jump off of a tall building...it should be great! You will leave your impression on the Earth, and we will all be thankful to have one less semi-hairless monkey jumping around and screaming about everyone offending and hurting them.
Ok, back on topic a bit more. I wonder how many other sites like this will prevent censorware from working. I was shown something yesterday that triggers censorware that is completely innocent:
This tip is sure to not work.
Various censoreware programs don't like it. Let's look at it again through their eyes:
This tiP IS Sure to not work.
It's pretty interesting...but shows how ineffective this type of software is.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Fink said N2H2 had devised its own fix to the problem. That patch would detect Web addresses included in Akamai URLs and filter based on those nested addresses. It will ship with the next version of Bess.
Woah... you mean, like, parse the rest of the URL? Dude, no wonder you're CTO.
Jeez, I use more care when sending email to my mom than the editors here do with posting stories. I think the editors here have gotten pretty lax:
1) Wrong link in paragraph
2) "C|Net had a story about."
3) "wan't" ??
I can understand wanting to post submissions verbatim, but PLEASE at least proofread them and perform slight edits before posting them. Your salaries should easily justify a proofread and spellcheck of the stories you post. We know you're not in high school any more.
Works nice, but it doesn't translate the links. Therefore all pictures are broken, and any link clicked will take you to the nice "access denied" screen of your favorite censorware.
---
Flamebait, but it's great!
Oops. Users of crummy-censoware probably won't see that....
I downloaded a copy of ZoneLabs ZoneAlert firewall a while back. I started up my dialup connection, at about the point the display says "checking user id password" ZoneAlert displayed a message about an external attempt to connect to me. I ran a trace route on the address, it was from Akamai.
Why and how is what I want to know!
Thanks
1) Create an HTML form as a jump-off point where users enter an address similar to the location bar in a browser. Use shttp so the query cannot be easily examined.
2) Proxy generates a unique (random) key to associate with the page.
3) Proxy grabs the requested document off the web.
4) Proxy modifies all href links, image sources, applet codebases, object and embed sources, link sources, and script sources to point to the proxy server instead of the site in question. All file paths should be changed in case blocking software searches for "lesbian", etc. in filenames, use variations of the page key to associate requests to specific resources.
5) Browser receives modified document and sends proxy requests for all media on the page, without a single http://www.superchicken.com url.
6) Proxy receives requests for resources and retreives them by id.
7) Teenie bopper views porn, parents never know.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
OK, so this is an egg-sucking lesson for all you Slashdot grannies out there....
Site-based filtering is broken . This is just yet another instance of it. Proxying the content through another unblocked site (like this Akamai example) will blow holes in it. Blocking Yahoo (and anything else sufficiently generic) because they also link to Scunthorpe.gov.uk, as well as to the Baptist Church Choir, will shut out large valuable parts of the Net -- you might as well burn your modem.
If you don't like the content on the web, then filter on the web content by all means. Let's see PICS rating more commonly used. If you really have an issue with wanting a government imposed central filtering scheme, then pass yourself a law in your country that makes rating schemes mandatory (or you'll be defaulted to XXX). The problem of "keeping the kiddies safe" then defers to browser operators (those who put browsers in the hands of the kids). Set your home browser however you like (they're your kids) and let local communities set the standards for locally-funded institutions like schools and libraries. If you don't like the library filters, because you live in a straight-laced town, then don't complain to the democratic group who paid for it and chose the settings, just buy your own web time.
Don't forget that PICS is a framework for rating systems, not a rating scheme itself. I'd like to see a PICS Hippy-Lovechild rating scheme where free-love and pot sites were rated OK, but accountancy was a major no-no. Build a Tennessee rating scheme if you want, where sex outside a married family is forbidden, but it's OK with your sister (or even yer dawg). Custom rating systems are a fine way to build an "Islamist web", where followers of one set of moral values are perfectly at liberty to define their own standards, implement them on their own set of relevant sites, and neither I nor they will offend each other with moral conflicts.
This might even be a way for eBay to get round the "not selling Nazi relics in France" problem.
Confusing content with location is just never going to work right.
Various censoreware programs don't like it. Let's look at it again through their eyes:
This tiP IS Sure to not work
Recently I've been seeing a bunch of Spam for VIGOREX, but it was spelt varyingly as V'I'G'O,R,E,X etc. I couldn't really understand this, as a fairly trivial regex wipes them out nicely, so they certainly don't make it into my mailbox.
Presumably this isn't a technique to defeat spam-traps, but to defeat word-scanning dictionary-based censorware. I guess they mash spaces, but not punctuation.
There are so much effort in stopping adults from looking at pictures of naked teens and to stop teens from looking at pictures of naked adults.
I think that it is something wrong with logic in this world.
I was able to load www.sex.com in babelfish, and the domain i still www.babelfish.altavista.com but the porn is there in all it's glory. Sure the text is is in German, but that isn't what most people are going to be after....
Or does censorware already block Babelfish? I mean being able to read what those french and german damn foreign perverts have to say can only corrupt America's youth anyways!
distribute its contents around the Web. Yet http://a1.g.akamaitech.n et/6/6/6/6/www.bluescreen.org.lu/. does work as expected, at least if you surf on '98.
This makes about as much sense as a parent going to congress and telling them the networks can't show sexual content because he's afraid his kid might see it.
this was the exact issue that popped in my mind as i read these articles. i don't want to sound like jon katz or get on a stump, but...
is it only me who recognizes that PARENTS today want to use technology to cover the gaps in their role as a parent? ultimately, any control placed to hamper web sites loading can be over come - save one: how about the parents take some responsiblity and turn off the PC?
yeah, yeah. i've heard it before. "we work." "we can't police our children 24/7." "society should set some acceptable norms for all to live by." etc. etc. etc.
look, if you have children, you made a CHOICE to propigate your family linage (and don't give me that bullshit about 'accidents.' there are no accidental births - what did you think the act of sex might result in? free beer?) it is your responsiblity to raise your child. if work gets in the way - well maybe you need to quit your job.
QUIT MY JOB! yeah, wtf do you think is more important - work or family (god, i hate asking that question to some people....)
and before you ask me my wherewithall to rant on this subject - my wife and i chose NOT to have children b/c we have other things we want to accomplish. we made that decsion based on NOT wanting to be part-time parents and full time employees. and also, my 13 year old sis recently got into some adult level chats with some questionable people. the result? no unsupervised PC usage (yeah, my mom actually sits there as she does homework research) and some stearn talk about the world, people, and growing up.
look, sorrry for the rant, but i am sooooo tired of people thinking technology has morals. people have morals. technology is just a means to an end.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
A few years ago, I was looking at baseball scores in my high school, which naturally used a proxy. I kept on seeing results from a team called "Oa d." What the hell was Oa d? A typo? That's what I thought, but it kept on popping up all over the place. I like to keep up on sports, but was this some new team I had never heard about?
Oh yeah. Oakland. I'm glad that the proxy filtered out that KKK hate speech that ESPN.com is notorious for. Other words like "hardcore" were blanked out, although you could still go to sex sites. It's not like the content is any more kid-friendly if you take out the bad words -- who reads porn sites anyway?
For more information, click here.
Don't forget that in the UK, sites based in Scunthorpe (I won't highlight that one) have problems getting through these things too...
my rant
you and i should get together and run against bush/gore. we'll call it the real family values tour!
great rant. i agree 100%. even about the tall buildings.
hehe.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/www.yahoo.com/.
;-)
Any G*d fearing user of censorware would have blocked all URLs containing 666 in it...
The Anonymizer deletes any personally identifiable information from your http requests (such as your IP) but using Akamai doesn't.
// Pop) then voting again Her e. (aid=2 // Soda)
You can give it try but accessing the Slashdot poll page Her e. (aid=1
The second time you vote, it identifies your proxy's IP as well as your actual IP.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Though, you may be joking. I'd better check it out.
Then again, perhaps you're a clever troll.
I know! Holds up hand to monitor in right place, clicks...
Um, yeah. hits close box It works.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
what did you think the act of sex might result in? free beer?)
:)
No, man! 'twas the free beer that resulted in the night of unprotected sex!
Cause->Effect
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Two points.
1: the world is a complicated place, the internet even more so. If there is a tool that will help me do my job of parenting, I will consider using it. My children are too young yet to surf the web. When they get older, I lean more towards the "show them the squid logs" method than the censorware, but censorware is more appropriate for some parents.
2. Communities have a responsibilty to their collective children, too. By all means, have a porn store, I'd just rather it wasn't next to the ice cream stand. Rather more strongly, I don't have a problem with people selling crack, but I definitely don't want them doing it outside the school gates (or in the classroom).
I don't want to childproof the world, or TV, or the internet. My children are only allowed to watch TV channels that we have approved (this means PBS, in practice). Not that we don''t get other channels, the children are just told what they can watch. I want tools to do the same with the internet, and so do many other parents.
--
--
E_NOSIG
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
--
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
That doesn't seem to work, it just loads the page in another frame from your machine.
I don't really understand this censorware thing, not as far as bunched-up-panties, anyway. I thought you needed uncensored public Inet because not everyone could afford it at home. But the other day I saw something that shook that.
There was a story about how somewhere in the US the state is issuing everyone who wanted it with a set-top box, for free. And then they showed this family using their set-top box, saying how they would never have had Inet without it. The only obvious reason they couldn't afford Inet was because they may have still been paying off a loan that paid for their 60 inch back-projector TV!
A set like that would cost about 2000 pounds sterling here in the UK. If the poverty-stricken poor in the US have enough spare change for high-end TVs, I can't get too sympathetic.
"Although it is a challenge to keep up with hackers who attempt to undermine filtering software, the result in the long run is a better product," SurfControl vice president Kelly Haggerty said in a statement. "We will investigate this and other hacking claims as they arise."
Those damn Hackers just won't stop Hacking and Pirating Copyright Protected Intellectual Property that Endangers the Safety of America's Children(tm). For God sake, you could poke your eye out!
I swear these PR people carry around a Buzzword Bible.
--
Scott Brady
Minor point: Akamai is not a content provider. They're a hosting provider that offers dynamically distributed hosting. Their best reason for not wanting to filter is that it's not their content to do anything about. Do the filtering manufacturers ask other hosting providers to filter data? Or ISPs? No (because that would put them out of business). They ask Akamai to do it because they somehow believe that filtering Akamai is more difficult than filtering direct requests (which it isn't).
Which is to say "Hackers help us improve our product."
-----
If Akamai is actually caching the pages access this way, could it be used as a way to create an instant mirror to mitigate the SlashDot effect, or for peak download times of newly released distros without having to compensate Akamai?
Perhaps this is the reason Akamai is really fixing the bug, they don't want non-paying customers taking advantage of their service.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Just found out this neatly circumvents our corporate firewall against porn.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Thad
Thad
The internet should not be censored to "protect" anyone. If you don't like your kids seeing porn online, then you should stop them. Teachers should do the same. Review the history files afterwards also just in case, and let them know ahead of time you are going to check what sites the kids visited. I know that won't work against everyone but nothing is fullproof. Especially censorware.
It all goes down to our society not wanting to be responsible for anything. Parents want to blame video games, tv, the internet, music, etc. for how they fail to keep their own children in line. Smokers commit slow suicide by putting fire into their lungs, then sue tobacco companies because these people are too stupid to know better.
Gosh, thanks for explaining parenthood for us. Remember the good ol' days, when anyone could be a parent? You didn't have to have an MIS degree to understand and counter every internet hack your 10 year old learns. You didn't have to play through every last video game your kid brought home looking for excessive violence and gratuitous sexual content. You didn't have to get up with your kids on Saturday morning to screen out cartoons about turds and boogers. You didn't have to explain to your kid about anal sex and animal fetishes.
Reality check here...do you remember being a kid? Do you remember having an iron-clad determination to avoid everything your parents said was bad for you? Me neither! The problem is that there is now ten times the garbage available but parents are not ten times more knowlegable. I don't know that censorware is the best solution, either, but as a parent, I definitely feel as though my authority is being robbed of me, because I can't anticipate every last thing that is being thrown at my kids.
Does this guy at the Peacefire site really want adolescents filling their minds with all of the adult content out there? We're not talking about some kid having a couple of Playboys stashed away in his room, here...we're talking our children having the equivalent of several thousand porno mags and several thousand porno videos being only a few clicks away, filled with everything from graphic depections of sex acts to beastiality to S&M.
What's the solution, you say? "Don't let your kids on the internet, don't let them watch TV, don't let them play video games, don't let them read gamimg magazines." Hey, I'm not Amish...I just want my kids to grow up to be a decent, well-adjusted people, to not be plagued by sexual or chemical addictions, and maybe even to carry on the values that I'm trying to impart. I'm also not omnipotent; once they are outside of the range of my five senses, I no longer have control over them.
It's not a matter of "trust" or "upbringing"; kids by nature have an insatiable curiosity and will naturally gravitate to whatever is forbidden and easily accessible.
And what about the parents who aren't as attentive as I am? My kids are going to school with those kids, interacting with those kids, maybe even becoming friends with them; their influence will be felt. What we are building towards is not a parental problem, but a societal one.
You say that censorware isn't the answer. Fine. You also say that government intervention isn't the answer. That's fine, too, but tell me how you're going to shift the balance of power back in favor of the parents without doing these things.
I dislike proposed censorware laws as much as the next guy, but I also believe they have every right to sell their product to people who wish to filter their own PC's (parents). I also find 'stupid filter tricks' as amusing as the next guy, but in this case it's Akamai's problem and not the filtering companies.
I must point out that this is no deliberate desicion by Akamai to stop those 'evil censors'. The truth of the matter is that they never wrote any security into their network to prevent any website from being 'akamized'. I also have it on good authority that it's alot of work to purge content from an akamai server. Thus in reality, akamai's service is the web-equivalent of an open email relay!
This time you all laugh because it's the filtering companies getting the short end of the stick. Next time this bug will affect you. How long do you think it'll take spammers to use this bug to put their 'get rich quick' webpages into akamai and use those links when they send out spam? ISP's right now can eliminate websites near-realtime when they are used to sell products advertised in spam, which discourages spammers from even trying as their page is taken down almost immediately. If the spammers can be relatively sure their pages would be up for days on end (as they could with akamai) then it encourages them to send more spam, that ends up in your inbox.
So what they are really saying when they say 'we will not commit to filtering' is 'we do not see fixing this security hole as enhancing profits and therefore cannot justify commiting programmers to close it'. I'll repeat for emphasis: This is an akamai security hole. This is the web-equivalent of an open email relay.
-- Greg
PS: I've reported this bug in the past, and they claimed it was a non-issue. Does someone have to write a 2600 howto article on getting service from akamai before it's fixed?
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
The makers of ``Bess'' wan't Akamai to filter it but Akamai says no. "
"wan't"? Wha? Does anyone proofread before posting anymore?
It's a security hole that costs them bandwidth. (which admittedly, Akamai isn't in short supply of, but still...) Every proxy request through Akamai costs them 2X the size of the response; once to get it from the source, once to send it to the client.
Also, it means that THEIR servers are distributing whatever illicit content is found. You can prove that little Johnny was able to download hate literature not from some random skinhead's machine, but straight from an Akamai.com machine.
I can't see what advantage the open proxy gives them. Why wouldn't they want to close it?
Use the IP address of the site instead of the domain name.
After they've blocked that too, then there's another method, equally simple, but I don't want to share it with anyone writing Censorware so I'll keep schtum.
Oh - and for the content filterers there's something _even easier_ still. - Only go to Japanese sites, or A.N.Other language which the censorware can't understand.
Where there's a willy there's a way.
FatPhil
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Of course, you won't get the pics, but anything text is there... And to those suggesting to filter content rather than sites, that's possible if you don't mind the odd mistakes, sex sites with suggestive rather than explicit language slipping through or breast cancer/safe sex/... sites being blocked (not to mention foreign language sites). Filtering images must be a complete nightmare to get right. For 90%, maybe, but 100% with no "decent" images blocked? I'll believe it when i see it...
How is Akamai any different from using a proxy or Anonymizer type thing? The censorware companies just have to block Akamai and the "problem" is solved, no?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
... it's to get me to take akamai out of my junkbuster filters and spam me with ads...
Heh heh, maybe doubleclick will start running similar 'proxies'..
Your Working Boy,
Does this mean that the MPAA will sue them over http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/www.free-dvd.or g.lu/
?
Based on my views, you would probably label me a "right wing Christian"...please explain to me why I would want to filter those words? Maybe I'm not understanding, but why is it wrong to even mention anatomy?
There's a vast difference between "anatomy" and "pornography", though, which is the real topic at issue here. I'm not sure why you think anatomy is evil.
You might have a case with the libel. I hadn't thought about that. But that shows exactly why censorware is dangerous -- what we all think is "unsafe for kids" today (insert crazy porn link here) might be what they want to block tommorrow (insert liberal/libertarian/etc link here) because it has ideas that are "unsafe for kids". Of course, today they _do_ want to block those kinds of sights, as evidenced by the blocking of peacefire.
/. has a lameness filter):
But for the software, I would never come near such a abuse of innocent hard drives, but I guarantee that it comes with a license containing a paragraph that reads like (all in caps, but
"This software is provided as is, without express or implied warranty of any kind, including fitness for a particular purpose, and no guarantee is made that it will perform its task as advertised, run for more than four(4) seconds without crashing, or do anything at all other than put a happy little window up on the screen during installation so you will feel all warm and fuzzy that now the children are safe so that you will shell out the cash for our product and line our pockets while actually only preventing kids from viewing sites about the Old Testament and breast cancer and dangerous ideas like free speech, not because we're evil, but because we only care about money and not a damn thing else, especially not your little brats.
The enemies of Democracy are
Google's cache will give you the text of pages... why weren't they considered a censorware workaround? I guess you can't see images, but there's still a lot you can get that would be considered objectionable.
> who reads porn sites anyway?
http://www.asstr.org
Lots of people.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Parents, teachers, etc need to get off their fat lazy asses and pay attention to what their kids are doing.
German libraries have a guideline to position Internet PC's in a way that the librarians can always have a look at the screen.
They do pay attention. I think that's way better than having Bess filtering your traffic. And they won't fall for "This tip is sure to not work."
--- The light at the end of the tunnel is probably a burning truck.
"Oh my *god*, there's a bare *breast* in this movie! What if the *kids* are watching?!"
What do you think your precious little innocent 'bunny-wabbit' was sucking on for several months of his/her life? What do you think your three-year-old sees when you take him through the women's dressing room at the YMCA? On that note - why is it that from the age of about three, to the age of 17, seeing people other than yourself nude is considered inappropriate? Notwithstanding the fact that nearly every teenager, as well as probably a whole lot of 11- and 12-year olds, have most likely seen at least one or two R-rated movies with nudity. I mean, I understand how some forms of hardcore porn (bondage, torture, beastiality) could give a young kid the wrong idea. But, realistically, how likely is it that anyone, including children, is going to come across something like that by accident. If they're looking for it, then, by definition, they're not going to be 'damaged' by seeing it. So, I ask again, where does this belief that 'inappropriate content' will damage our children come from? Certainly not any form of logic I've ever heard of.
--- Remove all references to mud-dwelling quadrupeds to email me.
And just what do you think censorware is supposed to do? Stop kids. I have two boys, 3 and 8. I do supervise them on the 'net. I'm not worried about them getting warped by stumbling across something by accident. Frankly, I'm not worried if they go out looking for pr0n. (Although at their ages, it'd sure surprise me!) It'd merit a discussion of what they're seeing and why I think it's inappropriate for them, but no serious repercusions unless they do it repeatedly.
However, I recently installed censorware on their computer, and passworded the screensavers on the others. Why? Teenage babysitters. My wife and I came home from a night out once, and I found a couple of mysterious icons on my desktop. ("Dialer.exe" and "Action.exe", both with images of women. Thank goodness I use a cable modem instead of a telco one, or god only knows what my phone bill would look like!) I checked my browser's history and found several pr0n sites that I know *I* didn't visit. (Not to say I don't visit *any* porn sites, just not those particular ones.) I asked the babysitter about it, and she denied everything. (She later called me back and admitted it.)
I don't mind her using the 'net while we're out, but I don't think she should be doing something in my house that her parents would object to. So, I installed censorware. Sure, she could get around it if she tried hard enough, but I think just the knowledge that her actions are being tracked is a sufficient deterrant.
Now, someone might suggest dropping her as a babysitter. Nope. For one, it's tough to get sitters. For two, she's basically a decent girl who seemed to be exploring after the kids were in bed. I can't really fault her for that. I just want to remind her that we'll know if she does anything out of line.
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that even imperfect censorware is useful. And if it incorrectly blocks sites that my kids (or sitter) should legitimately see, I hope they'll come and ask me to open that site manually or disable the filter temporarily, rather than attempting to bypass it. Censorware isn't a replacement for parent/child interaction, but it can be an effective tool.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Taking care of children used to be a social priority shared by all members of a society in a slowly changing world where the average work week was 18 hours. Since then we as a culture have decided (economics is something we choose to do, not something that just happens) that we all need to work 60 hours weeks and ignore each other and our kids just so we can have more stuff, faster than ever.
Some of us don't agree with this, and try to get away with one parent working "only" 40 hours a week. It is barely possible to do this in the west these days, even in a well paid profession like mine. Clients look at me like I am from Mars sometimes when I say this.
I say that if we as a society are going to choose to work so hard for such little gain, then we as a society need to share the burden of child rearing somehow. The amount of stuff produced and focused at my child is truly phenomenal these days, and the rights of it's producers are never questioned. But my right to be left alone and not marketed to unless I ask for it is somehow unimportant. Censorware is not the answer, but stopping all the marketing to our kids (Channel One anyone?) and reducing the amount of utter crap I have to filter for my son would help a lot.
And yes, I do believe it is my job to filter the world for my son until he is old enough to do it for himself. And I do believe that it is society's job to support me in that, if only by leaving us alone. And I do intend to let him see some of the crap and critique it as part of his learning process. But there is so much of it these days that if I let him see it all, he'd never have time to do useful things. Like learning to communicate, think, love himself and others and just generally have fun with the great gift of life (that is why we all work so hard, isn't it?)
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
I think the problem is that we don't trust children enough.
I've recently left adolescence, and *boy* did I ever have a lot of porn. In fact, at my first year of college, I was known as the 'Mad Porn King of [dorm]'. No, really. I was.
But I turned out fine. I'm not violent. I have a firm grip on reality. I'm an honors student at a good school.
Despite what you think, the majority of children old enough to use a computer are capable of knowing the difference between fantasy and reality, and between right and wrong.
Does this mean they don't need any supervision? No, but it does mean that they probably won't spontaneously combust when you leave them alone for five minutes. Sounds like you're more afraid of having to answer embarrassing questions than anything else.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Since they serve mostly banner ads, any censorware that blocks this blocks banner ads. It's a tradeoff: no p0rn, but no banner ads either. I'd take that one any day!
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Hmm... I suppose it's a good think Little Johnny isn't doing a report about large, tree-chewing rodents or domesticated felines... or 1940s noir detectives...
But, of course, if you can operate a newsreader, like, say Agent, it's all fair game.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Really? Are you going to show them the picture of a man shitting in a woman's mouth and say "There's nothing to be ashamed of"? Are you going to point out the ads for underaged asian girls and say "There's nothing wrong with it"? How old will your children be when you point them out the pictures of bondage and S&M with no context or explinations of consensual ways to do those things in real life and say "don't be ashamed of looking at this, why add worry to an overstressed world?"
Could we please stop pretending that there is one porn site on the internet and it contains artistic nudes, loving sexual scenes and some content slightly raunchier than PlayBoy? Its a long way from saying "we shouldn't hide sex" to giving kids access to representations of sexual violence, degradation and coercion and no ethical guidance on what real people are like.
As a mature, sexually active adult, I have come across things on line (yes, you can find porn accidentally) that made me feel mildly sick, or confused, or in some cases threatened. For a child that does not yet have any healthy sexual expereince to draw on, who may not be able to understand the levels of consensuality and pleasure in, say, BDSM, I could see such images being damaging to their development of a healthy sexuality. And even in the most perfect family, no child is going to be able to come to a parent and say "I saw a picture of a pretty woman being whipped and then I dreamed last night about whipping someone and got a woody, and it makes me feel gross that I liked that thought." They will bottle it up, and if they're lucky, sort it all out when they get older.
There is a emotionally healthy rate at which children learn about sexuality. Don't call people names because they want to preserve that learning curve instead of throwing truely adult sexual content at their 8 year old.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
This give a whole new meaning to "beer belly."
I'm going to have some strange dreams about that one.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They'll just get a bill passed that makes anything which has the purpose or effect of circumventing filtering illegal.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
What's to stop a dishonest website from giving itself a blander rating than it deserves? (We already see lots of sites stacking their pages with dictionary-esque meta tags in order to get more hits on stupid web crawlers.) For that matter, what's to ensure that one's own tastes and perspectives on how a site should be rated will conform with the site's author?
Sure, there would be incentive for porn peddlers to give themselves the raunchiest rating possible in order to draw more consumers. But at the same time, the ones with the most resources could easily have two parallel sets of pages, one with a raunchy rating and the other with a benign one, in order not to miss the ones who'd get snagged by censorware. With cgi-generated html wrapped around stock images, this could even be a preference-box on the user's home page within that site.
If mandatory self-ratings are to work as you intend, then there has to be some followup by the government to punish those whose ratings do not conform with community standards. But that's the same as having government-imposed censorship in the first place.
(And the idea that some people can construct an entire www for themselves containing only sites that agree with them and filtering out all other sites so there's not hte slightest chance that a dissenting opinion might slip in and provoke a new idea is abhorrent in my view.
I heard Peter Norton doesn't really exist. That he's just like Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben or something.
I'm already blocking all content from akamai, because I don't want to see their ads. Sure, I'd have to reconsider that if I ever wanted to use them as a such a proxy, but since I don't, I'm not affected by their "security holes".
As I see it, the greatest problem caused by this discovery is that it might hinder the adoption of adblocking software. But I don't think the risk is high.
Sooo, today I used th akamai thing to access the peacefire doc on how to use the akamai thing
Basically, I'm too lazy to make my own "site anonymizer" and run it off my system at home which would be dead simple. Usually If I can't see some interesting tidbit at work, I just wait till I get home.
--Clay
Of course a properly designed piece of censorware should be able to deal with this problem. They just have to be a bit cleverer about dealing with URLs. How do I know this? Because Junkbuster is capable of screening out Akamized content by looking at the whole URL. When it sees "ads.doublclick.net" in the URL, even if it isn't the base domain, it knows to filter it. A reasonably designed censorware proxy could do the same thing with "www.pr0nstars.com" or, sadly, "www.peacefire.org". Actually, you could turn Junkbuster into a Censorware proxy very easily by feeding it a different list of sites to block...
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Anyway, I first read about this in a C|Net story, which also had a very anti-censorship slant to it. I submitted my comment...and they censored it! LoL! They are refusing to put it online, and I submitted it twice just to be sure they didn't lose the first one.
Whether you agree or disagree with me, the hypocrisy over at C|Net is unbelieveable.
Here's my message, in its entirety:
Subject: Irresponsible story by C|Net
You know, you could have just reported the story without the specifics, you didn't have to actually tell all the 8 year olds how to circumvent their parent-installed software to go directly to sex.com.
Everyone says, "Oh, it's the parent's problem to monitor their children, not the internet's. The parent is solely responible for the upbringing of their children." Ok, well what about when a parent, taking the initiative, installs the filtering software and a kid reads on C|Net how to hack around it? C|Net may counter with something like, "Well, our target audience is 35 years old," but I don't remember being carded when I loaded the site.
Why is everyone on the internet in such a rush to empower pornographers and to rob parents of their rights?
Some of the sites that Akamai lets you access are their customers who are paying them to handle content. Other sites appear to be non-Akamai-customers that the Akamai cache system will serve if asked nicely in the correct syntax, which is most of the problem here. There probably are some Akamai customers who provide content that SOME censorware vendors want censored.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Enjoy talking about workarounds like this while we still can... sooner or later, the respectable, deep pocketed folks in the censorware industry or just about anywhere else are going to get sick of us ne'er-do-wells poking holes in their stupid, stupid, stupid products...
You mean I've been having sex with my wife all this time and there's NO free beer?? Seriously, I find your social commentary right on the money. Run for president and I will vote for you.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
This is a bit off topic, but did anyone notice that the article read "the Akamai bug". Who ever said it was a BUG? This is a feature by design! I love it when writer's put their personal "spin" on everything. just venting - thanks.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
Would you also suggest that my 13-year old daughter should be allowed to date the 18-year-old boy who has started calling her? Should she learn about the "hot dish" of sexual predation first-hand? Should she get pregnant and have an abortion so that she can learn not to "do it twice"?
If you've told her what will happen, and she still does it, yes she should. If she knows what will happen and does it anyway, she's either accepting the consequences, or she's stupid. I don't believe in laws to protect stupid people from themselves. I guess I'm too much of a hardcore darwinist that way.
No need. Go through those sites. How many are already gone, or offtopic? I found one working link in all of that that wasn't BS. kinda funny, huh?
Other words like "hardcore" were blanked out, although you could still go to sex sites
Somewhere there is a list of censored words and comments. Many words which are used in a "porn" context are also used in completly different contexts. Just hope somone isn't trying to look up construction or music.
I suppose you never visit Yahoo, CNN, C/Net, or any of the others that use Akamai? I mean, that's your choice and all, but it seems to me you are laboring under a misapprehension of what Akamai does, if you've blocked "their ads".
Edith Keeler Must Die
At my work, NetNanny is installed. Babelfish at www.babelfish.altavista.com is blocked. However, I just go to the UK version at uk.altavista.com/content/translate.jsp instead. Works just fine.
--
dman123 forever!
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dman123 forever!
Filtering out the -1s and 0s since 1999.
That sort of filtering is done by people who think it's better to overdo it than miss a naughty word, because then you're less likely to be sued.
No, it's not that simple. I work for a major school district, in the computer networking division. As part of that, I oversee the censorware. No, it's not my call how to implement it. That's determined by the politics above me. I just keep it running.
Well if you don't filter by scanning the content, then you aren't filtering much at all. If you block URLs, then people can just go to the IPs (which they can get in many different ways). If you block unresolved IPs, then they can go somewhere like babelfish.altavista, and tell it to translate a page, either from German to English (which won't have much effect on an alread English page) or pick a random language and then say display in original language.
This isn't a problem with the people being overzealous, it's a problem with the inherent inability of machines to comprehend content. It's a flaw in the very concept of censorware. A machine can't differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate material, so there's no effective way for it to censor all inappropriate material, and the act of censoring inappropriate material almost always spills over to censor appropriate material.
I checked this out from behind a firewall/netnanny (Microsoft most likely), and sure enough the Yahoo example (http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/www.yahoo.com/ ) works fine. So the storey's true...right? Then again, try pasting another Web page name there. Even try the example on peacefire.org using "sex.com" and it fails from here at least. Is this just a bogus story based on a wierd link to Yahoo?
This has to be the first time I have agreed with someone on the use of censorware. No mention of "evils". No false hope that kids won't look (someday). Even the admission that normal people look at porn sites. And for this use, even current censorware is fine. Great post!
The bottom line is that the people trying to censor porn are trying to make it "evil" to look at porn. Pornography is a derrogatory term, so is Smut. "Adult Entertainment" is probably a better term, or even "Adult", but that is neutral. Do you hear them saying the software stops Adult Entertainment? Nope... It stops Smut, Porn, Pornography, Disturbing and disgusting, Inapproriate and Unwanted...
It protects your children from evil.
That's what they want you to see.
It's the same thing enviromentalists did with recycling. "If you don't want to recycle, you don't care about the earth, and that means you don't care about the children, because it's going to be theirs..." clever. Even though the utter ineffectiveness has been shown. Like the huge amount of enrgy required to make a paper cup instead of styrofoam, and the amount of coal that gets burnt to make that paper cup. Coal that is blamed for much more than styrofoam ever will. But enough digressing.
The fact that you know now that you have a babysitter honest enough to fess up is probably more valuable. That had to be a tough call for her to make.
oh, c'mon....
i think what is at issue here is the age and maturity. when you were 13 what did you think of your parents? were you fully developed mentally?
sure you knew right from wrong, but in my experience, the older i get i am able to look back, reflect upon myself, my actions, my life and realize my foibles, follies, and failures.
at 13, i thought i was the smartest person on the planet. i didn't need anyone telling me how to make my own decisions. i knew right from wrong, made my decisions based on my set of experiences to that point and was pleased with the good/bad/worst results all along b/c I had made the decision.
was i stupid?
uhhh - i guess. but all the tests i took said i was of above normal intelligence.
did i make some really ignorant mistakes based on hard headedness and lack of experience? yep.
i think it would be morally repugnant to allow a 13 yr old to intermingle with an 18 yr old boy. how do i know? i have one of each as a sibling - 13 yr old female high school freshman, 18 yr old male college freshman.
it's not darwinism - it's a matter of being a parent. parents protect their young in all species - thank god we don't eat ours when they look like they might hamper the litter!!
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
I hope these will enlighten:
in my experience, the older i get i am able to look back, reflect upon myself, my actions, my life and realize my foibles, follies, and failures.
That's my whole point. You notice how that begins with "in my experience" instead of "my parents say that"? The point is that you are experienced because you had a chance to make your own mistakes, your foibles, follies, and failures. If you had just been told about them, you wouldn't have really learned, and you would have either done them eventually or built your current understanding of the world off "because my Mommy said so."
i think it would be morally repugnant to allow a 13 yr old to intermingle with an 18 yr old boy. how do i know? i have one of each as a sibling - 13 yr old female high school freshman, 18 yr old male college freshman.
Well that's fine, you can think it's morally repugnant. I disagree, and I don't think it should be illegal. Where do you want to draw the lines? Can 19 year olds socialize with 24 year olds? I did, and it was an amazingly open, loving, mature relationship. What about 13 year olds and 17 year olds? 15 year olds? The point is that it's ridiculous to put laws to such things, because they're matters of discretion and judgement.
But not too far off the mark...
While I doubt a poverty stricken family here in the US would buy a 60 inch TV to hook up a free "state" inet appliance, sometimes I see things here that make me wonder...
I was once in line at the grocery store, the individual in front of me was using one of those "fancy" card-swipe "debit" style cards for WIC purchases (welfare approved items - they are using these card things, because welfare stamps are too obvious, and can be bought/sold on the black market). After I got done, I walked out of the store, and saw them putting their groceries away - into the standard "bumpin!" style low-rider truck with a big stereo.
Now, of course, his girlfriend was up front with the kid - the stereo on so loud it hurt my ears, and I was a good 50 ft away. However, it made me wonder - why is this guy on WIC? He has an excellent truck (I mean, the stereo and all the body work isn't free, is it?), he was wearing good clothes - yet he can't afford bread?
I work full time and make a decent salary - what is this guy doing that I'm not? Of course, the snide remark would be "Selling drugs, of course!" - but I see these kinds of people all the time - sometimes I see kids with the hopped up, great paint job and stereo Honda CRX - maybe 16 years old if they are a day - the car has to cost a ton of money (stereo and engine stuff) - did mommy and daddy pay for it (and if they did, are they legally insane)? Or what is this kid doing?
I try to put it outta my mind, but your comment brought it up.
In the end, I hopped into my Ford Ranger, and drove off...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Ah, so we should let our 13-year-old children associate with college freshmen and just accept it when they end up in jail drunk off their asses, or at the worst end of the spectrum, dead. Yep, we told them what would happen, they didn't listen, they're dead now. Oh fricken well. We should just accept it. I think not.
You're wrong about not being able to learn "because mommy said so." That's how I learned. That's how I avoided countless potential catastrophes. I, unlike many of my peers, actually respected, loved, and LISTENED to my parents. I knew they understood life better that I because they had lived more of it. They had already been everywhere I was. Believe it or not, there are those of us who can learn that it's going to hurt when we hit bottom without having to jump off a bridge.
You're right about laws, though. They have no place where mere socialization is involved, much like they have no place where the Internet is involved. Parents should be supervising their children and the people they associate themselves with, but they should not just turn away when their children don't listen. I've seen what happens when they do, and it is not a pretty sight.
You're also right that 13-year-olds can associate with 17-year-olds. It happens all the time. Your miss is that parents should accept their 13-year-olds decision to go hang out at the frat house if they so choose, despite parental cautioning. That's irresponsible parenting.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
They have sentiments. They just call them 'moral' to give the impression they have a greater objective weight than their taste in cars, clothing, or sexual partners.
btw, I'm not certain I really believe this, but I'm feeling cranky/amused and well, one can never have too many snotty aphorisms to share.
Inexplicible proof, once again, that SHITTY SOFTWARE IS IN NO WAY A GOOD SUBSTITUTE FOR TRUST AND GOOD PARENTING!
I am very glad peacefire keeps posting this stuff. Keep up the good work.
I would like to remind you, once again, some of the sites that censorware will block:
Breast cancer awareness webpages
Chicken recipes
Information on Aids, STDS, and other sexually related issues
Information on condoms, birth control pills, spermicide, as well as other forms of birth control
Certain political sites that the creators didn't like
Sites against censorware (peacefire.org, censorware.org, etc)
As well as a host of others I can't remember or haven't heard of yet.
Sure, it may seem stupid. But idiots screaming "think of the children" at the top of their lungs are generally aiming for your wallet and couldn't care less if your kids surf porn all day, or never get to experience more than 10% of the internet.
It's called the "bubble boy effect". When exposed to a steady stream of small pathogens, people develop normal immune systems (rejection for bad sites). People who live in bubbles never get exposed to regular pathogens (bad sites) and when come in contact with such pathogens as the cold virus (bad site) die shortly after (don't know how to react to it, or overreact). I'm sure those of you with kids would want this to happen.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Go to http://www.hipbone.com/gettingStarted/try.html and click on the "Connect" button. This put's you into a similar proxy-browse scenario.
Apart from your reasons why this is no longer true, another reason is fear of litigation or other reprisal. It's gotten to the point where parents are scared to discipline their child in public for fear of being charged with child abuse. Someone in public can't chastize a child for inappropriate behavior without fear of being verbally (and sometimes physically) assaulted for their effort by the child's parents.
It's not so much that it is easy to just ignore it and walk away. The problem is that it can be too dangerous to attempt to do anything about it. Maybe if we all started taking a little more risk...
Censorware is not the answer, but stopping all the marketing to our kids...
Isn't that just another form of censorware, but at a legal level rather than a software level? However, I would greatly prefer it if a business/corporation/whatever had as little or less right to agressively attempt to get me to buy something as you (the individual) have the capability to do.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Wow, so this is an example of hacking? I thought it was just an example of how unintelligent filtering software is. I wonder if their software has problems detecting say https:// urls too.
---
>who reads porn sites anyway?
Doesn't everyone? I mean.. you go there for the deep interviews and insightful articles... right?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Just get a software that can clock sites and block the Akamai servers. It's easy. Don't know what all the fuss is about.
Ah, so we should let our 13-year-old children associate with college freshmen and just accept it when they end up in jail drunk off their asses, or at the worst end of the spectrum, dead. Yep, we told them what would happen, they didn't listen, they're dead now. Oh fricken well. We should just accept it. I think not.
That's absurd! Having been a college freshman, I can say that being a college freshman does not inherently lead to death. In jail, drunk off their asses? Maybe so. Because if you tell them "drinking is bad" and their friends tell them "drinking is cool" then they're going to want to drink. But if at 13, they drink enough to wake up in jail with a horrible hangover, then maybe at 15 or 16 when all their friends say "drinking is cool," they'll say "What are you talking about? Have you ever had any alcohol?" and their friends will say "Well, no, but my big brother is cool, and he's in a frat and drinks a lot, and besides, it's against the law, so it must be cool." and your kid will say "Well I have had alcohol, and it didn't taste very good, and I ended up in jail with a horrible headache and felt like a moron. I think it was a mistake, and if drinking is to be 'cool' or 'fun', we have to do it in moderation."
But instead, you tell them it's forbidden, and they feel all cool about doing it and they spend their freshman year rebelling by joining a frat and waking up in dumpsters every weekend.
You're wrong about not being able to learn "because mommy said so." That's how I learned. That's how I avoided countless potential catastrophes. I, unlike many of my peers, actually respected, loved, and LISTENED to my parents. I knew they understood life better that I because they had lived more of it.
I respected and loved my parents, but I'm glad I didn't always listen to them. They told me to stop spending all my time playing video games and reading and fooling around with my computer, and do my homework, because if I got bad grades I wouldn't end up in a good college and get a good job. I blew them off and only worked hard in classes that interested me. I got into a great college that I absolutely love and am confident is the perfect place for me, and I now have a very well paying computer job doing something that interests me. Yes, your parents are experienced, and that's a valuable thing. But they aren't very experienced at your life, and they don't always know what's best for you. They're also only human, and sometimes you're smarter than they are. They also have some of the stupid irrational parenting instincts that seem to get injected into them as soon as they see a baby. Like the fatherly "my little baby girl is never dating anyone, ever." So if you believe everything your parents say, you miss tons of opportunities and probably just repeat your parents' lives instead of finding your own.
Believe it or not, there are those of us who can learn that it's going to hurt when we hit bottom without having to jump off a bridge.
Not without jumping off of something. You can accept it when people tell you that it will hurt, but you never really know. You "learn" that a lot of things hurt, and most of the time they do. But there are lots of chances for amazingly intense and fulfilling experiences that you'll miss out on if you believe what people tell you about what hurts and what's safe.
You're also right that 13-year-olds can associate with 17-year-olds. It happens all the time. Your miss is that parents should accept their 13-year-olds decision to go hang out at the frat house if they so choose, despite parental cautioning. That's irresponsible parenting.
Well, I disagree with you on that particular one, but it's your call with your kids. The point is that at least you accept the responsibility of parenting the kids, and don't expect the laws and the corporations to do it for you. That's the real point I want to get across here.
I'm betting that you don't have any kids, Ketzer.
I have a zero year old daughter. I doubt I'll ever use censorware to block her net connection in a few years (maybe some sort of anticommercialist filter though, to block the adverts), but damn straight am I going to keep her away from older sleazeballs when the time comes.Another aspect of hardcore Darwinism is the protection of one's genetic investment -- aka parenting.
That's absurd! Having been a college freshman, I can say that being a college freshman does not inherently lead to death.
:) I, for one, have learned some things from you and appreciate the opportunity.
True, but notice my use of the phrase "at the worst end of the spectrum."
In jail, drunk off their asses? Maybe so. Because if you tell them "drinking is bad" and their friends tell them "drinking is cool" then they're going to want to drink.
I agree and disagree. If the "drinking is bad" message is hammered with negative reinforcement, and the "drinking is cool" message is hammered with positive reinforcement, the outcome is a no-brainer. However, if parents talk to their children about alcohol/drugs/sex without going into the fire and damnation "you're a horrible, ungrateful child if you don't listen to me" mess, then the children are far more likely to follow their parents' advice.
But if at 13, they drink enough to wake up in jail with a horrible hangover, then maybe at 15 or 16 when all their friends say "drinking is cool," they'll say "What are you talking about? Have you ever had any alcohol?" and their friends will say "Well, no, but my big brother is cool, and he's in a frat and drinks a lot, and besides, it's against the law, so it must be cool." and your kid will say "Well I have had alcohol, and it didn't taste very good, and I ended up in jail with a horrible headache and felt like a moron. I think it was a mistake, and if drinking is to be 'cool' or 'fun', we have to do it in moderation."
Possibly, but that's one heck of a kid who can stand up to to his/her friends like that. Then again, they might wake up in jail with a hangover and think "oh, wow, what a rush...I gotta get my friends in on this."
But instead, you tell them it's forbidden, and they feel all cool about doing it and they spend their freshman year rebelling by joining a frat and waking up in dumpsters every weekend.
True enough, but again it depends on the approach the parents took.
I respected and loved my parents, but I'm glad I didn't always listen to them. They told me to stop spending all my time playing video games and reading and fooling around with my computer, and do my homework, because if I got bad grades I wouldn't end up in a good college and get a good job. I blew them off and only worked hard in classes that interested me. I got into a great college that I absolutely love and am confident is the perfect place for me, and I now have a very well paying computer job doing something that interests me. Yes, your parents are experienced, and that's a valuable thing. But they aren't very experienced at your life, and they don't always know what's best for you. They're also only human, and sometimes you're smarter than they are. They also have some of the stupid irrational parenting instincts that seem to get injected into them as soon as they see a baby. Like the fatherly "my little baby girl is never dating anyone, ever." So if you believe everything your parents say, you miss tons of opportunities and probably just repeat your parents' lives instead of finding your own.
Very true. I suppose it's a balancing act between accepting our parents' advice and knowing what we're capable of out from under their wing. However, sex/drugs/alcohol have all been around since long before our parents, and they'll be around for a long time from now. Those issues are universal to every generation.
Not without jumping off of something. You can accept it when people tell you that it will hurt, but you never really know. You "learn" that a lot of things hurt, and most of the time they do. But there are lots of chances for amazingly intense and fulfilling experiences that you'll miss out on if you believe what people tell you about what hurts and what's safe.
Maybe, but I also know what it's like to fall off my bike. It's a hop-skip-and-jump from "knowing" that pain to deducing that I'm going to die if I jump off that bridge, or at the very least get really really mangled. I can deduce from relatively small experiences of mine, or from the experiences of others. Maybe I really never know, but damn, some things are just not worth knowing. I count that jump as one of them. I also count sticking my hand in the garbage disposal while it's on as another.
Well, I disagree with you on that particular one, but it's your call with your kids. The point is that at least you accept the responsibility of parenting the kids, and don't expect the laws and the corporations to do it for you. That's the real point I want to get across here.
Absolutely! But a little discussion around the edges never killed anyone.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Doesn't Censorware programmers know about that old really useful thing called a regular expressions ????
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Oh well, I guess they are Windoze programmers
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Stop privacy invasion!
Possibly, but that's one heck of a kid who can stand up to to his/her friends like that.
:) I, for one, have learned some things from you and appreciate the opportunity.
Yes it is, and it should be your goal as a parent to raise "one heck of a kid." If they don't stand up to their friends at first, then if they're a good kid, it should only take them a few more times waking up in jail to grow a spine. If they never do, then that's a fundamental flaw in that person.
Then again, they might wake up in jail with a hangover and think "oh, wow, what a rush...I gotta get my friends in on this."
If so, then why shouldn't they? What's so bad about hangovers and jail if they enjoy it?
However, sex/drugs/alcohol have all been around since long before our parents, and they'll be around for a long time from now. Those issues are universal to every generation.
They don't have to be though! We're not talking fundamental human experience (well, maybe with sex). Drugs and alcohol haven't always been problems, and they aren't problems everywhere. In most european countries, the drinking age is around 13, and they don't have nearly as many problems with the whole teenage alcohol culture that we've developed in America. Just as prohibition resulted in more crime, teenage alcohol restriction results in more teenage rebellion and disobedience. If drugs and alcohol were legal for everyone, then parents would to talk reasonably with their kids about it, and wouldn't rely on the law. The kids would then take that discussion and deal with it responsible. Most kids aren't genuinely self-destructive, they just exhibit self-destructive behavior out of rebellion. When you enforce things on them "for their own good," then self-destruction and rebellion become the same thing.
Maybe, but I also know what it's like to fall off my bike. It's a hop-skip-and-jump from "knowing" that pain to deducing that I'm going to die if I jump off that bridge, or at the very least get really really mangled. I can deduce from relatively small experiences of mine, or from the experiences of others. Maybe I really never know, but damn, some things are just not worth knowing. I count that jump as one of them. I also count sticking my hand in the garbage disposal while it's on as another.
Yes, exactly. You take your own experiences and deduce logical actions from them. You don't rely on "mommy told me not to jump off bridges or stick my hand in the garbage disposal." That's my whole point. If your parents didn't let you experience those non-fatal mistakes, then you wouldn't be able to deduce the fatal ones. Then they would have to warn you about everything fatal, and you would have to believe them.
Absolutely! But a little discussion around the edges never killed anyone.
Yes, excellent, and ditto. In that order.
= )