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Foil-The-Filters Contest
eon(36.0) / Kathryn Aegis writes: "The Digital Freedom Network today announces the winners of its Foil the Filters Contest. To illustrate the unreliability and political slant of censorware, the DFN asked Netizens to ply the filters with innocuous words, names, or search requests to see what gets blocked. This week is Banned Books Week, so read something naughty today."
With all the porn segregated into a small, easily detected part of the net, the wide-spread censoring of these areas is innevitable. ISPs, libraries, places of employment will all ban anything with the .sex TLD.
Now, I think a .xxx or .sex TLD would be a good idea -- fair advertising and all. But I don't think anyone should be forced to register under that name. That would just be asking for censorship. Sex is really important to our culture and to human interaction as a whole. To group all sexual works, even all explicit sexual works, in a category that will be marked "porn" is to cause serious harm to those works.
A little nudity never hurt anyone.
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If you have kids, and you are really interested in what the are reading, searching or looking in the internet, just install a fucking proxy and the take some time to: 1) Review the logs and where your kid has gone. 2) Talk about it whit him/her. If you can't do this, your problem is not the adult content at some internet sites...your real problem is just that Parenting is not for you. I'm sure there's some software that does this stuff for windows. When my father found a Playboy magazine un my room (I was 12 years old) we had a really constructive chat at that time. It helped me to learn how to be a better parent...Talking is much better that censoring, but you have to be prepared.
Once all the obvious fuckups are gone, all that will be left are the subtle ones, the ones that aren't so in-your-face humiliating for the censors.
At that point they'll say "it works" and the less high-profile but just as improperly-filtered sites will be lost behind the filters.
The point is that ANY attempt to censor like this is ultimately immoral and futile. Well, hopefully futile anyway.
Here's my question: With people claiming to be doing this for the children, who here wishes they had been censored MORE as a child?
Not me.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
before we all waste a lot of time, why not make a site that has a list of 'checkoff' sites that are commonly blocked by censoreware?
:)
that would serve two purposes:
1) allow us to script censorware tests
2) allow the manufacturors of censorware some insight into what things the 'community' feels are improper to censor.
email me if you're interested. i think we can have it up and running by the weekend.
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blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
For anyone looking to waste some time and have some great fun with evangelical types, head over here:
r op=all
http://www.wwjd.com/eforums/view/wwjd_senior/?d
Just be insidious and subversive about it, because every post must be approved by a very thickheaded moderator. There is fun to be had, though. I am on as "crystal" the airhead.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
He goes to the QA manager and informs him of the bug. The QA manager happens to have several people in his office at the time. He decided to test it himself. He loads up the product, everyone gathers around, and completely unaware of what he's about to see, the QA manager browses to goatse.cx. When the page loads, everyone suddenly lunges backwards in surprise, and there is a mad dash to hit ALT-F4, but not before everyone in the room has been permanently damaged by the horrible sight.
I'm willing to bet our product will soon be filtering goatse.cx.
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When I first read this article, I XXXumed thaX XX was going to be the usual anXXXhematic bit of tripe, XXX Xhen I read it and found it to be quite amusing. You see, I have used filtering software for quite some time and thaX XX hXX Xometimes failed me has never been the case. I support freedom of sXXXch XX Xomething that is important, XXX Xhen again, as George W. XXXX said, "There ought to be limits to freedom."
Anyway, thaX XX made the front page of Slashdot (the article that is) is just another attempt by the left to pollute the minds of youth everywhere.
XX Xincerely as I can,
Me
</sarcasm>
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
Of course, I'm still trying to get the Baptist Convention to proclaim me a minion of Satan. Have you joined the Minions of Satan club? Yes, paratheoanametamystikhood. You know why?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is the first article that a link to goatse.cx would be on topic!
Anyone who relies upon technology or the good intentions of other people to protect their children from unwanted material is asking for trouble.
One of the key problems I see with a .kids TLD is who would administer it? I fear the control would soon fall into the hands of Toys 'R' Us and KBKids and .kids would become a massive marketing playground in which children become indoctrinated in the ways of the commericial world.
I don't have a kid, so I can't speak with much authority, but the voice of my father comes to me in regards to these situations: 'Go outside and play, let the wind blow the stink off of ya.' Idle hands are the devils playground. I do believe a child who is trying to do homework, is doing homework. Its only when he is unsupervised for a long period of time does the idea of 'seeking out' naughty stuff comes to mind.
Of course, is this any different than my sneaking into my brother's secret stash of adult magazines? No. Everything is a learning opportunity and it would behoove a parent to teach the child about acceptable behavior regarding pornography the moment the child become interested in pornography. We all know that once that interest is sparked, there is no going back. It is called puberty.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
If you want to do something that is actually worthwhile (and c'mon, a contest run by geeks for geeks is not it), take some of the examples, as well as some completely legitimate sites that were not meant to trip any filters, and list about 25 of them on a flyer. Then find 25 sites that are completely innappropriate for anyone* to view, and are *NOT* blocked, and list those.
Okay, everyone go pick one brand of filtering S/W and do this. Print a paragraph explaining that this instituition uses brand-X filter, include a breif synopsis of what to expect on a few of the sites, and either tape it up next to the computers or hand it out outside the library. This is something those of you doing the goatsex redirects would absolutely love, find a URL for it that hasn't been blocked and encourage people to leave their terminal on that when they leave (Okay, maybe that won't help the cause, but make sure they understand what hello.jpg is and that it's only a click or two away.)
Write another paragraph encouraging people to ask their librarian who to complain to about getting said censorware removed, and provide email addresses to the customer service contacts for the censorware companies.
*That* would be worthwhile. In fact, Rob, since you enjoy the embarassment and ridicule of censorware companies, why not host a project that has printable postscript of such files? It seems like a much more effective way to get word out to the people than having cphack.exe source code posted all over your stories like a couple of months ago. Or if someone wants to start a sourceforge page for such a project, please submit it as a story.
*Hey I said it was innapropriate, noone to blame but yourself if you click without reading...
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
I can't believe the banning of
"The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, for sexual content and offensive language. "
I would have atleast banned it for "Wasting Time" or "Offensive Waste Of Oprah In A Movie"