A Parent's Guide To Linux Web Filtering

Excellent by ReverendHoss · 2004-07-01 05:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

The easier and more accurate it is for parents to filter content for their own children, based on their own values, the less likely it is for them to scream for the government to do it for them.

Re:Excellent by e9th · 2004-07-01 05:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

Well, that sounds good, but I'm pessimistic. The same parents who bitch about our educational system but who won't sit down with their kids and discuss what Johnny learned in school today will continue to scream and scream loudly.
"Why should I protect my children. That's what I pay taxes for!"
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:46 · Score: 1, Insightful

What are your values? Free porn for all kids?
There are legitimate reasons to agree as a society that kids viewing porn is not a good thing.
The government frequently passes laws restricting behavior of children in the interests of protecting them. (mandatory bike helmets, can't buy beer until you're 21, ban Joe Camel ads, etc.)
Re:Excellent by Total_Wimp · 2004-07-01 05:49 · Score: 2, Funny

Heck yeah, but it's getting much harder. Knoppix screwed my ability to filter at the computer. My neighbors' open wireless access points are in the process of screwing my ability to filter at the pipe. It looks like the only sure fire way left to filter is at the kid.

TW
Re:Excellent by stienman · 2004-07-01 05:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

Actually I doubt this will make much of a difference at all.

Even if they are always around to protect their kids parents still demand that 'public' places be free of anything that could harm their children. The internet is often seen as a public place. Unless the 'magazine racks' are covered and the 'bars' are closed to anyone under a certian age they will feel that the government should step in an ensure that these steps are taken. This doesn't even touch problems with identity, stalking, etc.

This is not a terrible thing. It is a new responsibility that parents have had to adjust to in the last decade. Any reasonable step that can be enacted with little cost that does not prevent another's right to use the internet should be enacted.

The 'internet' is still in a state of tremendous change. There is no way that a reasonable response can be created that will stand the test of time. Any response now will fall far short of the ideal. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, though. As we develop new techniques to match the internet's development we'll learn valuable lessens.

It's not much different than spam. Techniques come, are honed, changed, and then go. We all expect (and know) that eventually the tide will turn and spam will be managed effectively. Similarily, we all know and expect that certian regulations will be set in place that will make it difficult for minors to open themselves to crimes of opportunity or exposure to things which the law currently says should be restricted to adults (or to minors only under adult supervision).

This article is good for the tech savvy parent, but it certianly will not affect the majority opinion.

-Adam
Re:Excellent by Brandybuck · 2004-07-01 05:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

But of course! We will always have people who will want to hand their responsibilities over to those willing to accept them.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:Excellent by Peter+La+Casse · 2004-07-01 05:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well, that sounds good, but I'm pessimistic. The same parents who bitch about our educational system but who won't sit down with their kids and discuss what Johnny learned in school today will continue to scream and scream loudly.
That's a different problem, which this solution doesn't attempt to address. This gives proactive parents another tool, which is a good thing.
Re:Excellent by ch-chuck · 2004-07-01 05:54 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Especially if your values are this extreme [warning! Not for the squeammish!]

--
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Re:Excellent by jadenyk · 2004-07-01 05:55 · Score: 1

That's all well and good, but I know that I drank well before I was 21. I smoked before I was 18 and I never wore a helmet on my bike. I think the OP is trying to say that it's better for everyone if the parents know how to do these things and actively get involved in protecting their own children rather than yelling at the government when things happen.
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:57 · Score: 0

[nt]
Re:Excellent by AKAImBatman · 2004-07-01 06:02 · Score: 1

The bright side of this is that it prevents the kids from "accidentally" bumping into something they shouldn't. Whether you feel that's needed or not is up to you, but at least it's available. :-)

--
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Re:Excellent by e9th · 2004-07-01 06:03 · Score: 1

I was responding to the OP. But insofar as it removes one more impediment to wider acceptance of FOSS, I'm all for it.
Re:Excellent by netsharc · 2004-07-01 06:11 · Score: 1

Ouch... very very strange. The last paragraph sounds like something that should be in a porn^W erotic movie, though. ;-)

--
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Re:Excellent by Safety+Cap · 2004-07-01 06:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

Even if they are always around to protect their kids parents still demand that 'public' places be free of anything that could harm their children.
This is exactly why they will end up with weak offspring that will be killed in the first round of purges.
Pediatricians usually recommend one have furry pets and send one's kids to day care, pre-school so the little tykes actually get sick and build up their immune system. The offspring of the parents who use those "antibacterial" wipes and soaps are the ones who will die in the first wave of plagues.
This brings us to environment. Only by exposing one's kids to life in the real world (of which, Teletubbies and Barney are only a small part), can those kids grow up strong and able to deal with life outside the Master Planned Community, lest they be killed in the waves of immigrations that overrun the MPCs.

--
Yeah, right.
Re:Excellent by ichimunki · 2004-07-01 06:18 · Score: 1, Insightful

Only if you agree that children don't acquire some rights to control their own reading habits at some point. Seems to me the best filter is active parental involvement. What kid wants to try and sneak a peek at something when the folks are sitting right there with her? :)

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I do not have a signature
Re:Excellent by ahaning · 2004-07-01 06:20 · Score: 2, Funny

...I drank well before I was 21. I smoked before I was 18 and I never wore a helmet on my bike.

And look where you ended up! Posting comments to your imaginary friends on the Internet in the middle of the day.

Isn't that bad enough?!

;-)

--
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Re:Excellent by Sam3.14 · 2004-07-01 06:25 · Score: 1

I hope that's a joke.
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

What reasons are these? By the time you're interested in porn, the last thing you need is for everyone to pretend it doesn't exist, which is what this guide is helping parents do. If your parents are of some denomination that makes this sort of thing bad, that's one thing; you can raise your kid however you like. Still, 'agreeing as a society' is kind of a stretch-- my grandfather is a psychiatrist, and he quietly made sure I wasn't at a loss for what was going on. And when you get down to it, I'd rather have 13 year olds masturbating to internet pron than 13 year olds engaging in sex with each other. How is it protecting kids? They still have these desires, the urges. The only thing it's protecting is their parents' conscience. Don't get me wrong, little jimmy shouldn't have to see goatse if he doesn't want to, or if his parents don't want to; but that is a family-based decision, and not one all of society agrees upon. Honestly not trolling, but don't want the karma backlash either.
Re:Excellent by gillbates · 2004-07-01 06:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well, given that neither paying taxes nor sending your children are optional activities, I'd say your argument doesn't apply.

But there's something insidious about someone taking money from you (via taxes), and then using that money to undermine your parenting. Those who view children as a nuisance and the school district as a babysitter could care less what happens there. It is the parents who are actually being parents who take greatest offense at their own taxes being used to undermine their parenting efforts. It isn't an issue of free-speech rights, but rather of the rights of a parent to raise their own child in the manner they see fit. I don't tell you how to raise your children; why do you think you have the right to tell me how to raise mine?

--
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Re:Excellent by Jim_Maryland · 2004-07-01 06:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Only if you agree that children don't acquire some rights to control their own reading habits at some point.

I think that if your installing a filter of some sort, you are controlling your kids reading habit. Parental involvement does not necessarily mean physically standing over their shoulders 24/7 though. You need to give children a degree of freedom while protecting them (what you protect them from is up to the individual parents). If you are filtering for your kids 24/7, they likely won't learn how to make decisions for themselves based on the values you have instilled into them. I'm not saying that you don't stay involved with kids but that you have to prepare them for that day when they go out on their own. I do agree that parental involvement is the best filter but it isn't the only way to protect and raise children.
Re:Excellent by ReverendHoss · 2004-07-01 06:36 · Score: 1

Actually, my values would be watching my children while they are on the Internet. I'm a relatively good filtering program, as I know where all the porn is located.

There are legitimate reasons to agree as a society that kids viewing porn is not a good thing.

I'm glad you say so.
Re:Excellent by jekewa · 2004-07-01 06:40 · Score: 1

Doesn't this assume that the parents know more about LINUX than their kids?

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End the FUD
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-01 06:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

Home schooling and and private schooling are always options. Taxes pay for more than just schools and it is good that you should be responsible for more than just your own children. And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children. It is not just the family that raises the children, but the whole village.

Besides, it is more likely the parents undermining the schoold system. Parents come in bitching about little Sally getting an F even though she did no work. If parents backed up schools, then we would have better kids in society. Instead, we have parents teaching kids not to respect authority.

There is a time to question authority, but that time is not when you should be learning to read and write.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:50 · Score: 1, Insightful

Perhaps you should offer drugs to your children, so that they can learn to resist? Or more realistically, take them shopping and then yell at them when they want you to buy them something? Kids don't need all the temptations of the Internet. Hell, I don't: I installed Dan's Guardian to filter my own browsing.
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

I don't tell you how to raise your children; why do you think you have the right to tell me how to raise mine?

Well, your kids have a few rights, like the right to a decent education, to not be neglected etc. If you're going to provide a decent balanced educational program for your kids, that's fine. The state should satisfy itself that you are doing so in the same way that it satisfies itself that your kids aren't neglected, or that you don't beat your wife - ie. it does nothing unless someone complains.

If you can't provide a decent education (because you don't have the skills or knowledge, or becaus eyou don't have the time) then you'll have to avail yourself of the state facility that is provided for you.
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

who won't sit down with their kids and discuss what Johnny learned in school today

If you think it is trivial to ask your kid what they learned in school today, you don't have kids. The "Leave it to Beaver" ideal of sitting around to dinner table and talking about their day in school doesn't exist. But, whatever, this is slashdot, you get what you pay for.
Re:Excellent by zonker · 2004-07-01 06:54 · Score: 0

nice work. now we just need that "parents guide to linux" and this will be really helpful! ;P

--
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:54 · Score: 0

oh yeah. Send your kid to a kiddie corral where the employees are making bottom of the barrel wages and wonder why they are unruly little shits. They would be better served by being raised by one of their parents.
Re:Excellent by Fat+Cow · 2004-07-01 06:57 · Score: 1

Techniques come, are honed, changed, and then go

the problem is that techniques do not go if they are enshrined in law by the government. old laws don't get cleaned up

--
stay frosty and alert
Re:Excellent by stienman · 2004-07-01 07:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

You have a very interesting style of discussing a very common belief. I'm assume you are not using particular language to offend - perhaps this is how you really talk about this subject.

There is some good in the idea that one should expose children to many variants of disease and illness to build a healthy immune system while they are young and physically able to handle the ravages of such bacteria and virus.

But that doesn't prove your point.

Subjecting a child's body to alcohol, nicotine, polio, etc is provably detrimental to their physical health. To say that there are no mental or emotional equivilants to these compounds is to dismiss decades and centuries of behavioral studies and observation.

"The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably in thought and act." -Orison Swett Marden

While you and I may disagree on what specific emotional and intellectual activites are worth restricting to adults I suspect you may agree that there are such limits you wouldn't want your children to pass. I could come up with a million hypotheticals, and many (many!) actual examples - but I'm sure you are equally imaginative.

-Adam
Re:Excellent by jadenyk · 2004-07-01 07:00 · Score: 1

Aha! You see my point! That is why parents SHOULD take the initiative and get involved - not try to let the government embed morals and lessons into their children.
And yes, the day I see one of my children on /. will be the last day they see a computer.
Re:Excellent by orthogonal · 2004-07-01 07:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

What are your values? Free porn for all kids? There are legitimate reasons to agree as a society that kids viewing porn is not a good thing. The government frequently passes laws restricting behavior of children in the interests of protecting them. (mandatory bike helmets, can't buy beer until you're 21, ban Joe Camel ads, etc.)

Well, perhaps there are legitimate reasons to keep kids from porn.

But there are certainly legitimate reasons to insist that parents are responsible to monitor their children's use of the internet and not expect the nanny-State to do it for them.

There's no mechanism for keeping porn form kids that doesn't involve the government judging content and registering that content or its viewers, or both.

And there is a chilling effect on free speech if one has to get government permission before distributing content or fear government prosecution afterwards. The cure is worse than the disease.

Let's recall the various works banned by the U.S. Government for "obscenity"; DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, James Joyce's Ulysses -- and even Voltaire's political/religious satire Candide -- all were banned from the United States by U.S. customs inspectors. And all, of course, are now considered classic works of literary art.

And as I noted previously, there is plenty of stuff on the internet that, while not obscene, probably shouldn't be viewed by children. Will you ban pictures of the Nazi Holocaust in your attempt to make the internet safe for children?

And the whole "for the children" argument is a straw-man, set up by fundamentalists who are using "the children" as an excuse to keep porn from adults by banning porn altogether.

Sorry -- there are many good things in this world that it's not at all good to expect the government to provide.

Health care is a good, and I suspect that many parents would desire free health care for their kids even more than government suppression of porn. Little Johnny will recover from seeing a "beaver shot" a lot more easily than he'll recover from leukemia.

But the same fundamentalist conservatives who swear up and down that it will be positively disastrous for government to get in the universal health care business -- even just for kids --, advocate government telling us what we can and cannot view -- for the benefit of "the children".

The same conservatives who explain that government regulation of business stifles innovation and creates a drag on the economy, want to regulate the 50 billion dollar porn industry out of business -- even though by far the vast majority of porn customers are adults.

The same conservatives who rail against "Big Government" apparently don't think it's too much for government to vet every one of million of web pages?

Please: the same fundamentalists who preach about "personal responsibility" every time they want to cut a welfare program or unemployment benefits, can't ask a middle-class parent able to afford a computer and an internet connection to watch what sites his kids visit?

--
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Re:Excellent by 'nother+poster · 2004-07-01 07:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

Home schooling and and private schooling are always options. Taxes pay for more than just schools and it is good that you should be responsible for more than just your own children. And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children. It is not just the family that raises the children, but the whole village.

<pa feedback>

Testing, testing. This thing on? Uhmm, fuck the village. Thank you.

</pa feedback>

Besides, it is more likely the parents undermining the schoold system. Parents come in bitching about little Sally getting an F even though she did no work. If parents backed up schools, then we would have better kids in society. Instead, we have parents teaching kids not to respect authority.

If by undermining the school system you include demanding my child's teachers actually work to educate their students rather than simply lecturing them out of a book, I'm guilty as charged. Also, if by teaching kids not to respect authority you mean teaching my children not to simply swallow what the teacher spews and take it as gospel, I am guily of that charge also.

There is a time to question authority, but that time is not when you should be learning to read and write.

When is it then? When they've dropped out? How about when they're in prison? Ooooh, I know. When they're standing in the soup line carrying their worldly goods under in their arms.
Re:Excellent by Jim_Maryland · 2004-07-01 07:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

You missed the point entirely. The parent post I responded to seemed to indicate that installing a filter was side stepping parenting by putting the responsibility on software.

Perhaps you should offer drugs to your children, so that they can learn to resist?

Now why would you think of doing this? Did it work for you or your kids? Come on, nobody would do that. Kids need to be taught the dangers of drugs (and lots of other things), but offering them drugs isn't the approach I would use.

Kids don't need all the temptations of the Internet. Hell, I don't: I installed Dan's Guardian to filter my own browsing.

Kids using the Internet is almost a requirement in schools today. My kids (ages 7 & 10) have both had reports that asked for one Internet resource as part of their reports. Now that doesn't mean you give the kids unlimited access to the Internet because of the content. You could almost look at the Internet as going to the mall. For the most part, the stores are OK for kids to be in. You might want to "filter" them to not go into a "Spencer's", "Victoria Secret", etc... because you don't agree with the content (NOTE: I'm not saying these stores are necessarily bad, but as an example, their goods could be seen as "bad" for young children). Installing a filter for browsing can be useful to keep the "bad" information from showing up in your kids browser. I don't actually have a filter installed on my system but rather I do sit with my kids when they are doing anything in a browser. My kids do enjoy a few of the sites (Barbie, NeoPets, YuGiOh (sp?), Lego, Bionicles, etc...) and once at that site I might let them on their own for a bit. They know how to operate the browser and they also know that if they see anything that they weren't expecting that they are to get myself or my wife immediately. The sites they visit are what we consider acceptable material. Now my son has asked to look for things on Google and we as parents have told him that he can't use that unless we are sitting there with him. For now we trust him to follow our wishes and until he shows that he can't be trusted, we'll continue to give him some level of freedom (in this case we don't "block" him from doing things on the computer).

Or more realistically, take them shopping and then yell at them when they want you to buy them something?

Well telling them that you aren't buying them anything depends on why you went shopping in the first place. If you were going because you needed to pick up some groceries, then you can tell the kids that you aren't buying them anything. If you take them to the store and tell them that you are buying them something, then by all means you should hold to your word.

Back to the topic though, filtering is a tool that parents may choose to use to protect children from information they deem inappropriate. As for using a filter for your own browsing habits("I installed Dan's Guardian to filter my own browsing"), I guess you feel that you can't make a good decision or wish to rely on someone elses opinion (which may or may not match your own). You probably shouldn't allow your children Internet access as you don't seem to be able to protect yourself from the content. My approach is to prepare my kids to judge for themselves, within reason for the age/maturity.
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-01 07:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

When a kid is in fifth grade, that is not the time to be questioning authority. Questioning authority at that age is just being disrepectful to your elders.

Teachers can not actually teach, they can only present material. If the kids do not want to learn, then they will not. Your attitude teaches your child to be a selfish prick that needs to be spoon fed. Have you actually taught in a classroom setting in the last decade? I have.

Kids need to respect thier teachers. Kids need to do the work. And parents have to back up the schools in making the children accountable for what they do and don't do. If you feel that a teacher is only doing a mediocre job, then explain your concerns privately either to the school administrators or the teacher. If necessary, teach your kids what you feel they are missing in school. Don't tear down the teacher in front of your kids, that will only do the teacher and your kids a disservice.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by the_mad_poster · 2004-07-01 07:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children. It is not just the family that raises the children, but the whole village.

Ummmmm. No.

We have the responsibility to protect your children from you, if necessary, the same way we have the responsibility to protect anyone else who needs it. We do not have the right, nor the responsibility, nor, for most of us, the inclination to tell you how to raise your children.

An excellent example of that is the recent decision that government can not, in fact, meddle in the affairs of parents who send their children to juvenile nudist camps. Of course, if they were sending them off to brothels, that would be a different story, and we would be obliged to step in and stop them because it would, in theory, be possible to show that such action is harmful.

The idea that I have either the right or the implied responsibility to assist other people in raising their children without an explicit request to do so is ridiculous.

--
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Re:Excellent by h4rm0ny · 2004-07-01 07:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

This brings us to environment. Only by exposing one's kids to life in the real world ... can those kids grow up strong and able to deal with life outside the Master Planned Community, lest they be killed in the waves of immigrations that overrun the MPCs

I only wish to add a little something to this, which is that children will not so much learn purely from exposure, but from watching their parents deal with the exposure. I guess most of what we're talking about with filtering is naked people. Well, a child seeing nudity may or may not learn anything, but watching whether his father pervs, looks away or just accepts will surely guide his future behaviour.

--

Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:42 · Score: 0

Better yet, why not expose them to the plague? Then the ones that survive will definitely be able to survive more later.

That's like saying...

Expose them to horse sex on the internet. The ones who don't become mentally scarred for life should be able to put up with anything.
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-01 07:46 · Score: 0

We see a child misbehaving in public, we morally have the responsibility to step and tell the child that they are doing wrong. We morally have the responsibility to be good role models in public.

If a kid throws a tantrum in public and the parents are correcting the child, then yes, we don't need to get involved. If instead say that a child is in the grocery and knocking stuff off the shelves, and the parents do nothing. We have a responsibility to scold that child (and the parents).

We are a society, and as a society we have a right and resposibility to instill what we consider tolerable and intolerable behavior, particularly the younger members of society.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by Vellmont · 2004-07-01 07:47 · Score: 1

There's a big difference between sheltering your kids, and feeding them crap. If you don't shelter kids from the "evils" of the world they'll be much more able to deal with the real world.

--
AccountKiller
Re:Excellent by v01d · 2004-07-01 07:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

When a kid is in fifth grade, that is not the time to be questioning authority. Questioning authority at that age is just being disrepectful to your elders.

Respect is earned. If my daughters's teacher is a complete idiot, I will tell them so.

My sister's third grade teacher told the class that red headed children aren't as smart. If you silently accept that from a teacher you are a pathetic excuse for a parent, and are doing a disservice to your child.

Kids need to respect thier teachers.

Teachers need to earn that respect. I have rarely seen a respectable teacher not get the respect they deserve.
Re:Excellent by e9th · 2004-07-01 08:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

I don't think it's trivial. Parenting requires effort. That's the problem.
Re:Excellent by stienman · 2004-07-01 08:08 · Score: 1

I'm confused. Are you saying that I either should shelter my kids, or feed them crap? Or are you saying that they are the same, and you disrecommend both?

Actually, I guess I'm just confused as to how this applies to my comments. Are you trying to disprove, prove, or add to what I said? Did I say something ambiguous which you wanted to disambiguate?

Are you saying that there's nothing so "evil" that any child of any age should not be restricted from viewing, participating, enabling? Of course, I don't recall saying anything about evil - that's fairly subjective stuff.

Perhaps you're just saying that there's a fine balance between too much and too little sheltering?

Please help, I'm lost.

Sincerely,
-Adam
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-01 08:10 · Score: 1

No. For a student-teacher relationship, the default attitude should be respect. Respect can be lost, but the default is that it should be given.

If your daughter does not do her school work, who is at fault? I would say she is. If a teacher assigns a book report, and you say she does not need to do it because the theacher is an idiot; then you are just being a bad parent.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by the_mad_poster · 2004-07-01 08:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

We see a child misbehaving in public, we morally have the responsibility to step and tell the child that they are doing wrong.

That's ridiculous. If I had children, I wouldn't trust 90% of you yahoos to "pitch in". What you and I consider "morally" acceptable are, quite possibly, light years apart. I don't give a rat's ass if a kid wanders around in public swearing and being "vulgar" and etc. etc. However, lots of other people do. Who's the one with the right to enforce their moral opinion here? If some bible thumping klan member explains to their child that it's morally wrong to say "fuck" but morally right to refer to black people as "niggers" and gay people as "faggots", do I have the moral right and obligation to go over and beat the kid in the head with my ideals which are completely opposite of that? Hardly. I may WANT to, but I don't have any RIGHT to.

--
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Re:Excellent by japhmi · 2004-07-01 08:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children.

No, you don't. As long as a parent isn't harming their child, they have the innate right to raise him or her as they see fit.

If that child doesn't live up to the societies standards, than society has to take it up with the parents - it's their right and responsibility.

Parents come in bitching about little Sally getting an F even though she did no work. If parents backed up schools, then we would have better kids in society.

If the schools backed the parents up in return, then it'd be great. If I were a teacher, and a parent came in asking why Little Sally got an F, I'd point out the requirements for each grade level - and show how Sally did not meet them. (Then again, I'd have the policy that one of my teachers had explicit - if you turn in every assignment, and they're all complete, you will pass the class.)

My kids - they're being homeschooled. 1st, my wife and I feel that it's best for my family. 2nd, we can't give them the kind of education we want for them in school.

--
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Re:Excellent by It'sYerMam · 2004-07-01 08:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

This seems like the most intelligent approach, although not always the most practical. It's not always possible to be around when your kids are at the computer, and it's not always nice to have to be with them when they're googling.
However, the trust element is an important thing for a child to learn. Everyone goes through a stage of learning about breaking trust and both being found out and not being found out. It us up to the parent to both let the child explore and then break the trust, but also then find out and rebuke them.
This way, they find out what it's really like, and they get taught it's bad, as well. If you never let them do something wrong, then as soon as it's out of your hands they'll most likely be doing much worse things than looking up something unsavoury. On the other hand, if you never find out, they never learn that it's bad, and so will continue.
In my opinion, a web filter could be useful for informing parents of inappropriate activity; i.e. they have fulfilled the "release" stage, and this helps them to fulfil the "rebuke" stage.

--
im in ur .sig, writin ur memes.
Re:Excellent by ichimunki · 2004-07-01 08:34 · Score: 1

The parent post I responded to seemed to indicate that installing a filter was side stepping parenting by putting the responsibility on software.

I wasn't trying to imply that so much as saying that I think the filters are ineffective tools for truly achieving the goals desired. Your approach is more of what I expect thinking parents to do. That way the children are exposed to the thinking behind the values and can actually internalize those values more readily, rather than simply obeying the rules because mommy and daddy said so. That works for toddlers, but it's not a successful long-term approach.

--
I do not have a signature
Re:Excellent by 'nother+poster · 2004-07-01 08:36 · Score: 1

Respect is NEVER the default. Civilized behavior is a default, but not respect. Respect is something that is built and earned.
Re:Excellent by Rude+Turnip · 2004-07-01 08:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Subjecting a child's body to alcohol, nicotine, polio, etc is provably detrimental to their physical health."

Alcohol and nicotine are drugs, not diseases, so it makes no sense to give them any when they're young. What do you think they put in polio vaccines, or any vaccine for that matter?

--
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:43 · Score: 0

"I don't give a rat's ass if a kid wanders around in public swearing and being "vulgar" and etc. etc."

That doesn't have anything to do with morality, it's called being polite.
Re:Excellent by Some+Dumbass... · 2004-07-01 08:49 · Score: 1

And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children.

No, you don't. As long as a parent isn't harming their child, they have the innate right to raise him or her as they see fit.

The community does have the right to step in if the parent is hurting the child, like you said. They also have the right to step in if the child is hurting the community. E.g. if you teach your kids that throwing firecrackers at the neighbor's dog is okay, or that beating up other kids at school is okay, the community is bound to step in at some point.

Within those two boundaries there's a _lot_ of grey area. Yes, parents have a lot of rights, but so does everyone else.
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-01 08:58 · Score: 0

A teacher holds at least a Bachelor Degree. In most states, a teacher must also pass certification. They have already earned respect just by being a teacher. They have earned respect by choosing to teach the next generation. A teacher should be respected by default. Some professions get repect automatically, Policemen, Firemen, Doctors, and Teachers deserve respect just by choosing thier profession.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by holt · 2004-07-01 08:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

Kids need to do the work.

Not necessarily. Many gifted students don't need to do the many repetitive exercises that teachers assign the entire class, because they can pick up the ideas after the first or second time through. If the kid can prove they know the material, then why make them waste their time (and yours)? Let them do something else.
Re:Excellent by the_mad_poster · 2004-07-01 08:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

Whether or not a person believes that a word should be used in a public place because it is wrong is a function of morality.

Whether or not a word should be used in a public place because other people believe it should not be used in a public place is a function of politeness.

Therefore, telling a child that they should not use a word in public because other people believe it should not be used is a function of politeness.

Telling a child that they should not use a word in a public place because it is wrong is a function of morality.

Short of vulgarity laws existing to enforce a community's veiw of acceptable behavior, you have niether the right to be surrounded by polite people, nor the right to enforce your moral viewpoint on anyone else.

This difference of belief we have here is a function of social liberalism/conservatism. Liberals hate it when someone tries to enforce an arbitrary code of conduct on them. Conservatives want their own arbitrary code of conduct enforced on other people. To be honest, I view the conservative position as utterly idiotic. The idea that other people should presume to know what's better for me than I do when I am not afflicted by anything that would impair judgement and I'm not impacting any unwilling third party negatively is ludicrous. Obviously, society needs to protect itself to a reasonable extent, and that's when we hit laws. The argument is over just how much society needs to be saved from itself.

--
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-01 09:02 · Score: 1

You missed my point. The parents are saying that little Sally deserves to pass even if she does nothing, because it must be the teachers fault.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by BK425 · 2004-07-01 09:04 · Score: 1

What is society? What gives society the right to determine how parents raise their children? (serious questions).
I'm guessing you're a public school teacher, wich is a shame because my mom (bless her) would never have described parents in her classroom as "bitching". Teachers have the JOB of -explaining- to an upset parent WHY Sally got an F. They do not have a right to expect that no one will be upset or disagree with their decisions any more then anyone else can expect that.
I wouldn't create a child in a society that could legally interfere with my raising of it because I would never accept the theft of such a serious responsibility. If I did have a child, I would teach it to understand how systems work, that they had to respect other peoples time, and that those systems should be expected to respect them too. Any authority that is afraid of QUESTIONs is afraid of CRITICAL THINKING. You cannot think critically without asking questions... and I certainly wouldn't turn over a child of mine to a teacher that didn't expect and welcome that.
There are problems with our schools, there certainly are problems with how some parent and all of those are being made worse by discouraging children from questioning authority in a courteous and rational manner.
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 09:11 · Score: 0

They may have missed that point because that's not what you typed.
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 09:14 · Score: 0

> Then again, I'd have the policy that one of my teachers had explicit - if you turn in every assignment, and they're all complete, you will pass the class.

"If you don't like your job, don't quit. Go in every day and do a really half-assed job." - Homer Simpson

One questions what is learned from this, as well. If I do not understand the mathematics, but I write random numbers in all the answer boxes, exactly what have I learned? How to create a corporate budget?
Re:Excellent by 'nother+poster · 2004-07-01 09:29 · Score: 1

Teachers can not actually teach, they can only present material. If the kids do not want to learn, then they will not. Your attitude teaches your child to be a selfish prick that needs to be spoon fed. Have you actually taught in a classroom setting in the last decade? I have.

Huh? What the hell are they being paid for? Teaching is the presentation of information and materials in such a way that the student is able to assimilate and retain it. If a teacher is incapable of performing this task, they need to get a different job. As to my attitude, it implies that I intend for my child to be a well educated and useful member of society.

Ah, now that I have reached the end of your paragraph, I see the light. You were a teacher, and feel that the children should sit down, shut up, and not bother the teacher. Yeah, I'm fairly selfish in my desires too.

Kids need to respect thier teachers. Kids need to do the work. And parents have to back up the schools in making the children accountable for what they do and don't do. If you feel that a teacher is only doing a mediocre job, then explain your concerns privately either to the school administrators or the teacher. If necessary, teach your kids what you feel they are missing in school. Don't tear down the teacher in front of your kids, that will only do the teacher and your kids a disservice.

You say that children need to respect their teachers. Fine. Earn it. As to the kids doing the work, they need to become proficient at the materials. Doing work just to do work, or because that's the way we do it, is simply a cop-out by some educators. Oh, and as for the teaching my children what I think they are missing at school, I do. Sometimes before the classroom teacher gets to a subject. Having a teacher threaten to flunk a child for not using tally marks for basic math when my child could do it in his head was the last straw.

I agree that students need to be responsible, but it is a two way street. The teachers need to be responsible also.
Re:Excellent by sketerpot · 2004-07-01 09:31 · Score: 1

That's the only place you can filter. Web filters don't work worth a damn, and you can't always be hovering over the kid monitoring (at least not without some serious heavy-handedness and dedication), but I say the parents should get to the kid's mind before the rest of the world does, and the kid will be prepared. The best and only filter exists between chair and keyboard.
Re:Excellent by 'nother+poster · 2004-07-01 09:32 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Simply incorrect. None of they are owed respect by default. Now mind you, you had better treat the police officer with civil behavior, because most states have laws allowing them to areast you if you do not.
Re:Excellent by BK425 · 2004-07-01 09:34 · Score: 1

Okay, now that I've brought my BP down from being told that society should raise my children... I'd like to give -my- free advice ; ) worth every penny or double your money back. This from a never married /no kids single type guy:
Computer use is a social activity.
The computer should be huge, have the largest display you can afford and live right in the middle of the living room (perhaps supplanting the tv). And, it should be "the" computer... it's a learning tool and if you learn with your family get the benefit of sharing perspectives and teaching each other. Junior, does -not- get a game system for hours and hours of alone time in the basement, there's no old PC in the bedroom. We are engaging our minds and our family mind-tool together in a common living area in much the same manner that Thomas Jefferson did leaning against the neighbors fence and asking him about the Tories in the next county. Doing that, eventually, it will be natural for Junior to stumble across -all- -sorts- of interesting information that then becomes an entre for discussion about how we feel about the quarterly GDP or public education statistics or goats who like humans. I know I'm not supposed to say this on /., but computers really don't have to be insulative devices that cocoon us up in our special protective hideout... we do not have to turn into a world of antisocial, interpersonally incapable, ... oh heck nevermind. bk425 boydk425
Re:Excellent by 'nother+poster · 2004-07-01 09:34 · Score: 1

Oops, that should read None of them...
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 09:42 · Score: 0

(My response assumes you are from the US, but the precepts should apply in any free society)

As a society, we have the right to tell anyone anything, for the most part. But simply having the right to tell someone something does not mean that we have the right to force that opinion on someone else. And we, as a people, also have the right to ignore you or respond in kind. This concept should not be unfamiliar to you if you've read many discussions on this site.

Good luck, and try reading your history books...
Re:Excellent by japhmi · 2004-07-01 09:43 · Score: 1

Putting random numbers in the answer boxes isn't doing the assignment. Assignments can be designed to detect this.

--
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Re:Excellent by sageman · 2004-07-01 10:15 · Score: 1

And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children.

Obviously you aren't talking about America, since that clearly descibes socialism, pretty much a perfect example, and America is not socialist, but rather a democratic republic.

As far as filters (to go on topic) I've set up my computer as a proxy via Squid and blocked my brother from accessing websites to view cheat codes for video games because I thought it was funny. Worked really well (I've removed it since then of course!).

As far as porn, my parents have never had problems with me looking at it (I'm 19 now, been looking at porn for about 10 years). I recently introduced my Dad to the sites ogrish.com and rotten.com. Been watching R-rated movies with my parents and younger brothers since I was 6, as long as I can remember back. Been listening to vulgar music with my parents ever since I found out about music, say when I was 9 or so.

By the way, since I should mention this, this type of activity has done nothing to harm me since my responsible parents did sit down and talk it all over with me long ago. I am an honor student at a considered-tough college, have never had any encounters with 'the law', never a problem in school or elsewhere, never used any drugs, never drank alcohol (I had wine for new years with my parents, like one glass, a few times, okay), never smoked, and don't plan to do any of these things.

--
--- "To iterate is human, to recurse divine." -- Robert Heller
Re:Excellent by Jim_Maryland · 2004-07-01 10:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

I agree that filters may not be the most effective tool, but they can be useful, particularly in preventing accidental viewing of some of the more extreme material on the web. The first example I can think of would be something like the whitehouse.com vs whitehouse.gov (I don't know if this is still a problem).

As far as the long term approach, if I'm trying to filter when they are in their mid-teens, likely I messed up when they were younger. In my opinion, a value system has been instilled at a much younger age. I'm sure that my kids will get a level of curiosity at some point but I don't want to expose them too early.

PS: Sorry for misinterpreting.
Re:Excellent by Alexis+de+Torquemada · 2004-07-01 10:27 · Score: 1

No, you don't. As long as a parent isn't harming their child, they have the innate right to raise him or her as they see fit.
Yes, but the definition of "to harm" is very elastic, and some societies use it as a justification for a vast array of "protection" measures versus the parents. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. For example, if I was a Protestant fundamentalist, I could justify just about any measure to make your kids, or anyone else's, believe in Jesus Christ, even if it means forcefully separating them from their parents. After all, if going to Hell isn't harm, what is?

--
I love C++
Re:Excellent by SillySlashdotName · 2004-07-01 11:01 · Score: 1

Such blatant stupidity requires comment.

Moderators on crack. What is insightful about this posting?

Platitudes and BS do not equate to insight.

Single parents and parents struggling to make ends meet do NOT have home schooling or private schooling as options. Who was it that, when told the peasants had no bread said "Let them eat cake!"* Their statement, like yours, reveals a total lack of insight, understanding, or empathy for others. And it is exactly people with no understanding, insight, or empathy that pass laws and picket the school board to 'dumb down' the curriculum and 'let no child fall behind', require expensive special teachers and accommodations for 'mainstreamed' kids, and require so much oversight that the administrators outnumber the teachers.

Taxes SPECIFIED ON THE BALLOT to support the school system BETTER NOT PAY FOR MORE THAN JUST SCHOOLS! Why should I, as a single person with no children, be required to pay taxes to support schools I do not use? Yet I have no choice in paying the taxes.

As a society you DO NOT have any right to tell me (or anyone) how to raise children. What is it that you are thinking gives you that right? Is it a law, or is it somewhere in the Constitution? I am not familiar with any substantiation to your statement.

That quote about it taking a village to raise a child was nonsense and BS when it was first uttered, and remains nonsense and BS now. In fact you must agree as you then go on to say that "If parents backed up schools, then we would have better kids in society. " So you are claiming that it is the parents that are doing the raising, not the village.

* Marie Antoinette. Lost her head in the French Revolution.

--
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Re:Excellent by midknight32 · 2004-07-01 12:14 · Score: 1

This difference of belief we have here is a function of social liberalism/conservatism. Liberals hate it when someone tries to enforce an arbitrary code of conduct on them. Conservatives want their own arbitrary code of conduct enforced on other people. To be honest, I view the conservative position as utterly idiotic. The idea that other people should presume to know what's better for me than I do when I am not afflicted by anything that would impair judgement and I'm not impacting any unwilling third party negatively is ludicrous. Obviously, society needs to protect itself to a reasonable extent, and that's when we hit laws. The argument is over just how much society needs to be saved from itself.

Oddly enough, there are enough so-called "liberals" out there who know better than I do what's good for me, will tell me so, and if I was in the wrong "socially progressive" place and decided that I knew best and acted that way instead of in the "progressive, approved" manner, may end up in a world of hurt.

Such speeched are common among the old soviet communist tracts, as well as among many radical groups. Forex, recently , Hillary Clinton at a fund-raiser for Barbara Boxer. :

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you. We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you,"

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good," the former first lady admitted.

Of course she knows what teh common good is better than we do and should trust her judgement.
Re:Excellent by Kadmos · 2004-07-01 12:15 · Score: 1

When a kid is in fifth grade, that is not the time to be questioning authority. Questioning authority at that age is just being disrepectful to your elders.

A kid in fith grade shouldn't be questioning authority? What about abused children, when should they disrepect the authority abusing them?

Perhaps you should tell us so we all know how we should behave.

And yes teachers *can* teach, that is what makes the difference between a crap teacher and a good teacher. You should know that, if you don't, perhaps it is time to reconsider your position.

You are typical of teachers I see every day. Out of all the hundreds of people I meet and talk to every day teachers (as a group) are the most difficult. I prefer to deal with drug crazed idiots than teachers. Why? Teachers are, by far, the most demanding, arrogant, unpleasent, selfish and self-rightious people I have ever had the mispleasure to talk to.

Children *do* need to learn from teachers *and* parents, but from what you have just said it seems apparent to me that you don't know a thing about it. I will ceratainly be teaching my children to disrespect pricks like you.
Re:Excellent by Sam3.14 · 2004-07-01 12:22 · Score: 1

You must be an extremely sick and twisted person. I feel sorry for your kids.
Re:Excellent by the_mad_poster · 2004-07-01 13:09 · Score: 1

There's a difference between economic and social liberalism/conservatism. I am socially liberal and economically conservative. I don't buy this nonsense about shifting resources like Comrade Clinton is talking about, but I don't buy the moralistic bullshit that morons like Ashcroft spew, either. I am socially liberal and economically conservative.

Of course, if you take it to an extreme - like in your radical left example - you wind up with a bunch of people who think they know better than the people they're acting like. Very bizarre. The same thing happens on the right, however.

--
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Re:Excellent by _Sharp'r_ · 2004-07-01 13:22 · Score: 1

And of course the corollary, those who want to sacrifice freedom for the safety of being a slave without responsibility for themselves.

That's gotten pretty popular lately.

--
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Re:Excellent by zsau · 2004-07-01 14:10 · Score: 1

Why should anyone limit what anyone else sees? I don't care whether it's parents 'protecting' children, governments 'protecting' citizens, or anything else. By the time they're old enough to care about looking at porn (etc. etc.), they're old enough to make their own informed decisions.

I would still be interested in hearing contrary points of view. The sources of information on which I've based my opinion may have been biased...

--
Look out!
Re:Excellent by sonamchauhan · 2004-07-01 21:49 · Score: 1

> > Kids need to respect thier teachers.

> Teachers need to earn that respect.
> I have rarely seen a respectable teacher
> not get the respect they deserve.

Wrong. Teachers should get respect by _default_ because they are elder to the kids and because are partially responsible for them (as far as educating them is concerned). Teachers should only lose respect when they provably do something wrong to the kids (like abuse, or your example of a teacher calling red headed children dumb).

Children are NOT grown adults, they are being _trained_ to be good adults.

The teacher should not _have_ to be a educational version of Patch Adams (or even be exceptional) to be respected... just a human being doing his job.
Re:Excellent by stienman · 2004-07-02 00:14 · Score: 1

I'm glad you agree that there are compounds and diseases we don't want to expose children to. If you think polio is a bad example because we have a vaccine then I submit that HIV/AIDS is a disease/virus which we do not want children to be exposed to.

So I fail to see exactly what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that there are no emotional or mental equivilants to drugs and diseases that are obviously physically detrimental?

Perhaps you are making the point that even adults shouldn't be exposed to or using these substances/diseases. However, children and teenagers are notorious for making bad decisions without fully understanding the long term consequences. Shouldn't we limit the ability to make exceptionally life altering decisions until they reach a level a maturity where they are able to comprehend the consequences of their actions?

-Adam
Re:Excellent by v01d · 2004-07-02 00:26 · Score: 1

Children are NOT grown adults, they are being _trained_ to be good adults.

Not always. Teachers can also train children to be horrible adults. Teachers can train children to be sheep, or teachers can train children to be reasonable adults. I've seen more teachers attempting the former.

The teacher should not _have_ to be a educational version of Patch Adams (or even be exceptional) to be respected... just a human being doing his job.

Well then we're using the word respect differently. I'm all for being polite and well mannered in all but the most extreme cases. I don't think that is respect. I will not tell my child to yield their opinion to their teacher's opinion simply because of age or a teaching certificate.

Remember a teacher is "just a human being doing his job." No different than a janitor, developer, CEO or stripper. Be nice to everyone, but no one's opinion deserves anymore deference because of their profession.
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-02 00:30 · Score: 1

Those repetive exercises do more than reinforce the subject matter. They teach discipline and study skills. Trust me. Not to brag, but I was one of those gifted students. Not learning how to study did not help when I got to college.

It is another topic entirely about the grouping of gifted, average, and dumb in the classroom. The gifted kids need to be challenged. That is not going to happen if one needs to teach to the slowst student in the room and the room contains kids that are below average.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-02 00:54 · Score: 1

Actually, I was a substitute. Though several family members are currently teachers.

I have seen trends first hand of kids becoming more disrepectful. The current culture amongst kids is that it is cool to be stupid. It is undesirable to be educated or cultured. Parents are telling thier kids that they do not need to be responsible for thier actions. Kids play the racism or sexism cards at the drop of a hat.

And as for abuse, what should kids do if parents abuse them? More kids are abused by family members than any other group.

My suggestion to you, if you don't like teachers attitudes, then homeschool your brats.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-02 01:08 · Score: 1

Freedom of speech. I have every right to express my beliefs. In fact, I have an ethical obligation to express them.

While I am pro-choice, I fully support anti-abortion groups to express thier opinion.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-02 01:19 · Score: 1

How hypocritical.

Single parents and parents struggling to make ends meet do NOT have home schooling or private schooling as options.

Why should I, as a single person with no children, be required to pay taxes to support schools I do not use?

How in the world do you reconcile those two statements? I know, you can't. But presuming you are not a troll, I would advise you to read up on social contract theory.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by gillbates · 2004-07-02 01:21 · Score: 1

Ah, right, but what exactly constitutes a decent education is a matter of considerable debate. If my idea of a decent education is offensive to your morals, do I still have the right to subject your children to it?

--
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-02 01:41 · Score: 1

For your first two questions- read up on social contracts. Might also help to read up on the 5 wthical states.

The Sally example is misunderstood it seems. Say Sally's parents are sent several progress reports that Sally is not doing her work and is in danger of failing. Where does the parents get off yelling at the Teacher for daring to fail thier darling?

It is not critical thinking that is the problem. It is the courteousness that is.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by BK425 · 2004-07-02 02:01 · Score: 1

Social contracts are neither. Neither you nor society is obligated by agreements that sociology profs make up based on wide trends they see in society.
So, while it's true that a parent has a personal -obligation- to ensure that their kids diet has a reasonable split of nutrients and individuals of responsible outlook do so ... people seeking to say there's some "contract" related to that are simply pushing down the slope of relinquishing their personal responsibility (getting out of having to parent) to government. And government is obviously and quite completely NOT up to the job. (Google Wenatchee Washington DSHS...)
This is the second thing I've seen you add to "the Sally example". Your original statement said nothing of progress reports and adding it now changes the earlier statement. As I said in my first post; a teacher has an obligation to explain to Sallys parents why she's getting an F it's their job. Now that you've modified the example... I'm glad you agree with me. Certainly, as responsible individuals, we should expect other people (regardless of age or marital status) to be civil.
Re:Excellent by Rude+Turnip · 2004-07-02 02:02 · Score: 1

I think you're reading into it a little too much. I mean it is good to expose children to things that they can build an immunity to when they're younger, like colds and chicken pox. The only way you can do that with harder diseases like Polio is via vaccine. In the case of alcohol, giving a child a beer is not going to help him build up a tolerance against alcohol, because drugs don't work that way.

--
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-02 02:16 · Score: 0

I don't follow the argument:
Someone installs Dan's Guardian because he knows he can't resist the temptation to waste time on, say, porn sites (or Slashdot);
Therefore he's unable to protect himself.
FYI, Dan's Guardian is highly configurable; installing it doesn't give "Dan" any control over your browsing.
And why is it odd for an adult to want to install a porn-blocker for himself? How is it fundamentally any different than an ad-blocker?
Re:Excellent by holt · 2004-07-02 02:26 · Score: 1

I don't think they do anything but frustrate the gifted students. I too was in that category, and I know that I had opportunities to skip a lot of the boring repetitive stuff, which allowed me to explore my interests. On the other hand, there were other kids who were probably just as "smart", but they didn't have those opportunities and they grew up dreading school. The one in particular that I am thinking of ended up with a number of discipline problems and eventually dropped out of school.

The fact of the matter is that even in college, I don't have to do repetitive exercises to understand material. (Other than foreign languages, that is). I had the opportunity to study abroad in Ireland, which showed me that other systems of education work much better for my style of learning. Over there they expect you to manage your own understanding, and as such don't assign weekly homeworks or things like that.
Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-02 02:31 · Score: 0

Now at what age do you think a boy is going to say, "Daddy, I saw a picture of a naked woman, and I wasn't expecting it! What should I do?!", instead of trying to see more as soon as he possibly can?
Re:Excellent by SillySlashdotName · 2004-07-02 04:27 · Score: 1

Not a troll.

Reconciling those two statements is not required. They are two stand alone statements and do not require reconciliation, unless you are trolling, in which case I am wasting my time.

You say that home schooling and private schooling are "always" options to public schooling.

My first quoted line in your post states that that is not the case and mentions two cases where it is NOT an option which means public school is the only option in those cases. I am directly refuting your statement that "Home schooling and and private schooling are always options."

The second question you quoted from my post is clearcut and agan stands alone, although in the context of the posting you were replying to, it makes even more sense. Their contention is that public schooling is not providing the education your "social contract theory" says I am to get for my tax dollars.

In addition, if "home schooling and private schooling are always options" then public school is neither a requirement nor a necessity, so WHY AM I BEING REQUIRED TO PAY FOR IT?

Your "social contract theory" says that everyone supports an infrastructure that benefits everyone. For example, the fire department or 911 operators. How does public school benefit the homeschooling parent? How does overcrowded classrooms, dumbed down curicula, inflated grading, and the other well publicised ills of public schools benefit me, a person with no children? It is not benefiting the children, how could it possibly be benefiting me?

Requiring people who do not have children, homeschooling parents, and those who have chosen to pay for private schooling to pay taxes for public school as well reminds me of the custom of bulling the family of the executed prisoner for the bullet used by the firing squad.

--
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Re:Excellent by swv3752 · 2004-07-02 06:44 · Score: 1

One has the option to not go into work. There are consequences if you choose that option. It is not a contradiction to state that private school is an option even if it is not a realistic choice for some. But you state that private schools is not an option but that you will not provide funding for public schools. Then what does that leave for education options?

Many of the ills of public education revolve around not enough money. Many of the other ills are traced back to bad parents. Who do you think is demanding dumbed down curricula?

Now if only parents should pay for schooling, then they might as well opt for private, but regardless, all the money problems of public schools now will be further exacerbated.

I suspose that you were never a child. Or if you were a child, you never went to public school. Even if your neighborhood has never had a fire, don't you think paying for fire service is a good thing? Some things you pay for that only provide an indirect benefit.

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Excellent by hobit · 2004-07-05 06:25 · Score: 1

Society, on the whole, needs to answer this one.
There are somet things society agrees all children should learn (reading for example) and some things society agrees isn't proper (killing everyone with red hair). On issues that are strongly held by people of differing opinions (religion as an example) society's answer is to leave it to the parents.

--
As Nietsche famously said, "If you stare too long into the Abyss, 1d4 Tanar'ri of random type will attack you."
Re:Excellent by SillySlashdotName · 2004-07-06 10:31 · Score: 1

Slight correction. I stated that private schooling is not an option FOR EVERONE - and specified several catagories who might have a dificult time managing to pay for private schooling, or be able to provide food as well as home schooling.

If you do not have the required money, private school is not an option. Private schools are NOT REQUIRED to accept students who can not pay the tuition.

I also stated that, if public schools are not providing benefit to me, I should not be FORCED to pay for their disfunctional continuation through school tax assessments.

You mentioned a 'social contract theory', and I asked what is the quid pro quo, what am I getting for my school tax dollar when the public schools are NOT routinely turning out educated graduates?

YOU said that home schooling and private schools are always options. I said that those are NOT always an option that can be chosen. In addition, the parents of children who use private schools and home schooling ARE ALSO REQUIRED TO PAY TAXES THAT SUPPORT PUBLIC SCHOOLS. They are getting hit twice, once for an option they have decided does not meet their needs. Not very equitable.

Another correction. IN MY OPINION, many of the ills of public education resolves back to trying to do too much - whether through good intentions or through imposed requirements. Of course there is not enough money to do everything! But maybe public schools should not be trying to do 'everything' - maybe they should be concentrating on eduating their students, and providing value for hte tax dollars they are sucking up.

Now if only parents should pay for schooling, then they might as well opt for private, but regardless, all the money problems of public schools now will be further exacerbated.

Exactly. If those who used the system were required to pay the bill for using the system, then they would, hopefully, shop for the best value - and public education would have to struggle to attain standards they are not currently able to meet. Public schools would lose head count by an alarming amount, until or unless they were able to provide either a superior education, or a cheaper price - or both! - when compared to private schooling.

I suspose that you were never a child.

Seems I have been feeding the trolls.

--
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Re:Excellent by sonamchauhan · 2004-07-08 04:03 · Score: 1

> I'm all for being polite and well mannered in all but the most extreme cases.
> I don't think that is respect.
You're mostly right. I'll put it like this: Respect includes treating people nicely, but yes, it includes much more than that...

> I will not tell my child to yield their opinion to
> their teacher's opinion simply because of age or a teaching certificate.
But you should. Within a certain restricted domain (that of education), the child _SHOULD_ yield to a teacher's opinion.

Student to teacher: "Instead of sitting in class, I am of the opinion I should wander down the school hallways, arms outstretched, making cute airplane noises"
Teacher to student: "But _I_ am of the opinion you should sit in class and pay attention to what I am _teaching_ you"

The teacher should win this one.

Also, remember what I said about "restricted domain"?

Teacher to student: "I am of the opinion you should accompany me to the empty classroom and take off your clothers"
Student to teacher: "I am of the opinion you should be complained about & fired & arrested without further delay"

The student should win this one.

I have said this before and will say it again: The teacher should NOT have to be an educational Patch Adams to gain respect from students. If the teacher has the talent, and wants to, that's nice. But don't force teachers to a standard you don't meet for yourself at home. You probably have your child's respect, don't you? Note, it's not just because you're a gem of a parent. Most children grows up with an ingrained respect of elders for being able to do what they cannot ("ooh, pick me up daddy, please!"), that changes over time. Making sure a child retains respect for elders in general is a good thing and is a pretty important aspect of being a good parent.

Self-discipline. Respect for elders. These are good words, not bad ones. And they work well with words like empowerment, creativity, freedom.

"Remember a teacher is "just a human being doing his job." No different than a janitor, developer, CEO or stripper. Be nice to everyone, but no one's opinion deserves anymore deference because of their profession."
Yes, be nice to everyone - the CEO and the janitor and the stripper. And more than that - *Love* every person. But if you teach your child to respect a stripper's or prostitute's *profession*, if you explicitly or implicitly encourage them to view that as an acceptable alternative, you're doing them and yourself a disservice.
Re:Excellent by phoenix_rizzen · 2004-07-13 06:26 · Score: 1

Besides, it is more likely the parents undermining the schoold system. Parents come in bitching about little Sally getting an F even though she did no work. If parents backed up schools, then we would have better kids in society. Instead, we have parents teaching kids not to respect authority.

This has nothing to do with parents undermining the schools. This has everything to with with schools being run by spineless idiots, and the lack of support schools receive from their higher-ups. The various levels of government are removing the abilities of the schools to punish children. This has nothing to with the parents. It's almost against the law now to fail a student.

We need legislators that are willing to stand up to others and to give the school administrators the tools they need to stand up to the parents. If a kid is not doing the work, fail them. Don't pass them if they don't deserve it. Punish a student if they do something wrong, and a "slap on the wrist" or detention is not enough.
Re:Excellent by delorean · 2004-07-14 07:38 · Score: 1

Respect is earned. If my daughters's teacher is a complete idiot, I will tell them so.
No, no, no. The Teacher-- no hell, your fellow wo|man-- should have you and your children's respect to start with. If your kids can't respect anyone because they haven't earned it, then how are they going to be able to respect his|her certain inalienable rights?
A teacher who has a room full of kids who gives him|her no respect and who has no authority (which they hardly have now, either) will not be able to teach a damn thing.
Respect does not mean dumb subjectivity.
Whether or not they can keep and maintain that respect is up to them. The stupid teacher who made the comment about redheads lost all respect and needs to retire from teaching.

--
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835

Fun with Filtering... by Kjuib · 2004-07-01 05:31 · Score: 5, Funny

A nice how-to. This could be fun in the hands of kids to filter their parents Internet to only include toys and cartoons and... uhm... slashdot...

--
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers

Re:Fun with Filtering... by OhHellWithIt · 2004-07-01 06:21 · Score: 0

and... uhm... slashdot...

No way am I letting my kid read slashdot. She'll think I'm a moron.

Wait.... Too late. She already figured it out.

--
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Re:Fun with Filtering... by Tezkah · 2004-07-01 06:47 · Score: 1

Sex toys, explicit cartoons, and slashdot!?

What kind of _PERVERTED GEEK_ are you trying to raise!?

Why Censor? by Milo+of+Kroton · 2004-07-01 05:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

Really, is only naked women or men. In Mozilla Firebird, I have setted it to "Block images from goat.cx" (not visit!) and if my kids pictures of naked people find, fine. I did as child. I run linux but don't need this.

As friend said "You Americans are so puritanical!"

--
Read journal when you are not understand

Re:Why Censor? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:35 · Score: 2, Funny

1. if my kids pictures of naked people find, fine. I did as child.

2. I run linux...

Q.E.D.
Re:Why Censor? by eln · 2004-07-01 05:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Man, if you think the only things that you can find on the Internet are naked people and goatse, you must have been on the Internet for all of about 8 seconds.

Parents need to protect their kids from extreme pornography, highly graphic images (like rotten.com and the like), and websites that foster extreme viewpoints and hate speech, like the Aryan Nations. These things can have a much more profound impact on a child's immature mind than it would on a mature and rational adult's mind.

What your personal threshold for your family is as to how extreme content has to be before you feel the need to protect your kids from it is dependent entirely on your own belief system. This is why systems that allow the parents to decide criteria, rather than depending on things like Net Nanny, is so attractive.
Re:Why Censor? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:37 · Score: 0

Why delete you replies to your Journal, Milo? Is that not censorship?
Re:Why Censor? by dtrent · 2004-07-01 05:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

Really, is only naked women or men. In Mozilla Firebird, I have setted it to "Block images from goat.cx" (not visit!) and if my kids pictures of naked people find, fine. I did as child. I run linux but don't need this.

Well, there's naked people, and then there's porn. Personally I'm more worried about sites like bangbus which come 1/2 inch from condoning rape. I don't want my son treating women like that, and I don't want my daughter being treated like that, clothes on or off.

As friend said "You Americans are so puritanical!"

And that is just insulting. How do you resolve the above stereotype with the fact that most the porn *origninates* in the States? I suppose you think each and every German wears liederhosen too?
Re:Why Censor? by Milo+of+Kroton · 2004-07-01 05:44 · Score: 2, Funny

I only own single pair. Have been carried twice since bought them, when drunken at Oktoberfest in München in 2000 and 2001.

--
Read journal when you are not understand
Re:Why Censor? by jawtheshark · 2004-07-01 05:55 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm not a parent... So take everything I say with a grain of salt.
I have been on the internet for 10 years. Back then I was 17, which means I was not really a child. However one thing I learned quite quickly is that you have to search for porn/hatespeech/$fill_in_gross_stuff. Yes, I know rotten.com and I have visited it. Stuff there was quite a curiosity the first time I saw it.
Now, 10 years ago there was a child in this house. My sister. She was 12 back then. I did not once see anything questionable on her screen, nor in her browser cache (I used to monitor her stuff as a worried brother, my parents couldn't have done it) This means: if your kids go and visit those sites they have searched for it, or got the link from a friend. In the latter case you can be pretty sure they that they would have gotten the information anyways. I mean: how hard is it to go over to your friends place and ask him/her to show the site that you couldn't visit at home.
So, if I'm ever a parent, I'll just make sure to monitor what my kids do and not block their access. If I catch them doing something I can't condone then it'll just be time for a little chat.

--
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Re:Why Censor? by Milo+of+Kroton · 2004-07-01 05:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

Filters do not work. Already my son knows roughly half my knowledge of computers (he is but 8) and I can get past filters my brother in law had when visited him in North Carolina. I am (or wife) always in room when son uses family computer, so nothing bad is done, and understands proper use of net.

Filters don't work. Parents does.

--
Read journal when you are not understand
Re:Why Censor? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:01 · Score: 0

Subtle. Yet hilarious.
Re:Why Censor? by Mysticalfruit · 2004-07-01 06:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think the big issue that when some my age (late 20's) sees a site like bangbus, they see it for what it is.

It's a fantasy site. Centered around the idea "What if your driving down the road and you drive by a hot woman and for 500 bucks she does anything you want."

We adults see it for the fantasy it is and nothing more.

The problem is that when a minor sees something like that, they're not going to see the fantasy aspect of it. Their going to see it as an acceptable way to treat a women. Then people will be all shocked when that same kid goes out and objectifies every woman he meets into a sex object.

--
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Re:Why Censor? by GlassHeart · 2004-07-01 06:17 · Score: 1

"You Americans are so puritanical!"

How do you resolve the above stereotype with the fact that most the porn *origninates* in the States?
Logically, such a contradiction can be explained by a common human failing called hypocrisy.
Re:Why Censor? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:18 · Score: 0

"Filters don't work. Parents does."

Hooked on Phonics, however, does -not- seem to work. See the above example.
Re:Why Censor? by jtev · 2004-07-01 06:21 · Score: 1

What are you talking about? He spelled that sentance perfectly. Maybe we need Hooked on Grammar.

--
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Re:Why Censor? by quisph · 2004-07-01 06:34 · Score: 1

I suppose you think each and every German wears liederhosen too?
Song trousers?
Re:Why Censor? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:38 · Score: 0

"We adults see it for the fantasy it is and nothing more."

So why is it whenever I see someone named "regan" I do a doubletake and have to resist the urge to ask if they like to get "slammed"?
Re:Why Censor? by dtrent · 2004-07-01 06:39 · Score: 1

Sweet. No, I meant your garden variety lederhosen.
Re:Why Censor? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:55 · Score: 0

However one thing I learned quite quickly is that you have to search for porn/hatespeech/$fill_in_gross_stuff

No you don't. A search on any number of innocuous words will bring up a list of fetish sites...
Re:Why Censor? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:04 · Score: 0

My gods, a *real* parent. If I hadn't already been sitting-down I'd have fallen over from the shock of it all.
Re:Why Censor? by Brianwa · 2004-07-01 07:33 · Score: 1

I agree. I have been on the Internet since I was about seven years old. My parents never, ever looked over my shoulder, filtered the connection, or even looked at the history. Instead, they taught me their values, whats good and bad, then let me loose. Parents should be able to trust their children to make the right choices.
Re:Why Censor? by japhmi · 2004-07-01 08:21 · Score: 1

However one thing I learned quite quickly is that you have to search for porn/hatespeech/$fill_in_gross_stuff.

That is not true. I don't search for porn, yet I've found it. Oftentimes a dropped letter / wrong vowel / wrong ending to a web address can change a lot.

There was one website I used to view often, and they changed their address. For a year they were one both domain names. Eventually they changed to only one. About 1.5 years after that, I had forgotten the new name, and typed in the old one. Porn. It had been a family-friendly web site before.

--
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Re:Why Censor? by ZeroExistenZ · 2004-07-01 08:22 · Score: 1

I find this a very valid concern, and not only with minors, nor just about "porn". How many times have you heard someone, mostly with average intelligence, say "but they do it on tv, why shouldn't I?". Media can influence the way a person thinks, even influence his morals (think 'social' reflection). It's not about censorship in all sorts of media, but perspective -in relation with reality. Certain people seem to be unable to think or evaluate what they see or certain information they derrive thereof if it's presented in some sort of way in either form of media imo.

--
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Re:Why Censor? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:23 · Score: 0

A search on any number of innocuous words will also bring up the title, URL, and a small amount of text from each fetish site it brings up. I suspect even a 12 year-old will know enough to not click on something she's not interested in.
Re:Why Censor? by shalla · 2004-07-01 08:57 · Score: 1

This means: if your kids go and visit those sites they have searched for it, or got the link from a friend.

Bull. I'm a librarian in a public library's computer center. Patrons can easily stumble across porn without meaning to, either just exploring the Web or via e-mail messages.

The Internet was a different beast 10 years ago. There's a lot more porn now, and there's lots of spy/ad/malware that will drag you to it. We've had that problem on a staff machine or two used by the prudes in the library. If nothing else, all you need is one kid who types in whitehouse.com (which does have a cover page) or plays around making up URLs to find porn. Or, as my mother discovered, searching for things like "shower games" when looking up ideas for a bridal shower. That ended in a frantic phone call to me.

I don't think it's flinging itself up on screens as the kids sit there, no, but it's not at all that hard to stumble into. The trick is teaching your kids how to handle it. But simply saying if the url is there, they went looking for it isn't necessarily true.
Re:Why Censor? by Loundry · 2004-07-01 09:04 · Score: 1

So, if I'm ever a parent, I'll just make sure to monitor what my kids do and not block their access.

(Grain of salt taken.)

Do you plan to hover over your kid while he does (fill in the blank)? Do you plan to do this 100% of the time that your child isn't sleeping?

Before I was a parent, I swore that I'd never have my kid eat fast food (except that I didn't realize how damn convenient it would be, or how effective it was as a reward), or wear "themed" shoes (except that I didn't realize that my son would ask for them and I didn't have a good reason for saying no). Lots of your grandiose ideas of parenting will change dramatically once you realize how emotionally draining being a parent is.

--
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Re:Why Censor? by mrbuttle · 2004-07-01 11:25 · Score: 1
- Instead, they taught me their values, whats good and bad, then let me loose.
That's what I did with my son, and it didn't work. He's 12, extremely bright, but has OCD. He ended up spending hours a day searching for porn. He would switch to playing games or reading when someone was in the room. I thought he would fill his curiosity and get bored or disgusted and stop. Even after I told him I could see every sight he accessed because of the transparent squid proxy I set up, and talked to him about some of the poor choices he made in web browsing, he continued. He couldn't help himself. Now he's on a whitelist of ~10,000 sites. If he wants to go anywhere else he has to ask me for it. What was right for you won't work for every child, or even adult .
Re:Why Censor? by sbszine · 2004-07-01 11:36 · Score: 1

Or, as my mother discovered, searching for things like "shower games" when looking up ideas for a bridal shower. That ended in a frantic phone call to me.

Is your name Seymour, by any chance?

--
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Re:Why Censor? by jawtheshark · 2004-07-02 05:27 · Score: 1

She looked for "shower games"? Huh? Okay, now first she was an adult. Not a child, which is the audience of these filters. Second, just out of curiosity, and because when I think of showers, I think of the wet variant to get clean, I did a google search . It doesn't give the results you claim it gives. Even the more obvious "cream pie" doesn't yield the sexual practice.
there's lots of spy/ad/malware
That's a computer security issue... Your IT staff at the library should take care of that. None of my machines has spyware (and I have a bunch of machines under my control)
If nothing else, all you need is one kid who types in whitehouse.com
I know about whitehouse.com.... If that kind of nudity offends you, you better stop watching TV too. Unless you pay you won't get much hard stuff.
I don't think it's flinging itself up on screens as the kids sit there, no, but it's not at all that hard to stumble into. The trick is teaching your kids how to handle it.
With this I agree. You can stumbe across it, but usually you need to pay up on those sites (linked from spam, obvous hijak-porn-sites). Besides, why do you think I posted "have a talk with the kid". That's the part you call "teaching your kids how to handle it".

--
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Re:Why Censor? by jawtheshark · 2004-07-02 05:29 · Score: 1

No, I'm not going to watch my kids ever hour it is awake. I'll do it just as my parents did: if I came with strange questions (like the first time I saw BJ pictures), I'll explain. It's that simple.
My parents managed it without watching me all the time. This is about trust in your kids, I am going to trust my kids and be open to questions.
If my parents managed, I also will.

--
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Re:Why Censor? by jawtheshark · 2004-07-02 05:33 · Score: 1

What you describe can happen. Another posted gave the example of whitehouse.com.
About 1.5 years after that, I had forgotten the new name, and typed in the old one. Porn. It had been a family-friendly web site before.
And that site... Did it have pictures that can be considered "hardcore" for free download? The odds are you saw censored pics a boob left and right. But for the hardcore content, you'd have to pay up. Unless your kid has access to your credit card that won't happen.
I'm not saying it is impossible... Just improbable.

--
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)

Nice one! by Grell · 2004-07-01 05:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

This could really help push Linux for schools and libraries. (who don't need the extra expense of the "secure" kiosk's their paying for now.)

~G

--
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky

Re:Nice one! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:42 · Score: 0

Perhaps if they had this technology a few years ago, the savings would have been enough to pay somebody to teach you the difference between "they're", "their" and "there" :)
Re:Nice one! by crackshoe · 2004-07-01 05:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

i've found schools prefer to have the blocking at the isp level, so a kid with a laptop and a wireless card still can't pull up porn (or instant messenger). i've also seen schools block such things as babelfish, which is genuinely useful to 9/10's of the school, but the spanish teachers are too fucking lazy to actually teach, so they just put kinds into the lab where, suprise suprise, they'd use babelfish. and most librarians i know ( and i know several at public and university libraries) are about as anti-censorship as possible, outside of the few computers in a designated kids zone. the only reason any real library i know of has added general filtering is to get govn't funding.

--
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Re:Nice one! by Eraser_ · 2004-07-01 06:20 · Score: 1

The school district I work at used to use a non-transparent proxy system from N2H2 (Bess) which was a debian linux box that you had to pipe all of your traffic through somehow, generally by feeding proxy settings into web browsers. Now we have a RedHat linux machine which is running IFP software from N2H2 and interacts with our Cisco PIX firewall.

Port 80 outbound is now open completely, because any HTTP request outbound on it gets caught by the PIX, and a request is sent to the IFP server with various credentials etc, and it either OK or Deny's the page. This can be setup to use a RADIUS server for authentication of any web user, or just have a default user and let people have over rides. We are very happy with the HTTP filtering it does, however they do not yet have HTTPS/FTP filtering enabled, so our old bess proxy is still in place.

We are also somewhat happy about being able to manage our own redhat computer, as opposed to having a blackbox on campus which they monitor remotely. Lets us deal with hardware/minor software issues quickly and easily, instead of waiting for their techs to do their thing.
Re:Nice one! by marnargulus · 2004-07-01 06:21 · Score: 1

My grandmother was a librarian, and I know quite a few of them myself. A very liberal bunch, very much anti-censorship. Which is slightly odd considering that they are older ladies, and they all seem to be on the same side. Sadly, it is true about the funding. The government requires some type of blocking to get certain grants/funds for public libraries...
Re:Nice one! by DrEldarion · 2004-07-01 06:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

Actually, there's a better reason for them to block babelfish - it can be used to get around the filters. Page blocked? Just translate it through babelfish - hot hot proxy action.
Re:Nice one! by FireFury03 · 2004-07-01 06:41 · Score: 1

i've found schools prefer to have the blocking at the isp level

That's not my experience at all - I work in the filtering industry, supplying systems (running under linux) to schools and they *love* the ability to control access locally for specific groups. Got a class of 15 year olds doing history projects about violence and oppression? cool - give them access to those sites but lock out the rest of the school. If you had to do this at the ISP level it'd be hell - you couldn't do things for a specific group of users and you'd be forever chasing the ISP to change stuff.

so a kid with a laptop and a wireless card still can't pull up porn

Not sure what this has to do with anything - this is purely a network design problem. If you're stupid enough to stick a wireless access point on the internet side of your filtering proxy then of course kids are gonna do that. The solution is to simply put the AP on the inside of the proxy so the kids still have to go through the filters.

i've also seen schools block such things as babelfish

Blocking babelfish doesn't sound too bright, but probably the worst site is images.google.com - it can be used for some really good stuff, but it can also be used to find porn. Since images.google provides pages of images with not textual content, there's nothing to keyword filter on so there's no way to tell if the user's looking at porn or completely legit stuff. The only thing the administrator can do is make a decision to either block the whole site or leave it accessible.

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Nice one! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:50 · Score: 0

"Not sure what this has to do with anything - this is purely a network design problem"

I think the original poster was alluding to the fact that desktop-level censorware was not effective ... migration to an upstream filter was necessary (which is a much simpler issue than nailing down the specifics of said filter).
Re:Nice one! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:56 · Score: 0

I know my highschool banned babelfish because we used it to bypass their filter/proxy. Of course, half this was for legitimate purposes like research for debates/speeches/projects, but the other half was admittedly for random java/flash game sites ;)

Good News by arieswind · 2004-07-01 05:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well, this is good news for linux parents, and hopefully it will set a precedent for either, more people moving off of windows, or developers of filtering software for windows to make their products more easily customizable to what parents think their kids should not see, instead of what the company thinks their kids should not see

I might as well say it first by mobiux · 2004-07-01 05:32 · Score: 5, Funny

So there are what, 4 people using linux at home that also have intimate enough relationships to actually produce offspring

Re:I might as well say it first by SteveAstro · 2004-07-01 05:38 · Score: 1

either we're 1/2 of them, or that should be 6 ;-)

Steve
Re:I might as well say it first by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:38 · Score: 0

Doesn't Linus have one?

Well there you go, there's now a need.
Re:I might as well say it first by Timesprout · 2004-07-01 05:50 · Score: 1

No, she just discovered Mac OSX and left me, you are it now.

--
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Re:I might as well say it first by gmaestro · 2004-07-01 06:14 · Score: 1

I just realized I have produced no children since I started using linux. Damn your accurate insight!
Re:I might as well say it first by SteveAstro · 2004-07-01 07:11 · Score: 1

Bummer.
Re:I might as well say it first by whitis · 2004-07-01 08:05 · Score: 1

So there are what, 4 people using linux at home that also have intimate enough relationships to actually produce offspring

At least some of us Linux users are capable of extremely intimate relationships. If there is a small number of Linux users with kids, it may be because we are smart enough to read the man page for condoms. And of course, the little part in the birth control pill manual that says they aren't effective for 30 days after you start taking them or after missing a dose. Windows machines, and their owners, get knocked up all the time because they aren't smart enough to RTFM. Often, even their operating system was loaded on the computer without their consent. It isn't that windows users have more sex, its just that they have more mishaps.

And Linux users are also capable of creating intellectual creations which reduces the psychological need to spawn biological creations.

Mac users, on the other, hand may have trouble reproducing because they are always too busy using their iBrators :-).
Re:I might as well say it first by DataCannibal · 2004-07-01 20:08 · Score: 1

Since I started using Linux I've produced two.
Both one-shot, first try during the fertile time conceptions. When I used windows and VMS, I shagged around a lot but never produced any children.

If Redhat or Mandrake would like to contact me I'd be willing to star in adverts for them........

--
No but, yeah but, no but...

Another filter by z0ink · 2004-07-01 05:32 · Score: 5, Funny

Make sure you add /. to that filter if you ever want your kids to grow up to be productive human beings. Otherwise they'll be just like the rest of us, lurking around until the next item is posted. I've got some work to go not do now ...

--
Steal This Sig

Re:Another filter by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:52 · Score: 0

Make sure you add /. to that filter ...
You joke, but there have been days that I have been seriously tempted to do that very thing ...
I used to refer to this but ever since Jon Katz stopped contributing, I no longer have a #1 reason ...

Bumper Car for OS X by bennomatic · 2004-07-01 05:32 · Score: 4, Informative

Those fun-loving shareware dudes and dames over at Freeverse have a customizable browser for kids, aptly named BumperCar. Don't know much about it, but I happened to see it on a browsing jag yesterday, and thought I'd mention it here.

--
The CB App. What's your 20?

Re:Bumper Car for OS X by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:34 · Score: 0

How many gay men have children?
Re:Bumper Car for OS X by DevNova · 2004-07-01 07:15 · Score: 1

There's a binary install for Dan's Guardian and Squid available for OS X. I installed it on our family computer, but could not find the docs on how to modify Dan's. Hopefully this article will help in that respect. Currently my Mac is locked down pretty tight.

Not sure if OS X needs iptables or not.

Censorware by any other name... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

I thought we were mostly in agreement here. Consorware is bad. Filters don't work.

Why is it that censorware suddenly becomes good when it's implemented by an open source program?

Re:Censorware by any other name... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:39 · Score: 0

Why do you object to my running dansguardian in my house so my 7-year old daughter doesn't acidentally stumble into hardcore porn while looking for kid's games on the net?
Re:Censorware by any other name... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:41 · Score: 0

You're still thinking slashdot readership is a uniform borg with one opinion? Sucker.
Re:Censorware by any other name... by eln · 2004-07-01 05:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't know that most people really object to censorware as a concept to protect kids. What people object to is installing censorware in public, government-funded institutions like libraries where non-children can be affected by them, thus limiting constitutional rights.

Other people using these things in their own home is none of your business, and if you make it your business, you're the one violating people's rights.
Re:Censorware by any other name... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm not personally objecting. I'm pointing out that several Slashdot editors spent years railing against "censorware" and "memetic warfare".

But what they were complaining about were filter programs with basically the same functions as this one.

Perhaps it means that the Slashdot crew are starting to understand that parents have legitimate concerns about the internet browsing of young children. (i.e., age 10-12 years)

But it may just be that they prefer this software because of the idea that open source software is automatically good, regardless of what the software actually does or does not do.
Re:Censorware by any other name... by joranbelar · 2004-07-01 05:45 · Score: 1

Why is it that censorware suddenly becomes good when it's implemented by an open source program?
Censorware suddenly becomes good when it's implemented (and controlled) by a parent or legal guardian, instead of by a blanket legislative mandate. It's even better when said parent is level-headed enough not to go overboard with the filtering.
It's no different than having a parent control which TV shows, movies, books, etc they choose to expose their children to.
Re:Censorware by any other name... by Secrity · 2004-07-01 05:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Perhaps because the censoring criteria is being done in a knowlegable way by a parent, not by a corporation that may have it's own reason for censoring certain material. What happens when the RIAA has a little chat with the censoring software companies and the censoring companies decide that children shouldn't see something negative about the RIAA?
Re:Censorware by any other name... by EvanED · 2004-07-01 05:51 · Score: 1

Censorware != bad

Forced, mandated censorware == bad
Re:Censorware by any other name... by Kainaw · 2004-07-01 05:59 · Score: 1

There is a fundamental difference between having your web censored by someone else and having it filtered by you (or your parents). I chose to filter the ads out of the websites I visit. I chose to filter the images out of emails I get. If I am censoring content for myself, it isn't really censorship. I think that is the reason this is a good idea. Parents can filter content without relying on a third party for censorship.

--
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Re:Censorware by any other name... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:06 · Score: 0

so for people who can show proof of age at the library, let the librarian log them into the "adult" account and browse until their goatse.cxheart is content
Re:Censorware by any other name... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:17 · Score: 0

"I don't know that most people really object to censorware as a concept to protect kids. "

People object saying that: A) It is damaging to your child when you treat your child as a mere object instead of a person in and of themselves with their own interests. B) If your child is old enough to be interested in looking at 'naughty' pictures then I think its time you have the birds and the bees talk with them, and pray to god he or she prefers to satisify themselves on mere images and decide on sex later on. C) There is few, if any, arguements or evidence that suggest harm comes from merely being exposed to information in the form of images or text online. If any harm does exist it pales in comparison with the harm that comes from restrictions on free access to information.

True they are your kids to ruin, and no one else as a right to parent for you. What people do have a right to do is say you are wrong, you can then use that information how ever you wish.
Re:Censorware by any other name... by aardvarkjoe · 2004-07-01 06:31 · Score: 1

Other people using these things in their own home is none of your business, and if you make it your business, you're the one violating people's rights.
Posters on slashdot regularly argue this point (as you should know, with a uid of 20,000) -- usually by claiming that the only reason why you would want to filter internet access is because you're a crazy, gun-toting, bush-supporting, anti-environmentalist fundamentalist christian. Of course, I rather suspect that it's mostly because of the large contingent of 14-year-old boys who are posting from Mom's computer.

--

How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Re:Censorware by any other name... by Tassach · 2004-07-01 06:41 · Score: 1

I object to censorware on the grounds that it is snakeoil. It doesn't work, and is a fundimentally flawed concept. Shitty software is no substitute for good parenting -- actually supervising your children and teaching them right from wrong.
The fact that Congress wants to make unconstitutional laws requiring that local governments spend money in order to further a vocal minority's religious agenda is an entirely seperate issue.

--
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Re:Censorware by any other name... by japhmi · 2004-07-01 08:33 · Score: 1

I object to censorware on the grounds that it is snakeoil.

Censorware can be snakeoil, but it's not necessarily. If you go into it knowing the limitations, then it can be an excellent backup to other things.

--
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke

Well.... by tekiegreg · 2004-07-01 05:32 · Score: 4, Funny

Granted all the software is released under GPL and source code included, all it would take is for the kid to either A) Learn a little C++ (or whatever language this software is coded in) to make the software worthless or B) Start hunting for a patch that someone else was nice enough to build. Though if your kid can learn C++ I presume he's probably mature enough to view anything he wants and parents should stay back. However full censorship in Linux,IMHO because of the nature of open source is just next to impossible. As it should be though :-)

--
...in bed

Re:Well.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:41 · Score: 0

Obviously you have no clue about Unix' permissions system. Just because they can compile a non-blocking proxy doesn't mean they'll be able to successfully deploy it.
Re:Well.... by tekiegreg · 2004-07-01 05:43 · Score: 1

and what kid hasn't figured out the admin password to their parents computer? Never that hard for me...

--
...in bed
Re:Well.... by katre · 2004-07-01 05:45 · Score: 1

Er, say what? He'll download a patch? Or just modify the code himself, and then use it how? I'm assuming that any parent who is going to set this up isn't giving away the root password. It'd take a fairly serious compromise to be able to shut down the filter, even with local access. Now, using other proxies on other ports might well be a way around that, but that's what firewall logs are for.
Re:Well.... by slashjames · 2004-07-01 05:47 · Score: 1

If you're convinced Linux is "good enough" for the desktop and has better security than Windows (no dispute on the latter), it shouldn't be hard. Install the filter as root, and then have the child(ren) use a non-privilaged account. As long as the appropriate filter files are owned by root with permissions set to 755 you shouldn't have a problem.
Re:Well.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:48 · Score: 0

No wonder you're that stupid now, with such idiotic parents who don't set a good root password.
Re:Well.... by confused+one · 2004-07-01 05:49 · Score: 1

That'll only work if you give the children root access... Without it, they shouldn't be able to mod the software.
Re:Well.... by FireFury03 · 2004-07-01 05:53 · Score: 1

Errm...

1. don't give the kid the root password to the router that's handling all this filtering - use a strong password to prevent brute forcing in the ample time the kid has to sit there.
2. iptables the router down to force client machines through the proxy
3. password protect GRUB to stop the kid going into single luser mode
4. remove floppy/CD drives/USB ports from the router machine to prevent the kid booting off a boot image and bypassing the passwords protection like that
5. put a padlock on the case to stop the kid plugging a floppy in

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Well.... by tepples · 2004-07-01 06:00 · Score: 1

iptables the router down to force client machines through the proxy

How does this prevent the kid from yanking the Ethernet cable out of the router/proxy machine and into his own computer?
Re:Well.... by Alexis+de+Torquemada · 2004-07-01 06:00 · Score: 1

Granted all the software is released under GPL and source code included, all it would take is for the kid to either A) Learn a little C++ (or whatever language this software is coded in) to make the software worthless or B) Start hunting for a patch that someone else was nice enough to build.
Not quite. Messing around in the sources is not an option, or would you give your kids root privileges if you wanted to force them to use a web filter? Disable booting from removable media, set a BIOS setup password to prevent them from reenabling it (Knoppix doesn't include a web filter ;) ), and they'd have to open the computer and mess around with hard drives in order to change the settings. Visiting a friend whose parents don't restrict his Internet access in this way is much easier and probably less risky...
But they may always figure out how to use external HTTP proxies. You may in turn log their activities etc.; in the end, I guess these things are best employed for preventing accidental access to "problematic" websites. The odds that you can prevent your 12 year old from seeing any violence/pornography/etc. if he/she wants it are close to zero anyway.

--
I love C++
Re:Well.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:03 · Score: 0

Better make sure there is a BIOS password and that booting from CD or floppy is disabled, otherwise with physical access, the root password doesn't mean much. And then you need to make sure the case is locked closed or you can move the jumper or remove the battery to clear the BIOS, or just pull the hard drive and move it to a machine that can be compromised.

Physical attacks on the hardware are something that even a secure OS can't necessarily prevent.

And while you are at it, you better make sure the firewall is similarly locked down or they can just tamper with the logs...

None of this is hard to do. I certainly could have managed it when I was that age (of course there was no commercial internet back then). And worse than that, I knew a lot more about computer security than my parents did.

Of course when I was a teen I viewed pr0n, and accessed adult USENET groups through borrowed university logins... And it didn't warp me... :-)
Re:Well.... by Flying+Purple+Wombat · 2004-07-01 06:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

Errr....no. He's not mature enough, yet. My 14 year-old son is learning C++, with the goal of doing some graphics and games programming. I don't want him looking a porn, or emailing/IM'ing/chatting (text or video) with dirty old men claiming to be 14 year old girls.

I would like to get the PC in his room on our house LAN, so I am currently looking at available filtering tools. The stuff in the article looks interesting. I want to be able to block inapproriate sites from "accidentally" appearing on his browser, but I don't want to completely block net access. Currently, the PCs in my kids' bedrooms are not on the LAN, and they can only access the 'net from the "public" machines in the living room and dining room. (You know you're a geek when you have 8 PCs in your house, but only 4 people live there.)

I do agree, however, that kids will look for a way to bypass filters. They do it at school. At home, it took my 10 year-old daughter about 3 seconds to enter a fake birthdate so she could register at a site that said "you must be over 13 years of age or your parents must register for you."

--
If God had meant for man to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day.
Re:Well.... by fubar1971 · 2004-07-01 06:14 · Score: 1

...Now, using other proxies on other ports might well be a way around that, but that's what firewall logs are for...

That's exactly why I don't even have a filter in place for my kids. My children are all still young (8, 6, and 2 years old). I DO NOT give them net access without myself or wife being with them. Sure they all have their own PC's, with various educational titles installed for their appropriate age ranges and skill levels. My oldest is now starting to become aware of the Internet. Sure I could put in a filter and censor everything, but I do that all day to protect my lusers at work from themselves. I don't want to have to monitor even more logs when I get home. Not to mention, I feel that filters are a cop out for lazy parents anyways. How many parents are going to vigilantly check and monitor the logs. I don't know about other parents, but I know my schedule is quite hectic between work, soccer games, baseball games, vacations, family functions, etc.

What I do, is block all Internet access to my childrens computer. When they(mostly the 8yr old) want to go to a website or search for something, I then sit down and help him do whatever he wants after I open up the firewall. If I feel that it is appropriate for all of my kids, I then open up the firewall to access it from their PC's. When I feel they are mature enough to understand that the world is not always a nice place, then they will get unfiltered access. Once they have come to this realization, they will have already figured out how to get around any filter or firewall that I would put into polace to stop them. Hell they could just go to a friends house, the library, a WiFi hotspot, Internet Cafe, etc. Until then, I keep the Internet off of their PC's, except for specific sites that WE have visted. This way I can not only ensure that they do not view something that would scar them, I get to spend some quality time with my kids.
Re:Well.... by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2004-07-01 06:18 · Score: 1

Though if your kid can learn C++ I presume he's probably mature enough

Ability does not equal maturity. Kids can do a lot of things, for many of them, it takes true maturity to NOT do them.

Knowledge does not equal wisdom, maturity or effort for that matter. A lot of people know things are bad for them, like unprotected sex, reckless driving, smoking and so on, but a great many people still do all of these despite knowing the dangers.
Re:Well.... by chris_mahan · 2004-07-01 06:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

The Best HTTP proxy is at the local netcafe, where, upon paying your $3 (what lunch money) said 10 years old is now getting a faceful of creampie.

Clueless Conservative Parent:
"I'm gonna filter my puter and Johnny's not gonna get access to nuthin."

Johnny:
"My friend Jason (the other 13 year old) just burned me a CD with 30 hours of german bdsm, as well as Jenna Jamison's entire collection! My dad's so stoopid."

--
"Piter, too, is dead."
Re:Well.... by FireFury03 · 2004-07-01 06:23 · Score: 1

Ok, fair enough - lock the server and DSL router/cablemodem/whatever in their own cupboard. Or epoxy the network cable into the socket :)

Seriously, there are good solutions to all these problems, security is what you make it. Hell, you could get a PCI DSL card and have the phone line plugged directly into the server - in that case the kid has to not only get hold of a new DSL router but has to know the username and password for the ISP.

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Well.... by puff+the+barbarian · 2004-07-01 06:24 · Score: 1

Yes, exactly, it has to come down to that. If you have to worry about that, then you would have to lock up the room with the router/firewall...
Re:Well.... by Narchie+Troll · 2004-07-01 06:34 · Score: 1

init=/bin/sh
Re:Well.... by Stradenko · 2004-07-01 06:40 · Score: 1

A lot of people know things are bad for them, like unprotected sex, reckless driving, smoking and so on, but a great many people still do all of these despite knowing the dangers.

A lot of people do things things because of the risks associated.
There is a difference between ignoring the risks and accepting them.
Re:Well.... by pegr · 2004-07-01 06:44 · Score: 1

Granted all the software is released under GPL and source code included, all it would take is for the kid to either A) Learn a little C++ (or whatever language this software is coded in) to make the software worthless or B) Start hunting for a patch that someone else was nice enough to build. Though if your kid can learn C++ I presume he's probably mature enough to view anything he wants and parents should stay back.

Yeah, if you let your kids run as root! No joke, my kids had this bad habit of picking up all kinds of spyware on their Windows box. Finally, after my nth reload, no more Admin rights for you rugrats. Now I have to install all of their software (bad), but they don't pick up near the number of cooties they used to...

Now if your kid cracks your account and installs a root-kit, yank the box and give them your old C64 or Atari 800. That'll show the little bast@rd! ;)

(Note: Mild profanity munged to prevent triggering web filters... How's that for irony?)
Re:Well.... by Fnkmaster · 2004-07-01 06:46 · Score: 1

Howzabout you make a reasonable effort to make the rules clear to your child, and punish them if they willfully violate them. Locking everything up like a paranoid fruitloop won't go very far towards teaching them responsibility. I'm working under the assumption that really young kids aren't going to be sophisticated enough to take all the steps you describe, and by the time the kids are old enough to figure out how to circumvent these measures (drop into single user mode, hack the router, etc.) they are probably old enough to understand the basic concept of trust and rules with respect to what kind of material they are allowed to browse on the web and can understand that they'll have all their internet access taken from them for some period of time if they break the rules.
Re:Well.... by aastanna · 2004-07-01 06:52 · Score: 1

What I would probably do if I had kids would be to turn on the router logging, and periodocally check the logs. If a child sees something they shouldn't it's not the end of the world, but best to know it happened and talk to them about it.

Of course it depends on the age of your kids, under 10 or so I'd be more comfortable looking over their sholders.
Re:Well.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:57 · Score: 0

A lot of people do things things because of the risks associated.

That's dumb.

There is a difference between ignoring the risks and accepting them.

That's smart.

I'm a certified Private Pilot and an aspiring motorcycle rider. Calculated risks are fine, just so long as the benefits outweigh the risks. Doing something just because it's risky is just plain stupid.
Re:Well.... by FireFury03 · 2004-07-01 07:02 · Score: 1

My message was a response to the complaint that it was easy to bypass the security (which it is not, it just takes a little forethought), it wasn't a recommendation about how your kids should be handled.

See my other posts on my opinions of dealing with the kids.

I should point out that I am not a parent, but I have lots of dealings with schools that face these problems. I agree with you entirely that parents should lay down ground rules and punish the kids if they break the rules. However, IMHO there is a place for filtering at home to prevent the kids from accidentally wandering into a porn site.

Schools on the other hand, have a different problem - the kids aren't going to care as much about pissing off their teachers as they do about pissing off their parents, plus there is peer pressure involved. (Did you never crack your school/college's computer system when you were a kid? :) The systems at schools need to be far more robust, especially since the parents often hold the school responsible for their kid's activities while there. However the school must also enforce the rules through punishment rather than always looking for the technological solution, which is something that a lot of schools seem to steer clear of. (Some of that may well be down to buck passing - the teacher doesn't want to deal with it, it's the sysadmin's fault).

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Well.... by FireFury03 · 2004-07-01 07:06 · Score: 1

What I would probably do if I had kids would be to turn on the router logging, and periodocally check the logs

Any idea just how many lines the proxy logs would have after a few hours of surfing :)

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Well.... by arose · 2004-07-01 07:15 · Score: 1

My 14 year-old son [..] I don't want him looking a porn
There seems to be a bash.org quote for every situation...

--
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Re:Well.... by Stradenko · 2004-07-01 10:37 · Score: 1

Of course, by "because of the risk" I meant because of the benefits (or perceived benefits) of a risk.

Perhaps doing something because it's risky means, doing it because of the adrenaline rush of the risk. (adrenaline is the benefit in this situation, and may be a strong enough benefit to accept a certain risk, for some people)

You can't judge which benefit outweighs which risks to someone other than yourself.

It was probably just a long-winded way to say YMMV ^^
Re:Well.... by lachlan76 · 2004-07-01 23:37 · Score: 1

all it would take is for the kid to either A) Learn a little C++

Learning C++ takes at least 2 weekends. I prefer just:
Going into mozilla options, clicking connection settings, and then selecting direct connection to the internet.

Though if your kid can learn C++ I presume he's probably mature enough to view anything he wants and parents should stay back

I am 14. I started learning C++ 7 years ago. Do the math. I'm not the only one. If you're not smart enough to cover your tracks, you're not mature enough. Works for me anyway.

I do agree with you though. Maybe that's why my dad doesn't like open source. Nah, can't be. His problem is that he has trouble getting the internet to work over the lan. He just sets aside that the problem is a problem with the firewall in the windows computer. I get the feeling that any parent smart enough to use linux in the first place would have kids who are smart too. And they could probably set up Mozilla or find the docs for squid anyway.

The internet isn't where we get all our opinions from anyway. We get opinions from other people all the time though. Imagine rebuilding a giant RAID-1 array, and you understand.
Re:Well.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-03 01:43 · Score: 0

I prefer just: Going into mozilla options, clicking connection settings, and then selecting direct connection to the internet.

...except port 80 isn't forwarded in my house, so you won't be able to open any extrernal sites at all that way.

That's something a mom can love! by underpar · 2004-07-01 05:33 · Score: 1

We haven't complety gotten rid of Windows. (I'm sorry. Please don't hit me.) Anyway, it's nice to know that when I get over my addiction to a few games and apps I have somewhere nice to go.

Refreshing by Mr.+Spontaneous · 2004-07-01 05:33 · Score: 2, Interesting

Its nice to see that Linux is really emerging as a Windows alternative for the whole family.
Also, it should give the kids a nice challenge to get around the blockers... ;-)

If at first you don't friccasse, fry fry a hen

--
Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye... then its just fun.

I think configuring it yourself is better by soft_guy · 2004-07-01 05:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is better than letting some company configure it for you. A lot of the companies that make filtering software don't even allow you to know what their critiera is for blocking a site.

On the other hand, I tend to think that when my daughter becomes interested enough in sex to seek out these kinds of pages, that maybe it is better that she be able to.

--
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score

Re:I think configuring it yourself is better by harley_frog · 2004-07-01 05:52 · Score: 1

Agreed. I'm a librarian and oppose censorship on principle, but there is such a thing as "age appropriate" material. I don't think eight year olds need to stumble across a porn site while surfing the web. However, I would like the ability to know and change the blacklist as I see fit. That is what being a responsible parent is all about.

--
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Re:I think configuring it yourself is better by LetterJ · 2004-07-01 06:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

That's part of why I've got a computer sitting at home today churning through sites trying to train a Bayesian engine to detect inappropriate stuff. Once it's done, putting it in between the proxy's lookup and handing over of the page will allow learning and building a bigger list. The first engine will be used to build a filter intended for children under 13. Future engines will analyze for different criteria. I intend to charge for the list subscriptions, but will likely make the generating software open source and will gladly share the criteria/databases.

I'm currently using self-classified content/sites from DMOZ.org. If a site has voluntarily added itself to the Adult section on DMOZ, they've already indicated that they are not appropriate for children. This also means that when I get to the filter for older children (initial target fo the lists is schools), I can explicitly allow those sites categorized as educational rather than outright porn and get different lists. Since DMOZ is human reviewed and sites are categorized by experts, that's the data set I'm using to train my filter.

It does OK right now, but I'm looking for better methods for training it to approach that 99.9% effective rate that I'm currently getting with POPFile on my spam.

--

The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things

Oxymoron perphaps ... by auburnate · 2004-07-01 05:33 · Score: 0, Flamebait

" shows Linux-using parents how to set up Web filtering ..."

Exactly how many people is this article for ... counting the number of Linux-using parents on one hand ...

Stumbles right out of the gate by goldspider · 2004-07-01 05:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

"The only software you need to set up parental filters under GNU/Linux is iptables, Dan's Guardian, and Squid."

That's two too many, as far as the target audience is concerned. I'm no GNU/Linux programmer or anything, but what's stopping people from putting that all in one single installer?

I'll admit I didn't read on to see (God forbid) what other numerous (supposedly "easy") hoops that parents would have to jump through to get the desired result. Not that it matters; they'd probably already lost most of their target audience.

--
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy

Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by tsg · 2004-07-01 05:48 · Score: 3, Informative

That's two too many, as far as the target audience is concerned.

Netfilter is part of the linux kernel and doesn't require a separate installation. As for the other two, the entire unix philosophy is build small tools that do one thing well and connect them together. If someone doesn't like Squid, they can use another proxy server without ditching Dan's Guardian (or the other way around). It's called choice. It's a good thing.

Not that it matters; they'd probably already lost most of their target audience.

Their target audience is mostly parents who are already running Linux. The "hoops" (that you admit to not reading yet feel the need to criticize anyway) they have to go through are little different than configuring any other Linux app.

--
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by goldspider · 2004-07-01 05:54 · Score: 1

"It's called choice. It's a good thing."
I'm not saying choice is a bad thing. I'm saying that all of the choices currently out there are lousy. (HINT: That's why most people aren't switching to Linux in droves)
"that you admit to not reading yet feel the need to criticize anyway"
Went back and read it; configuring that clusterfuck is even worse than I suspected.

--
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by eln · 2004-07-01 05:59 · Score: 1

Their target audience is Linux-savvy parents. Do you think people automatically become retarded when they have children? Just because you're a parent doesn't mean you can't also be a Linux nerd.
Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by tsg · 2004-07-01 06:07 · Score: 1

Went back and read it; configuring that clusterfuck is even worse than I suspected.

This configuration is not that hard for anyone familiar with Linux. The article gives you very clear steps to follow. In addition, there are various tools available to make it even easier. That you don't understand it doesn't mean their target audience won't.

--
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:15 · Score: 0

Went back and read it; configuring that clusterfuck is even worse than I suspected.

Buy a Mac. If you want a system that makes sense, Linux is for you. If you want a system that's easy, buy a Mac. If you don't care about sense or easy but want a wide selection of applications, buy Windows.
Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by Bronster · 2004-07-01 06:26 · Score: 1

Do you think people automatically become retarded when they have children?

Speaking from experience, basically - yes. I used to stay up late hacking and be able to sleep in the next morning. Now I get woken up early by the baby and byebye hackmode.

Or something.

Actually, now that she's turned 1 and is sleeping through the night, it's not so bad. Until the next one anyway.
Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by puff+the+barbarian · 2004-07-01 06:30 · Score: 1

Not only that, but get Linux out of the way and it can be even easier. In FreeBSD:
sudo pkg_add -r squid
sudo pkg_add -r dansguardian

Fiddle with the config files (a little) & you are done.
Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by Niflar · 2004-07-01 06:45 · Score: 2, Funny

> That's two too many, as far as the target audience is concerned.
And to add some more fun the article says:
> If yours doesn't, you will need to compile a new kernel and enable iptables,
> which is beyond the scope of this article (and probably beyond the abilities of most parents).
Has Linux reached a whole new "target audience" or did my brain melt when I became a parent?
Re:Stumbles right out of the gate by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:18 · Score: 0

The hoops they have to go through are little different than configuring any other Linux app.
which explains why Windows and the Mac own the home pc market.

Who knows best? by jokach · 2004-07-01 05:34 · Score: 1

Hopefully parents who use this method won't have kids who know Linux better than they do and disable what has been put in place to protect them from porn ....

Re:Who knows best? by Secrity · 2004-07-01 06:05 · Score: 1

At least in the case of disabling the censorware on a Linux system you know that the kid has learned something about Linux. It used to be, and probably still is, that kids could find instructions for disabling Windows censorware either on-line or passwd around at school.
Re:Who knows best? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:18 · Score: 0

If they do, then they would also probably figure out what I was blocking and why. Protecting them doesn't always mean that they don't see it -- it may mean that they put it in context. "This stuff is forbidden because porn is a fantasy and you shouldn't think that the real world in any reflects the fantasy that these folks are selling." Once they get that through their heads, and they have to realize that they're breaking the rules, I think they'd be OK. They might still need some revocation of computer priveledges or something like that (from now on you send your syslog to DAD's SERVER or else).

Anyway, that's how it's likely to play out in my house. Your methods may vary.
Re:Who knows best? by GenSolo · 2004-07-01 07:36 · Score: 1

My theory is, if my kids want the porn bad enough to disable/bypass the filter, it's time to have that talk and move to another security measure. I figure, once they learn to break through one layer of security, it's probably no longer relevant anyway (like a filter to prevent accidental porn viewing... it's no longer accidental once they break it).

And besides by arieswind · 2004-07-01 05:34 · Score: 1

Now parents can do something useful with their web filters, like block all those nasty Microsoft and SCO webpages

Speak for yourself by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:34 · Score: 0

Okay, but why block goat.cx?

As you say, it is only a picture of a naked man. If your kids want to look at him, that's their prerogative.

Complexity... by burrows · 2004-07-01 05:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

I say just run the box in console mode, and if the kid can figure out how to configure X and open a browser, they are old enough for porn.

Seriously, this is a little strange in it's scope. In the fourth paragraph, it defines for the reader what a "server" is, and then they expect the reader to be comfortable just jumping right in and editing the squid config. Seems like a little user-friendliness is probably needed before we can consider the parental filtering thing taken care of...

--
Paper Pusher

Re:Complexity... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:52 · Score: 0

I say just run the box in console mode, and if the kid can figure out how to configure X and open a browser, they are old enough for porn.

At six I was proficient with a C64. At thirteen I had most of the DOS 5.0 manual memorized. At fifteen I had Slackware running and X going full blast on unsupported hardware.

I don't think that "brains" should be the reason that you can see porn.
Re:Complexity... by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2004-07-01 06:08 · Score: 1

I think that assumes Lynx can't be used? The content people think is inappropriate for their children doesn't always involve GIFs and JPGs.

If you want a say in what children should and should not be involved in, raise your own.
Re:Complexity... by archen · 2004-07-01 06:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

You know what else is a good filter: Put the computer in the living room. Then disable networking after say, around midnight.
Re:Complexity... by np_bernstein · 2004-07-01 06:22 · Score: 1

Just for the record, I was using unix at 11.

--
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
Re:Complexity... by bckrispi · 2004-07-01 06:33 · Score: 1

If you'd RTFA, you can customize the filter based on numerous criteria, including text keywords.

--
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Re:Complexity... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 16:44 · Score: 0

The quicker your brain develops the sooner you can appreciate pr0n.

Thus this is a perfect filter.

QED.

My first thought... by sailor420 · 2004-07-01 05:35 · Score: 1

Is that any parent that is running Linux on all their home machines is going to

A) Realize that the very idea of net filtering is pretty futile
B) Be able to implement a decent version themselves if they so deem it necessary.

I mean, seriously... Where is the market for this?

Re:My first thought... by underpar · 2004-07-01 05:37 · Score: 1

I like filters. Sometimes you can accidently run across something you didn't intend to. I don't think you can stop someone that is set on looking at porn, but when my son does a search for beavers online I want them to be rodents.

GNU nipple detection by tomRakewell · 2004-07-01 05:35 · Score: 5, Funny

I have been developing an algorithm that scans images and can detect whether there is a nipple in the image. If this were incorporated into an http filter, you could get rid of porn and possibly notify parents when nipple-laden images were being downloaded.

The only technical problem at present is that I can not discern between human nipples and animal nipples, so some images of cow udders and the like register false positives. Nevertheless, I think this is a very important algorithm.

I have considered selling this to the Justice Department, as Atty General Ashcroft has expressed an interest in this kind of software. However, I feel this is too important to be closed. I am happy to say the project will be listed at Sourceforge soon, and released under the GPL!!!

Re:GNU nipple detection by havoc · 2004-07-01 05:42 · Score: 3, Funny

Screw that, I want to use it to create the worlds largest archive of porn! Have it traveling across the net day and night looking for nipples!
Re:GNU nipple detection by almostmanda · 2004-07-01 05:44 · Score: 2, Funny

And Fox News could use the technology to automatically blur out nipples! While still showing explicit penetration shots/
Re:GNU nipple detection by kill-hup · 2004-07-01 05:44 · Score: 2, Funny

[...]I can not discern between human nipples and animal nipples, so some images of cow udders and the like register false positives.
Gee, I feel bad for you then. How horrible it must be to go through life not being able to tell if that naked chick has nipples or udders.... ;)

--
Sinepaw.org: Grape Winos
Re:GNU nipple detection by stinkyfingers · 2004-07-01 05:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

What about all the good porn that has no nipples in it?
Re:GNU nipple detection by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:52 · Score: 0

Does that include wet t-shirts?
Re:GNU nipple detection by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:05 · Score: 0

If this were incorporated into an http filter, you could get rid of porn and possibly notify parents when nipple-laden images were being downloaded.

Great. Not only do we have to endure "Think of the children" arguments for bin-laden, but now we have to do the same for nipple-laden? Who is he anyway? Some terrorist cousin?
Re:GNU nipple detection by Goobermunch · 2004-07-01 06:06 · Score: 1

Please send me your algorithm, as I am currently working on an http filter which will only display images containing nipples. This will greatly accelerate my work. --AC
Re:GNU nipple detection by UserGoogol · 2004-07-01 06:24 · Score: 1

Men have nipples. These nipples are considered appropriate for all ages. (Although they look a little different.) That's gonna throw a monkey wrench in your system.

--
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Re:GNU nipple detection by shigelojoe · 2004-07-01 06:26 · Score: 1

Not only that, but he must have had a *really* awkward childhood.
Re:GNU nipple detection by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:43 · Score: 0

I know this is a joke... but I once worked for a company that was working on image identification algorithms for the purpose of tagging potentially objectionable web content. The idea was that the content would still be available, it would just be placed behind a "plain brown wrapper" image/link that would allow the user to decide for themselves if they were interested in seeing the image or not.

We had almost zero interest in it until one fo the marketing guys with contacts in the porn industry (gee, imagine that!) let some folks know that we had this capability. I wasn't to aware of the company's finances at the time, but I wouldn't be suprised to find out that the porn baron's interest in our "nipple-identification techonology" was the only reason the company stayed afloat for as long as it did.
Re:GNU nipple detection by Hallow · 2004-07-01 06:50 · Score: 1

The largest archive of pr0n and dair cow pictures you mean?
Re:GNU nipple detection by BJH · 2004-07-01 06:55 · Score: 1

Not to mention, you'd also end up with the world's largest collection of naked cow pics!
Re:GNU nipple detection by whitis · 2004-07-01 07:16 · Score: 2, Funny

Error: Adult Content Blocked!
Site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html
Reason: George W Bush is a boob!

access denied ! by srichand · 2004-07-01 05:35 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Access has been denied ! Access to the page http://www.microsoft.com/ has been denied for the following reasons Content found on the site was deemed to be inappropriate !

Already done by NanoGator · 2004-07-01 05:36 · Score: 0

Until Real Player works on Linux, I'd say porn is sufficiently filtered!

--
"Derp de derp."

Re:Already done by SteveAstro · 2004-07-01 05:41 · Score: 1

Err. It does.

Steve
Re:Already done by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:54 · Score: 0

I think it was a joke seeing as how porn comes in more flavors than just .RM.

Parents using Linux? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:37 · Score: 0

If the parents don't have the know-how on how to filter web access to begin with, how on earth would they have the expertise to actually use Linux?

Usability is not one of Linux's strong points.

Great! by Mz6 · 2004-07-01 05:37 · Score: 1

This is wonderful... until they start asking where the Start button is. :)

--
Hmmm.

Still missing the point... by angst7 · 2004-07-01 05:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

So much is made about filtering content for children, presumably to prevent them from wandering upon unsuitable content. The fundamental flaw with this (techological limitations notwithstanding) is the notion that kids under the age of 13 or so should be left alone to browse the net.

It seems to me that proper parenting requires an active participation with your kids, whether it be in watching TV, checking out books in a B&N, or spending time on the net. Simply throwing in a vchip, blocking channels or applying hole-ridden filters can never be a substitute for actively being entertained, lerning, etc. alongside your child.

At least I think I read that somewhere...

--
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums

Limits Create Curiosity by Osgyth · 2004-07-01 05:37 · Score: 1

The more you limit or restrict something, the more children (and all humans) are naturally drawn to it by curiosity. If they can't access it on their home computer, they will do it somewhere else. I think the only way, is to teach your child what is and isn't appropriate. But when the time comes they will go looking for it anyway.

But this only works for children of a certain age.
Disclaimer: IANAP :)

Re:Limits Create Curiosity by Quill_28 · 2004-07-01 05:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yes, my daughters love pill bottles. Love to try and open them and eat anything that pops out.

But according to half the people here I should let them at it.
Re:Limits Create Curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:56 · Score: 0

But this only works for children of a certain age.

Yeah, and that's kinda the catch. Filtering software _does_ have a legit purpose: I'm in favor of giving parents the means to keep six-year-olds from stumbling onto something totally inappropriate by accident. I'm not so keen on "protecting" a fifteen year old from accessing stuff they're looking for on purpose; I agree that _talking_ to the kid is more appropriate. The catch is making it so that parents can decide where to draw the line between those two categories based on how mature their kid is.
Re:Limits Create Curiosity by RealAlaskan · 2004-07-01 06:13 · Score: 1

Yes, my daughters love pill bottles. Love to try and open them and eat anything that pops out.
But according to half the people here I should let them at it.
Mod parent up. Please.
It's about time someone told these young whippersnappers what their parents had to do for them, and what they'll have to do for their children someday. If they can ever find a girl willing to have them.

--
See what I've been reading.
Re:Limits Create Curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:28 · Score: 0

There seems to be a difference between information (that cannot harm) and pills (which can).

Not very hard to understand, but I'll let your child explain it to you.
Re:Limits Create Curiosity by blane.bramble · 2004-07-01 07:39 · Score: 1

There seems to be a difference between information that is suitable for a 7 year old and information that is suitable for a 15 year old.

Not very hard to understand, but I'll let your parents explain it to you.
Re:Limits Create Curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:41 · Score: 0

Well said
Re:Limits Create Curiosity by DataCannibal · 2004-07-01 20:10 · Score: 1

...from which you can conclude that at least half the people here have no children

--
No but, yeah but, no but...

Don't filter, log and ask by hackstraw · 2004-07-01 05:37 · Score: 2, Funny

I don't have any kids, but if I did, I wouldn't filter a thing. I would install squid, write a perl script to parse out the domain names and report to me a count of each domainname reached.

I would tell the child that I had records of every site they visit, and step on them if they kept "making mistakes".

Re:Don't filter, log and ask by Rhesus+Piece · 2004-07-01 05:44 · Score: 1

I don't have kids (yet), but I feel pretty certain that stepping on children is not a productive solution.

Well, I guess it depends where you step.
Re:Don't filter, log and ask by Fishstick · 2004-07-01 06:09 · Score: 1

Yep, this is essentially what I did for my son's private school.

Small private school with a couple PCs in the library and my son came home telling me one of his classmates was browsing porn in front of everyone.

Next day we get a note from the administrator (well, he's founder, principal, finance coordinator, administrator, teacher, janitor and network admin -- really nice guy) saying that they were going to disconnect internet access until they could work out some filtering or something.

I next got a call from him asking if I had any ideas on what options there were and how much it might cost to implement some kind of filtering software. I was hoping for a chance to put in my two cents (the school's founded on very community-oriented, democratic processes and we were often invited to open discussions about school issues), and I had rounded up some different software options and had the pros and cons ready to discuss.

I proposed a logging and reporting system exactly as the parent post describes. We (the teachers, parents _and_ students) decided that we would solve this issue by implementing this system so that students could continue to browse the web free of problematic filtering software, but also with the knowledge that the sites they visited were being logged and their access to the web depended on them exercising good judgement and responsibility.

We did log everything, but we only produced a report of URL's (not who visited them) and started tacking the printed out report to the public notice board. It was amazing how well it worked.

We found a simple solution that did not interfere with web access, did not require invasion of privacy or scrutiny of individual surfing habits, but resulted in the students using good judgement to police themselves.

We had discussed how we would handle the situation if inappropriate sites ever showed up -- would we immediately pull up the logs to determine who was going there and take away their access? We decided instead, when it did eventually happen, that we would tell all the students that someone had visited a porn site, and that if it happened again, we would pull access for everyone for 30 days.

It has never happened again since.

--
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Re:Don't filter, log and ask by An+Onerous+Coward · 2004-07-01 06:19 · Score: 1

I appreciate the evenhandedness of your solution, but I am curious about how it would materially affect a student who was "browsing porn in front of everyone". If the student knows that the URLs cannot be traced back to him, what's his motivation for policing himself? Just knowing that the surfing isn't entirely anonymous?

--
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Re:Don't filter, log and ask by nolife · 2004-07-01 06:44 · Score: 1

Currently modded as funny but that is almost exactly what I do now at home. My kids each have a computer in their rooms. They know I monitor the sites, the web caches, the AIM logs, and they know I use VNC. I'm sure they sneak stuff past me but I always tell them, I will eventually find out if they are doing something I do not approve of, It might not be today, or this week but I WILL eventually find it. I am not just talking about porn or gore either. I don't like when they use IE for anything other then a few specific sites (my son's main computer is Mandrake so not an issue), when they use WinMx or Kazaa or similar (I use P2P but not for music which is all they seem to use it for), download screensavers and anything else that breeds spyware and a few others. It is very clear what I do not want them doing, if they do it anyway and I find out, they lose the computer for a while or I do something that I know makes them mad, disable AIM for a few days.

--
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Re:Don't filter, log and ask by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:46 · Score: 0

I would install squid, write a perl script to parse out the domain names and report to me a count of each domainname reached.

My parents do that. (Well, actually our router keeps a log of DNS lookups.) I get my pr0n on CD-R from friends and via email.
Re:Don't filter, log and ask by Fishstick · 2004-07-01 07:23 · Score: 1

>If the student knows that the URLs cannot be traced back to him, what's his motivation for policing himself?

not getting 20 other guys pissed at him for causing a suspension of access for everyone for 30 days

We discussed having a solution where they would have to log into the proxy server so that their specific access would be tracked back to them . We decided against that in favor of semi-anonymous logging backed up with peer pressure not to screw it up for everyone. The students themselves actually suggested this -- they knew who the single offender was but wouldn't rat him out and wanted to have a system that helped them keep him honest rather than getting him busted.

--
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Re:Don't filter, log and ask by Frizzle+Fry · 2004-07-01 09:01 · Score: 1

Bah. If you were a real perl hacker, the script would step on the kids for you.

--
I'd rather be lucky than good.

pr0n by birdwax2k · 2004-07-01 05:37 · Score: 1, Funny

Can you have multipe settings? So my child can view everything but porn, and I can set it so all I get is JUST porn? Isn't that what the internet is for?

Just wondering...

Re:Just wondering.. by eln · 2004-07-01 05:38 · Score: 2, Informative

Yes, and they do generally charge more. They are usually run by religious organizations. The PAX network has been advertising their own filtered Internet service, for example.

Platform doesn't mattter - filtering == bad by gentlewizard · 2004-07-01 05:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

Putting filtering on Linux doesn't make it better. Filtering still:

a) doesn't work. Kids who want pr0n will find it, or find a way to get around the filters; and
b) creates and adversarial relationship between parent and child instead of a collaborative one.

Having parents set up their own filters instead of trusting an outside organization to do it for them almost GUARANTEES that the filters will not be effective. Who has time to be comprehensive on content, given the rate at which new sites are created? The only alternative is to trust some organization that does have the resources to do a more comprehensive job, and even then will not be complete.

The more serious issue is the loss of trust demonstrated by putting filtering software on the computer.

Re:Platform doesn't mattter - filtering == bad by goldspider · 2004-07-01 06:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

"b) creates and adversarial relationship between parent and child instead of a collaborative one."
The assumption here, naturally, is that it is bad to have disagreements with your child. That's why kids these days are so fucked up: parents will do just about anything to remove conflicts from parenting.

--
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Re:Platform doesn't mattter - filtering == bad by FireFury03 · 2004-07-01 06:12 · Score: 1

a) correct - if kids want porn they will find it. IMHO the purpose of filtering is to prevent innocent kids from accidentally ending up on a porn site (does happen). If the kid is actively going after porn you give 'em hell.

b) Only if is is presented as an enforcement system - if it is intended as a protection system (see above) then there is no problem.

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Platform doesn't mattter - filtering == bad by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:39 · Score: 0

You're right. Far better to have a child who doesn't trust you, who doesn't want to tell you that she got propositioned by some guy on the Internet because she knows it will be a year before she gets to touch a keyboard again, and whose goal in choosing a course of action isn't to decide what is right, but what she can get away with.

It's fine to have disagreements with your child, and it's fine not to approach such disagreements with the attitude that the kid's viewpoint is just as valid as your own. If that were true, we'd give them the vote and be done with it. But most of the people who bemoan our cultural unwillingness to discipline strike me as authoritarians who want complete control of their childrens' every thought and action.

I have an aunt who is that way, and I simply hate visiting her family. I haven't once seen my cousins when they weren't having one punishment or another enforced upon them. They live in fear of their mother, and I'm guessing that not a one of them will stay in that house any longer than they absolutely must. The oldest daughter ended up getting pregnant, so I propose that her parenting style is a failure.

Regarding your sig: You make it sound like situational ethics is a bad thing. But I've never seen a set of religious ethics that didn't admit to the principles of situational ethics. If telling a falsehood (an ethical no-no) is done with the intention of saving a life, I can't think of a religious tradition that would condemn the action. Situational ethics has never meant "you can do exactly what you want whenever you want it"; it just means that you cannot say a particular action was ethical without looking at the situation in which it occurred.
Re:Platform doesn't mattter - filtering == bad by LihTox · 2004-07-01 07:45 · Score: 1

Putting filtering on Linux doesn't make it better. Filtering still: a) doesn't work. Kids who want pr0n will find it, or find a way to get around the filters; and b) creates and adversarial relationship between parent and child instead of a collaborative one. This is true if the kids are actively searching for pr0n. How about six-year-olds who are just searching the web, mis-type a website, and end up in Laura's Luscious Lesbian Love Lanai? Whether this damages a kid or just confuses him is open for debate, but a parent can prevent this from happening without being in a confrontation with their child.
One could also keep an eye out for a kid's trying to circumvent the system; when that happens, you know it's time for "the talk". :-)
Re:Platform doesn't mattter - filtering == bad by Phred+T.+Magnificent · 2004-07-01 08:36 · Score: 1

Putting filtering on Linux doesn't make it better. Filtering still:

a) doesn't work. Kids who want pr0n will find it, or find a way to get around the filters; and
b) creates and adversarial relationship between parent and child instead of a collaborative one.

There are a couple of misconceptions here. In the first place, most of us who use filtering (I've had DansGuardian in place for a long time now) aren't looking for a way to block kids who are actively looking for pr0n. We're not stupid: we know that kids who actively want it will find it, filter or no. In the second place, our kids can be trusted to know the difference between a system we set up to prevent accidents with material they actually don't want to see, and an attempt to keep them from doing what they do want to.

As it happens, I set up my filtering system (complete with transparent proxying on the firewall) at a time when I didn't even have kids yet. My wife and I wanted a system to prevent ourselves from accidents, and from the occasionial maliciously placed popups on otherwise legitimate sites.
We have a 2-year-old now, but filtering for her won't be an issue for quite some time yet. By the time it is, she'll certainly know that the same filters that apply to her browsing apply to ours as well.

--
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Re:Platform doesn't mattter - filtering == bad by dheltzel · 2004-07-01 09:05 · Score: 1

Having parents set up their own filters instead of trusting an outside organization to do it for them almost GUARANTEES that the filters will not be effective. Who has time to be comprehensive on content, given the rate at which new sites are created?
Hmm. Are you suggesting that the at least one "concerned" parent needs to be performing research on a daily basis just to keep up with the onslaught of new porn sites?
I think that at least some parents would be willing to do that (for the good of the children, of course) :)
There might be a requirement for some penetration testing also, the details of which are left as an exercise for the reader.

Teaching how to Hijack... by CowsAnonymous · 2004-07-01 05:38 · Score: 1

From the article:

> We'll configure Squid as a transparent proxy, meaning we'll hijack network traffic and redirect it to a new destination

I wonder what level of Linux user this is intended for. If they say "I use linux 9.0", they might be thrown off when they find out that they're "hijacking network traffic."

--
CowsAnonymous: We're here to help moo.

Important step by Fiz+Ocelot · 2004-07-01 05:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

No matter what people say, how futile it is etc etc, it's an important step in getting Linux to be more common in the educational environment. A school or library needs to be able to say "we tried our best!" when it comes to these things. It helps linux get its foot in the door.

Dansguardian is great by danpbrowning · 2004-07-01 05:38 · Score: 1

My opinion about Linux filtering software is unbiased, despite the fact that my first name is that of the author's.

I've been using Dansguardian in the same way described in the article for a while now and it has worked great.

--
Daniel

Why Filter - Just Log by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:39 · Score: 0

In a home, you don't have to filter. You tell your kids not to do something and have a proxy log. If they go the places you told them not to, you punish them appropriately.

Filters don't encourage kids to make good choices. They just (somewhat) prevent them from making bad ones.

Here's an Idea... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:39 · Score: 1, Interesting

Here's an idea. Keep kids off the Internet period until they're old enough to handle it, i.e. approximately 16 or so depending on the child. I didn't go on-line until I was 17 in 1994, and I'm thankful for it. All the crap I was exposed to on-line since then could, and probably would, significantly emotionally and mentally damage a child unprepared for the world.

I shudder when I think of my 12 to 15 year-old cousins going on-line and all the stuff they're most likely being exposed to, even with their parents having NetNanny and such installed.

Re:Here's an Idea... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:54 · Score: 0

This is an impossible feat. Kids these days use the internet on a regular basis in school to do research. I should know this, having just completed the 8th grade. If you try to censor the internet as a whole, it'll only lead to them "exploring" the internet's nasty corners at school, which could be VERY bad if they were caught. Also, I've been browsing the internet, uncensored, since about the 2nd grade. I've looked at my fair share of naked people online since then, and I feel I'm not too out of the ordinary - I have some friends, I go to school, I get mostly A's, the usual stuff. Censoring the internet would have ired me so much that it probably could have lead to either violence in the house or my deleting my dad's work files. Once a child has experienced the fun, fun interne, taking it away from them is like taking away meth from an addict. If a parent is concerned about their child being scarred for life by porn, they shouldn't be. I know many people my age who look at pornography on a regular basis, and they are no different from those who don't. I think talking to a child about this would be better than censoring it. Censoring internet content would be very bad, since denying something is an excellent way to make someone want it. For example, narcotics are illegal in the United States, and the prospect of rebellion and disobedience entices many teenagers a year to experiment with what should be a legal, enexciting substance.
Re:Here's an Idea... by Zorilla · 2004-07-01 05:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

All the ASCII porn on gopher really screwed me up back in 1994.

It's much easier to not use the Internet when it's as inaccessible as it was ten years ago. I think the only access in 1994 we had was when my oldest brother used his college account which dialed into a remote unix terminal, which you then connected to the internet from. Downloading was a pain. For instance, ftp went from the remote server to the unix terminal's home directory. That was pretty fast (probably T1), but you had to download again from the home directory over the terminal connection to the local machine. That was at 14.4kbps.

Even then, it was followed by buggy TCP/IP tools and a crappy, unstable version of 16-bit Netscape if you were in Windows 3.1.

Long story short, I bet you didn't use the Internet until 1994 because your parents said you weren't old enough - but rather because it wasn't feasible to use it until then. That and parents saying, "there's porn on the internet?" Assuming they knew what the Internet was at the time.

--

It would be cool if it didn't suck.

How much "protection" do children need? by Steve+'Rim'+Jobs · 2004-07-01 05:40 · Score: 1, Insightful

Protecting children is one of our chief duties as adults, whether we are parents, professionals, or friends. But we also have to ask: What are we protecting them from? My book says that sexuality is a fact of life, and a potentially wonderful part of growing up for children at all stages of their lives. It's not sex itself that is harmful to children, but the conditions under which they might express themselves sexually that can leave them vulnerable to harms like HIV, unwanted pregnancy, or sexual violence.

In our country, there are people pushing a conservative religious agenda that would deny minors all sexual information and sexual expression. They're the people behind abstinence-only education, the child-pornography laws that get people arrested for taking pictures of their babies in the bathtub, or laws that make abortion risky and traumatic for young women. These so-called protections are more harmful to minors than sex itself.

But most people don't have an agenda. They're just nervous thinking about children as sexual beings and they're worried that something bad might happen to a kid they love. I'm not saying we should stop caring. But let's care realistically. Do we really want to strip sexuality out of young people's lives?

Re:WHATTHEFUCKWHATTHEFUCKWAHTTHEFUCK!?!? by Zorilla · 2004-07-01 05:40 · Score: 0, Flamebait

SHITCOCK!!!

Penny Arcade 19 Mar 2004

Yes, this the parent is somewhat remotely on topic. i.e. you'd rather have your kid visit homestarrunner.com than penny-arcade.com. That, and at the risk of being modded down, I just love Penny Arcade's Internet Fuckwad Theory and had to share it.

--

It would be cool if it didn't suck.

I could compile by age 11 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:40 · Score: 0

I don't know about you, but when I was an 11-year-old, I could already use a C compiler. Considering that it doesn't even take much C knowledge to get around this, I wouldn't bother with this.

really stupid by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:40 · Score: 0

no parent in their right mind is going to jump through all these stupid linux shit hoops to get filtering working when you can buy something off the shelf and not spend the next 6 month configuring your filters

the stupidity of /. never cease to amaze me

Re:Still missing the point... by underpar · 2004-07-01 05:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's nice tou know that you can turn your back for a minute, though. That's why I have a fenced in back yard. I know the kid can open the gate, and I know I still have to watch him.

Went back and RTFA... by goldspider · 2004-07-01 05:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

...and it's even worse than I originally thought. If by some miracle that Average Parent User trudged through the installation of the three programs, there is NO WAY IN HELL that they are going to be competant enough (let alone willing) to configure them all without throwing their hands up in frustration.

What "average" users do you know that would be comfortable with modifying .conf files and all that other crap that this forces them to do?

Anyone who calls this process "easy" is completely out of touch with the average PC user.

--
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy

Re:Went back and RTFA... by NineNine · 2004-07-01 05:52 · Score: 1

I agree... my eyes started to glaze over after the first couple of paragraphs. I mean, one of the first things it says to do, AFTER downloading THREE programs, is to:

To configure Squid as a transparent proxy, add the following lines to squid.conf:

httpd_accel_host virtual

httpd_accel_port 80

httpd_accel_with_proxy on

httpd_accel_uses_host_header on

And my question would be:
What is the "squid.conf"?

How do I add lines to it?

Where do I put these lines?

And that's just the beginning. This is ridiculously complicated for 99.9% of all people out there, so unfortuantely, this doesn't look like it's a feasable option.
Re:Went back and RTFA... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:25 · Score: 0

If you don't know how to add lines to a text file, you should not be using Linux.

Actually, it doesn't. by Fooby · 2004-07-01 05:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

The article only tells how to install iptables, squid, and Dan's Guardian. It doesn't tell how to customize it to your own tastes or values. Here, in full, is all the article says about customizing the filter:

While Dan's Guardian provides an excellent filter all by itself, you may want to exercise further control over the Web filtering by editing the other files in the /etc/dansguardian directory that contain external blacklists. Blacklists from squidGuard and URLBlacklist work perfectly with Dan's Guardian. Each file contains a brief explanation for its contents to make configuration easier.

So what we have is a case of relying on "Dan's" ideas of good and bad, rather than a commercial company's. Not a huge improvement on the face of it if parents are just going to install an open-source tool rather than a commercial one. Better yet would be to educate the kids and monitor their behavior rather than trusting some blanket censorship tool, open-source or not.

Re:Actually, it doesn't. by younixguy · 2004-07-01 06:08 · Score: 1

When get the DansGuardian software, read the installation instructions! It tells you how to customize it.
Re:Actually, it doesn't. by Fooby · 2004-07-01 06:14 · Score: 1

The article is supposed to be a tutorial, presumably for people who need more handholding than that. I guess it must not be a very useful tutorial, since all it seems to do is badly summarize the instructions.

You need to be shocked into reality by confused+one · 2004-07-01 05:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

Go to Google and type in a bunch of keywords which would represent the most disgusting and/or disturbing idea you can think of. You'll get hits. With pictures.

Then go looking for news articles about kids being lured to their death by people in chat rooms, etc. You'll find plenty.

You need to monitor what your kids are doing on the net. The children aren't responsible for their actions, You are.

Re:You need to be shocked into reality by Milo+of+Kroton · 2004-07-01 05:49 · Score: 1

We only have family computer which is in main room. My son of 8 (has his own logon) uses it for school and monitored net use, while I or my woman are read on couch nearby. I do monitor. I need no software to do it instead me.

--
Read journal when you are not understand
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by zoloto · 2004-07-01 05:56 · Score: 1

I will do something like this as well.

Secured Linux homebrewed install of my own.
Keylogging software at the driver level (piece of cake)
Website logging and caching of pages (12 month cycle of logs)
ScreenShots based on keywords, websites and emails.

No seperate login needed really. Just teach your kid what to do, and what NOT to do, and usually even if their curious, they'll follow your instructions. Not to a T though, I mean come on. Who EVER was a perfect child in obedience and did what their parents told them? Let them explore and learn for themselves; it's the only way they're going to become responsible at all.
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by confused+one · 2004-07-01 06:00 · Score: 1

That's all I'm suggesting you should do, monitor his use. Censoring would only have limited effect.
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by Milo+of+Kroton · 2004-07-01 06:06 · Score: 1

I do that. His Karma better than me!

--
Read journal when you are not understand
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by vk2 · 2004-07-01 06:36 · Score: 1

And don't forget to trash your library card so that your kid never ever accesses anything that you don't monitor.
Lord - I pray you will not be viewed as some Hitler or Saddam's cousin by your kids. The more you try to censor the more curious they became to explore - if not at home then somewhere else. Instead talk to your kids with an open mind - perhaps it might make them more responsible.
P.S: No attempt to teach/lecture you to raise kids - or blaming your methods.

--
No Sig for you.!
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by greg_barton · 2004-07-01 06:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

Then go looking for news articles about kids being lured to their death by people in chat rooms, etc. You'll find plenty.

Then go looking for news articles about people dying in freak accidents, like being struck by lightning. You'll find plenty.

Doesn't mean you should avoid the outdoors, or cower in the basement every time you hear thunder.
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by confused+one · 2004-07-01 08:33 · Score: 1

That wasn't the point. The point is, children are innocent. They generally have no idea what evil can and does happen IRL. As a parent, you're responsible for your chilrens health and well-being. Your also responsible for their actions. A parent has to pay attention to what their children are doing, to protect them from themselves and others. I'm simply advocating monitoring their internet activity.
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by IamNotAgeek · 2004-07-01 09:06 · Score: 1

I agree. I have also thought that it would be a good idea for the internet to be self "policed" so to say. If Google could add category values to each page with the ability for anybody viewing the pages to vote on the levels of each category then eventually the levels will represent the majority of "values" of the people using the internet. So if there was a "kid friendly" category, we could have browsers that could be set by the parent to query google before loading anything from a web page for a certain level of "kid friendly". This could work to everybodies advantage. If I want to surf the web at a "hard core" level of 10 (on a scale from 1 - 10) then I wouldn't have to put up with all the sites that only have soft porn. Given enough different catagories it could be very usefull for doing searches. If you had an "informative" or "technical" category it would make finding useful trouble shooting information easier to find. Also it would be easy to set up for your kids that if there was no levels set such as for a new site then the browser wouldn't show the site but for me I would have everything show up so I could rate it. If the values are a running average then somebody trying to screw around with the rating would not be very successful as more and more people vote. Anyways I just thought of this so it probably has a lot problems but I need to get back to work now.

--
All generalities are dangerous except ones that start with "All /.ers"
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 10:48 · Score: 0

Your right!

IMHO any one who would let their kid use the web unsupervised has rocks in their head.

Filtering software does not work. The kid usually has more tech skills than the parents and will just bypass restrictive filters by dropping in a Knoppix disc.

It's better to just be there and the kid will learn healthy web habits.

PS.
(I used an acronym now I'm slathered in web-savvy goodness.)
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by Anthony+Boyd · 2004-07-01 12:48 · Score: 1

Then go looking for news articles about kids being lured to their death by people in chat rooms, etc. You'll find plenty.
Then go looking for news articles about people dying in freak accidents, like being struck by lightning. You'll find plenty.

Doesn't mean you should avoid the outdoors, or cower in the basement every time you hear thunder.

Nor does it mean you should walk out onto a field in a lightning storm, wearing armor and a carrying a metal javelin.

I mean seriously, some of the arguments here are positively inane. Have you no common sense? Do you think that simply because something is possible you should open your mouth like a baby bird and consume everything that is shoveled down your throat? Do you read every spam message that comes into your mailbox? Buy every product you see advertised? Rent every video ever made just because it's there?

The point is, every human being has filters. Whether you use the filter between your ears, use the delete key judiciously, use search engines, or use actual filtering programs, you're finding ways to view only certain data. Young children don't have the mental capacity to enact all those filters in healthy ways. Parents do. Of course, parents have to gauge when to be protective and when to let go. That's difficult. But that's parenting.

Part of how we define who we are is by what we don't do. I don't rape women, worship Satan, or kill people who disagree with me. That is part of what I want to convey to my children.

Are some parents too restrictive, and some parents too permissive? Yes. But most parents are simply trying to raise their kids to be good human beings -- by their own definition, not yours. You have your own kids, you raise them your way. You certainly cannot discredit the concept of filtering information just because someone does it differently than you would.

--
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Re:You need to be shocked into reality by greg_barton · 2004-07-02 04:17 · Score: 1

Nor does it mean you should walk out onto a field in a lightning storm, wearing armor and a carrying a metal javelin.

Dunno. I've played a sousaphone during a Texas thunderstorm in the middle of a football field. It's pretty fun. You should try it.

But that's about all of your post that was a reply to mine. The rest might have well been an argument with a mannequin...or a straw man...

Or you could by akvalentine · 2004-07-01 05:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

Make sure that when they are very young, that you are with them any time that they are online.

Then, when they are old enough to understand, you open the Internet wide open and log everywhere they go. Make sure that they know you are logging.

Discuss with them what you think is inappropriate for them. If they visit sites that you don't approve of, talk to them about it.

Don't get me wrong, I love cool technology, but technology isn't a valid substitute for parenting.

Parents should surf with their kids! by Patris_Magnus · 2004-07-01 05:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

I have installed two different filters on my kid's computers and I still find porn in my son's cache. Whether Linux or Windows, to date, the only filter that realy works 100% of the time while I am not at home is to disable the lan connection to the internet. It's only a matter of time until he figures that one out too.

Re:Parents should surf with their kids! by cK-Gunslinger · 2004-07-01 06:36 · Score: 1

Umm.. not to question your parental skills, but what are you doing about this? Are you just adding more filtering software and trying to stay one step ahead of him, or are you actually confronting him with what you've found? How old is you kid?

I have two children of my own, one old enough to surf (from a pre-selected list of sites we've agreed upon - mores added as she sees commercials or hears about them and I get to prescreen them first.) I can't image having to worry about her eventually "figuring out" my protection scheme and trying to get around it. Does your child not have any respect for you? Do you punish or otherwise make known your objections to his actions? It seems to me like you are mistaking your role in this situation. You are his parent -- you make the rules. If he's still young, you need to make that clear. If he's too old to control, then he's practically an adult and the whole point becomes moot. Are you trying to control what your 17-year-old sees?

I'm sorry if I seem like I'm making judgements about you without full knowledge of your situation, but this just seems very odd to me.
Re:Parents should surf with their kids! by Patris_Magnus · 2004-07-01 06:56 · Score: 1

Maybe I gave you the wrong impression. This is not a rampant problem. He is 14 and interested in girls. I have confronted him and asked him what he thinks would happen if his mother found this material on this computer instead of me. I have told him to stop, and he has, for the most part. Where the problem is now is that my kids like to surf the gaming sites and they are bombarded with popups and banner ads for adult material. Granted, the images are generally of thumbnail size but inappropriate nonetheless. Hell, my daughter and some of her friends were entering their names in a search engine and ended up getting naked pics of girls even with the filters turned on. This is the type of problem I am seeing. As far as the disabling of the network. He may or may not actively try to get around this in the future. I was merely referring to his ever increasing knowledge of how computers, and the like, work.
Re:Parents should surf with their kids! by cK-Gunslinger · 2004-07-01 07:12 · Score: 1

Oh.. ok. I thought you had a problem where he was out "looking" for this stuff at every oopportunity, despite your efforts.

I *did* have the wrong impression, sorry.
Re:Parents should surf with their kids! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:31 · Score: 0

they are bombarded with popups and banner ads for adult material.
Can't you (your kids) use a different browser (e.g. FireFox), or at least install the IE popup blocker, to prevent that? I've heard there's some ad-blocking plugins for FireFox too, but I've not explored those yet..

Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by TheFlyingGoat · 2004-07-01 05:47 · Score: 3, Insightful

While this might take care of keeping kids off a large number of porn sites, it still will allow kids through to sites with all pictures. Those can't be filtered by keyword.

My personal belief is that kids under a certain age should NEVER be on the Internet without close supervision. As the kids get older, they should be given more freedom to explore by themselves, but monitoring software is still a good idea.

A close friend of mine who's 18 and getting ready to go off to college still isn't allowed on the computer when her mom is at work during the day. The computer is password protected so the mom has to be around when they're on it. They just accept it and deal with it. She doesn't sit and watch over their shoulder now that they're older, but she's at least around and able to glance at the screen occasionally.

--
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill

Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by garcia · 2004-07-01 05:59 · Score: 1

A close friend of mine who's 18 and getting ready to go off to college still isn't allowed on the computer when her mom is at work during the day. The computer is password protected so the mom has to be around when they're on it. They just accept it and deal with it. She doesn't sit and watch over their shoulder now that they're older, but she's at least around and able to glance at the screen occasionally.

That's a bit strange and I can't imagine that would have done anything for me other than made me mad enough to figure out a way around the password or a way to get access elsewhere.

Supervision is one thing... Psychotic babying is another.
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:02 · Score: 0

While this might take care of keeping kids off a large number of porn sites, it still will allow kids through to sites with all pictures. Those can't be filtered by keyword.

Actually, that's still possible by looking at the URL.

My personal belief is that kids under a certain age should NEVER be on the Internet without close supervision. As the kids get older, they should be given more freedom to explore by themselves, but monitoring software is still a good idea.

I agree 100%.

A close friend of mine who's 18 and getting ready to go off to college still isn't allowed on the computer when her mom is at work during the day.

18? She's a bloody adult! That's just way over the top in my opinion.

The computer is password protected so the mom has to be around when they're on it. They just accept it and deal with it.

That's possibly what disturbs me the most. If I was treated like that when I was that age, I'd be raising hell, and rightly so. Blind "parents know best" attitudes may be a good idea when you are five, but grown adults just deferring to their parents is just plain creepy. They should be able to think for themselves at that age.
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by RogueProtoKol · 2004-07-01 06:09 · Score: 1

My personal belief is that kids under a certain age should NEVER be on the Internet without close supervision. As the kids get older, they should be given more freedom to explore by themselves, but monitoring software is still a good idea.

My personal belief is that you're an asshat and that supervision is no replacement for parents teaching their kids decent values and letting them find their own way. I've been online unsupervised sicne I was at least 9 years old (1996) and being exposed to porn has had no ill side effects to be honest, I really don't see what the big deal is, parents are typically clueless when it comes to these things.
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by garcia · 2004-07-01 06:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

To be honest, the fact that you view such material at all speaks volumes about your attitute towards women.

Yeah, it says that I appreciate women's freedom. I appreciate women that are sure of themselves and their body.

It speaks volumes about you when you honestly believe that a naked woman is somehow demeaning.
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:22 · Score: 0

"My personal belief is that kids under a certain age should NEVER be on the Internet without close supervision."

What do you think will happen exactly if they use the internet without you being there?

Anyone here view pornography below the 'offical' age? Of course not, otherwise you'd be blind and wouldnt be able to read this, eh? I guess thats the justification for the purticanical laws that fuck up this country, from pot on up.
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:41 · Score: 0

To be honest, the fact that you view such material at all speaks volumes about your attitute towards women.

Who mentioned women? The nym "RogueProtoKol" doesn't say anything about gender or sexuality. RogueProtoKol could be a woman, gay, or both.

It looks to me that you are prejudiced against porn.
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by radish · 2004-07-01 06:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

A close friend of mine who's 18 and getting ready to go off to college still isn't allowed on the computer when her mom is at work during the day.

Wow. I truly am speechless...

When I was 18 I had moved away from home and it had been my computer for 10 years. No one tells me what I can/can't do with my own computer, not then, not now. Of course this was before the net, we had to swap..."art"...by mailing floppys around the place.

--
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by sowth · 2004-07-01 07:44 · Score: 1

The entire system is password protected so the kids can't use the computer at all during the day? What, does she keep pr0n sitting on her computer or something? What if one of the kids needs to write a report for school? So they're not allowed to use a word processor or anything else on the computer? Does she do the same thing with the television? (Let me guess, that is the babysitter.)
I think someone either needs to remove the stick out of her butt or get a real operating system.
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by Inda · 2004-07-01 08:52 · Score: 1

I would have agreed with you until the 12th hour of supervising my daughter passed. She loves cbeebies. She is three. She knows which button is the back button. I am happy.

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This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by kaschei · 2004-07-01 10:02 · Score: 1

Does she do the same thing with the television? (Let me guess, that is the babysitter.)
This is the problem-- parents now want to turn the PC into what the television is: something that you put the kids in front of and forget about, while they go out, or work, or whatever is more important to them than being with their kids. That's why they want these safety measures. The TV airwaves are tightly controlled and censored for language and nudity (unless you get the special channels).
The problem is, the internet doesn't have much similar with TV, despite advertisers' many attempts to the contrary. Content from millions of sources, and yes, some of them are going to be "bad" from your perspective. Parents should consider an internet-equipped computer likened to a full cable subscription, with all the 'extra' channels and no password: the only adequate solution is supervision. With TV we get around this (to some extent) by limiting the rights of content producers (can't say fuck, have to blurr the boobs, plus time restrictions), and this simply cannot effectively be done to the internet.

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I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. -Henry David Thoreau
Re:Still No Substitute For Close Supervision by meringuoid · 2004-07-01 20:40 · Score: 1

A close friend of mine who's 18 and getting ready to go off to college still isn't allowed on the computer when her mom is at work during the day. The computer is password protected so the mom has to be around when they're on it. They just accept it and deal with it.
Of course by 'deal with it', you mean with a Knoppix CD?

--
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.

I don't know that this will work ... by petabyte · 2004-07-01 05:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

Frankly, you're not going to beat sitting down with your kids and talking to them about where to go on the net and where not to. I mean this software helps but isn't that hard to get around. All the kid really has to do is boot the system with knoppix or root the box. Some people might laugh at that notion but think of what you would do at this age. Most linux people have that sort of "I want to do this just because I can" mentality. If that gene has passed on, you'll need a little more than iptables. :)

When I was 10, my dad had a net-nanny type program on the machine allegedly to protect my younger brother. It timed internet access and cut you off after a certain period. So I opened up regedit and ripped the program out manually. Sure, the system was barely functional, the network connection didn't work at all and the machine needed to be reinstalled - but that nanny software never came back.

Re:I don't know that this will work ... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:10 · Score: 0

Frankly, you're not going to beat sitting down with your kids and talking to them about where to go on the net and where not to.

I agree.

All the kid really has to do is boot the system with knoppix or root the box.

Disable booting from CD, password protect the BIOS, and keep up-to-date with security patches.

When I was 10, my dad had a net-nanny type program on the machine allegedly to protect my younger brother. It timed internet access and cut you off after a certain period. So I opened up regedit and ripped the program out manually.

With all due respect, that was Windows. The equivelent in Linux would be fiddling around in /etc, and you aren't going to do that unless you are root.

Sex is a powerful instinct, possibly the most powerful one next to self-preservation. If you can harness that by making your kids learn all kinds of techie stuff to get past your filters, maybe that's a good thing. They won't even realise they are learning.
Re:I don't know that this will work ... by ejaw5 · 2004-07-01 11:08 · Score: 1

Disable booting from CD, password protect the BIOS, and keep up-to-date with security patches.

All the kid has to do is then open the computer case and reset the BIOS.

To counter that, the parent installs a lock on the computer.

The kid then learns how to crack the lock.

So...instead of having a pr0n-hunting kid, you now have a lock-pickin', computer-crackin' pr0n hunting kid.

--

$cat /dev/random > Sig
Re:I don't know that this will work ... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 18:20 · Score: 0

All the kid has to do is then open the computer case and reset the BIOS.

Sorry, no. The kid can't do that without being caught, as he can't replace the password when done.

A Post: The True Answer by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:48 · Score: 0

Here is a reply from an anonymous user on that article reposted here:

"Can I set up parental Web filters for my children using Linux?"

The real answer that should have been given: A) It is damaging to your child when you treat your child as a mere object instead of a person in and of themselves with their own interests. B) If your child is old enough to be interested in looking at 'naughty' pictures then I think its time you have the birds and the bees talk with them, and pray to god he or she prefers to satisify themselves on mere images and decide on sex later on. C) There is few, if any, arguements or evidence that suggest harm comes from merely being exposed to information in the form of images or text online. If any harm does exist it pales in comparison with the harm that comes from restrictions on free access to information.

Re:A Post: The True Answer by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:23 · Score: 0

Please, go screw up your own children and leave mine alone.

Parenting by any other name... by goldspider · 2004-07-01 05:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

I thought we were mostly in agreement here. Parenting is good.

Putting limits on material they want their children exposed to is a HUGE part of parenting. So why do you oppose software intended to let parents do just that?

--
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy

Re:Parenting by any other name... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:34 · Score: 0

So why do you oppose software intended to let parents do just that?

Because he's worried his parents will get it?
Re:Parenting by any other name... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:15 · Score: 0

Because it's allowing the 'parents' to shuffle-off babysitting responsibility onto an inanimate object? Yes, you *should* be putting limits on what your kids are exposed to, but the operative word there is 'you'. *You*. Not a computer, not a religious institution, and not your government. If you don't want to look after the kids, don't have them in the first place.
Re:Parenting by any other name... by goldspider · 2004-07-01 07:23 · Score: 1

So you're of the ilk that believes anything other than 24/7 monitoring of your child is bad parenting.
Filtering software is a tool, just like a crib, walker, gates, fences, etc. are tools that keep children from wandering into harmful situations. You seem to think that parents will use these tools as a substitute for parenting. IMHO, a parent who takes a proactive approach to their child's safety by using these tools is a better parent.

--
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy

Spoken like a true nonparent... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:50 · Score: 0

Just how the hell am I supposed to "supervise" both of my kids while also cooking dinner? Or should I keep them locked up in a closet any time I can't "supervise"?

Stuff like dansguardian prevents accidents. You know what jerks porn site ops are about trapping the unwary (whitehouse.com, for example).

Oh Really? by mratitude · 2004-07-01 05:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Regarding all the "kids will hack it" and "watch your kids" content so far.

The underlying issue is quite simple - Access to the Internet is the equivalent of allowing your kids to leave the yard without permission, not bothering to know where they are, who they're contacting or being contacted by and generally leaving them at the mercy of the big, bad world.

So, establishing them on isolated segement NAT'd computers where every single 0 and 1 goes through a router that their parents manage or through a proxy service of the same circumstance isn't anything more complicated than insuring that Jack or Jane ask permission to leave the yard and to know where they're going and who they'll see when they do.

With kids, you don't throw out the rules for sake of convenience or with the idea of being "progressive" about child rearing. The consequences are just too dire.

--

Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.

Re:Oh Really? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:31 · Score: 0

With kids, you don't throw out the rules for sake..

Did you say sake? I love to drink that Japanese beer and I will throw out rules and the kids for some!
Re:Oh Really? by ciggieposeur · 2004-07-01 06:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

With kids, you don't throw out the rules for sake of convenience or with the idea of being "progressive" about child rearing. The consequences are just too dire.

I'm not trying to slam, but what actually are the consequences of unfiltered net access? Realistically:

1) If a kid is somehow communicating with a real sexual predator, wouldn't their behavior in the outside world show that some kind of problem needs to be addressed?

2) Has anyone shown a solid correlation between childhood/adolescent pornography viewing and adult dysfunction?

I mean, how is Internet access so much different from say unfiltered library access? When I was a lot younger I could easily find dozens of naked pictures in the art and sexology books, and I also found plenty of books undermining my parent's religious, political, and ethical views. I don't feel like I was mentally or morally hurt by that process, so I don't quite understand the need to shield others from it.

In all seriousness, as a parent what are your concerns?
Re:Oh Really? by pnatural · 2004-07-01 07:31 · Score: 1

Reminds me of a story about Coleridge. The story was about religion, but it applies to nearly all values that parents would like to instill in their children. Story goes:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge once fell into conversation with a gentleman who posited that children should receive no formal religious instruction: they should, rather, be free to choose their own religious faith upon reaching a suitable age. Coleridge did not disagree, but later invited the man into his rather unkempt garden. "You call this a garden?" the visitor exclaimed. "There are nothing but weeds here!" "Well, you see," Coleridge replied, "I did not wish to infringe upon the liberty of the garden in any way. I was just giving the garden a chance to express itself and to choose its own production."
Shamlessly copied from http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=8964
Re:Oh Really? by jzilla · 2004-07-01 07:34 · Score: 1

Regarding all the "kids will hack it" and "watch your kids" content so far.

Well, at least the kids will have to work for their porn, like we did back in my day.
Re:Oh Really? by mratitude · 2004-07-01 07:48 · Score: 1

In all seriousness, as a parent what are your concerns?

My primary concern is that kids are natively naive and undisciplined about a lot of issues and circumstances in which they can get involved. Unfortunately, so are a lot of parents. Speaking to the issue of porn, according to what I read, adults are experiencing a form of addiction. Can you imagine what can occur with kids?

Bear in mind too that this isn't just about porn - How many parents got a lawsuit notice 'cause their kid was downloading "free" music or binary copies of copyrighted material? What about the perceived "glamour" for being an "elite" in the underground and VX crowd? How many parents want the FBI knocking on their door (or knocking down their door) 'cause their little darling thought it would be a cool idea to take advantage of a cool new 'sploit he found?

I don't see much difference between what you allow your kids to do out in the world and the online world. The problems are very similar.

--

Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
Re:Oh Really? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:01 · Score: 0

I see nothing wrong with letting kids leave the yard un-supervised. When I was growing up I would just tell my parents I'm going out to play. They would tell me to be back by a certain time and ask me for a general area. This translated to things like, the wood north of playground or somewhere around the lake. I would run off and do what I wanted to do. If I was stupid enough get hurt or get caught breaking a rule I was punished. Otherwise I was basically allowed to run free.

Now I've done some stupid things over the years under such lose guidelines. Such as playing with bear cubs before I knew enough about bears. Shooting dynamite with a .22 caliber rifle. Falling into a lake which was frozen over. As I got older I started doing different stupid things, such as skipping school. Getting really drunk and getting in fights...etc.

However, because of such a free upbringing I'm much more responsible then any of my friends. I'm capaible of taking care of myself in almost any situation. I have a good job and I'm almost finished with my PHd.

So it's all a question of perspective. Yes children face more risk if you let them do a potentially bad thing. However, children are very good at learning from thier mistakes and often will one do it once.
Re:Oh Really? by arcade · 2004-07-01 19:55 · Score: 1

> The underlying issue is quite simple - Access to
> the Internet is the equivalent of allowing your
> kids to leave the yard without permission, not
> bothering to know where they are, who they're
> contacting or being contacted by and generally
> leaving them at the mercy of the big, bad world.

I think this may be the core of the problem, and why I disagree so vehemently against filtering.

When I grew up, I could go wherever I wanted after the age of .. 6 or 7 or something. No restrictions, except on 'time'. My parents wanted me to call home if I were going to be "late" - "late" being defined as "not home by 16:00" or something similiar.

A few years later, say when I was 8-9, I could just say that I would be playing in the woods with friends, and would be home by 19:00 or something, and that was okay with them. We did crazy dangerous things - but nobody got more seriously hurt than a few broken bones.

The freedom to explore was very important to me as a kid. I had a pretty strict curfew (is that the right word? Time you had to be home by) - and my parents asked who I was going to be with, but they never knew where we actually were going - except "in the woods" .. woods they didn't know, by the way ;D

--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Re:Oh Really? by bckrispi · 2004-07-02 07:21 · Score: 1

1) If a kid is somehow communicating with a real sexual predator, wouldn't their behavior in the outside world show that some kind of problem needs to be addressed?
The problem here is that (very often) by the time outward signs surface, the child has already been solicited for sex/molested. Sorry, but that's too late. Every day you hear of children being lured to meet sexual predators they met on a chat room. It isn't until after the fact (and the damage is done) that the police look at the kid's computer and say, "Gee, little Suzy/Billy was chatting with this pedophile for two months before we found him/her floating in the river.
I'm not saying that filters are 100% successful, but coupled with monitoring kids internet access and talking with your kids about online safety, it can be an effective tool in keeping your family safe.

--
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno

This is a very good thing. by uigrad_2000 · 2004-07-01 05:51 · Score: 1

It's about time for this to be available. I set up my aunt and uncle's machine as dual boot, and although the kids liked linux more, the parents run it now entirely in Windows, partially because they have filtering programs in Windows.

--
Free unix account: freeshell.org

Oh crap! by zoloto · 2004-07-01 05:51 · Score: 4, Funny

Does this mean parents will actually have to talk to their children? Does that mean they will actually have to teach them values and standards of their own?

You don't say. What a shocker!

Bangbus is a work of genius. by NDPTAL85 · 2004-07-01 05:52 · Score: 1

It is painfully obvious that the sites like Bangbus are FAKE and not real rape sites simply by the fact that everyone's face is shown and if there was any *REAL* rape going on no one would stupid enough to incriminate themselves worldwide.

So you have a problem with people who like to "pretend rape" which is harmless? How can you possibly know what kinds of fantasies your children will harbor? Lots of people harmlessly engage in roleplay on a regular basis then go back to regular lives.

Obviously this topic makes YOU uncomfortable. But sometimes even very upstanding citizens such as yourself need to acknowledge the difference between reality and fantasy. Fantasy is ok, no matter the subject. The same subjects taken to reality are not.

Bangbus is fantasy, not reality. And hilarious fantasy at that.

--
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.

Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by TwistedSquare · 2004-07-01 05:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think the grandparent is aware that bangbus is fantasy, but the problem is: will kids be this aware? If they see pretend rape happening and nothing being said against it, it is not unreasonable to be worried that they will view the real thing as fine too. Remember that a small child's mind works differently to ours.
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 05:58 · Score: 0

You missed the part about not wanting his son to imitate those folks. The father (or mother) might know it's fake, that the actors must sign releases, that all paperwork is up for inspection, etc., but the son isn't quite as legally fluent.
Teaching kids about propaganda and fake "reality" is good, but the pseudo-rape sites aren't necessarily the best examples.
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by dtrent · 2004-07-01 06:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

Whoa there conclusion jumper, did I say I wanted to ban bangbus? No, I said I don't want my young children seeing depictions of rape and the general lack of respect for women that I see there. What is "painfully obvious" to you and I isn't so obvious to a 7 year old.
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by jtev · 2004-07-01 06:29 · Score: 1

I find bangbus to be extremely distastefull. I might set some of this shit up just so I don't stumble on to it any more when I'm looking for better porn. What I've seen of it isn't realy rape, but it still is distastefull. I mean seducing some woman, then leaving her at the side of the road? Is this realy what we want our children to see? While not illegal, it's quite immature and selfish, it's not something that someone who doesn't have a frame of referance for it should be watching. Also on the subject of BDSM, I love it as much as the next guy, but I don't want to explain it to someone who doesn't have the framework to understand it from.

--
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:47 · Score: 0

Then you REALLY must like the BaitBus. Better teach your son about not getting into strange vans with hot women and one strange-acting guy too...
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:56 · Score: 0

Distasteful maybe. But the women are there agreeing to it, its all staged and everything. Look at the legal info on their site they will send you proof everyone is over the age, participated, signed releases everythign if you ask. It's all staged.
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:07 · Score: 0

"I mean seducing some woman, then leaving her at the side of the road?"
Those women are not "seduced." They are whores. They accept money or a ride in exchange for sex - usually with a black or latino man. Is that what your issue with bangbus is? Are you racist?
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:10 · Score: 0

Depictions of rape? Lack of respect for women?Excuse me if I'm missing something, but those women who you say are being disrespected are accepting money and rides in exchange for sex - with black/latino men - and they appear to enjoy it immensely. Are you racist by any chance?
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:13 · Score: 0

Hi. Those women aren't victims. They are whores. They have sex with those men for money. They consent, they like it, and they are always standing on the side of the road to begin with.
Grow up.
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by jtev · 2004-07-01 07:28 · Score: 1

No, I simply find the whole thing distastefull. I don't want to see it, if you want to, fine, watch all of it you want to. I don't care. I do not have any illusions about the actions of any person involved in those movies being "socialy acceptable" though, and when a child is still learning what is and isn't ok, I think they shouldn't be exposed to it. I also don't think they should be exposed to bondage pornography which I rather enjoy, but which children do not have a frame of referance to understand it from. I'm not saying anything about taking it off the internet or anything like that. I'm a big supporter of "I may hate what you say sir, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it". That is not the same as the right to be heard though. Now the beauty of the internet is I do not have to support those people who do things I find distastefull. You do not have to care what I think. This is, however, a discussion board, and last time I checked, the editors like people to discuss issues here. Now if you want to refute why I shouldn't block my future children from seeing people behaving badly for no reason except because they are bullies please, feel free to put words to it. Logged in even.

--
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by dtrent · 2004-07-01 07:33 · Score: 1

You're a troll, but for the benefit of others, here's a choice bangbus quote:

"that is if you enjoy listening to a foreign broad gag and choke!! I know I do! Sadly, Nicol's fate is parallel to her predecessors...as she is unmercifully flung from the belly of the Bang Bus after sucking out all of Ramon's baby batter"
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 10:39 · Score: 0

Bangbus, rape? Umm, no.
Now I'm not a member of any sites like this (I also disagree with the lack of respect for women contained on BangBus and it's ilk) but as far as I know those videos show *consentual* material. Here's the thing: If it's *consentual*, no matter how demeaning or degrading, it is *not* rape (unless I've deeply misjudged these sites.)

Trust me, there's some pretty horrible 'rape porn' out there - if you spend too long in the seedier side of the web (warez, etc) you're bound to encounter at least one popup for something like this - that makes BangBus look like Sports Illustrated.

Degrading? Yes. Demeaning? Definately. Rape? No.
Re:Bangbus is a work of genius. by dtrent · 2004-07-01 12:21 · Score: 1

The whole point of that site is they lure the women on the bus undder false pretenses, then spring a suprise on them (and yes, I realize it's all actors, I'm talking about what is depicted). I said in my OP "1/2 inch from rape" and thats what I meant.

But what or what not happens on bangbus in particular isn't even the point anyway, I merely pointed out in my orignal post that porn is sometimes a lot more than "naked people" and might be worth blocking from your 7 year old.

It's all pretty subjective. by Gordonjcp · 2004-07-01 05:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

I grew up in a farming community. Around farms. Farms with stupid people and dangerous machinery on them. Trust me, I saw far more horrible things than rotten.com nearly every week.

I honestly don't see what the problem is. Although my world view has changed somewhat over the years, I don't *think* I react that differently to things now as to how I reacted when I was, say, 12 years old.

Re:It's all pretty subjective. by Secrity · 2004-07-01 08:41 · Score: 1

Farms have a tendancy to keep the gene pool cleaned out and children healthy, both in body and mind. I grew up around farms and have great respect for farm kids.

Re:Still missing the point... by Peter+La+Casse · 2004-07-01 05:56 · Score: 1

There's truth to that. A key element is adequate logging, both for enforcing accountability and for tweaking whatever filters one sees fit to establish.

Firewall/router/AP by InodoroPereyra · 2004-07-01 05:56 · Score: 1

A quick an easy option, not to be overlooked, is to put all your home network behind an access point/router. Right now you can get a netgear in Amazon for USD 16 after rebate. This is just an example, the bottomline is: they are affordable, they provide a firewall, and they usually provide a web-interface to configure the firewall and the router in general from any OS (I use Linux exclusively). A quick way to filter content, based on YOUR criteria.

Re:Firewall/router/AP by Gothmolly · 2004-07-01 06:15 · Score: 0

Is this a troll, or just stupid?

Moderation Totals:
-1, Offtopic
-1, Wrong
-1, Linux-pimping

--
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Re:Firewall/router/AP by Hank+Reardon · 2004-07-01 06:21 · Score: 1

Not really, no.

Firewalls are designed to keep unwanted requests out of your network. There are some hardware firewalls that do packet analysis for content-based filtering, but they're really not consumer-grade items and they're not well suited to this type of thing.

What the article is geared for is setting up a home network that provides a firewalled environment in addition to content- and URL-based filtering.

--
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
Re:Firewall/router/AP by InodoroPereyra · 2004-07-01 13:58 · Score: 1

Thanks for the feedback Hank:
What the article is geared for is setting up a home network that provides a firewalled environment in addition to content- and URL-based filtering.
But this is exactly what my netgear MR814 provides ! Firewall, content and URL filtering. Anyways. My 2 cts :-)
Re:Firewall/router/AP by Hank+Reardon · 2004-07-01 18:48 · Score: 1

Well I'll be...

I haven't been able to fidn any documentation on the filtering aspects of it, but this seems to fit the bill. I was looking for something similar about 6 months ago and came up blank. Kudos to Netgear for filling a market need.

Thanks for the pointer; I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it! :)

--
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...

Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content by nullspace · 2004-07-01 05:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

Has anyone applied a Bayesian filter to web content? This would be an interesting way to give the filter a set of initial conditions from which it could derive an ever-increasing better filtration of content based off the parent's initial criteria.

If there is a pre-existing application, I would interested to know.

Re:Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content by CRCulver · 2004-07-01 06:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Well, for SpamAssassin, one is encouraged to gather at least one hundred spam messages to feed to the Bayesian filter so that it is adequately trained. In the complex world of pornography, one would have to collect, gosh, thousands of sites. What a great task!

Well, I'm prepared to make the sacrifice and do the difficult work of visiting these highly erotic sites for information-gathering purposes. Does any parent group wish to provide funding for my brave endeavour?
Re:Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:43 · Score: 0

As naive bayesian filtering relies on word (technically token) frequencies to determine if content is "good" or "bad" (legit email/spam, for instance), I don't think they would work. If all you're trying to do is filter porno from your children's internet diet, then perhaps it would. But trying to filter say Nazi/KKK/Anarchist's Cookbook/and Porn at the same time won't be too effective. Bayesian filtering assumes there is a common theme to all of the content being filtered. With variations in language betweent he different categories, I just don't think it could effectively work.
Re:Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content by LetterJ · 2004-07-01 06:52 · Score: 1

I've got one about half done that works OK and have been messing with Bayesian analysis for both filtering of content and recommendation of content in both web sites and RSS feeds. I'm currently using a PHPBayesian class and using an iframed script as my "proxied browser" because I am comfortable with PHP and it makes for a decent testbed. That system just spits out large text files for use in software like Squid. If you wanted more ongoing, real-time evaluation, there'd need to be an implementation sitting at the proxy level to do evalutation on each URL that isn't already in the blacklist on the fly, which would require a more speedy implementation than my current testbed.

I intend on making the filtering engine open source and possibly build a Mozilla toolbar for select people to use and do the training correction with their browsing to replace my iframed script.

Ideally, different data sets could be used to build different filters: one for elementary schools, one for locked down workplaces, one for less locked down workplaces, etc.

The nice thing about this is that the categories don't need to be just porn, you can also include cracking, gambling, etc. easily. Of course the software could also be used for politically slanted lists as well, but any flexible tool can be used in inappropriate ways. I wouldn't necessarily agree with it, but it could easily be used to build a church-defined filter with very specific criteria to shield parishners from whatever evil their theology objects to.

--

The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Re:Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content by LetterJ · 2004-07-01 07:04 · Score: 1

I've run well over 100,000 adult sites through my training program on different occasions. The list is easily obtained in XML format from the DMOZ.org project.

--

The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Re:Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content by LetterJ · 2004-07-01 07:07 · Score: 1

The thing you do isn't to create just a binary dichotomy of good vs. bad, but to actually put things *into* categories for Nazi or gambling. The good/bad determination is then done afterward by taking the output of the Bayesian analysis and saying that anything that the Bayesian tool says is a gambling site goes into the "bad" category.

It's just that most current implemenations of Bayesian filtering are focused on a binary problem: spam. Even there, though, software like POPFile does quite well keeping my work and personal stuff seperate from each other in addition to seperating spam.

--

The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Re:Bayesian Filters Applied to Web Content by WWWWolf · 2004-07-01 08:07 · Score: 1

It might work pretty well, at least with textual pages. There's just a few small problems with filtering pr0n with bayesian methods. Specifically: Spam == text. Pr0n == mostly images. You are able to block stuff based on the text on the pages themselves, of course (and hopefully the text on the sites makes them easy to recognize, or something like that...), but pictures aren't going to be filtered accurately no matter what you do. There have been some... "attempts".

Drop broadband by Thrakkerzog · 2004-07-01 05:57 · Score: 2, Funny

Only use dialup. with a 14.4 modem.

Porn will take too long to transmit. They will be browsing without images in no time!

Re:Drop broadband by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:24 · Score: 0

That's funny - Back in my early teen days, I distinctly remember downloading grainy smut via GEnie at a whopping 300 baud ... and I Liked It!

ps. thats "grainy", not "granny", just in case there was any confusion.
Re:Drop broadband by Alexis+de+Torquemada · 2004-07-01 10:06 · Score: 1

Who said you need images to view porn?

--
I love C++

Re:Oxymoron perphaps ... by jawtheshark · 2004-07-01 05:58 · Score: 1

You should read some of the user journals. There are quite a lot of happy daddies around here.

--
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)

Reality by NDPTAL85 · 2004-07-01 05:58 · Score: 1

Then you hit the real world and realize that no parent in the history of huamnity has ever spent so much time with their child without causing it to be dysfunctional upon reaching adulthood.

--
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.

Re:Reality by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:24 · Score: 0

Then you hit the real world and realize that no parent in the history of huamnity has ever spent so much time with their child without causing it to be dysfunctional upon reaching adulthood.

Uhh, yeah... I was homeschooled but I am no more dysfunctional than the average Slashdot reader.
Re:Reality by This+is+outrageous! · 2004-07-01 09:05 · Score: 1

I was homeschooled but I am no more dysfunctional than the average Slashdot reader.
That doesn't say much. The maximum is attained at the "average Slashdot Reader"...

--
This is...
O U T R A G E O U S !

hosts file by blindbat · 2004-07-01 05:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

Or you could put things in your hosts file that you want to block access to. Much simpler, but I'm not sure you things would go with that whole black list there ;)

Anybody ever use CensorNet? by bizitch · 2004-07-01 05:59 · Score: 1

http://www.censornet.com/

I'm a Linux newbie. This article is right up my alley considering that I was just about to deploy CensorNet in my house.

I've got an old PII with 2 nics which I was going to use for this purpose.

I'm just trying to setup some basic pr0n filtering to keep my babysitter in check.

I like this solution because it's easy to install and it is configurable via web page (i.e. great for Linux newbies)

Anybody out there use this?

--
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano

BOFH's Guide to Webfiltering... by Knacklappen · 2004-07-01 05:59 · Score: 1

The BOFH's guide to webfiltering can be found here: "BOFH peers through the proxy mirror"... :)

--

Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)

Proxy the Proxy by Eberlin · 2004-07-01 06:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not sure how all this is supposed to work and all, so anything I'm spouting off is strictly theoretical.

Couldn't someone float to a web-based proxy, get the stuff there, and pass it through the filters? If it's keyword-based, you could even probably parse it through a "translator" to get rid of those particular words.

It mentioned pushing traffic through the proxy -- does this mean that it'll be strictly on port 80? No FTP, no NNTP, no SMTP/POP, no Realplayer streams? Sounds lovely already.

I work at a place that does content filtering -- all MS-based with the proxy/filter hardwired to IE (this implies a few things, but I'll leave that as an exercise). Though this stops most folks from getting to certain places, the filter doesn't do too well taking out the IP-based addresses that some porn popups are made of. Even better, it won't stop anyone from receiving valid web-based e-mails that may contain "objectionable content" either in text or as attachments.

I believe filters are made to comply with rules. Otherwise, totalitarian dictator admins would simply restrict access to every port but 80...and even then, subject that to some heavy filtering and logging.

goatse :-) by KrisCowboy · 2004-07-01 06:02 · Score: 0

Put goatse as the desktop background. Believe me, kids won't even dare to *touch* the computer.

You don't have kids, do you? by underpar · 2004-07-01 06:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

You are looking at this as though parents making mods or installing software are trying to prevent kids from looking at something they are actively searching for.

The real reason we want this stuff is so the kids won't stumble on to something bad they had no intention of finding. The lack of trust being demonstrated is a lack of trust toward every jerk on the internet that doesn't care about my kid.

That's my reason anyway. Does anyone here have kids?

Re:You don't have kids, do you? by gentlewizard · 2004-07-01 06:24 · Score: 1

I DO have kids. I just don't let them use chain saws unsupervised.

Or rather, I don't let them use chainsaws at all until a certain age. Then I use the chainsaw and let them watch and help. Then I let them use the chainsaw with me close at hand. Then I trust them to use the chainsaw by themselves.

A filter is not an excuse to let kids have access to an ADULT resource (adult in the grownup sense, not in the pr0n sense) in their rooms unsupervised any more than it would be to let them use power tools by themselves until they are of age. It creates a false sense of security and is an abdigation of parental responsibility, IMO.
Re:You don't have kids, do you? by underpar · 2004-07-01 06:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

I wouldn't let my son use a computer in his room unsupervised. I do want to be able to cook dinner or brush my hair while my kid looks up something he finds interesting online. I have a fenced in backyard so my son can go out and play with a slightly lower risk of wandering away. I still have to check on him, but the fence helps.

All safety devices CAN give a false sense of security. You know those little bath seats they have so 8 month olds can sit up in the bath tub? There are idiots that think it's okay to leave an infant alone in those things. I'm not one of those idiots. However, when my son was little I liked the fact that I could take my hands away for a minute.
Re:You don't have kids, do you? by glhturbo · 2004-07-01 07:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yep, Two boys ages 4 and 8 (see my reply above). I am worried about the accidental slips, but to be honest, I supervise my sons in the Internet because they might try looking (my 8-year old son knows a few kids in school who have most likely heard of www.playboy.com already...).

As a comparison, I also monitor their TV use. Am I in the room every minute checking up? No. Has my 8-year old tried watching something inappropriate? Hell, yes, but when I caught him, I didn't sue Comcast, or the TV maker, or write a letter to Congress. I kicked myself in the rear for not supervising him. I then explained what was wrong with the show he was watching, and tossed in some light discipline to make it stick. So far, so good...
Re:You don't have kids, do you? by sp3c1alK · 2004-07-01 07:35 · Score: 1

That's an interesting thought. Giving a kid access to the internet IS giving them access to an adult resource. I would never have thought about it that way. The POTENTIAL to get into 'adult' content is always there, filters or not.

But, as other people have pointed out, the filters are a tool for parents to guide their kids, not a virtual babysitter. The same can be said of the vchip (not that kids need to be watching any more TV).

This parenting crap is hard.
Re:You don't have kids, do you? by stienman · 2004-07-01 08:28 · Score: 1

and tossed in some light discipline to make it stick.

"Allright buster, just for that I'm not allowing you to recompile your kernel for 2 months!"

"Aw, Mom! I think I got the NVidia OpenGL thing worked out! Can't I have one little compile?"

-Adam

Dual purpose by Rorschach1 · 2004-07-01 06:03 · Score: 1

I figure implementing a Linux-based content filtering system for my son will accomplish two things. It'll keep him out of porn for a bit, and teach him to hack Linux. =]

look at the typical people demanding filters... by SuperBanana · 2004-07-01 06:03 · Score: 1, Interesting

The easier and more accurate it is for parents to filter content for their own children, based on their own values, the less likely it is for them to scream for the government to do it for them.

Considering that the people usually screaming the loudest for government to "protect" their children are usually the dimmest bulb in the marquee sign (not to mention the laziest, unable to supervise their children they supposedly care about so much; we have a few on our street who demand "GO SLOW! We love our children!" signs from the town instead of teaching their kids not to run into the road), I don't see how filtering for linux (which by its nature requires a certain persuasion towards intelligence by its very nature) is going to help. You're not very likely to find linux running in in a trailer park, folks.

It also doesn't solve the problem of filtering in libraries and schools, which is what all the christian/right-wing nutjobs (personified in the Simpsons as Mrs. Flanders- "Oh! Won't someone PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!") scream about anyway.

--
Please help metamoderate.

Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by underpar · 2004-07-01 06:15 · Score: 1

Dude.. That was Mrs. Lovejoy/Moe.

Anyway, it's nice to have a bit of a filter so I can make dinner or something. I'm not asking for a nanny. Just a fence.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:18 · Score: 0

There is a guy near my street that screams (literally) at anyone who drives by going more than 10 (speed limit is 30). He then proceeds to run to the edge of his driveway and scream more at you to slow down. I passed his house going 20, and when he screamed at me I seriously considered driving back and running him over.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by bckrispi · 2004-07-01 06:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

Considering that the people usually screaming the loudest for government to "protect" their children are usually the dimmest bulb in the marquee sign
You miss the point entirely. This article is good because it puts the power of filtering in the hands of the parent, where it belongs *NOT* the government.
we have a few on our street who demand "GO SLOW! We love our children!" signs from the town instead of teaching their kids not to run into the road
You're obviously not a parent. If you were, you'd never make such a moronic statement. Kids do stupid things. You can teach your child not to run in the road - is that a guarantee that 100% of the time the lesson is going to stick?? Hell no!!!! That's why residential neighborhoods usually cap the speed limit at 25.
I don't see how filtering for linux is going to help. You're not very likely to find linux running in in a trailer park, folks.
Insightful, my ass. This article isn't for Joe Sixpack. It's for Linux users who want a filtering solution. If I'm a Linux user, and I want to apply net filtering for my kids, this is how I do it. Pretty simple logic, huh bubba??

--
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:24 · Score: 0

Hey now, I used to run obsd/freebsd in a trailer park, does that count? Or is that an official trailer-park OS?
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by markmier · 2004-07-01 06:26 · Score: 1

It's actually Mrs. Lovejoy (the minister's gossipy wife) that always says "Oh! Won't someone PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!" Mrs. Flanders has not said that. (plus, she's dead.)
It's funny that Mrs. Lovejoy's only known child is a miscreant known for blaming other people for her problems. It was a fairly early episode, where Bart falls in love with the minister's "perfect" daughter who of course turns out to be not-so-perfect.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by asdfghjklqwertyuiop · 2004-07-01 06:44 · Score: 1

Where is this neighborhood? Sounds like a fun place. Is this guy senile? I'm surprised some teenagers with nothing else to do don't drive back and forth in front of his house fast just to piss him off.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by Zebbers · 2004-07-01 06:50 · Score: 1

You're obviously not a parent. If you were, you'd never make such a moronic statement. Kids do stupid things. You can teach your child not to run in the road - is that a guarantee that 100% of the time the lesson is going to stick?? Hell no!!!! That's why residential neighborhoods usually cap the speed limit at 25

I agree with the 25 thing, but 25 is still damn fast and will kill a kid. When I see parents playing in the road with little Jimmy, when theres a park a block away....well, they should be arrested.

I love when the kids are in the road and you come driving down and mommy comes freaking out to pull them out...like your the badguy and its not the dumbass mother who is letting her kids play in the middle of the fucking street.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by stewby18 · 2004-07-01 06:51 · Score: 1

This article isn't for Joe Sixpack. It's for Linux users who want a filtering solution.

Right: and the point the poster was making is that providing filtering solutions for tech-savvy, Linux-using parents isn't going to make much of a dent in the nationwide demand for laws. Helping tiny tiny fractions of the population helps those specific people, but Congress isn't likely to notice any difference in demands for government solutions.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:00 · Score: 0

You're obviously not a parent. If you were, you'd never make such a moronic statement. Kids do stupid things. You can teach your child not to run in the road - is that a guarantee that 100% of the time the lesson is going to stick?? Hell no!!!! That's why residential neighborhoods usually cap the speed limit at 25.
Some would call this 'cleaning-up the gene pool'...
None of my nieces and nephews have been knocked-down by a car, because they've all been taught road-safety from an early age, both at home and in school. Of course cars shouldn't be hurtling past schools at top speed but if you are a parent you have a responsibility to look after your child and teach it some (un)common sense; do not expect anyone else to do it for you, and that includes them pootling down the road at 5mph just-in-case the ignorant offspring of self-centred parents runs out into the road without looking.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by Procrastin8er · 2004-07-01 07:03 · Score: 1

You were making a decent argument, I don't agree with you, but I was listening. Then I noticed the link you have to "Fahrenheit 911" and then you lost all credibility.

--
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by pnatural · 2004-07-01 07:05 · Score: 1

but 25 is still damn fast and will kill a kid.

agreed - 25 mph will kill a kid. but 25 mph also means that the average car and the average driver can stop *a whole lot sooner* than 35 mph, 40 mph, etc. iow, it's not about the potential for harm, but rather the potential to avoid harm.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by Tassach · 2004-07-01 07:07 · Score: 1

we have a few on our street who demand "GO SLOW! We love our children!" signs from the town instead of teaching their kids not to run into the road
You're obviously not a parent. If you were, you'd never make such a moronic statement. Kids do stupid things. You can teach your child not to run in the road - is that a guarantee that 100% of the time the lesson is going to stick?? Hell no!!!! That's why residential neighborhoods usually cap the speed limit at 25.
The original poster's complaint was not with the sign but with parents who expect the sign to be a substitute for teaching and supervising their children.
If careless drivers don't obey the 25-MPH speed limit sign, what's the probability that another sign is going to make any difference? Our neighborhood has "children at play" signs and people still drive down my street like bats out of hell. My back yard is fenced in, and my 6 year-old is old enough to know the rules (that she has to stay inside the fence unless she's with an adult), and she knows the concequences for breaking the rules (because she's been caught breaking them). Does this mean she's allowed to play in the back yard totally unsupervised? Hell no -- someone's still watching her even if we aren't hovering right over her.

--
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by bckrispi · 2004-07-01 07:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

If careless drivers don't obey the 25-MPH speed limit sign, what's the probability that another sign is going to make any difference? Our neighborhood has "children at play" signs and people still drive down my street like bats out of hell.
I think the sign will make a small difference. I, personally have no qualms about doing 80 in a 65 if that matches the flow of traffic (living in Phoenix, this is a fact of life). Even at lower speeds, it's common for most drivers to "bend" the speed limit by 5 mph or so. If I know I'm in a residential neighborhood, and I'm aware that there are kids playing, (school zone, etc) I'm more apt to keep to the letter of the speed limit. More signs certainly not a "catch-all". If a jerk wants to fly through a school zone at 45, a sign isn't going to stop him. But I do believe that it does slow down a percentage of drivers (especially parents).

--
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:49 · Score: 0

Yeah I guess my parents did a good job too then--they never let me go out.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by sketerpot · 2004-07-01 09:36 · Score: 1

Your fence has holes in it. Try reading slashdot (I haven't seen it blocked) at threshold -1. Try going to everything2.com and clicking interesting links for a while, and you may arrive at a page about "how I nearly killed myself masturbating". Mostly unblocked.
And when your fence blocks lots of perfectly legitimate sites, it's just getting in the way and providing the illusion of protection.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by gcaseye6677 · 2004-07-01 10:30 · Score: 1

Windows ME is the official trailerpark OS.
Re:look at the typical people demanding filters... by Deep+Esophagus · 2004-07-01 14:24 · Score: 0

You're not very likely to find linux running in in a trailer park, folks.
As a Christian right-wing nutjob who until recently lived in a trailer park, I have to disagree. I used the Linux From Scratch guide to build my own server which I use as a router to share my cable connection with the weird mix of Windows NT (required for work), 98 (wife's preference), and 95 (because the kids got hand-me-downs that I haven't gotten around to upgrading) boxes scattered around the house.
I also experimented with various flavors of content-based HTTP filters when the kids were old enough to have free access to the web from their rooms but not old enough to exercise common sense and judgement - for example, making sweeping generalizations about large groups of people in a public forum about technical issues. Nowadays they're smart enough that they don't need a human or automated babysitter to tell them what sites to avoid and how to engage in civil discourse.
Try removing some of that narrow-minded prejudice that clouds your judgement and you'll be amazed at how widespread Linux is.

What a waste... by InvaderXimian · 2004-07-01 06:05 · Score: 4, Funny

This whole article is a complete waste since we all know that people who use Linux cannot attract the opposite sex which therefore means that they won't ever be able to have children. Its in the GPL too, somewhere around the 30th line...

"If you can comprehend the aforementioned statements and use this software, you will not get laid. Ever. I know this because I'm RMS and chicks dig bearded guys. I haven't been laid yet so you won't either."

Still, we all know that chicks dig BSD instead.

Wrong Audience by bubba_ry · 2004-07-01 06:06 · Score: 1

This article isn't exactly Slashdot fare. I mean, I thought the whole ./ crowd was pretty much made up entirely of virgins! What do _we_ know about kids?

Re:Wrong Audience by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:14 · Score: 0

50% of the /. virginis are kids!
Re:Wrong Audience by Knacklappen · 2004-07-01 09:14 · Score: 1

Nice example of how stereotypes can be so often repeated that in the end the victims are believing the crap themselves...

And yes, of course you meant to be funny. I know. I've laughed my belly of, now I'm exhausted...

--

Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)

You must be on crack. by Gordonjcp · 2004-07-01 06:06 · Score: 1

The mythical "Average Parent User" doesn't need to trudge through all the configurations. They just need to follow the instructions. Can you bake a cake? No? Of course you can, you just follow the recipe in a book.

For fuck's sake, I taught my 60-something mother to change the oil in her van with a simple set of instructions, and she is about the most non-technical person I know. A simple sheet of paper with "Drive van until it's hot. Park outside the house on the flat bit. Lift the driver's seat and locate the big nut at the bottom of the engine. Put a bucket underneath it, and unscrew the big nut with the big spanner in the toolkit. Go and have a cup of tea. Put the big nut back in and tighten it, then put a bit less than a gallon of oil in. Start and let the engine idle until the warning light goes out" written it was all it took.

Re:You must be on crack. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:27 · Score: 0

Does she know that the oil can burn her hands if she gets some on her? Does she know that she is supposed to put a new crush washer on the drain plug each time she changes it? Does she know how to dispose of the used oil? Does she know what type of oil to use? Does she know the proper oil weight? Does she know what oil filter to use? Does she even know that she's SUPPOSED to change the oil filter?

It's the little details ;)
Re:You must be on crack. by Gordonjcp · 2004-07-01 06:42 · Score: 1

Well yes, obviously. You don't get to be 65 years old without realising that oil from a hot thing will probably be hot. The drain plug doesn't have a copper washer, it's got a rubber seal, so that's one less thing, and the actual type of oil isn't particularly important "If it's got a motorbike on the front, it's the wrong stuff" - kind of thing.

Do I hear an Amen? by underpar · 2004-07-01 06:07 · Score: 1

No, you can't say "no" to a child. What if they don't like you anymore?

Have I told you that I love you?

Let the kids setup the filter by bl8n8r · 2004-07-01 06:07 · Score: 3, Interesting

What I've done in the past is setup linux boxes for people with all outgoing access closed - with a script, the user entered the address they want to connect to (disney.com). The script then logs this, and allows outgoing access to the sight. This way, there isn't a lot of pre-setup stuff to do. With everyone understanding the usage is logged, it keeps them honest. Mom and dad can checkout the log with a web browser. Submitting content took some work to get figured out.... Not a perfect system, just a little different.

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boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org

Linksys WRT54g? by gtrubetskoy · 2004-07-01 06:07 · Score: 1

I wonder if anyone has tried installing this on a Linksys WRT54g

Re:Still missing the point... by FireFury03 · 2004-07-01 06:08 · Score: 1

I work in the web filtering industry and most of our software goes to schools - specifically the comprehensive school level. It seems not many parents are happy to let their 13/14 year olds spend all day surfing porn.

The silly thing is, no matter how hard you try, you will never block 100% of the porn and the kids always find the stuff that gets through. But a lot of the schools want a technological solution and refuse to actually punish the kid for it. If you've got a filtering solution installed that catches 99% of porn sites and one of the kids spends a while surfing the other 1%, they really have no excuse - it wasn't an accident they got to that porn, they did it on purpose - when you catch them you have to punish them to stop them doing it again but a lot of our customers are not willing to take steps such as removing the kid's internet access for a week or two. If you were surfing porn at work you'd get a warning and then get fired. Pulling someone's internet connection at school seems a perfectly legitimate solution.

There have also been incidents where little Jonny has been caught looking at porn despite the filtering, the school has informed his parents and the parents have immediately held the school responsible and threatened legal action.

Yes, very young children should always be supervised when using the internet, but once you get to comprehensive school level it isn't feasable to supervise every kid each minute they spend on a computer. The solution is simply to do your best at blocking the sites so that people don't accidentally stumble upon them and anyone caught abusing the internet access gets a warning, the next time they get their connection pulled for a while and if they keep doing it then block their access permanently.

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http://blog.nexusuk.org

You have GOT to be kidding! by Intraloper · 2004-07-01 06:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sorry, but I don't want my 10 year old daughter to be seeing pictues of violent and abusive sex, whether staged or not. Neither will I want my son to do, when he gets old enoughj to staart using the computer. Not to mention the many sites of brutal, if putatively consensual, abuse of women that are also out there. At ten, she is NOT ready to see pictures of women beaten bloody, being pissed and shat upon, and enduring mutilation of tits and genitals. Hell, I'm in my 40's and some of that shit is hard for ME to dismiss from my mind if/when I see it. Turning a child loose on the internet without supervision, is the psychic equivalent of sending them out to play on the freeway, without even giving them Safety Orange vests to wear.

culture subscription by Doc+Ruby · 2004-07-01 06:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why don't various culture magazines offer filtering proxies tuned to reflect their cultural values? Like a Web "Reader's Digest". Different magazines would draw lines differently around sex, violence, gender, and other sociopolitical issues. Their magazine editorial would fill that out, and let people make consistent decisions through these infomediaries.

Of course this scheme doesn't thwart the porn-hungry mormon teenager, or the santablind pre-barmitzva. That's an NP-complete problem: a bad kid will just go to a friend's unfiltered web terminal. But I note the Slashdot oracle's fortune at the bottom-right of this posing page:

It is a wise father that knows his own child. -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"

--

--
make install -not war

Re:Still missing the point... by Belgand · 2004-07-01 06:10 · Score: 0

The fundamental flaw to me has always been that there's really that much out there that children over 13 don't already know.

"Oh no! There might be swearing somewhere!" Trust me, most kids are probably using those same exact words on their own when you're not around. "Well... maybe, but the sex!" Yeah, well, they're likely to be talking about that too. The answer there is more likely to provide them with a way to find out the truth about sex rather than rumour and idle speculation.
"But they surely shouldn't be seeing pornography, right?" Do they have older siblings? Friends with older siblings? Parents with a porn collection? Once again kids are going to get access to porn and it's probably going to be at a younger age than you think. Now, admittedly this is more likely to be your average softcore Playboy centerfold. Nothing that shocking really and quite another thing from goatse.cx or some of the fetishes that can be found more easily on the internet than in the past when we relied mainly on print and Cinemax.

Ultimately though parents tend to delude themselves a bit into thinking that their kids are completely ignorant. Kids already know about pretty much any thing you're going to try and "protect them from". Think about when you first learned much of this.

As for active parenting, part of the problem with that is that kids need time on their own to explore and become their own person. If a parent is sitting over them all the time checking out what they're watching and reading then the chance that the child will grow up to be an independent person with thoughts and feelings of their own is much less than the chance that they will grow up to believe in much the same things are their parent. Part of being a good parent is letting kids explore on their own and do and see things that while not dangerous to them might be things that you don't approve of.

ClarkConnect by nick13245 · 2004-07-01 06:10 · Score: 2, Informative

I have done several network installs for people who have kids, and want web content filtering. Generally what is set up a gateway machine with a distribution of linux called "ClarkConnect" clarkconnect.org which is designed specifically to be used as a gateway. It already has dansguardian and squid installed, as well as a iptables, dhcpd, and other various useful features. What I really like about it, is that it has a nice web interface which allows my customers to actually make changes to dansguardian/squid, the firewall, and other services without having to actually know any linux commands. It's very user friendly.

Re:Why Censor by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

I really have to disagree here. I'm 18, so it wasn't long ago that I had a child's immature mind. I remember I saw, indeed looked for, porn before I was even a teenager. I remember seeing Stile Project's most deformed genitalia list. Am I some screwed up sicko now? No. I'm a good student, 1600 on the SAT, over a full ride to college, blah blah blah. Images do not make a person. The most effect I'd say seeing that stuff has had on me is that it made me a tougher person. Hell, I'd say overall, the control over my mind I gained from being exposed to stuff like that was actually a beneficial experience. It's all in how a person deals with stuff like that. An unintelligent sick person might get ideas from graphic images, but such people are already screwed up. Parents probably need to pay more attention to the family environment they're creating and the examples they're setting than to pictures their kids run into on the web.

The truth is, as a little kid you don't really run into that much graphic content unless you want to. I seriously doubt bumping into a rare image of a woman in the procreative act while searching for whatever it is little kids search for is going to cause some serious damage. At most it will create an awkward situation with the parents. I think that's the root of this supposed problem. Parents don't like to deal with serious issues when it comes to their children. Their children are never going to have sex. Their children are never going to encounter death. Their children are never going to grow up. This is the real problem. It's parents unwillingness to deal with their children entering the real world. I'm not saying it's an easy thing to deal with, but it's something you have to deal with, not just blame the internet.

-ShadeOfBlue

Re:You have GOT to be kidding! - how'd this get he by Intraloper · 2004-07-01 06:11 · Score: 0

I could swear I replied to the 'bangbus is a work of genius' post just below.

Another poor solution by shaitand · 2004-07-01 06:13 · Score: 1

Blacklists are great and all, but in reality, they miss hundreds of sites. squid + squidguard with the standard blacklists on the site for instance doesn't even block playboy.com.

Keywords are nice and fine and dandy but they suck too. We should look to spam which is much more complex to interpret for the answer to this...

Does anyone know of a web content filter that uses bayasian filtering as well as blacklists?

use your router by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:18 · Score: 0

or... you could use the keyword filtering that's built into many or the 'home' routers.

This isn't rocket science.

IMZombie

LINUX USERS by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:28 · Score: 0

...do not have children, so this is an exercise in futility.

Re:Still missing the point... by KrisHolland · 2004-07-01 06:31 · Score: 1

And if little Johnny wants to look at porn, and looks at porn instead of having sex to satifify him, then why the hell not let him look at it.

No wonder America has double the teenage pregnancy rates in comparison to other industrialized nations: idiot puritanical repressed parents who think sex and nudity will warp little johnny for life.

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3dinfo@maficstudios.com

http-to-email gateway by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:34 · Score: 0

I just tried a google search, adding in the useful "&num=100" but I couldn't find any.

What am I talking about? Way back, when people could barely surf, there were a whole swag of sites that would send you webpages via email. You would email a particular address, with the webpages you want in the body, and then the gateway would go surf and download the pages for you, and then email them back to you. I am not sure if it would return binary content or not...

Anyway, they are(or were) a _great_ way to get around firewalls. These days we could probably do it cooler! Using pgp so that no one can read your websurfing: collect a list of pages you want downloaded, attach your public key, encrypt with the bots public key, unencrypt the resulting email, and then surf your HDD.

Helicopter parents by FerretFrottage · 2004-07-01 06:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

My wife (OMG, ./er who is married) calls these parents "Helicopter Parents" because they just hover over their kids, but as soon as there is an incident with regards to the child and the school and/or teacher, they immediately fly on in assuming that they (the school/teacher) are the cause of the "accident". It's sad when my wife is surprised that the parent(s) supports the teacher's or school's position. She actually got offered $5k by a parent to pass her child so that they could get the kid out of the house (this was in the affluent Plano west high school). She turned it down which is probably why she's a teacher and I'm not...I'd take the $5k and still fail the dumba$$

--
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."

Re:Helicopter parents by lpret · 2004-07-01 07:42 · Score: 1

Sic 'Em Plano...
I get a bunch of those down here in Waco.

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This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Re:Helicopter parents by Alexis+de+Torquemada · 2004-07-01 10:20 · Score: 0, Troll

My wife (OMG, ./er who is married)
Pardon, what's a Dotslasher?

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I love C++
Re:Helicopter parents by Trejkaz · 2004-07-01 20:47 · Score: 1

I'd take the $5k and still fail the dumba$$

That actually sounds fairly sensible.

You can take the money because what are the parents going to do? "Umm... I tried to bribe the teacher, and he took my money." As if! They're going to shut up, and stew over it. I say take the damn cash. You get the money, the parents get a lesson they may never forget. Everyone wins! ;-)

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Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Re:Helicopter parents by Ricwot · 2004-07-05 12:48 · Score: 1

./er, it's clearly someone who's where you are.

Squid and SquidGuard by rossz · 2004-07-01 06:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Being a little smarter than the average websurfer, I set up squid+squidGuard and set my daughter's computer up to go through the Linux box. She could easily bypass this if she had ever taken the time to learn the basics about computing, but she has never shown any interest when I have offered to teach her. Doesn't really matter, in the next week or two I will be reconfiguring the entire home network to force everyone through the Linux box and use a transparent proxy system.

My proxy system enforces just a few basic rules:

IE is not allowed. Never ever. I'm not taking any chances with my network's security.
She loses internet access late at night. I got tired of telling her to shut down and go to bed every damn night, "just a few more minutes!" In her language a few more minutes == an hour.
Warez, porn, and hate sites are blocked. I don't think she'll go porn surfing on purpose, but she's a little quick to go to links without thinking about it. She's also too willing to believe fringe and conspiracy theories, but I think that's very typical of teenagers.
Music sharing programs are blocked. I told her to stop downloading pirated music as we couldn't afford an RIAA lawsuit, but she didn't listen to me, so now she can't even trade music when it's legal.

I told her straight out, if you think a blocked site is legit, just tell me and I'll see about unblocking it. I have blocked a few fringe science, religion, and political web sites. When she refused to discuss the contents with me, I blocked the sites. I was perfectly willing to leave them unblocked, but only if she was willing to discuss them rationally with my wife or myself.

--
-- Will program for bandwidth

Re:Squid and SquidGuard by rossz · 2004-07-01 07:52 · Score: 1

Ooh, look! A troll! And not a very good one, either!

--
-- Will program for bandwidth
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:55 · Score: 1, Insightful

So this is the solution to handle problems with your kids ? A technical one ? OMG.

Generally, why does anyone want to filter the web ? It won't "protect" the children. I don't think porn is a problem. Contrary to public believe, children (also young ones) do have their own sexuality. If they are ready for porn, they'll visit those sites. If not, they won't care. I know this maybe is hard to understand, because you're always told different. Sex does not necessarily harm children. This is _not_ meant like let's have sex with children, but children have to learn things about sex, like they have to learn anything else in this world. Why should sex be such an exception ? You also learn to eat, walk, speak, read, write and so on ... If the internet helps, fine !

So, to sum it up, the slashdot readers who are usually against any kind of censorship want to cripple their children's internet ? That's quite strange !
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:58 · Score: 0

Music is pretty important to teens.
At least set up an ftp with an upload account so her friends can send her the songs she wants.
That way she wount appear in some Kaaza log.

And don't ever let her catch you reading her MSN, ICQ, IRC logs ;P
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:00 · Score: 0

"I have blocked a few fringe science, religion, and political web sites. When she refused to discuss the contents with me, I blocked the sites. I was perfectly willing to leave them unblocked, but only if she was willing to discuss them rationally with my wife or myself."

You are being foolish. Maybe she wants to explore her world without having to look over her shoulder or get your approval.

You are probably a person who had asshole parents, and now are being the same to your children. Lets hope this is one lesson your child will refuse to learn from you.
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by rossz · 2004-07-01 08:05 · Score: 1

I know music is important. That's why I first asked her to stop downloading pirated music voluntarily. If she had simply stuck to legal downloads I wouldn't be blocking all music download sites. Now, everything is blocked and I will only open up sites if she asks and I have verified it is kosher.

--
-- Will program for bandwidth
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by reynols · 2004-07-01 08:15 · Score: 1

Several years ago, when my son came to me as asked me why kartoonnetwork.com had a bunch of naked women on it, I switched from "blacklists" in squid/squidGuard to "whitelists". My son had found a new hobby of trying any 'ol domain name he could think of and seeing what came up. While amusing at first, of the domains names my 7 year old would think up, when it got the the point that the majority of domains resolved to porn sites, I put a stop to it. Now if my kids want to go to a site that isn't on the "whitelist" they just tell me and I add it. This method has been working great for the last several years.
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:18 · Score: 0

Perhaps going about with a slightly different approach wouldn't be bad though. She could feel cornered and cornered people can panic.

Closing one door and opening another can be quite effective.
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by rossz · 2004-07-01 08:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

Typical. You and everyone else are quick to jump to conclusions about what kind of parent I am. I actually give her way more freedom than most parents would for a 13 year old girl. As she grows older and more mature, the proxy settings will be adjusted. Emotionally, however, there is a lot of bad shit she is not ready to deal with on her own.

Running squid is a compromise. I would prefer my wife or myself were around when she's browsing, but we can't be with her every moment. So we run squid and allow her reasonable unsupervised access. When we're at home, she can ask for a site to be unblocked. I've unblocked on several occassions.

I'm not blocking teen or women's health sites, and I'm not blocking political websites (except for some lunatic fringe places). I'm not blocking sites on sexuality (not even gay sexuality). I'm not blocking religious websites (except for one lunatic conspiracy theorist nut job foil-in-the-hat cult site).

As for a teens sexuality, I would prefer she learn about that from someplace besides hardcorewithdonkeys.com (I made this up, I don't actually know if it's real or not, nor do I wish to know).

I am no prude. Nudity does not bother me. If she wants to see nude pictures, fine with me. Hardcore, however, is out of the question. She's only 13, she's not ready for everything.

--
-- Will program for bandwidth
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:38 · Score: 0

Good thinking,

I think I'll apply this too when that time comes.

However doing that to a teen used to do his/her own thing? I imagine it must be like putting a fan next to your house of cards.
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:50 · Score: 1, Insightful

rossz: I agree with you 100%, and imagine that most the inmature slashdotters still living in their parents basement will come to the same realization as you when they have their own children. Despite what open views one might have before having kids that all changes after.

It's you home and your rules, don't worry too much about what the pimpely-faced slashnerds have to say.
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by lucas+teh+geek · 2004-07-02 04:29 · Score: 3, Funny

I'm not blocking religious websites (except for one lunatic conspiracy theorist nut job foil-in-the-hat cult site).

You're not letting her read slashdot?!?!?

--
TIAEAE!
Re:Squid and SquidGuard by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-02 13:57 · Score: 0

Nope, hardcorewithdonkeys.com does not exist. Darn you for getting my hopes up.

I want a Web white list by shreak · 2004-07-01 06:42 · Score: 1

I'd like to be able to have a firewall type box between my home network and the internet (ala Linux Router Project type box, except I don't need an LRP box since I bought a wireless router already...).

I want that box to block all web pages unless a password is provided (then allow all access).

I want to be presented with a web page when a blocked page is reached with the ability to put in a password and have that page be added to the list of allowed pages/domans.

Does anyone know of such a project (Open source prefered)

=Shreak

Re:Still missing the point... by FireFury03 · 2004-07-01 06:44 · Score: 1

No wonder America has double the teenage pregnancy rates in comparison to other industrialized nations: idiot puritanical repressed parents who think sex and nudity will warp little johnny for life.

Errm, I live, work and supply filtering software for schools and businesses in the UK...

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org

"Especially porn" by niom · 2004-07-01 06:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not all parents want their children exposed to everything on the Internet, especially porn.

I find it strange that porn is the only content to be avoided that is explicitly mentioned by the story submitter and many comments. There are lots of things in the Internet that would be way more disturbing for children than porn, such as very extreme violence. Until that kind of content can be filtered I wouldn't even start thinking about filtering porn.

--
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".

Re:"Especially porn" by thephotoman · 2004-07-01 07:17 · Score: 1

Usually, porn is what gets the most viceral reaction, especially from Americans.

However, you're absolutely right. If I were to set up such a filter, I'd probably stop hate group sites first and worry about the porn later. After all, if they're seeking out the porn, there is no innocence left to protect. If they just happen upon it, and they don't have any idea about what porn is, it's not going to damage them too much, as they won't really understand what's going on and they will quickly hit the back button on their browsers. As far as the bad stuff on the Internet goes, porn is hardly the worst.

--
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yes, and the kids prefer Win98 by georgeha · 2004-07-01 06:51 · Score: 1

since there are lots more kid games written for Windows.

Re:Still missing the point... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:51 · Score: 0

Nothing that shocking really and quite another thing from goatse.cx or some of the fetishes that can be found more easily on the internet than in the past when we relied mainly on print and Cinemax.

Er... don't bet on that. At 13 I had cracked the combination on the locked briefcase that my father kept his pr0n collection in, and was "reading" German smutmags involving John Holmes and Dutch prostitutes.

Re:Still missing the point... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 06:53 · Score: 0

Actually, one report I read was that Scandanavian countries had a "born out of wedlock" rate of around 62%. That is MUCH higher than the rate in the US.

Re:Still missing the point... by glhturbo · 2004-07-01 06:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

The fundamental flaw with this ... is the notion that kids under the age of 13 or so should be left alone to browse the net.

Fully agree...

My 8-year old has a list of bookmarks for sites that he is allowed by me to access. Additions to the list are pre-screened by me, and I'm not afraid to tell him why something will not get on the list. I try to hide the Address box so that he can't type in URLs, but sometimes I do forget... Not that it much matters. I have his computer in plain sight of mine, and I watch him on the 'Net, if I am not interacting with him at the time. I also monitor TV usage, friends that he plays with, etc...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not micro-managing him, nor am I always in his face. He has my trust and confidence to make a decision on his own. If I feel he makes the wrong one, I try to educate and guide him, and discipline if necessary.

Why filter? by jez9999 · 2004-07-01 06:56 · Score: 1

Honestly, I can't personally understand why parents want to filter the internet for their children. I'm not a parent (as you may have guessed) but if I was one, I reckon I'd not mind giving my child unfiltered web access. They'll get it in real life, as well as the unfiltered web when they're older, so why keep it from them now? Because they'll be scarred for life if they see some extreme sites? I think that's plain wrong, and only believed by rather ignorant people who don't understand how the human mind develops.

--
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.

Re:Why filter? by HeyLaughingBoy · 2004-07-01 08:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

I can't personally understand why parents want to filter the internet for their children

Well, I am a parent and the reasons are not always what you'd think. First, note that my 3 year-old doesn't do any more with our computers than type his name and those of his friends (hey, it makes him happy :-) Even so, his mother and I have already agreed that when he needs a computer, it will be in plain sight so we can occasionally glance over at what he's doing. I personally don't think filtering is worth the effort.

That said, children vary in their responses to different things. I tried watching Miyazaki's Spirited Away with him. Yeah, I read the "scary for kids" warning, but I figured I'd gauge his response to it. He was terrified. By what you ask? The scene where the child's parents turn into pigs. He's not afraid of pigs, he thinks they're funny. But he was terrified that his mother and I might turn into pigs like in the movie. Make sense? No, but he's three years old!

In real life, we already have issues with him being influenced by kids whose parents (if you can call them that) apparently have wildly different ideas about childrearing than we. So he already knows a few words he we don't want him using and has made a few statements that would be pretty nerve-wracking if he actually knew what they meant. We can handle stuff like this because it's out front. If he were learning this stuff online it would be much more difficult to figure out the source and decide how to handle it.

Most parents' response to the net is similar to how they view books or movies: I don't want my son watching "Saving Private Ryan" for quite a while because I know how many nightmares he'll have. But if he happens to see the occasional bare tit on TV, no big deal. He'll just giggle and forget about it.

The fundamental issue is that of not exposing a child to material that he's not yet ready for. And this decision should rest solely with the parent. Our job's hard enough as it is; for those who want to use it, filtering is just one more tool.

Honestly... by Digitus1337 · 2004-07-01 07:00 · Score: 1

How many linux users have children?

Maturity by t_allardyce · 2004-07-01 07:02 · Score: 1

The rule could be "you're old enough to see all these things when you're old enough to decode the complex perl one-liner self-recurring regex filter i wrote"

--
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.

Re:Maturity by base3 · 2004-07-01 09:01 · Score: 1

Exactly. Any twelve year old boy who can't get past a filter doesn't deserve to see porn.

--
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.

A good first step... by thephotoman · 2004-07-01 07:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

This software should make Linux a more viable option for families, but parents need to remember that no software is a substitute for watching what their kids are doing online in person. That's really the only sure-fire way that no objectionable material gets into children's hands.

Of course, that's difficult to do in practice, especially with latchkey kids. That's why teaching responsibility on the Internet is more effective than just installing a web filter.

However, this could be used by corperations to keep their employees on task instead of goofing off on the Internet, too. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. However, it is probably a more useful application of the software than using it as a net nanny.

--
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

quick (and fairly easy) by oneishy · 2004-07-01 07:08 · Score: 3, Informative

I have used dansguardian on ipcop for several different sites (schools, homes etc), and have been please by the relative ease of installing (as far as linux stuff goes) and the configuration options.

I have used IPCOP v 1.2 and 1.3 w/o any problems. Sidenote :it runs well on an older pentium 133 box.

Re:Still missing the point... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:10 · Score: 0

"Now, admittedly this is more likely to be your average softcore Playboy centerfold. Nothing that shocking really and quite another thing from goatse.cx or some of the fetishes that can be found more easily on the internet than in the past when we relied mainly on print and Cinemax."

Exactly. I really don't want to try and explain fisting and watersports to an 8-year-old.

Nudity is not a problem - fringe behavior is.

My Internet access by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:12 · Score: 0

I have had access to the internet since I was 14(1999), My Mum (Mom for all you cray americans) has never watched my internet use

I have to admit that I belive this is the best aproach(sp?). Yes I has accessed free porn sites and looked at porn but I feel this alowed me to find out for myself what I should/should not look at.

If I had to say anything that would stop kids looking at porn is use a browser such as fireFox, this eliminates all(most) porn pop-ups.

Oh I'm quite aware... by zoloto · 2004-07-01 07:14 · Score: 1

Oh I'm quite aware ...that they'll be exposed to things I can't monitor. Then again, I don't expect to know everything they see, and at the minimum be aware of and possibly to what extent (of the things they've seen/been exposed to). But there's a limit to things I want brought into my home and if possible, into my childs mind (at such a young age).

Actually, rereading my post that you responded to, the intent was to monitor what they see - not censor their ability to view anything outright. Though, there's nothing wrong with blocking rotten.com, the various goatse's and slew of other seriously damaging crap from coming into my impressionable and immature child's minds.

As an adult, we can understand and rationalize. However, they cannot understand to the extent that we do, no matter their intellect; with age comes experience and hopefully wisdom. In the case of children, we hope their decisions will be based on helpful and truthful information to where they can make their own decisions that are hopefully, saner and better than our own.

I guess that's what every parent want, but I'll have to guess for now b/c I'm not one yet.

-zoloto

Re:Oh I'm quite aware... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 16:40 · Score: 0

Goatse is pretty disgusting, but I think it's potential for real damage is vastly overestimated. I saw that when I was pretty young, probably as a freshman or sophomore in high school, after following a link in irc. Although it was surprising and disturbing on a number of levels, it certainly wasn't traumatic.

And kudos for the driver level monitoring idea. If there was ever a way to turn a kid into a wizard quickly, that's it.

Re:Still missing the point... by pnatural · 2004-07-01 07:20 · Score: 1

No wonder America has double the teenage pregnancy rates in comparison to other industrialized nations: idiot puritanical repressed parents who think sex and nudity will warp little johnny for life.

This is correlation without causation, pure and simple.

And FWIW, teen pregnancy rates in America have dropped for ten straight years. low. Link : http://www.agi-usa.org/media/nr/2004/02/19/

But far be it from me to interfere with your bashing of "puritanical" parents. (The nerve of those folks -- teaching their kids something you don't agree with -- their values!)

I'm surprised at everybody by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:20 · Score: 0

The summary mentions pr0n and no one thinks of the obvious! Come on: filter MSN, closed-source, etc.

But no matter how hard you try, your kids will learn about these sins in the school playground and will most probably experiment with it to look cool in front of their friends. Pretty soon, they're stuck awaiting their next fix or two to help keep the monkey off their bootsector... err... back.

Unfortunately, I have quite a history with these things so I'd look like a hypocrite (hence: posting AC). Such is the dilemma.

Suuuuuuure by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:26 · Score: 0

Like any person that uses Linux would be procreating...

Gun toting? by zoloto · 2004-07-01 07:27 · Score: 1

I tote a gun, and I am also against public web filtering, censorship, pro-enviromentalish.

Heck, I've generally supported Bush in a lot of ways... but not all. /. is not a place to discuss politics and religion (as in many places or websites)... as it usually intices trolls, anti and pro extremists in both directions to post, thus reducing any chance of an "even" discussion where egos don't flame, and civil conversation is stymied.

spelling be damned!

Re:Still missing the point... by blane.bramble · 2004-07-01 07:35 · Score: 1

Actually, one report I read was that Scandanavian countries had a "born out of wedlock" rate of around 62%. That is MUCH higher than the rate in the US.

And this has exactly what to do with teenage pregnancy? Guess what, there are plenty of planned, non-teen pregnancies between stable committed partners that are "born out of wedlock" - all that means is the parents weren't married, which is a reflection on the general populations view of marriage more than anything else.

linux using parents who cant configure software by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:38 · Score: 0

wow thats such a HUGE untapped market

Just block sites with garish color schemes by Animats · 2004-07-01 07:39 · Score: 2, Funny

Porno spams seem to have distinctive color schemes. Who else uses large areas of saturated yellow? And where else do you see multiple animated GIFs larger than icon size?

Oh yeah, here

Re:Still missing the point... by GenSolo · 2004-07-01 07:43 · Score: 1

The fundamental flaw with this (techological limitations notwithstanding) is the notion that kids under the age of 13 or so should be left alone to browse the net.
To me, the best use of a filter is to make sure something I don't know will be a porn site doesn't pop up while I'm standing there. I mean, I'm not sure whitehouse.com would register to me that the kid typed .com instead of .gov before she pressed enter, and at that point, on a decent speed connection, it's already too late. The filter is to help with parenting, not to replace it.

nice approach by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 07:45 · Score: 0

But wouldn't be easier to talk your children about sex and porn on the internet. just because many geeks found sex by themselves maybe due their parent's indifference, fear or shy it doesn't mean they have to use technology as an excuse to avoid talking to they children.

You can see south's park episode about sex it teaches a LOT here

If you don't want the responsabilities of having children don't do it, is not mandatory, don't beleive your church or what politics say, there is a lot of methods to avoid them, you just have to use them, is not fair to bring a child to the world just to slave them to rules and other stupidities, set them free from the begining or let them have a full life, nothing half way through is worth it.

Information Censorship by nurb432 · 2004-07-01 07:50 · Score: 1

I tend to agree that children should not be exposed to a lot of the extreme graphic content that is spewed out these days as it does harm them ( but then again, so does a lot of the so-called 'music' that is allowed to exist on the public radio), but I don't agree about your other statement.

Your 'Aryan nation' comment strikes me of rather closed minded. In that case its a concept that you are disagreeing with. It would be the same as blocking all Christian sites from the child..

Children need the information to make their own decisions, blocking 'information' harms them just as much as the graphic images that are available.

( and yes i know only governments by definition can truly 'censor' )

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----

Re:Information Censorship by Secrity · 2004-07-01 08:39 · Score: 1

I just saw aryan-nations.org. I didn't realize that Christians have that much hate in them. Until seeing the Aryan Nation website I had no idea that Christians hate Jews and blacks as much as they hate homosexuals (godhatesfags.com).
Re:Information Censorship by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 09:09 · Score: 0

Ummm ... try a few more sites, buddy. Aryan Nations "Christians" are about as Christian as Osama bin Laden gives an example of the true meaning of Islam.

Mod Parent Up. by KrisHolland · 2004-07-01 07:56 · Score: 1

Very insightful.

--
3dinfo@maficstudios.com

Monitoring Instead by aero6dof · 2004-07-01 08:05 · Score: 1

I've always thought it would be better to let the access stay open, but monitor and flag questionable sites instead of blocking them. Let the child know that a monitoring system is in place and let them have some practice at making real world decisions.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. by handslikesnakes · 2004-07-01 08:14 · Score: 1, Insightful

NSFW links below, but that should be obvious.

Children are tough. Seeing goatse or rotten.com or pichunter.com (a personal favorite of mine) isn't going to warp their minds. These are all things that happen and exist in the real world; seeing them as a child isn't going to do any more harm than seeing them as an adult.

wtf? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:14 · Score: 0

The analogue of Kid asking permission to leave the yard is Kid asking permission to use the computer. The analogue of Kid telling you where he's going is Kid telling what he's going to be looking at.

Where did routers and proxies come into this? What on earth would the real-world equivalent of a monitoring proxy be?

rossz: +5 Liar? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:15 · Score: 0

What you said here:

"Now, everything is blocked and I will only open up sites if she asks and I have verified it is kosher."

What you said before:

"...we couldn't afford an RIAA lawsuit, but she didn't listen to me, so now she can't even trade music when it's legal."

So what is it not "even trade music when it's legal" or do you allow it when its "kosher"? Maybe you should give your child a lesson on why it's wrong to lie, then allow her to look at her own religious and political sites, unless your goal is to completely rule her life.

Access Denied... by wodelltech · 2004-07-01 08:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've been using DansGaurdian for a year or so now (what's good for my kids is good for me, I figure...) Anyway, it blocked access to these very comments (see below). Irony.

ACCESS HAS BEEN DENIED -

Access to the page:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/01/ 15 48255&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=153&tid=95&tid=99&th reshold=2 ... has been denied for the following reason:

Weighted phrase limit exceeded.

--
Your monitor is staring at you.

It needs to distributed; Reputation based by KjetilK · 2004-07-01 08:30 · Score: 1

Well, that's life. Problem is, you can't yourself surf all the useful sites out there, nor can you surf all the nasty sites.

I think a distributed approach is needed to the problem. Every-one out there needs to have browser toolbar where they can rate pretty much all the sites they surf. We need people to annotate sites with accurate metadata, and we need a distributed moderation system that punishes trolls and spammers. Some like surfing porn, so they rate their porn. Some will check out kids' sites, and add their metadata to those.

A parent can then decide who to trust, besides his own meta-data, and what to give access to based on these data.

--
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid

Great! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:31 · Score: 0

One of the biggest impediments to Linux adopton was lack of support for cross-platform censorship.

Freedom by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 08:42 · Score: 0

Information wants to be free! Down with censorship!

Religious hate by nurb432 · 2004-07-01 08:49 · Score: 1

Ever notice that most of the wars in history have been caused by so-called religious reasons?

More death and suffering has been caused by this then anything else in history. 'Hate' is not just relegated to 'traditional' hate groups. So to be fair, either they all get to speak or none.. Which was my original point of letting children see all viewpoints.. Let them judge which is right, and which is wrong.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----

Short summary by lockne · 2004-07-01 08:51 · Score: 1

vi /etc/hosts

Typical "Government is My God" crap by Loundry · 2004-07-01 08:58 · Score: 1

Taxes pay for more than just schools

You're right! They also buy votes for politicians. It works like this: a politician takes money from those people whose votes they don't need, and gives the money to the people whose votes they do need.

it is good that you should be responsible for more than just your own children.

And what other things should I be responsible for beyond those things that I choose to be responsible for? I'm sure you think that we must have the government (which is nothing more than other individuals who happened to win/rig an overly complex and corrupt populatiry contest) tell us what we must be responsible for.

And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children.

Oh, you have the right to tell me how to raise my child? Tell me, which part of the constitution of the USA grants you that right?

It is not just the family that raises the children, but the whole village.

Vague statements like this are so typical of superstitious people. What, pray tell, is the "whole village"? Who are its members? Does the meth addict bum help me raise my child? What about the fucking predator who broke into my house and stole my property? Did he help me raise my child? Or were you just equating "the whole village" with "the government"?

Besides, it is more likely the parents undermining the schoold system.

The reason why schools are crappy is complex and highly politicized. I see several reasons behind it:

1. Government-run schools don't have an incentive to educate children. If children come out welfare-dependant, that means more votes for politicians because those kids "need" the government.

2. Some parents suck. This suckiness carries over into the schools, since sucky parents treat schools as nothing more than a taxpayer-funded babysitter.

3. Our society in general treats the crimes of assault, harrassment, sexual harrassment, and battery as "part of growing up." If you're 17 and you beat the living shit out of a 16-year-old, then that's just "part of growing up" for the victim. Crimes like these are frequent in highschools. What does it teach children?

4. Teachers' Unions are the most powerful unions in the country. Their purpose, like that of all unions, is to A) protect union members' jobs, and B) use extortion in order to make union members get paid more for doing less. Note that neither of these things helps students; in fact, they harm students. Protecting teachers' jobs most affects the teachers most likely to be fired, which, in general, are the shitty teachers (and, yes, there are shitty teachers). Paying teachers more for less work also harms students since, in some cases, it takes money from the school (which could have been spent on students) and rewards teachers in cases when they don't deserve it.

There is a time to question authority, but that time is not when you should be learning to read and write.

Since I see you as a government-worshipping Leftist (as opposed to a Gaea-worshipping Leftist), I'm sure you can think of lots of times when we shouldn't question authority. I see you and your ilk as hyper-conservative Christians, except that you've replaced YHWH with the State (and the State, like YHWH, *must* be obeyed). Furthermore, your statement assumes that (government) schools are teaching children to read and write. Not only do government school fail at that task with alarming regularity, but they also teach other things that aren't related to reading and writing. Should schools teach children to be strong individuals, or is individualism a sin?

--
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.

Re:Typical "Government is My God" crap by swv3752 · 2004-07-02 02:07 · Score: 1

You are anti-union. Let me give an example of how unions are usefull.

A few years back, NW Airlines sacked a bunch of low level managers that were a year or less short of retirement. This was done solely so that the company would not have to pay retirement benfits. The union even though manager were automatically not members, still helped the managers get together and put together a class action lawsuit against the NWA. The union did not have to get involve, but it was the right thing to do not just on a decency level, but to protect the union employees from similar actions in the future.

Teacher Unions are amongst the weakest unions, seeing how teachers do not have the right to strike. If you saw how school districts treat substitute teachers (who typically do not belong to the union and as such not protected), you would realize why unions are needed.

If we didn't have Unions, this sort of thing would go on even more.

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Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Typical "Government is My God" crap by Loundry · 2004-07-02 09:02 · Score: 1

Let me give an example of how unions are usefull.

Great... but then you admit:

The union did not have to get involve,

Exactly. Unions are not required to file class action lawsuits (and I think that one is merited in this case).

Teacher Unions are amongst the weakest unions, seeing how teachers do not have the right to strike.

Is that the only measure of strength that you give to unions? Consider this: the NEA frequently influences decisions made by government for schools. What other union has this kind of power? Do the Teamsters get asked for their opinion on transportation bills?

If you saw how school districts treat substitute teachers, you would realize why unions are needed.

If you would admit the massive corruption and extortion regularly used by unions for decades, you would accept that they have too much power and must be curtailed. Is there any amount of evidence that will convince you that unions are not as good as you think they are?

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I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.

Are there any standards at all? by duck_prime · 2004-07-01 08:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

The same parents who bitch about our educational system but who won't sit down with their kids and discuss what Johnny learned in school today will continue to scream and scream loudly.

Well and good, parents should indeed keep tabs on what their kids are told in school or see on TV or internet and help them interpret it.

That said, I can see parents getting annoyed when they have to fight a constant rear-guard action against smut, violence, and what-have-you everywhere. Despite what your parents tell you, it is undeniable that what the kids see around them is what they accept as normal. So parents do have a legitimate interest in public debate over what types of material are appropriate for public places / airwaves. And especially over how much of their own social/political philosophy teachers should be allowed to preach in classrooms.

There is an argument to be made between community standards, especially with respect to media which is so easy to see (often impossible not to see), and 1st amendment rights. Speech is protected, but ... is venue? Most folks are entirely happy that we don't have cig ads or graphic sex acts or murder or Druidic rituals on open billboards, and are happy to get any tool that helps.

Americans are prudes by Loundry · 2004-07-01 09:09 · Score: 1

And that is just insulting.

Are you insulted because it's false, or are you insulted because it's true? I think it's the latter. Americans are complete prudes when it comes to sex.

Wait, I revise my statement:

White Americans are complete prudes when it comes to sex. I've noticed that black people can talk about it much more freely and openly than whites can.

Wait, I revise my statement again:

White, Southern Americans are so prudish about sex it'll make the average European's head spin. I am a white, Southern American, so I can describe my own culture with impunity. I am a gay, white, Southern american, so I can criticize my own culture with honesty when it relates to how my people are so fucked up with one of the most primal and common human activities: sex.

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I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.

Re:Americans are prudes by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 09:33 · Score: 0

but you can't criticize the culture with any intimate understanding because you reject absolutes? Funny, you consider monagomy fucked up, when most of the animal kingdom practices manogomy.

My method works for all operating systems by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-07-01 09:24 · Score: 1

Set up a private BIND server, but don't let it query other servers. Instead give it a hosts file that you manually maintain.

Johnny wants to access a new website? You look at it first, and if it looks OK, add it to the hosts file on the family DNS server. All computers OTHER than your development machine should be limited to using this LAN DNS server.

Works fine with all operating systems, and has the added bonus that you know EXACTLY what your children are looking at.

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.

Re:My method works for all operating systems by Zoolander · 2004-07-01 10:53 · Score: 1

What if they look up the IP address of some public proxy and use that? Then the proxy would do the DNS lookups, wouldn't it?
If your kids are a bit computer literate - chances are that they will be, since you're posting at ./ ;) - they will figure that out pretty quickly.

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Meep.
Re:My method works for all operating systems by Zoolander · 2004-07-01 10:55 · Score: 1

Doh... misspelled /.
Shouldn't post while deliriously sleepy.

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Meep.
Re:My method works for all operating systems by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-07-01 11:15 · Score: 1

Certainly depends on the kid- but if he's that autistic, I wouldn't worry too much about the p0rn either- it becomes quite boring quickly enough. Certainly not nearly as sexy as getting that final algorithim that you've been hunting for all week.

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.

Simple answer for filtering by tacokill · 2004-07-01 09:30 · Score: 1

I have a simple answer to those who want to filter for their kids:

Have at it.

For those who want to filter MY material, well, that's a different story.

Sidenote: All throughout this argument about "kids and porn on the net", I can't help but wonder why the parents don't just unplug the machine from the net. If it really is as bad as you say it is, then just unplug and the problem goes away. Nobody is forced to use the internet. If you see things that offend you to the point of madness, well, then just unplug the machine. No filtering needed. No new laws needed. Little Johnny stays safe. And most importantly, you have absolutely no impact on MY usage of net.

To me, that seems reasonable. So why hasn't that ever been brought up to these over-ambitious parents who want to pass law after law telling us what we can't do on the net? To date, I've never heard anyone ask that so I ask it in all seriousness. Internet usage is not a right nor is it forced upon anyone. So what makes someone think they can "regulate" it according to what THEY deem acceptable?

What about TV filtering? by FrankAnemaet · 2004-07-01 09:32 · Score: 2, Informative

Long ago my parents where visiting friends, I was bored and checked tv to watch cartoons.
(I was 10/11 by then)
I turned on tv and saw porn.

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-- Frank Anemaet irc.freenode.net frank

Re:What about TV filtering? by nick13245 · 2004-07-01 12:58 · Score: 1

TV-Filtering already exist. It's called V-Chip technology.

What about a Whitelist? by Sark666 · 2004-07-01 09:35 · Score: 1

I'm skeptical with a blacklist, some site will slip through the cracks.

Say when the kids are logged in their account I only want certain sites available and thats it. Like disney.com, ytv.com etc and thats it.

Then when they want a new site, they would tell the parent and verify it, and then add it to the list.

Another perspective by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 09:39 · Score: 3, Interesting

Most of the posters seem to be parents here, so I'll give another perspective - the childs. I'm nearly 17, and I've had fairly unrestricted access to the internet for, hmm, probably about 5 years and used it a little before then. I've read and seen things on the internet that could be grouped into pretty much every category conceivable, and guess what? It hasn't done me any harm at all. In fact, I'd agree with the people who say it prepares you for the real world that little bit more. I don't have urges to rip my ass cheeks apart, drive around in a bangbus, or hate black people. My parents set a few (fairly unrestrictive) rules about my internet usage, and as long as I behave in a reasonably acceptable way in general, they won't have any reason to look at internet usage or anything else.

Re:Another perspective by Mike+Hawk · 2004-07-02 09:22 · Score: 1

3, interesting? Are you sure that you are the best judge of your own behavior? Plenty of addicts of all types don't see themselves as having a problem. Perhaps your own notion that you are perfectly ok is the scariest thing of all...

offer drugs to my children??? by NumbThumb · 2004-07-01 09:49 · Score: 2, Funny

hell no, i would *ask* my children for drugs!

"ok, daddy, the first one is free..."

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I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.

Telnet to port 80 by shoppa · 2004-07-01 10:01 · Score: 2, Funny

My kids browse the web by telnetting to port 80 from my model 33 teletype. What am I supposed to be filtering out?

Re:Telnet to port 80 by sloanster · 2004-07-01 10:32 · Score: 1

My kids browse the web by telnetting to port 80 from my model 33 teletype.

I see... and they listen to music by watching a silent movie of the speaker vibrating, right?

blinding miss of the obvious by SuperBanana · 2004-07-01 10:08 · Score: 1

You miss the point entirely. This article is good because it puts the power of filtering in the hands of the parent, where it belongs *NOT* the government.

It may put it in the hands of A VERY SMALL NUMBER of parents, but it certainly doesn't take it out of the hands of the government and right-wing psycho born-agains.

I love how you don't take my comments in context, and get modded 5 insightful, while I get modded 1, Insightful. Then you continue to miss the point, and get THAT post modded up as well. JHC, it's time to start metamoderating again.

The parent post, which I was replying to, said all yippy skippy, "oh, this'll keep those nasty legislators from making nasty laws about censoring firewalls!"(for which he got modded 5, Insightful- for a comment that clearly was anything but).

My answer was, essentially that the original poster's comments were a complete non-sequitur; a filtering package for an obscure operating system will do jack shit as far as filtering in schools and libraries.

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Please help metamoderate.

Re:blinding miss of the obvious by Chris+Hodges · 2004-07-01 22:36 · Score: 1

My answer was, essentially that the original poster's comments were a complete non-sequitur; a filtering package for an obscure operating system will do jack shit as far as filtering in schools and libraries.
That'll be the "obscure operating system" that 1/2 the posts here are saying is ideal for use in schools and libraries, will it?

Barbie, McDonalds, etc. etc. by refactored · 2004-07-01 10:08 · Score: 3, Funny

You let your daughter go the Barbie site? Shudder Yeurgh. The poor girl, she'll grow up all twisted.

Web filtering for a geek child is useless by Invalid+Character · 2004-07-01 11:40 · Score: 1

If your child is even moderately inclined towards computers then this will probably not work. When my parents tried to set up web filtering on our computer, I got around it without them really knowing about it. And eventually when they seemed to forget about it, I cracked the uninstall program and got rid of the whole thing.

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Registered .sig quotient : 1337

bitchslap time by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 12:39 · Score: 1

Go to Google and type in a bunch of keywords which would represent the most disgusting and/or disturbing idea you can think of. You'll get hits. With pictures.

Good idea, sounds like fun. Thanks. Enjoy the link I added to your comment, and wash your hands before you get to the keyboard. We wouldn't want it to get all sticky, would we? Then go looking for news articles about kids being lured to their death by people in chat rooms, etc. You'll find plenty.

As you well know, this is so uncommon that when it happens, large numbers of news publications will hit on the same handful of cases. There is enough uninformed hysteria created by people who make their money off censorship without slashdotters adding to it.

Personally, I'd rather leave kids I'm responsible for on an unfiltered Net connection on a browser with a home page set to the site goatse.cx moved to than with you as a baby-sitter.

You appear to be a nut, and in-person exposure to nuts is far more dangerous than a statistical probability of running into a pedo in a chatroom who will actually manage to talk anybody into going anywhere with him.

Better to teach kids common sense, but that isn't a comment you're exactly familiar with, is it?

I'm posting AC because I actually used to work for a censorware company and I'm still embarrassed about it.

the problem is by louden+obscure · 2004-07-01 13:06 · Score: 1

there is a lot of evil lurking right outside my ADSL connection. i don't care to infringe upon anyone's first ammendment rights. but conversely, i should be able to filter out what i will allow inside my house. i have the tools, it's nice that now i can read how to use them.

right now i have an eleven and twelve year grandson logging into my debian sid desktop to google for xbox game cheats. what they can get away with on their parent's computers is one thing. what i will let them get away with is gonna be a lot less.

plus, i only had three kids, but i have seven (due to be nine by the end of summer) grandkids. they're learning how to use *nix on grampa's linux box. and grampa has an xbox that can run xebian as well. my kids are hopelessly locked into m$, i sorta hope i can just do a leap frog deally...

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Serenity now, insanity later.

Parents ... by The+MESMERIC · 2004-07-01 13:56 · Score: 0

If your 13 year old daughter run away with a 46 year old man - its YOUR FAULT !!!

Enough said.

Honestly, though...... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 16:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

I can't believe this is the same slashdot crowd that flames every other attempt at even the slightest application of censorship. (And, just a little while ago, was comparing their favorite pr0n mags)...

What's the point of all this? Explain to me, logically, how blocking the real world from a child is going to help him or her become more mature and prepared to deal with the same real world later on? Exactly what "mind warping" are you all so afraid of?

Come on, think about it...they can't stay in your little plastic bubble forever. All you're doing is stunting their mental growth (no pun intended).

Face it. The world is the world. You can't change that, no one can. Don't think about "protecting" them...think about preparing them. How are they ever going to become independent if you are working to prolong dependence and naivete?

I know I'll probably get modded troll for this, but it's an honest question: why censorship? What good, specifically, does it do?

Besides, unless you've seriosly locked down your machine (read: padlock+ ), it's pretty trivial to bypass these little pieces of software... Knoppix CD, anyone?

Even if they aren't able to bypass it (say you've set up a Fort Knox of padlocks, bios passwords, bootloader passwords, system passwords, filtering at the gateway, filtering off-site, etc), it's only a matter of time before they try looking for the same stuff on a different, less "protected" computer. And thus, they just will become resentful towards you....

Just my $0.02
(And no, I'm not a parent :) ). (So flame on :) )....

My daughter complains about the parental controls by trigggl · 2004-07-02 00:49 · Score: 1

I didn't bother to tell her they don't work in Linux. :-D
She wants to do a lot of chatting and instant messaging. The problem is, she decides to start calling the people she's chatting with. The resulting phone bill is the reason that is now blocked in Windows. She hasn't figured out that she can do all that in Linux with no inhibitions. I'm not in any hurry to teach her.
Since I've discovered Blocklist Manager, I want to use SquidGuard to use that list. I'm amazed at all the stuff that list blocks. I'm amazed at what sites it has to block stuff at. I think it's essential for anyone on dial-up. Who has time to download ads?

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Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.

Log, don't filter by Jonny+290 · 2004-07-04 05:35 · Score: 1

Simple. A black box router, full logging, locked down tighter than a nun's honeypot. But no netnanny shit.

Kids dig on porn because it's FORBIDDEN. It's EVIL. It's DARK and the parents really hate it, and that's part of the attraction.

It's easy to whack off to dirty secret porn. It's a lot more difficult to wank it to juggycheerleaders.com when you know your dad's watching the logs. Sorry to be so coarse, but that's the way it is. Think like a child and work from that mindset.

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Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...

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A Parent's Guide To Linux Web Filtering

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