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Internet Censorship in Utah Schools & Libraries
One of my old partners in crime, Michael Sims, contacted me with the latest report from Censorware.org. By analyzing their web logs, Censorware found that they were blocking access to such offensive materials as The Bible, and The Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution, using the unaptly named SmartFilter software. Check out the Salt Lake Tribune for more information.
They're probably banned because the censoreware people know that those documents contain the very tenants of our society that demand free speech.
Ahh yes, now you have an open mind...
- Pedophilia has nothing to do with minors getting married. It is the viewing and distribution of child pornography.
- The Mormon Church (e.g., the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) has never promoted pedophilia. As a matter of history, it has been grounds for excommunication since the LDS church was founded.
- There was no problem with corruption in the upper ranks. The so called "serious problem with pedophilia" was in fact, the fact that many bishops (roughly equivalent to a pastor or parish priest) were struggling to know how to effectively deal with family issues while actively disciplining (including excommunication) members guilty of such offenses, which often included incest. Mormon leaders actively speak out against pornography of any kind all the time -- I have literature published in 1954 and since which proves it. Heck, the president of the Mormon church was on Larry King live a few months ago and spoke out against it then.
- Like it or not, there is a Biblical foundation to the concept of polygamy -- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, and others had multiple wives. So the Mormons have a doctrinal leg to stand on in their church's original position on the subject. That said, the LDS church has not practiced polygamy since 1890, following numerous legal appeals of the law which made it against the law. Any member attempting to practice polygamy at this time is summarily excommunicated.
BTW I'm not trying to preach or defend one group or another here, but the accuracy of your post sucks.While you may refer to the second book as a fairy tale, many non-Christians would say the same thing about the Bible, by the way. I notice that you did not mention that the subtitle of the Book of Mormon is 'Another Testament for Jesus Christ."
So easy to spout off...so hard to get the facts right.
I think porn should be required to have a .xxx instead of a .com.
It would be _much_ easier to filter out.
So censorware must be blocking fiction, if it is blocking the bible? I could go for a bibleware, that just blocks everything from the religious, fanatical front.
And thank goodness they did. I'd hate to see this country were allowed to force their beliefs on people through government or schools. As to the "revisionist history", I don't seem to recall any of my history textbooks claiming that the founding fathers weren't Christians, that the Bible didn't play a role in abolition, etc. And it did claim that lots of people emigrated because of their religious beliefs.
And I'm supposed to be impressed by Christ's sacrifice? There've been other people throughout history who have died by ways at least as painful for sacrifices that are far less meaningful. And there certainly exist ordinary human beings willing to make a sacrifice of the same magnitude for the same benefit (or even far less).
But then, the Bible depicts scene of sex, incest and other stuff like that... it's funny that the same persons that are shocked by the nacked body of a woman on TV insist that their kid learn the Bible ! It's not the censorship software that is wrong, it's those humans that judge something harmfull or not based on the context, not the content...
Isn't this the religion whose prophet once taught "teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves"?
No! We will NOT let you go to hell! Free agency is EVIL! It is FAR FAR better for you to die in ignorance than it is to learn how to control yourself in difficult circumstances (and possibly fail). Bah! Spit! Self rightous bastards!
Please excuse my irony, but I am getting damned sick and tired of people legislating away my God given right to make my own decisions and thereby learn from my mistakes.
You exactly wrote what I think ! At least not everybody got brainwashed with religion since school. I'm glad I don't live in a nation where there's not written "In God we trust" everywhere. In the US you are free of your religion as long as are Christian ;-)
can you?
I was under the impression they used the tailor-made american fable written by Joseph Smith?
As opposed to the generic middle-eastern fable written by Jewish fanatics a couple of thousand years ago?
Everyone's religion is a fable to those outside the religion. Even *gasp* yours.
"or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That should give you a hint. The Constitutional reference was intended to imply freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
I'm 13 and I never get offended at anything. My mother, OTOH, is offended at EVERYTHING!!! This is proof that age doesn't mean anything.
How about "schools facilitating your role as parent" by not goose-stepping them into the re-education camps every single day under force of law, to be force-fed the government approved view of everything?
:-)
One day the children will rise up and revolt.
The Constitution provides freedom of any kind of belief as it pertains to religion, including but not limited to the right to no religious belief at all. I don't think anyone was contradicting that.
All religions are based on myth. But it is the nature of people to want to have something they can hold on to for faith when they can't explain events that happen in their lives or need to fill some gaping hole in their existence. Every other species on this planet has come to grips with the cycle of life, why the hell can't humans?
Age does not mean anything. I am 13 and I am MUCH more mature than most adults.
I don't seem to recall any of my history textbooks claiming that the founding fathers
weren't Christians
Why is the religion of the founding fathers relevant? They were wise enough to establish the principal of separation of church and state in the government. Some of the founding fathers weren't Christians, by the way. They were deists.
, that the Bible didn't play a role in abolition, etc.
The Bible was used to justify slavery in the South. The more "Christian" the area, the more rapid their belief in the righteousnous of slavery.
And it did
claim that lots of people emigrated because of their religious beliefs.
People fled to the New World to avoid religious persecution. Then they persecuted others not belonging to THEIR religion.
Children should have access to violence because if they don't see violence they won't know that violence is bad.
Abolishonists (oops, bad spelling) in the 1800's who did so much
to end slavery were mainly motivated by their belief that slavery was unbiblical.
There are many other things like this...
And religious peolple in the south justified slavery through the Bible. What's your point?
Millions of people in the world have been killed and tortured in the name of religion too. The more people believe that their religion is right, the more likely they are to inflict suffering on others.
You might want to read Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World".
Kids should be allowed to look at porn and shouldn't go to school. The only reason kids might be harmed by looking at porn is stress because they might get in trouble. You don't learn anything in school. You learn alot more on the Internet. School is why most Americans are stupid brainwashed idiots.
The bible is a pretty important part of American History. The statement "In God We
Trust" is on many pieces of our currency.
So four words written on the currency make the Bible important to U.S. history? The Bible's relevance to U.S. history is minimal.
One of the most revolutionary ideas in U.S. history is that the U.S. government was created to be separate from religious institutions.
The Bible is full of lots of cases of murder and genocide, often perpetrated or incited by the character known as 'God' in the book.
When you get down to it, the Bible is darn right unChristian.
Heh, over a year ago at my old high school i mentioned this to the librarians, whom are incapable of any logic whatsoever, and said it was too much trouble. BULLSHIT! They already used logins anyways... oh well... no one ever listens to me...
I'd be offended if I believed you actually tried
seriously reading the Bible, dumbass.
hello.c:
#include
main ()
{
printf ("Hello World!\n");
}
Your points are irrelevant. The original poster was claiming that the "secular humanists" or whatever were rewriting history, and gave examples. I said that my textbooks did not make the false claims that were cited. You then came and listed a bunch of negative things about Christianity in U.S. history. That is completely irrelevant to the issue of whether history as it is commonly taught in schools falsely portrays the role of religion in U.S. history.
Article VI, Section 3 - ...but no religious test shall ever be required...
Amendment I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...
Hardly a twentieth century notion
True -- however, such constitutional restrictions were generally applicable only to the federal government. State and local governments frequently established, e.g., religious litmus tests for public office.
It was the 14th Amendment ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States"), ratified in 1868, which extended the application down through all levels of government. And it wasn't until the early twentieth century that the Supreme Court began applying it as broadly as we're accustomed to today.
Note also that the first amendment specifically restricts itself to Congress -- i.e., the legislative branch of the federal government -- and applies only to legislative acts. Thus, until the courts later extended the protections, purely declarative acts (e.g., Reagan's 1984 "Year of the Bible"), even by Congress itself, were not considered constitutionally suspect.
Suffice it to say we tend to interpret the First Amendment more broadly today than the Founding Fathers did. Whether we should is another question...
hello.c:
#include
main ()
{
printf ("Hello World!\n");
}
I've never been able to reconcile how a perfect God could desire that entire nations be eradicated, including small children. Most of the book of Joshua is about Israel's eradication of neighboring populations. I would really not want my young daughter to read some of this material just yet.
The New Testament, however, has a central message of love, humility, and forgiveness. These values are clearly meant to supercede the "old Jewish laws" as a way of pleasing God. I hope it isn't blasphemous to suggest that God's attitudes toward humanity gradually became more kind and forgiving.
How can any decent person agree with the slaughter of entire nations, including all of the children? The stated purpose is that God didn't want Israel's beliefs to be contaminated by the "heathen" practices of adjoining communities.
A lot of the Old Testament is really at odds with the New Testament values I associate with Christianity (love, forgiveness, humility, etc.). Perhaps there has been a serious problem with translations. I just can't accept that God would want innocent children to be put to death.
#include >stdio.h<
#include
What's so bad about porn that kids shouldn't see it? And why should kids go to school?
PS You are an idiot
You are an idiot.
Schools are for brainwashing, not for learning.
Yeah. It proves young people are more mature.
Uh...you're kidding, right?
... the Christian Bible was a driving
Whether you agree with its contents or not, the Christian Bible has an enourmous influence over
American (and all Western) culture. Try reading
it sometime, you'll be surprised at all the
moral codes and literary references you've already
heard in a non-religious setting.
And even if you discount that sizeable chunk of
evidence
force in the first wave of immigrants to the
American shore. People were seeking the freedom
to read that Bible and worship as they chose.
Christ's sacrifice? Then why is it that everyone always says that Christ "died for my sins" when that sacrifice is ultimately fairly trivial? People have died for all kinds of things but that doesn't make them worthy of worship.
It's a conspiracy to cause human extinction by brainwashing kids to not have sex.
The biggest problem in the world is parents. They think their children can't think and ENCOURAGE them not to think by NOT TELLING THEM THE TRUTH. That is DISGUSTING and MUST BE STOPPED! And the worst part is that PEOPLE THINK IT'S GOOD and they also think it's protection. That's a bunch of sh*t.
Mandatory education is teaches more than ABCs...it teaches obedience.
Obedience?! Horrors! Next thing you know, they'll be trying to ram good citizenship down our kids' throats. We must stop them before it's too late!
Parents should not decide things for their children. That only promotes immaturity.
Not to mention that someone who voluntarily allows someone -- someone they "love" no less -- to be tortured for all eternity -- for a finite "crime" committed over a finite period by finite beings, no less -- is evil by pretty much any definition of the word. There's nothing to be gained from it, nothing to be learned, you can't even use the "pain as teacher" excuse. Most civilized human nations don't even torture their own worst criminals, let alone those they love.
"Yeah, I loved her, but she rejected me, so I locked her in my basement for the rest of her life and had her tortured." Why do you insist on the double standard of not holding your god accountable for his actions? Those are the actions of a serial killer, not any being who merits my respect.
By the way, I laughed out loud when you said that the entire Bible is not a story of condemnation. Talk about wearing blinders...
I looked through the Censorware report, and while it makes good headlines to claim the Constitution was blocked, there doesn't seem to be any real evidence to support the accusation.
It is true that there were a handful of attempted accesses to a copy of the Constitution which were rejected -- not, however, because it was the Constitution, but because the site URL was in a prohibited domain, or because the site contained some other objectionable material, or because an objectionable banner ad appeared on the same page.
In any case, it was never the Constitution which was rejected, and it remains freely accessible at dozens of other sites across the Net.
The same appears to be true for many of the other documents -- The Declaration of Independence, the Bible, the Koran, etc. -- which the Censorware Project alleges were blocked.
Christ's sacrifice is God's way of getting around his own laws? Don't make me laugh. What, did God screw up the first time? Why didn't he just send Christ to begin with?
And I've got news for you: even if he didn't send Christ, God still didn't have to condemn everyone to eternal separation from him. He could have accepted unbelievers into heaven. Or he could have given them oblivion instead of eternal separation/lonliness/torture or however the Christian sect-of-the-week wants to view hell. It was God's choice. I'm not going to think him noble for providing a "solution" (Christ) to a problem of his own creation (hell).
Cartoons are better than live action.
I didn't learn anything from school.
And cartoons are more educational than school
My point above, by the way, was that to be meaningful, the magnitude of sacrifice should be on the order of the magnitude of its result. Christ would have to suffer infinitely more than any other schmoe who died horribly to make him worthy of worship. Furthermore, there would have to be no ordinary human being who would be willing to make the same sacrifice (blatantly false, since others have suffered worse for less). Then, it wasn't even much of a sacrifice, since he got ressurected. Now, if someone was willing to go through that and end up with eternal oblivion or torment, maybe that would be worth something. Finally, just because someone suffered a lot for my behalf or for anyone's doesn't mean I have to worship him or should be punished for not doing so. It just means he's a really great guy and we should all appreciate what he did.
Wouldn't /. be blocked because of the DOJ category icon?
Obedience is not good because it makes you more brainwashable. (is that a word?)
And murder people who didn't.
The Pilgrims NEVER wanted freedom of religion, they wanted THEIR religion to be the one forced on everybody.
But I suppose you think Roger Williams left Massachusetts to found Rhode Island just for fun.
Also, the Pilgrims aren't that important a part of American history. Let's not forget the kind people who set up the Indian schools, to force Native American children to give up their religions along with their languages and cultures.
Or the state of Oklahoma, for that matter, where public school teachers made their children say christian prayers as late as 1979, and where the law uses christianity to tell you what you can and can't do in your bedroom.
Religion has a dominant part in our history. It is the greatest force for oppression and misery the world has ever known.
"Looking after them" i.e. converting them, thus rendering them non-gentiles.
The Bible is vile crap, and is probably the ONLY thing on the net that is harmful to children.
"i was in high school not to long ago"...
Not as a student, 'twould appear, as your post contained 16 spelling/grammar/punctuation errors
in what rendered in two lines on my screen.
Perhaps we need to install proxy filters that block all websites but Strunk & White's...
(Just kidding, although I find the presence of censorship in our schools far less abhorrent than the absence of teaching.)
"...such as Utah's own www.mormon.com (one wonders why that was blocked in the first place)."
I'm not exactly a prude, but if you would have seen what the individual who originally owned that domain used it for you would have been shocked. In fact until John Huntsman bought the domain it kept getting worse and worse as the owner put up more and more bizarre material.
On a slightly different subject, does anybody else think that holding reputations, trademarks, tradenames, etc. hostage via domain name glomming is somewhat absurd? Am I the only one who thinks that entire situation got way out of hand as the net exploded?
"what is inarguable is that children should simply not be allowed to view certain things (porn, nazi-propaganda, heaven's gate style religious fanatics recruitment page)"
I read "Mein Kampf" when I was twelve because I had just finished reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". I had heard that Hitler stated quite clearly in "MK" what he would do if He Was In Charge and wanted to see for myself if that statement was correct. You would not have allowed me the privilege, because "Mein Kampf" can, I feel it is safe to say, be considered Nazi propaganda.
I cannot and will not accept -- ever -- the notion that anything, be it sexual, militant, bigoted, or just plain Insensitive can be said to be Absolutely Inappropriate for someone on the basis of age.
"I am 13 and I am MUCH more mature than most adults."
If you were as mature as you think, you would not have used the word "most." "Many", perhaps...
> And why should kids go to school?
"To learn how to read, write, and do simple math. Hopefully, to learn a bit more than that. To be a useful member of society in the 20th century, you
need to have at least these basic skills."
Not American society. If your "at least" is reading, writing, and simple math, then you're in a world of hurt. "Readin' ritin' and cipherin'"
is a skillset adequate for a steam-powered thresher-driver of the late nineteenth century.
school gives children unfettered access to the Internet, it robs parents of the right to decide which
content their children should and should not be exposed to.
A 'right' they don't have. It is not the government's decision or the parents', it is the INDIVIDUAL'S.
California beats Utah by far. No minimum age with parental consent and a court order (Ca Fam Code sec 302, 1999). Some interesting decisions under the previous version of the same law (CC sec 4100):
- The authority of the parents in the matter of giving consent to the marriage of their infant child is conferred, and is also limited, by the statute. West v West (1924)
- At common law the age of consent to marriage was fourteen years for males and twelve years for females. Vaughn v Vaughn (1944)
I'll bet there are others that can do as well *cough*.
people into his presence.
But your imaginary 3-year-old bully in the sky is supposed to be omnipotent.
If there were any truth in your fairy tale religion, then the only reason anybody ever suffers is because your Invisible Hitler, who decided the rules of the universe, wants people to suffer.
I'll say that again, because it's important. Your make-believe god wants people to suffer.
"Sesame Street", you bloated sack of ignorance. A great deal of it is animated, and it's probably taught more children to read than the schools have.
The original poster was claiming that the "secular
humanists" or whatever were rewriting history, and gave examples.
Unfortunately the examples he or she gave were bogus, as I pointed out.
You said:
don't seem to recall any of my history textbooks claiming that the founding
fathers weren't Christians
But because the following is not taught in textbooks, many people wrongly assume that the so
called founder fathers were all Christians... which is just not the case.
I said that my textbooks did not make the false claims that were
cited. You then came and listed a bunch of negative things about
Christianity in U.S. history. That is completely irrelevant to the issue
of whether history as it is commonly taught in schools falsely portrays
the role of religion in U.S. history.
The telling of history is vastly influenced by what one omits. One does not have to make
false claims to alter a particular interpretation of history.
Many of the negative things that have perpetrated in the name of Christianity
are not taught in schools either. Maybe it's due to pressures from Christian groups...
Maybe it's because there not enough room to cover everything... I don't know.
The original poster was seemingly trying to justify Christianity by listing some of the good
things that were done in the name of Christianity. I was pointing out the fallacy of
this reasoning.
But in the area of biology, fundamentalist Christian groups definitely are trying to re-write and cover up history...
in this case the natural history of life on this planet.
But why should we be held responsible for Adams mistakes ? I was not there at the time, I can proove it ;-) .
Beside, God is supposed to be the source of everything, so he is responsible for everything, pain, death and hell included.
My bet is that God was very bored in the nothingness and decided to start a little "Sim Universe" games, so he created small creatures with a limited intelligence, and is treating them like some toys, crushing them when he is upset or bored.
In fact "thou shalt not kill" is the wrong translation of the Bible, it's closer to "thou shalt not murder" (that's what specialists say).
So christians still have the right to make war, burn wiches or scientists, torture non-believers, stone people and so on... But all fun is sin and strictly forbidden of course (sex/food/whatever). This religion is SICK ! (not that others are much better either...)
The very concept of individualism, so fundamental to our government and
our society, originates with Martin Luther's insistence on the right of
private interpretation of Scripture.
What a load of baloney! Individualism is human nature. Later it was suppressed by
largely tyranical governments that were the religious head of state too.
Democracy has it's roots in ancient Greece... a non Christian civilization.
Perhaps you've heard the words, "we are endowed by our Creator with
certain inalienable rights...". Which religion teaches a Creator God?
Every religion teaches a creator god or gods.
believe with every inch of my heart that my "religion is right" as you so nicely
put it. And it doesn't make me want to harm you in any way.
If you believe with every inch of your heart that your religion is right, then sure you believe with every inch of your heart that my religion (or lack thereof) is wrong. And surely if you were in a position of power or in charge of making policies, your viewpoint would influence your decisions. And that WOULD harm me.
The Bible and Christianity have had a large part in American history. Things like
the Salem witch trials, for instance.
I would say that the Salem witch trials have more to do with ignorance and superstition than with Christianity. Same thing with the Spanish inquisition. Though it was Christian supported and supervised mass murder, you could substitute other religious zealots for the Christians and you would get the same thing.
The religion is largely unimportant. The ignorance and superstition and their effects are important.
Yes, so important that it was felt necessary to divorce the government from religion by explicitly stating that no laws would be made in regards to religion, respecting religion. It is no mistake that they chose that particular word.
"Seperation of church and state" may never have been uttered in the constitution, but it was echoed in Jefferson's writtings often enough, and it was first proposed by Baptists that worried, rightly, that mixing of government with religion would foster corruption. The Inquisition was proof of this, and the "moral" majority seem to confirm it.
This is not a Christian nation, nor is a religious nation, it was founded on the belief that the citizens had a completely free and unabridged right to make their own decisions concerning their liberty and their beliefs. That is what the first amendment is about. Do not make the common fallacy of thinking that religion played a part in the making of this nation, religion plays only a part in the people that built this nation. The difference should be clear.
it may be goodtasteware...
And you call other people fascists?
Since when does having an opinion make someone a fascist? Basically, he said that witchcraft was bad taste. And that makes him a fascist? Do you even have any kind of clue as to what fascism is?
Well, your argument is interesting, but it doesn't apply to kids that get killed/flooded and die at age 3, and never experience something else than pain... "If" I was God, with unlimited and absolute power, I would do things better than that. If a poor limited human like me can do better than a god, then there's obviously something wrong with this god. Either he is not that powerfull, or he is more evil than the humans he created.
Beside, there's simple, pure logic :
- nobody has ever proven God
- nobody has ever proven God not to exist (proving the non existence of something is impossible)
You can replace the word God with Superman/goblins/vampires/unicorns/Cthuluh . There are no more reasons to believe in God than to believe in any other myths. I won't believe in God just because an old book written 2000 years ago says God exist, neither do I believe that the earth is flat.
To quote somebody who knows how evil religion is :
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
Galileo Galilei
(god) can't let sinful people into his presence.
to:
as a sinful person, you wouldn't want to be in God's presence.
Why not? It only changes the meaning completely.
it appears as though you have no respect for God.
If your god existed, I would despise it. As it is, I simply have no respect for christians.
I'll try to relate that in other words: How can you create a perfect software package w/out first failing at sometime or another?
If an omnipotent being like the non-existent monster you bow down to wanted me to, I could.
Further, if your make-believe daddy existed, since he'd be omnipotent, he could make people who could learn anything he wanted them to learn without suffering.
Don't you get it, you simpleton? In your fantasy world-system, the only possible reason for pain is as an end unto itself. Your imaginary Big Brother is a sadist. Nothing more. Nothing less.
You must work for Microsoft.
As feeble a comeback as your coward's faith.
...read the report, that is. My initial opinions were not improved.
The whole report smacks of hurried research and careless statements. For example, on pg. 7 we find the following:
Costs to UEN for maintaining the censoring proxy servers are significant.... [C]ost for the software alone is approximately $20,000 per year. UEN's budget for fiscal year 1999 indicates they were allocated $12,000 for proxy software and $124,048 for proxy hardware. There are also substantial costs associated with the personnel to maintain and administer these servers.
The impression left, of course, is that the schools are spending nearly $150,000 per year (plus salaries) for the sole purpose of censoring the Internet; the report fails to mention that most of the costs -- proxy hardware and software, and maintenance personnel -- would have been incurred regardless.
The study's methodology, frankly, strikes me as problematic. In addition to providing no clear reason why certain blocked URLs were excluded from the study (see p. 6: "URLs ending in '.gif' or '.jpg' or '.jpeg' were excluded"), pp. 6-7 state that
For the four smaller categories [which UEN had selected to be excluded] this review was simply scanning over the list looking for URLs which seemed "out of place".
That's it? Some guy at Censorware Project just manually scans through the list and decides, "well, this looks appropriate to me"?
The report continues, saying (p. 8)
The review process should have been efficient enough to discover the majority (>50%; perhaps >75%) of the wrongful bans present in the log files.
No criteria are presented for deciding what constitutes a "wrongful ban". And, beyond taking Censorware's word for it, no evidence is provided that the process was indeed "efficient enough".
And the report never tells me what I really want to know: what percentage of blocked accesses was deemed "wrongful" by Censorware? Ten percent? One? Point one? In fact, one has to do a bit of digging to come up with the answer.
Page 8 seems to imply ("This applies only to the list of wrongly or irrationally banned sites at the end of this report") that the list in the appendix is an exhaustive list of "wrongful bans". If so, then out of 205,737 banned accesses the report itself could only find 374 it considered "wrongful" -- that is, less than 0.2 percent -- which means even the Censorware Project tacitly acknowledges Filterware acted appropriately better than 99.8% of the time.
Other disingenous remarks include p. 17: "If they had implemented that plan, it is likely that documents such as the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence would not today be banned in Utah."
Of course, the truth is neither document is banned in Utah. The most Censorware Project's report can document is that a few attempted accesses of specific instances of the documents were wrongly banned. The documents themselves remain widely accessible from many locations.
Frankly, it looks to me like Censorware Project went into this thing with an agenda, and the result was poor research and willfully disengenous use of facts.
Unfortunately, other valuable documents that the censorware products may incorrectly block might appear only on one site
This is, of course, speculation on your part (at least, you've provided no example of an actual student being denied access to material he could not freely obtain elsewhere on the Internet).
Granting it for the sake of argument, however, it still remains that if a student needs access to a particular site he is free to request it.
Look, I don't favor filterware on public school computers. My point is simply that if you're looking for a cogent argument against it, this ain't it.
I also have some sympathy with the other side: why should my tax dollars pay for equipment that simply enables Johnny to access nude pictures of Madonna?
But (in your boogeyman story) god created everything, including free will. Since he can do anything at all (it says so right here on the label), he could have made free will itself different so that nobody would suffer from it.
As a parent, I have learned one major fact, as humans we generally only learn "the hard way".
Now suppose you were omnipotent. Therefore you could make your children _just know_ what they needed to know.
If, then, you didn't, and you let them burn their fingers on stoves, you would be a child abuser just like those christians who don't believe in medicine, and who let their children die from treatable conditions, are murderers.
The most common problem with facing the existence of God is that people want to know why he doesn't just Fix everything.
I wouldn't have that problem if your Jew-on-a-stick really existed. I would just consider him the most evil entity in existence and strive to destroy him.
Some things are worth dying for.
I can logically analyze your favorite work of fiction (i.e. christianity) just like I can any other work of fiction.
Just because you Truly Believe something and I know better doesn't mean I can't show you the conclusions that its premises inevitably lead to.
"I'm from the gonvernment, and I'm here to help."
It's certainly not undeniable, and you'd better have something more than suspicion under your belt when you go around helping people force other people from doing what they want when they're harming nobody else.
Hypothesis: Increasingly sexually explicit entertainment causes extermely large decreases in rapes and only moderately large increases in the reporting of rapes. Back when there was no pornography (like there ever was such a time), rape rates were unbelievably high but nobody ever admitted being raped.
My hypothesis is just as well supported by your data as yours is.
What people see and hear affect their behavior
Influence, perhaps. Determine...?
"Your Honor, I had to rape that woman. I saw a picture of a naked woman on line when I was a kid, so I had no choice!"
"Agreed. This court finds that the defendant is not responsible for his own actions, and is a rapist from forces beyond his control rather than from a deliberate, conscious choice to hurt other people. All charges are dismissed and the defendant is ordered released at once."
If TV didn't affect behavior, noone would advertise.
A rational person would say, "If people didn't think TV affected behaviour, no one would advertise."
We are in agreement, noble Satanic warrior! In the motherland, we often had problems with preachers representing the twisted being "Jesus." Without censorship, our young children would be subjected to his vulgar teachings and would remain warped for life!
ALL HAIL SATAN!
He has more clue than you do about what
Witchcraft is. Research both sides,
-then- form opinions, or be a worthless,
wrong-headed political statistic.
Your choice.
Feh. I gave up on the Bible as soon as I
got to "Thou Shalt Not Kill (Apart from
Witches, Adultresses, and anyone else
you think God might not approve of)"
Um, yes. The last thing you want is a nation
of Sovereign Individuals, eh? Oh, the Chaos.
You sound like an institutionalised inmate or
domesticated animal. If all the walls of the
cage were blasted down tomorrow, you'd blink
at the horizon for a moment and then sit down
and start building some new ones, right?
"Only thinking people are safe from the charlatans on the net"
Au contraire... there is a safe and proven alternative to thinking, and that is to place your trust in giant faceless soulless corporations with strong brand equity.
Corporations are the Catholic Church of the 21st century.
ps. Yes, my real name is Anonymous Coward.
White males are not mature individuals and should not have the right to decide everything for himself. White males need to be watched over and protected, they do not know enough to care for themselves. If you think otherwise, then you are obviously very ignorant of white males and their abilities.
Pick any other group and substitute their name in the place of "white males", the way I substituted for "children" -- and maybe you'll see how discriminatory and offensive your statement is. Every person -- child or adult -- is an individual. Censorship treats all those individuals the same, regardless of their different capabilites.
The way children are treated in this society... well, if any other group were treated in similar fashion, no one would be surprised when they rose up in armed revolution to fight for their rights.
It may be considered a nickname in Utah, but here in AZ, you will be corrected for using that word. I some parts of the state it is similar to calling a black person a n----r. They are far more fundamentalist in Arizona than even in Utah.
Does anybody have a *real* response?
There's no opposition between my two statements. You can't prove the existence or the non existence of God, both are valid at the same time. The fact that you can't prove the non existence of something doesn't contradict the fact that you can prove the existence of something. I maintain that all my statements are valid and non contradicting. Of course they don't lead to any conclusion/universaly valid statement, which is exactely the point I want to show : there IS no conclusion on the existence or non existence of God. Therefor all religious people are just believing it because others do, which doesn't show so much free mind...
;-) your argument that life is made to learn pain and success, and experience free will. Those kid don't experience free will as whetever happen to them is not their fault, and don't experience success either. So why creating them, if you know they'll only know pain ? Sadism ?
Sure God could prove himself... but then if you are a vampire you can prove yourself too !! Remember the "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefor I am) ? Anybody can prove its own existence. God is just like vampires, he might or might not exist, but nobody has ever proven either ones. So the people claiming God exist are just as credible as the people that claim that unicorns or vampire exist. No less, no more.
My argument about innocent kids dying and suffering counter (or is supposed to
Your comparison with 3yo/parents against humans/god doesn't apply. Parents have limited power and knowledge, God doesn't. So if I was God, I would have umlimited power, then I could do whatever I want of the universe, without ANY limitations. And I would do better than the mess we live in. There's NO excuse to make innocent people suffer, especially when you have all the power you need to stop it. When your kids fight to death, you stop them, even if they are supposed to have freewill. God doesn't, he prefer to take some popcorn and wach... if God exist he doesn't have any compassion.
And as Galileo, well have you considered that he was believing in God because if he said he was not, he wouldn't have had even the chance to explain himself before being burnt by the "loving and caring" christians he was living with ?
I had to read parts of the Bible in my high school literature class (it was required). It was fiction back then, and it still is now. Merely a bunch of peoples interpretation/embellishment of history. It's just amazing how so many "educated" people today can rely on a book written thousands of years ago, as the word of god. We laugh at the idea of Greek Mythology or worship of other deities, but for some reason it is ok to believe in a christian god. If god wasn't so profitable for some, she probably would have faded out long ago.
I don't think the federal government was the only target of that concept, or they wouldn't have specifically mentioned the States twice.
n /conqa.html.
Interesting point. I do note, however, that the religious litmus test was prohibited only in the case of offices or public trust of the United States, not the states.
In any case, neither the constitution, Bill of Rights, nor subsequent amendments were considered as applicable to the states prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified (together with the 13th and 15th -- the "Reconstruction Amendments") in the immediate post-Civil War era to strengthen the federal government. As a case in point, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1866 that should a State restrict its citizens' right to bear arms, it would not interfere with a national privilege, which was protected by the Second Amendment only from national interference.
The first clause of the Fourteenth established a national citizenship ("All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"), distinguishing it from and superordinating it to State citizenship (such a distinction did not previously exist in the Constitution; the Fourteenth Amendment made it "official").
Prior to this distinction, the citizen was not, under the theory of States' rights, in direct contact with the national government. He owed his allegiance to his State, and the State dealt with the nation. Only with the establishment of a national citizenship superordinated to state citizenship were the States absolutely enjoined from interfering with rights and privileges devolving from national citizenship.
The existence of the Fourteenth Amendment, it seems to me, bespeaks its necessity. If the States had already been enjoined by Article VI, why ratify the Fourteenth?
A few links which discuss the Fourteenth Amendment and its background:
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/constitutio
http://www.nidlink.com/~bobhard/constit7.html
http://www.nidlink.com/~bobhard/consti12.html
I don't necessarily agree that we interpret the First Amendment more broadly that the Founding Fathers did.
I differ, but don't have time right now to research the question. It strikes me as interesting, however, that the same Fathers who authored the first amendment also provided for the opening of each session of Congress with prayer -- certainly an act which would today run afoul of constitutional interpretation, though that thought did not seem to cross the minds of the Founding Fathers.
The very concept of individualism ... originates with Thomas Jefferson's belief that only a government founded on the rights of the individual can avoid degenerating into despotism
It does not. Political individualism derives most directly from the writings of British political philosopher John Locke, who greatly influenced the Founding Fathers (including Jefferson). Locke himself was a product of neo-Enlightenment political thought, which can be traced directly back to Luther's "Two Kingdoms" writings during the Protestant Reformation.
Really, you're in bad need of a history course or two. I also recommend a perusal of Locke's Two Treatises on Government; they can be found at:
http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Locke/
The Bible and Christianity have had a large part in American history.
Thank you - I believe that was the original poster's argument.
Things like the Salem witch trials, for instance.
"The group usually referred to as the Salem witches were a small proportion of the population, and by the time this country was formed no longer existed as a cohesive group."
How many witches were burned at Salem? And who defended them?
i may beleive that my religion is absolutely the best for me, but i also know that it is right ONLY for me and not anyone else. everyone has to find their own way -- there is no one single system of beliefs that will work for every individual in the world. the sooner the religious zealots who feel the need to force their beleifs on everyone realize this, the sooner everyone will have one less thing to kill each other over...
just my 2 cents -- take it or leave it...
Arizona has always BEEN redneck!
Most of the state, outside of Phoenix and Tucson, is controlled by Mormons (they were the original white settlers 100 years ago). Combine that with the Timothy McVeigh wannabees from the South that came here in the '50s and '60s and you have a pretty intolerant society. Gays are openly (and legally) discriminated against and don't even think about moving here if you are Black!
It's getting better since the midwesterners have moved here in the last 20 years or so. In fact, the Mormons have already lost control of Mesa (3rd largest city in AZ and the largest Mormon population in the US except for Salt Lake City) and are losing control of the state legislature.
Don't worry about Arizona. We are even setting up movie studios here. 19th Century Fox is opening up one next year, in fact!
bess, a sysadmin's easy answer to a proxy server, updated every nite, and debian linux loaded, just plug it in, and boot it up, no logons for the sysadmin,but who cares, it works
still lame
>or at least get your facts right, and your
>wording accurate. Facts:
>1.Pedophilia has nothing to do with minors
>getting married. It is the viewing and distribution
>of child pornography.
Likewise. Pedophilia is the desire to have sexual relations with children. It has nothing to do with pornography.
Your other points I just don't know enough about to argue with.
--
No matter how hard you work to make something idiotproof, someone will always come along and make a better idiot.
You BELIEVE he gave YOU life, that doesn't mean that it is the truth. .. let alone give anyone _ANYTHING_.
I've not seen a single proof that proves he even exists
Sorry, but unsubstantiated claims are not going to convince any of skeptics here.
The world would be a better place without all these "religions" - how many wars have been
fought over them, how much atrocities had been commited in the name of "religions"?
All these brainwashed fundies gives me the creeps "shudder"
Thirteen-year-olds should not be allowed to use school resources to look at porn.
Why not? Sexual intercourse is normal human behavior. It's a part of life -- heck, with the teenage pregancy rates being what they are, a lot of 13 year olds don't have to look at porn since they're already having sex.
All these problems about who decides what kids should or shouldn't be allowed to do in a public school arise because the kids are in public school to start with. THIS is the wrong that needs to be corrected; stop forcing kids to be second-class citizens and stop shipping them off to re-education camps every day for their dose of government brainwashing.
You're not really afraid of kids seeing porn; you're afraid too many of them will wake up, realize they're slaves, and download plans for Molotov cocktails, zip guns, and formulas for plastique, and start to blow their Nazi prison guards -- excuse me, I mean teachers -- away and escape from the gulags you want them to suffer and be broken in.
I had family involved in the Loudoun County Case: one of the librarians fighting the local bible-thumpers was a family member.
Never trust any institution that imposes any form of censorship. Censorship in itself is a crime: when you deny to someone all information that is present, you commit a crime against another person. You may not mean to, you may do it because you love them, you may do it to protect them. But it is still a crime.
The concept of religion trying to censor subject matter isn't new, and stuff like this always tends to float to the surface. That's why we have institutions like the ACLU.
Religion isn't censoring stuff that will 'warp' children. Its censoring to children subject matter it finds questionable. The fact that the save-the-children arguement enters the picture is just amazingly good luck for them.
Children also have judgement, gossip, and time on their hands. If a child wants to find porn on the net... well, they will find it. Its just a fact, and the technology to stop them won't exist while porn is one of the most profitable online activities.
It wouldn't surprise me to find out that one of these characters running the company that provided this software donates large sums of money to the local place of worship, or perhaps vice-versa.
The government does not have the right to censor speech or ideas. And neither does anyone else.
But that's typical of reporting in general.
... blocked access to a site containing the Bible and sites promoting the right of free speech
For example:
Based on the report's allegations of over-broad nature of the UEN's filtering
Please define "over-broad". Do I get to decide for myself what "over-broad" is, or do I just have to take the Censorware Project's word for it?
What percentage of the time did the filtering software block legitimate sites? Without having read the report myself, my impression is the Censorware Project is probably just as fanatical as those it's complaining about.
Often students and researchers are victimized
More inflammatory language. "Victimized?" Sheesh! So if I can't access one site with the Bible on it, I'll just go to another. That hardly makes me a victim of anything.
For those who savor absurdity
Again, hardly objective language here. I hope this was supposed to be an opinion piece.
SmartFilter
And what else did those sites contain? Maybe it wasn't the Bible, but the online script of Debbie Does Dallas which got the site blocked.
"When the Declaration of Independence is banned from the citizens of Saudi Arabia. . . we call it culturally backward," the report concludes. "When it's banned from our own public libraries by our own government, then what do we call it?"
While "banning the Declaration of Independence" makes for good headlines, is that really what happened? Is it really impossible to access the Declaration of Independence from any site on the Internet, or was only one specfic site blocked? And for what reason?
Look, I'm not arguing in favor of filtering software. I'm just not willing to make a judgment based on the selective information provided to me in this article.
However, we have very cleverly found a way to turn this into a weapon to use against religion altogether. Anytime someone expresses some religious thought, everyone cries "separation of church and state!" If some legislation is proposed and is found to have a basis in religion, people squeal like a stuck pig! People are using the "separation" clause, intended to protect religion from government, to outlaw and bully religion!
Now, most people take the "separation" clause to mean that government cannot dictate moral right and wrong. That's silly enough since *every* law represents the government's view of right and wrong. But let's not stop there. They also end up believing that *society* shouldn't dictate right and wrong. We have a real problem here since the statement that "society should not dictate right and wrong" is a statement of right and wrong! In this situation, the absence of absolutes is an absolute!
Another somewhat humorous example. Atheists emphatically affirm that there is no a God. They do not say that there *might* not be a God (that would be an agnostic). Most atheists will also say that there is no absolute truth. But, their statement that there is no God is a statement of absolute truth!
I'll wind up this incredibly long and boring tirade by making a final point. *All* societies have established absolutes. Whether they are explicit (murder, robbery, speeding, and so on are all against the law) or implicit (it is wrong to teach children a religious view). If our absolutes are not based on a religion, they will be based on something else. BUT, we *will* have them. We will never get away from absolutes.
Don't forget:
Peacefire. They're into the anti-censorware, too, but the catch is that it's primarily run and operated by the people directly involved: high-school aged kids. ((And really intelligent and dedicated ones, not script kiddies and IRC weenies.)
Check it out. Lots of good stuff there.
The Bible's relevance to U.S. history is minimal.
Sheesh! Is this what passes for history these days?
Regardless of your personal feelings about the Bible, the fact is it played a fundamental role -- both directly and indirectly -- in the shaping of our country.
The very concept of individualism, so fundamental to our government and our society, originates with Martin Luther's insistence on the right of private interpretation of Scripture. All of Western jurisprudence has its source in the law code of Justinian, which derives from the Bible. Perhaps you've heard the words, "we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights...". Which religion teaches a Creator God?
The Pilgrims, and many of our early immigrants, were fleeing religious persecutions in Europe, fighting for their rights to read and interpret the Bible. Our public school system has its origins in the Sunday schools of New York state. Both the abolition and civil rights movements were led by Christians, motivated by their religious beliefs.
The list goes on. Regardless of whether this is a "Christian nation", regardless of whether any or all of the Founding Fathers were Christians, regardless of whether you're personally offended by the idea, the Bible and Christianity were of fundamental importance in shaping our nation.
Everyone repeat after me: only the government can censor. If your parents, or your preacher, or Time-Warner, or anyone else wants to restrict your access to published material, that's just fine. And your opposition to such a restriction is just fine too. May the better argument win.
Now dust off your Bill of Rights. Find the first amendment. (It's toward the beginning.) Notice the first five words? CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW. Now that's as plain as plain can be, and because the Founding Fathers didn't reserve regulation of the press to the Feds, anyone else should be free to to do so. The anti-Federalists were finally able to pervert the 14th to their cause, but that's a story for another day.
IOW, stick with the moral outrage; the legal pronouncements merely expose your ignorance.
Rubbish. In fact, the federal government has spent lots of money looking for proof of that, and has never found any.
Look how the rape crime rates have risen since the 1950's.
Correlation is not causation.
it is completely reasonable to prevent children from seeing this material.
No, it is completely sensible to perform psychological screening on all children, and put to sleep any that are such sociopaths that looking at a picture of a vulva will turn them into rapists later in life.
I can't remember anything in Exodus about killing all gays (there's one to kill all witches, though, which either refers to wiccans or sorcerers...either way it's bizarre and makes one doubt that the Bible was written by anyone divine, but I digress). However, in the first chapter of Romans, Paul of Tarsus (aka, the Lunatic) says that all gay people deserve death.
If, on the other hand, you did a piss poor job raising you child, and at age 13 they're going against everything "good", you've got bigger problems on your hands than the internet.
Take a look at how your kids were raised. Do the job well, they won't go looking for porn, nazism, etc. And if they stumble across it, they'll know it's wrong, move on, and not be shocked/amazed/tempted-to-do-something-dumb by it.
Honestly, if parents would raise their kids half as well as they wish the governemnt would do it for them, the world would be much better off.
--
--
Just lurking, thanks!
In today's US, you can be guaranteed everything pisses at least one person off. So, in the spirit of political correctness, all must be banned.
I'd say, shut down the Internet, yeah! That'll solve it. And libraries, where do they get off having books that any kid can read, that's ridiculous. The constitution? It was made during the time of slavery, the writers had slaves, so it's all demonspawn. Yeah. The bible? Who pays any attention to that any more, come on. With all it's, "Thou shall not murder," and stuff. How can they expect us to go through life without murdering at least a handful of people! It's my constitutional right!
(For those readers with no sense, this was sarcastic, not literal.)
I know Netscape has some SDK to customize many parts of the browser. Where I work, they have the whole Properties->Advanced->Proxies section greyed out so you can't edit it. That's one alternative, until someone figures out you can download Netscape off their ftp and install a new version over the protected. I don't know if Netscape has a SDK to customize the Linux version...
Let's face it, there is no way to avoid lawsuits today. Everyone is offended by something, and being offended is our nations top priority to avoid. There is more sensitivity put into avoiding this than the family of a car accident victim on the news. My brother was killed in December, and the local news just had to be there at 6am showing every detail of it, live. That's how his wife found out. Trust me, it's not a way you'll want to learn about something like this. But don't get me started on the media. :)
Hell, my old university put in some wheelchair accessible entrances to one of the buildings a few years back. They were sued because they put the ramps on the side of the building, not the front main entrance. They were obviously shunning handicaps into using a different entrance. What else could it possibly be?? Well, until you went in that entrance, and found right near that door is where the elevator is. They did it for what they thought would be the convenience of handicap people, the building was long, and they'd have to roll a long distance to get to the elevator if they used the main, middle entrace. And yet, they were sued. I left before it was finally settled though, so don't know what the outcome was.
It's only at the K-12 schools - The U's network connection goes through UEN but is not filtered.
They block port 80 to all hosts except their censoring proxy and an internal server that has proxy configuration files for people's web browsers.
The U.S. Constitution
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever
Thomas Jefferson, principle author of the U.S. Constitution
I think I am not the one in need of a hint.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States, and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
I don't think the federal government was the only target of that concept, or they wouldn't have specifically mentioned the States twice. As for state and local governments requiring religious tests for office, you are right. I would point out however that those tests are frequently struck down as being unconstitutional (as they should be).
Although I realize that to a degree this comes down to opinion and interpretation, I don't necessarily agree that we interpret the First Amendment more broadly that the Founding Fathers did. I think, rather, that we interpret it more broadly (as a nation and government) than we have in the past, but still not as broadly as those who wrote it meant us to.
This is an excellent point that doesn't get made often enough. However, one of the major problems of organized religion is that it encourages men to believe that they know God's will, and then impose it on everyone else.
I believe with every inch of my heart that my "religion is right"
And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. It's when it causes you or anyone else to believe that there is no possibility that you're wrong, and then to act on that belief, that the trouble begins.
Then I would say that you and I are using different words to say the same thing. ;) As for who is right, we all are. As long as we realize that we're only right insofar as it applies to ourselves.
And the important question, as I see it, is not whether or not there is universal truth. It is whether you or I, as human beings, can ever be 100% sure we know it. Not believe it, know it. And I would submit that if the answer to that question were yes, then there would only be one religion, not the thousands that we currently have.
Still not a real problem. The problem comes in when someone with that type of belief system decides it makes them infallible, and therefore they have the right to impose those beliefs on everyone else. Believing as you do is not a problem for me; if you try to legislate your beliefs, that is. That's why when this country was founded (for economic reasons, not religious ones, BTW) it was decided that government should not interfere with religion and religion should not interfere with government. That way everyone can follow their heart in whatever direction it takes them.
To answer a question you posed in another thread, no, I'm not bitter. However, history (especially, it seems, of this country) is often 'rewritten' on the fly to support various viewpoints; it's a pet peeve of mine. Don't even get me started on the whole "Marconi invented radio" fiasco. ;)
From the United States Constitution:
Article VI, Section 3 -
...but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Amendment I -
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
Hardly a twentieth century notion. As for your other (just as wrong) points -
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion...
- John Adams, while President of the United States
All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites.
- All quotes by Thomas Jefferson
Joe Haldeman wrote in the forward to one of his books that people who learn their science from science fiction deserve what they get. I suppose the same can be said for those who learn their history in church.
All of American jurisprudence has its source in the Constitution, which derives from many ideas, but primarily the belief that only when the rights of the individual take precedence over the rights of the government will that government survive.
I have heard the words "we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights..."; has it ever occured to you to wonder why it doesn't say "our God"?
The original settlers of this country (America) came here with the purpose of establishing a claim to this land for Queen Elizabeth, who was afraid Spain was going to claim it. The group usually referred to as pilgrims (the puritans) came later, were a small proportion of the immigrants, and by the time this country was formed no longer existed as a cohesive group.
The movement to maintain slavery was also led by christians; and the abolitionists were motivated by their belief that one man cannot own another. Religion played a large part in this belief for many; for many it did not.
The Bible and Christianity have had a large part in American history. Things like the Salem witch trials, for instance. They are frequently the motivating force behind attempts to establish the types of tyranny most immigrants to this country came here to escape.
State law in Utah allows marriage at 14 years old with parental consent (18 w/o). By far the lowest in the nation.
"I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis"
I'm sure there's lots more. I believe infidels.org has a more complete listing, and there was some fairly offensive stuff in there. Certainly stuff most Christians would object to if it was in any other book their kids were being allowed to read.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Either that or the people writing the book(s) realized that stoning people was no longer as popular as when the Old Testament was written, so for this religion to catch on, they needed a warmer, fluffier, kinder, gentler version of the Bible (sort of the religious equivalent of "Compassionate Conservatism").
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Why is it that computers and the internet are the only things ever deemed 'inappropriate for children.' If reading alt.atheism is deemed inappropriate for kids to read in a library, why are they still allowed to read ink-on-paper books about atheism? If sites with information about sex are deemed inappropriate to read on a computer, why can kids still check out books on sex and sexuality?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If we wanted to make this a Bible study we could also analyze the word thanatos vs the word hypnos and how they are translated.
Well, I'm not great with ancient Greek, but I do speak modern Greek, and it would seem to me that, figuratively at least, they mean the same thing.
thanatos means, literally, "death"
hypnos means, literally, "sleep"
Now, unless it is talking about actually putting somebody to sleep, hypnos is probably a euphamism for thanatos.
Of course, I could be wrong.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Not to be picky, but why a black stain? My ancestors weren't the ones forcing religion down people's throats. On the contrary, how do you think African slaves were kept under control? (By promises of heaven after death, which kept them from rebelling).
And how do you propose enforcing this edict? All a country has to do is buy a server and declare it as its (the country's) territory (they already do this with embassies).
Actually, pr0n merchants would pay Niue $$ for a safe haven :P.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
it may be goodtasteware...
In my own way, I rather hope there is no such thing as the Second Coming...
...because I am quite convinced at this point that were Jesus actually to come back, the modern-day verstions of Pharisees (aka the Religious Reich) and the guvmint would find Yet Another way to off the poor guy for the crime of telling people to be nice to each other every once in awhile, and 2000 years from now we'd all be wearing little golden M-16s or electric chairs around our necks. :P
My two pence on that, anyways...
Posted by Drogue:
I agree that it would be difficult to trust an organization that censors others outside of itself. However, an organization may be within its innate rights if it censors itself. for example, a voluntary organization like a church denomination could censor itself. I am a pastor, and I can assure you that it would cross the bounds of morality if, in a church school for example, which presents itself as having certain moral standards, pornographic materials were permitted.
However, we should remember that information in general should not be censored. The Protestant reformation brought us what was basically an "open-sourcing" of religion. Instead of being controlled by a closed-heirarchy of leaders, the Bible was brought into the open and all people could make their belief-choices based on their own interpretation of a Biblically-consistent worldview as they saw it.
The trouble with censoring such things as "hate speech" is that someone out there is defining hate-speech and there is no guarantee (nor likelihood!) that what he defines as hate-speech is wrong. I can look at Bible prophecy and with a knowledge of history clearly identify the beast of Revelation 13:1-10 as the Roman Catholic Church. But if you call that hate speech and censor it out, does that mean it is not true?
Posted by Drogue:
BTW, almost all of the original Protestant reformers were originally within the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). They were cast out in ex-communication, or left on their own to follow out the meaning of the new world-view they had chosen. They started something fresh and new. Thus, it cannot be strictly said that the RCC attempts to suppress them were attempts at internal censorship.
In matters of moral authority a Biblically compromised church leadership has undermined itself and has no basis for valid self-censorship. (OK. Covered my bases now).
Posted by Ominous the Foreboding:
For the record, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) does NOT promote Polygamy or Pedophilia. AFAIK, pedophilia has NEVER been promoted by the Church, while polygamy has not been practiced or promoted by the Church in about 100 years.
As far as why the site was blocked in the first place, I can find a great many references in the Book of Mormon (as well as in the Bible, for that matter) that refer to "asses", "pissing against a wall", etc., all of which could be the subject of an automated censorship sweep.
Combine this with stories of, for example, a man "spilling his seed on the ground" (and, no, we're not talkin' pumpkin seeds here), and you get a great deal of potentially-offensive material.
Read either book (or both, if you have time), and you'll see a lot more examples.
Posted by T_X_N:
a pal of mine said
"Protect the easily affended....Ban Everything"
Then as now, people use religion to convince them that their political views are right. This is both good and bad at the same time. Religion is a political tool, face it. At least the writers of the constitution were trying to do something to change that (they weren't very successful, though).
Just as religion can currupt politics, politics can corrupt religion. Those guys knew that. They'd seen enough of it in Europe and they wanted no part of it. The first amendment was as much to protect religion as it was to protect politics.
My point? You don't have to be an atheist to want separation of church and state. It's in the best interests of the religious as well to keep them apart. They don't have separation of church and state in most of Europe and the atheism rate there is much higher. Why? Government mandated religion tends to make more people dislike religion.
Keep 'em separate. Its in the best interests of both theists like you and atheists like me.
Now, as far as this censorship goes, I'm just as much against censoring the bible as a Christian would be. After all, reading the bible yourself is a good way to scare you into becoming an atheist. That propagandistic trash is one scary manifesto.
The real problem in this case was not deliberate censorship, but the laziness to assume that a piece of pattern-recognition software could accurately filter info about certain topics. It doesn't work that well. Think "AOL" and "TOS". Doctors talking about breast cancer are not being pronographic, yet dumb censorship software can't tell the difference between that and, "Naked breasts R' us!" - type sites.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
>if people are reading explicit textual content, such as alt.abuse.sexual.recovery or information about STDs, they can just use a small font size.
Not everyone has 20/20 vision...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Who parted the Red Sea?
a) Moses
b) Aaron
c) Cecil B. DeMills
d) Kansas City
I never heard about that one.
There are large sections of the old testement that I have never read, so unless someone put it in a movie I might not know about it. :-)
Need more examples, or are we done with quizzing?
That will due for now. :-)
TedC
BTW, I can't help thinking that I got more out of what I did read than you did.
I remember that now that you mention it.
Why -- because you only remember the 'nice' parts, and ignore the atrocities that god commands?.. or is it because you think that believing that horrible book makes you have gotten more out of it'..
Hebrews 4
TedC
It's a perfectly logical reply to someone who wants to make illogical decisions for other peoples' children. You have no right to tell another person, adult or child, what he or she has the "right" to view. Since when do you issue peoples' rights? If you have that power, so do I, and by my power, I revoke your right to life, and order you dead by tomorrow by your own hand. Do you still feel so empowered?
A lot of the Old Testament is really at odds with the New Testament values I associate with Christianity (love, forgiveness, humility, etc.). Perhaps there has been a serious problem with translations. I just can't accept that God would want innocent children to be put to death.
Many people seem to be a lot more forgiving than God is in this way. I never could figure out all the seeming contradictions in the Bible. I've had people try to explain, but it usually comes down to "He knows what's best. You don't because you're not him." So again, it's all faith and no proof of any kind whatsoever. You either believe what you've been taught or you don't. Given the human tendency to cheat, and deceive for their own benefit, it's really tough to take anything someone teaches you at face value without any kind of proof. They may be sincere, but how do you know that someone wasn't lying a long time ago and it's still with us like one of those net chain letters that never seem to go away?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
She's full of err.. it. I doubt they review more than a tiny percentage of the sites. Even with a bunch of full-time websurfing grunts, they couldn't do it because content constantly changes.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Don't believe me, ask a psychologist, a responsible one will agree with me.
Did this line make sense to anyone??
Basically it says, "Don't believe me. Ask anyone who agrees with me." Hmm.. nice. By your reasoning I could say that censorship is good, but don't believe me. Ask anyone. If they are sane and reasonably intelligent, they will agree with me. There. I totally countered your arguments.
Seriously though, I'm not actually disagreeing with everything you said, I just think you didn't make a very good argument there at the end. I do think that there is a limit to when children should have unfettered access to the net. Probably sometime around 5th or 6th grade would be best. Anytime before that, they should either be supervised by a parent or closely supervised by a teacher. Even at the 5th or 6th grade levels, they should probably have teacher supervision if they are accessing the net from school. The rest is up to the parents.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Watch it, this is a techie/junkie site. Not the grounds of a holy war.
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We studied Mathew 13 in Sunday school this week. The whole church is studying the New Testament this year in Sunday School. We studied the Old Testament last year. It is a four year cycle that has been used since the beginning of the Sunday School and organized meetings in the Church. And even before that Joseph Smith preached out of the Bible constantly.
Over half of the Quad is the Bible.
In short yes.
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I've been trying to get GospelLink to work with Wine so I can download scriptures and other works to my Palm Pilot. So far it looks promising, at least the demo works well. But I'm not through fixing the incomplete installation InstalShield does under Wine to actually use GospelLink. And even then there is no guarantee that the serial port will work to establish the link.
~
GospeLink is good becuase I have the Palm Pro and can only download pieces at a time, and it would be useful to download recent conference talks too.
Alas, needless to say, that is one app that I am anxiously awaiting a port to Linux. But I'll probably have a long time to wait on that.
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Yeah thats Ammon, like Alma:26 I think (I don't have it in front of me.) And sure enough its Ammon against about 30 warriors. And he only kills one. I remember in primary (Elementary Scoool Age Sunday School) reinacting the scene where they bring all the collected arms to the Lamanite king showing him that this stranger (Ammon) isn't your average person.
No urinating on walls or urinating at all that I can find. J Golden Kimball was famous for telling people in stake conference they were dumb as asses, going to hell, worth less than maneur (and yes that is the word he used) etc... But you have to get the one-man play about him to really appreciate it.
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I always get too caught up in the post to completely relay my thoughts.^ ~~^~
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Whether or not it is a myth is something everyone must find out for themselves. That is the point to free speach, you hear something and then find out for yourself. But if someone thinking they know it all restricts it from being said then...
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1) the origional statement is never validated beyond the person who says it,
2) useful truth isn't get communicated for others to gain from.
The Bible has many martyrs who died under such censorship. William Tinsdale was jailed and executed for the crime of publishing an English translation of the latin Bible without the ecclesiastical consent.
But it is out there, and people have found useful truth in it so it continues to flourish. One can't dispute that.
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I think we've all figured out it is poor software/administrators thats to blame, not a religion.
Second, I don't know any legislation even in Utah that was initiated or proposed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do you? You find any quotes from any General Authority that says "Hey, we need a law that will stop people from
Even so, thats the fun of laws isn't it? You always have the agency to keep or break the Laws. No legislation is going to keep you from learning from your own mistakes. Nothing is really stoping you from driving down the wrong side of the freeway now is there? You have the agency to do that.
Mark Twain once said (roughly) "a man who picks up a cat by the tail will learn a lesson that he will never forget." Making a law about it simply helps out cats and saves people from getting there arms scratched up.
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What does the UofU have to do with anything? I expected the "my college is the center of the universe" attitude from a BYU alumnus.
I have attended neither. But although I never attended Utah State, I think (at least that is what the girl told me) I can now call myself an Aggie. (Wohoo!)
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You seem to understand a lot about life. It is true that there is pain, death, hell (some of my break ups have come close to that.) Are you complaining that God didn't create a place where everyone is happy all the time?
He did, and you've been there. Like Adam chose to leave the Garden of Eden (yes it was a concious choice to leave) you also chose to leave.
Why chose to leave?
In a simple way, so that you could actually experience life. If you in your time machine went back to Adam and had a little interview (music...)
You: Adam you aren't wearing anything are you Cold?
Adam: I've never been Cold here.
You: Are you warm then?
Adam: I've never been Warm here.
You: Do you have any idea of what Temperature is?
Adam: I know its there but I've never experienced it.
You: Yes you have, you are experiencing it now!
Adam: How would I know?
(music...)
Boy Meept would be proud of that one.
As a child I never experience romantic Love, and in a way they are incapable of it. I have now, and although I would like to get rid of the painful times I can't, becuase without them i wouldn't have had the happy times. Without them I wouldn't have experienced Romantic Love. Given the option I would (in and a way did) make the same decision Adam made. He didn't make a mistake and neither did you.
Now that I find myself having made that choice, I can see that I can still affect that choice. I can stay indoors and lead a sheltered life and never experience Love life or temperature for that matter. that is a choice of what I want to do and be.
I can chose to not believe in God (shudder) and never want to do anything with God again, ascribing so many evil intentions as to make my last Girlfriend look like a saint in comparison. I am chosing by doing so to not have a God.
Shure its going to be hell for a while realizing I did something stupid. But that is what I decided right? And God wouldn't make a choice for you. its like deciding your Ford Pinto is good enough for you, why make the effort to get any better and pass up a chance to command the Enterprise.
God is merciful, kind and just, and often misjudged by the very people he is trying to help out. God did create us to be happy, but we have to know sadness to know happiness. In the end he only wants us to have what we want (and i mean in a much bigger sence than this short existance.)
There is my Religion for the day. I like your observations, they are pretty keen and astute. I hope I was able to be of help.
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Biblios interpreted means Library (like Bibliography). The Bible is a collection of stories, sermons, letters and books.
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Personaly, think God created the Universe out if industry, not as an escape from eunnui (as Sherlock Holmes put it.)
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*sigh*
Not on Slashdot.
If you want to, tell me how Joseph Smith knew they used such things as Concrete, hardened Copper, highways, metal plates for writing, knew about the geographic upheavals in central america Circa 30ad, as well as understood intricacies of four dead languages and Hebrew as a 21 year old back woods farmer in upper state New York, using more new words than than Shakespeare came up with in all his works
He displays uncanny knowledge of the mideastern Bedoin lifestyle, language intrecacies and tools.
Sure he quotes the Book of Isaiah a lot, but from four different translations, two of which were very rare outside of the holy land and one of which wasn't even found at that time.
Just remove the spam shield, and email me. I'm not out to prove the Book of Mormon, but it sure isn't discreditable.
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Already known. Thanks.
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I can understand when someone takes it on faith that they are right, But when your own logic works against you... (I wouldn't have quoted Gallileo with miserable logic like you used.)
- nobody has ever proven God
- nobody has ever proven God not to exist (proving the non existence of something is impossible)
Doesn't your suplimental statement to the second statement contradict your first statement? I think Gallileo would be honored you quoted him, but ashamed at the leaps of logic used in the same post.
Besides as the proof of that statement goes, you can't prove there is not a God becuase you would have to be a God to do it. I don't think you can apply a vampire or unicorn in that logic. A God can disprove vampires, but he cannot disprove his own existance.
And should I take it on your word whatever my argument was doesn't apply to unfortunate loss of life at an early age? What argument doesn't apply?
How about when you say if you were all powerful you would do things better than that? What would you do differently?
I know three year olds who think they could do better than their parents becuase if they had they would be smarter and and . My are evil becuase they do not do that and
Was that the kind of Logic that Gallileo (who believed in God) used to prove that a perfectly workable model of the solar system can have the Sun at the center?
You seem to be backing youself into a corner. Care to continue?
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>>Lets Rephrase the Quote
>Why not it only changes the meaning completely
Um, no. But then you may have a point, you just don't make it.
>If your god existed, I would despise it. As it is, I simply have no respect for christians.
A simple catch here, God does exist so where does that leave you?
>Further, if your make-believe daddy existed, since he'd be omnipotent, he could make people who could learn anything he wanted them to learn without suffering.
Your reasoning is shoddy at best, it looks like you are saying you would do things differently as a god. Would you? Is there a way to learn without suffering when learning is the repository of experience? In other words if you create a Universe, and define learning as a growth from experience (ouch hot stove, I guess I've learned my lesson) you could only achieve what you are talking about by changing the meaning of learning. But then it really isn't learning is it.
> the only possible reason for pain is as an end unto itself
I don't think he said that the reason for pain is to experience pain. I looked his post up and down and couldn't see it.
It is true that without pain you can't experience pain, (duh) and if you can't experience pain you can't experience anything else. How boring would climbing a mountain be if it was no more effort than an escolator ride? There would be no sence of achievement and the feeling of self worth that comes from it. There would be no joy of overcoming, nothing.
In every post you always skip over that. You haven't answered or even challenged the fact that you need to know pain to know joy. You just complain that there is pain to begin with. I guess you find it funner to play in the kindergarten logic that perfection means everything works out best for you no matter what you do.
You admit you can't disprove God's existance, yet you believe logic dispells it. Doesn't that seem contradictory to you?
But then again thats why you are an AC.
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Ahh yes the Vampires. You missed the point, my AC friend. The amazing thing is that God Cannot disprove himself, therefore it is impossible to disprove God. And you would have to be a God to know everything in the universe simultaneously to create the exhaustive proof of God's inexistence. Since a Vampire isn't ascribed omniscience, he falls out of the loop of the disprovables (at least by that logic.)
You suppose that is an argument to say there must be a God, but that is not so. If you can't prove something you are accepting it on faith. That means that believing there is no God is the approach of never ending faith (it can't ever be proven), whereas God can be proven. That to me makes it, at least, the logical approach. But doens't prove existance.
I thought you missed my argument. When you say "your argument [is] that life is made to learn pain and success," you miss one difference. My argument is actually that you chose a life so that you could learn pain and success. God created a place where that can happen and you chose to go there (here). Becuase it doesn't happen for everyone is irrelavant to your case, and the argument.
As far as your point, your reasoning still hangs on perfection meaning everything works out great for you no matter what you do. But yes, lions eat wildebeasts. Touching a hot stove burns your finger. Standing in the way of a fast bus smashes you body beyond its designed capacity to function. This doesn't disprove or even dispell God.
And there have been many christians burned alive by other Christians. My favorite was William Tinsdale. But they seemed to believe in something worth dying for, they could have chosen to renounce there beliefs and lived but their values were beyond the pain and suffering they were causing in their lives.
Wouldn't your logic (pain means imperfection) label that as simply absurd, a person following your logic would never do that. Yet they did, driven by values beyond personal suffering. That value to truth exists, and is a principle that drove Galileo, William Tinsdale, and Christ.
Truth is out there, it can be gawked at, sworn at, imagined away, but it is still there. Killing the messenger of that truth doesn't even kill the truth. Arguing it away with Aristotolian logic doesn't change it (just ask Gallileo. (btw I'll look for some good Gallileo believing in God quotes later.) Truth needs to be found, becuase its there. And when everything is said and done, and the truth is discovered you may find it isn't so unfair after all.
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But no answers to my questions.
Maybe another day then.
BTW, on the scholarly level you might want to check out
www.farmsresearch.com
Most of infidels.org is third grade whinning. But some things have merit, and FARMS is pretty good about being straight forward and not apologistic to such critisisms.
If you really think you have the understandable logical opinion go check them out.
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To me the Book of Abraham has never been an embarasement.
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I've heard discussion about the Joseph Smith Papyrus, maybe that is what you are refering to. Like I said go to FARMS
www.farmsresearch.com
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I've heard of a few people marrying 16 year olds way back in the 1800's, but then that was the times. In fact even in the early 1900's in places like Louisianna and East Texas it wasn't uncommon. When I lived there I remembered that it most women I met over 50 that grew up there was married at least once before 18. One in particular was married at 14.
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I'll guarantee that the site never promoted polygamy or pedophelia.
And yeah there are still cases of abuse in the upper ranks. Its rumored even that one of the origional apostles sold out Christ himself.
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The problem is precisely that its use is not voluntary in this situation. Private individuals may use whatever filtering strikes their fancy. When the government gets into the act (in the form of a public library, or requirements on a public library), though, there is a First Amendment issue at stake. It's not relevant that the software is not produced by the government; in essence, the government has granted a private entity a franchise to regulate free speech of the general public.
Why should children "simply not be allowed to view certain things"? Suppose, for example, that a high school student is writing a term paper on propaganda for a history class, and wishes to use contemporary neo-Nazi sites for examples?
Saying that children categorically should not be exposed to certain things is neither effective nor desirable. They'll either find other sources for the same information, or find ways around the filters. It's much preferable for them to be exposed to this material under mature supervision than to see it in secrecy with their peers, who probably don't understand the harm at all (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not), or who think that it's cool to kill people, and gee, isn't it neat that this web site advocates killing people and tells us how to go about it?
Since it's contraband, it will not be possible to use this for educational purposes. It will not be possible to discuss Nazi propaganda and explain the harm caused by it, and point to examples on the net for classroom discussion. It will be that much harder to teach children how to think critically and thereby avoid the same mistakes in the future. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it (Santayana), and children are better learners than adults.
To address the issue of adult usage: libraries are not intended solely for purposes of scholarly research. Most libraries contain works of entertainment (novels and such). Certainly if one individual is tying up resources to the exclusion of other library patrons the library can enforce reasonable time, place, and manner regulations; libraries routinely restrict how many books one individual may have checked out at any one time, and impose fines for late return.
Furthermore, even by the definition of scholarly research, individuals may not want others to know what they're accessing. It may be that someone wishes to research something unpopular and does not wish to be exposed to the opprobrium of the surrounding community (consider someone who wants to study the ACLU or Planned Parenthood in a conservative community -- or the NRA in certain other communities). It may be for other reasons of secrecy, such as a desire to be the first author of a given piece of research, for preservation of patent rights (as distasteful as that may be to many of us), a nondisclosure agreement that someone may believe he is in violation of if others can see what's on his screen, and so forth.
So no, I cannot agree that censorship is good in certain circumstances. I'm Jewish, and for that reason I would want my children to have access at a relatively early age to hate sites, in order that I could teach them the dangers of hatred and how to recognize it.
>Recall that the Puritans left England because
>they wouldn't follow the Church of England (and
>the resulting persecution) but rather practice
>the Catholic faith (I believe it was Catholic)
err, no, and no.
One of the Great Myths is that the pilgrims, who were puritans, came to the New World to gain religous freedom. Great spin, but . . .
They were called puritans because they wanted to "Purify" the Church of England. They did take over the country for a while, under Cromwell, and executed the king. Among their more notable "accomplishments" was banning Christmas.
Yes, I'm serious, they criminalized the observance of Christmas. They weren't Catholic, but thought there was too much Catholic influence left in the C of E. Which is what led to the smashing of statutes in churches, etc.
Even so, after the Restoration, they were largely tolerated. They were left to themselves, with the only requirement being that they attend Mass at the C of E once a year.
So they fled (Holland?), and it was from there that they crossed the Atlantic.
But it wasn't about freedom of religion, or persecution. Rather, it was because they weren't allowed to impose puritanism on the rest of England.
Having arrived in Massachusetts, they promptly set up a Theocracy, with club-wielding goons set out after anyone who didn't show up for church services, fines for dressing in a "papist" manner, and assorted similar freedoms.
A few years ago, a researcher went over the old records, and found a birth within six months of a majority of their marriages . . .
Using them as a mascot for religious freedom is like holding up Clinton as a model of chastity . . .
:)
/end{history lesson}
As a Mormon, I will agree that, yes, to an extent there are some people within the LDS church that there is some degree of paranoia with regards to sin and temptation -- especially when it involves children and teens. However, I'd bet this is the case within any religious organization. I do think that such censorship is a little out of hand, but I don't in any way advocate complete freedom of exposure. You quote Joseph Smith correctly, but I'd counter-argue that the spirit of the statement is that knowledge is required in order to differentiate between "good" and "evil." Free agency is inseparable from responsibility, and in some cases, agency should not be given because responsibility cannot be held (this doesn't just go for kids; I know adults like this too). Such mass censorship of certain internet sites is going a little far, though; the porn I can understand, the others I can't. They should at least clearly notify the customers of such a policy.
...because I wonder who is doing the censoring. I can't help but remember Montag in Farenheit 451 (the guy burned books by day and read them by night, if you don't remember). Censorship seems like an immensely hypocritical job, telling others what they can or cannot know. I really wonder about those doing the censoring, whether they are so digusted by what they see that they quit, or are so disgusted that they are forced to ban certain material that they end up quitting.
Yeah. It proves young people are more mature.
And more cocky.
I presume you're talking about verse 27 where it mentions homosexuality and then verse 32 where it mentions death. Reread it, it doesn't say all gay people deserve death. It says that all the godless people who are wicked and supress the truth deserve death (verse 18) and homosexuality was one of the characteristics of some of them.
If we wanted to make this a Bible study we could also analyze the word thanatos vs the word hypnos and how they are translated..
Thanatos, death, refers to the soul. You can be alive and kicking but experience thanatos.
The passage in question where some other poster suggested that Romans 1 commands that all homosexuals should be killed doesn't say what the poster thought. It says that wicked people who hide the truth (some of whom are homosexual) deserve spiritual death. It doesn't say to kill people and even if it did it isn't saying to go out and stone them or shoot them it is saying that whenthey are judged by God they won't make the cut into heaven. We're way off topic though.
I see several comments that basically all say, "Why should there be certain things that children should not be able to see?"
Parents need the ability to shelter their children from material they do not feel their child is mature enough to handle. If I wanted to wait until my child was 12 before telling them about the birds and the bees, I'd rather them not find out misleading information from the Internet link in his/her school's library when he/she's 9 years old.
So, which causes the greater harm? Sheltering ("censoring") just enough Internet material to keep most all parenting concerns to a minimum, or leaving the Internet links wide open to keep our children from the evils of any form of information censorship?
That decision must be made at the community level. Remember: These are *children* we're talking about. They are not legal adults and are not *guaranteed* access to non-educational information in public educational institutions. The decision on how much (or if) to censor in the public schools should be made by the local school boards (with the input or vote of the parents themselves). A balance between the education of the child and the proper degree of parenting must be found and respected, and this is always a local, community decision, *not* something that we as a national community should impose.
I'm sure you already knew this and were just trying to pick on the poster, but for those that don't: is considered an HTML tag and Slashdot filters out HTML tags that aren't specifically allowed.
Thus:
#include <stdio.h>
became:
#include
So you'd have no trouble with me walking up to your 8-year-old son, telling him that cocaine was really just as as harmful as powdered sugar, and since it was extracted from plants, its just as good as green vegetables? All you do is snort it up your nose and you won't have to eat green beans tonight! Maybe I could give him a pamphlet with directions to the nearest crack dealer.
Or what about hard pornography? You'd have no problem with me setting a stack of hard gay porn in front of your child's elementary school then?
What about directions on building pipe bombs? I noticed your 9-year-old has a thing for chemistry sets. This would be a cool little experiment and a fun way to get back at friends and teachers!
Do you honestly think that your child will be "too good" to partake in any of this? Do you really think you can prepare your child at age 9 for every possible bit of potentially misleading or desensitizing bit of imagery, sound and text that's out there and available? If you say yes, you desperately need to go take some parenting classes or counseling yourself.
Whether or not YOU think any form of parental censorship is evil or not is NOT THE ISSUE. You are no better than the people you're trying to insult. Where they are trying to "impose" *their* censorship beliefs on others, you are trying to do the same on them.
Parents are the ones that need as much control and flexibility in sheltering their child from material they do not feel their child is mature or responsible enough to handle. At home, this is easy to do, but once their kid is sent off to school, how can a parent be sure their wishes are being honored?
Public school systems thus try to accomodate as many people as they can. At the *community* level, it's decided if material censorship is something they desire in their schools, and if so, at what degree. Obviously, no single policy is appropriate for the entire nation. Certain communities will want very strict controls, while others won't. A balance must be found and honored, but this balance is only appropriate for that community and no other.
To censor or not to censor. You have no right dictating what other communities should and should not do and how they should interpret their local laws. It's up to the parents, the community and the schools to decide how to go about educating and parenting their children, not you.
If you think monitoring by parents is the solution, how do you propose parents monitor their children's browsing habits while they're at school?
The school obviously doesn't, and even if they did, how could you be certain their monitoring habits were consistent with your goals as a parent? You can't. What can you do about it? Disallow your kid access to online resources while at school? Not a great solution.
Children are *not* entitled to 100% unrestricted access to Internet materials while they're at school. The local communities decide if censorship in the classroom is something that's desired, and if so, how much to censor. They need to catch as much material as to appease the majority of the parents while still allowing the child access to as much educational material as possible.
If you feel the policy your local school system is instituting is just plain evil, have your child make up a list of the sites he/she wasn't allowed to visit. Then, when he/she gets home, he/she can use your Internet link at home to browse each of those sites your school deemed questionable. Problem solved.
The truth about what, Santa Claus?
A typical nine-year-old boy does NOT have the maturity or responsibility to handle information relating to the construction of pipe bombs. This has been demonstrated TIME and TIME again.
However, a nine-year-old son of an explosives expert might just defy that and actually be mature/responsible enough to handle that type of information. In this case the parent might be justified in allowing him/her access to that information.
Does this mean that we should allow ALL kids access to it? Of course not! It means we respect the parenting decisions of most of the children in our schools by keeping that knowledge out of the child's hands while they're at school.
Once they get home, you're free to give them a list of URL's on how to construct explosives from household chemicals ALL YOU WANT.
The only way you're going to be able to honor parents' wishes with regards to what their child can and cannot see is by finding a reasonable lowest common denominator and censoring content at that level. You can't please all parents, but you can please most and still maintain an educational atmosphere. This is precisely why the decision must be made at the smallest level possible. Ideally, the parents individually should be able to decide exactly how their child is educated and to what materials he/she is exposed to, but realistically, the smallest unit of responsibility ends up being the local school or school system, which is where the decision needs to stay.
If you abhor censorship, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from getting a censor-free Internet connection at home and letting your child surf unsupervised all you want. Like it or not, you are in the minority in this respect.
Let's say parent A wants to shelter their child from objectionable materials. Parent B objects to all form of censorship and wants their child to have access to everything there is.
If schools censor the content in their classrooms and libraries: Parent A is happy. Parent B can allow their child uncensored Internet access at home. Parent B is somewhat happy.
If schools choose not to censor the content in their classrooms and libraries: Parent A can longer can choose to censor content available to their child. Parent A is unhappy. Parent B is happy.
The practice of censoring objectionable content in schools gives *everyone* the chance to parent their child as they see fit. Denying schools the ability to censor objectionable material denies parents that choice.
The degree of censorship should be determined by the parents and local community.
1. name-calling/personal attack
2. "probable" facts not backed up with any form of fact, url or statistic
I think it would be hillarious to see what your children are like when they turned 18 and have watched nothing but PBS shows like Sesame Street and have never been to school.
I am tempted to say they'd be little name-calling AC's who never back up their arguments with facts, but then I figure you've probably been to school yourself, so they'd probably turn out a whole lot worse.
Regardless of that difference, you are saying that parents and communities must not be allowed to respect a parent's wishes to shelter their child from material that their child is neither mature nor responsible enough to handle. By prohibiting public schools from being allowed to deny a child access to certain materials available online, you are effectively denying their parents the ability to make that decision.
If, instead, you were to allow each community to set its own standards as far as censorship in public schools, parents can then be permitted to make that decision. If a parent wishes their child not to have access to information about building explosives, the school already prevents the child from having access to that material, so the parent is fine. If, on the other hand, a parent is anti-censorship to the point where they seem to *want* their child to have access to this type of destructive information, they can do this in the privacy of their own home.
If you deny a community/school system the ability to shelter its children from objectionable material, you deny the parents the ability to raise their child as they desire. If, instead, you permit a community and school system to make the decision regarding censorship in the libraries and classrooms on a community-by-community basis, everyone wins. Parents can relax knowing their child won't be exposed to materials they don't want them exposed to, and anti-censorship parents like yourself can expose their children to all of the profane and dangerous content they want. They just can't get to it while they're at school (and not under your supervision).
Well, didn't George Washington part the waters of the Potomac?
Slavery is not "unBiblical". Slavery is considered a perfectly acceptable institution in the Bible.
Genocide, infanticide, incest, rape, scatology, and all kinds of depravity, much of it instigated by Yahweh the angry sky god. See
o rgan/vulgar.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_m
for the gross parts. Pretty damn offensive if you ask me, though of course, I don't approve of censorship.
It's Exodus.
o rgan/atrocity.html
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Chosen People kept slaves of their own. When a new territory was conquered those who were not slaughtered were kept as slaves. It was a perfectly acceptable practice at the time. See
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_m
for more biblical fun.
"In libraries, we don't need a policy of what can and cannot be viewed. This is censorship, pure and simple."
Yes, but the U.S. has laws that REQUIRE censorship of some things to minors. The rule of law (however bad that law might be) is what U.S. citizens live under. If you have objections to the law, change the law-- don't attack the people who are trying to cornform.
Now, in all fairness, the libraries might also be over-stepping their responsibilities. But lets be realistic, THERE ARE NO PERFECT FILTERS! I'm sorry that they have chosen one that is appearently so poor but no matter what filter they use, it will have false positives and let some junk through. Sorry, but for now this is a fact of life.
"If you want to prevent your child from viewing anything you find objectionable, I suggest you hold your child's hand and restrict, TV, books, movies, school, as well as anything else found outside your home."
Agreed. Parents need to do more of this.
"I realize that might be much work..."
That's an understatement. To put it more correctly, I would say something like, "I realize that this is impossible in many cases...". Look, parents need to do better, but society also has a resposibility here. Also long as society believes that things like pronography, tabacco, guns, etc... are harmful to children, there need to be controls on them. That's what the filtering software was, a control. (Maybe a bad one, but afniv hasn't pointed that out yet.)
"By instituting a filter, you are instituting censorship. It is absolutely impossible to filter objectionable material without filtering non-objectinable material at the same time."
True, but dont forget that this is censorship that is mandated by U.S. law. Without trying to stop kids from accessing porno they can be held liable when one does.
"Don't forget, there are many non-objectionable site that use XXX. There will eventually be 10 web sites for the Super Bowls with XXX in it."
True.
"Also, how is one supposed to know if a filtered site is really not objectionable to whatever institution so that it can be brought to the IT manager's attention? That would preclude some unfiltered method of looking at web pages which would make filtering web pages useless."
Very good point. I can quickly think of several possible solutions, but none are very realistic or will work very well.
Anyway, my whole point is that you are you are attacking the wrong people. It isn't the people that put these filters into place that are the problems. (I'm sure that having these filters costs them a lot of money and time. Undoubtably, it would be easier for them not to have to filter.) The real problems are in the laws that force "censorship" of porno from kids. The real problems are in the parents who leave their children unsupervised in dangerous places like libraries and schools. The real problems are in the parents who sue libraries where little Suzy saw a XXX picture. The real problems are with society's values as a whole.
I see your point. No law exists to require libraries/schools to filter (censor) material. In fact, Freedom of Speech would seem to preclude any such law. (Again, if your wife knows differently, I too would be interested in knowing that.) There are laws against selling/showing sexually explicit material to minors-- even if they ask for it. (And rightfully so, IMHO)
Now, here comes the grey area...
What about, rather than actually showing or selling sexually explicit material to minors, someone gives them access to that material? For example, the porno magazines are placed along side other magazines (not the comics) in a store. A strip club that never checks ID's? A vending machine at the mall that sells XXX videos? In each of these cases, a smart lawyer (or maybe even a dumb one) could get the store/club/vendor in a lot of trouble. I can't see any difference btween the library's situation and the ones I've described above. The real question isn't whether or not a store/club/vendor/library could get in trouble it is *should* they get in trouble for those things?
That's why the filter was there. Libraries felt (and rightfully so) that they could get in trouble when some litigation-loving-parent or value-oriented-organization sued them if they they didn't take some steps to prevent inappropriate access by minors.
You may go back to the argument that it isn't society's responsibility to filter, it is the parents responsibility. That may be partly correct, but it isn't very realistic. (I have a 1.5 year old son, and it is all I can do to keep him from eating dirt and marbles. I can only image how hard it will be to keep a constant eye on him when he turns 9 or 13.) I personally think society must bear some of the burden of supporting its own standards and values. If enough people feel that sexually explicit material is dangerous enough to pass laws to regulate it. Then enough people should feel comfortable when some filters are put in place help keep those laws. I don't mind being ID'd to buy beer or guns, nor would I mind having to use a special room at the library to get unrestricted internet access (or whatever the solution might be).
Anyway, there is a fine line here between too much and too little. It needs to be watched closely by everyone.
-Derek
It is exactly that sort of mentality that gives us the sort of crap for software Redmond does and the public accepts.
Disgusting.
--
Erskin
geek.
(I'd settle for a disclaimer saying "I'm working on it, really," "You fix it," or "That's a feature, not a bug.")
--
Erskin
geek.
The Bible is very offensive by design--part of the intention is to tell people that they aren't perfect. Besides being just normally offensive, that's murder on kids' self-esteem.
:)
There's a lot of offensive stuff out there which people should probably pay more attention to...
Unfortunately, every domination has a problem with the other. Recall that the Puritans left England because they wouldn't follow the Church of England (and the resulting persecution) but rather practice the Catholic faith (I believe it was Catholic)
The same goes for every other kind religion where there is a split because of a difference in opinion.
sri
I'm sure the Flat Earth Society would agree with you.
As would the Institution for Creation Research.
Surely these people are not basing their ideas on the "scientific" bible?
(www.icr.org)
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
How about where he orders the burning of the first-born child in Exodus 22, (a tie in is in Leviticus 22:27) and then tries to rationalize it in Ezekiel 22:25,26?
A real schizophrenic.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Do the Mormons use the bible? I was under the impression they used the tailor-made american fable written by Joseph Smith?
Shame it doesn't fit so well... poor writing.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Curious how they must be redeemed, and how the burning of the first-born so nicely coincides with the rites of fertility gods in that area. Could it have been a later addition? Remember, the text says LIKEWISE with your cattle. The cattle are burned. Also, you didn't read Ezekial 20:25,26...
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Written in the centuries after Jesus' supposed birth, I'm sure this message would have been a great comfort to Hypatia as she was dragged, skinned alive, and burned by a christian mob - christians who later destroyed the greatest Library in the world that she had been caretaker of.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
I would actually agree with that definition of the bible. Although, the bible is slightly more comprehensible, since it was one of the sources of the book of Mormon. If you are interested in what was used to create the book, and the errors in it, I can post them.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Curious that this post was under the heading of censorship, particularly when you think about the bill forbidding ridicule of a religion that they are trying to pass. Again, if you wish to know the origins of your scriptures, I would be happy to post them.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Ok. I will not post materials.
x t
o rmonism/mormon.html
o rmonism/abraham.html
o rmonism/smith.html
Just links.
I am on too many mailing lists to begin a trivial discussion on another american church. Scientology is bad enough.
Ok, this one is fairly... emphatic. Gotta love the CDC.
http://www.cultdeadcow.com/cDc_files/cDc-0275.t
And let's not forget the wonderful freethinker resources at infidels.org. Errors in the book of Mormon.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/m
Now the Book of Abraham is a growing embarassment to Mormons. Fortunately, infidels.org has a mention too.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/m
Oh, and lest we forget.
The final portion of the archive is failed prophecies of Joseph Smith.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/m
I urge people to read these links, and the rest of the archives, of course. The results can be illuminating. Especially in those sections where debate is engaged in.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
What percentage of the time did the filtering software block legitimate sites? Without having read the report myself, my impression is the Censorware Project is probably just as fanatical as those it's complaining about.
Perhaps if you read the report you'd understand. The report details individual instances where users attempted to access documents like The Declaration of Independance, The Bible, and other documents. This report isn't about potential or theoretical blockings, but about when actual "Access Denied" screens were displayed to students and library patrons.
Is it really impossible to access the Declaration of Independence from any site on the Internet, or was only one specfic site blocked?
It's nice that The Declaration of Independance is a popular document and is mirrored in many places. Unfortunately, other valuable documents that the censorware products may incorrectly block might appear only on one site.
And for what reason?
It might be unprofitable for the censorware companies to block at a finer level than per-hostname or per-domain. Consequentally, entire hosts, subnets, and domains can get blocked because of one document that person or some web crawling robot looking for keywords finds objectionable. A fine example of this is n2h2's bess censorware, which blocked every web site in ml.org.
I remember one part in the BOM where a prophet referred to or likened some people to 'dumb asses'. Somehow it immediately reminded me of the scene in the Beavis and Butthead movie when they were on the bus full of nuns. I also liked the chapter where instead of killing his attackers, Ammon(?)chops their arms off with his sword -- sounds like a Swartzenegger movie. :)
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The topical index in the Bible is great, but all of it can be kinda hard to carry/use if you don't have it in an all-in-one book (still using the boxed set). Which is why I want to get a Palm IIIx and the version being distributed by infobases. I don't know if the 4M is enough or if I have to get an upgrade to 8M.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
This seems so intrusive to me. And it is censorship...working through fear. Fear is no way to rule a child's life. Yes, you as the parent are responsible for that child, but that child is also a person and should be treated as such.
Will you also log every person they send email to as well? Maybe send the parents transcripts of conversations in their apartments? What else will you track about their behavoir? What will you sell to Pepsi for marketing information.
Pat
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
So the school only has to keep track of what URLs the kids are looking at? As soon as you start doing this everyone will want something tracked. What path around campus their kid takes, what kind of food they eat, etc...
Believe me, I've taught in a high school and if you give one parent one thing, every parent will want their own thing... I'm not saying this is bad, I'm just saying that it is not the job of the school to play big-brother-pass-through for parent's.
The idea of logging what URL's kids look at may seem like a rather harmless idea, but just look at the evil ways in which it would be exploited. Just because you are 16 doesn't mean that you shouldn't be allowed to have any privacy.
Pat-- Are you an EFF member yet?
Grades are actually relevant to what the child is doing at school. I don't see how a list of URLs that the child has looked at is relevant. You might as well send a logfile of all the dirty words that were used while not in the presence of an adult. The school that I worked at had an "Acceptable Use" policy that parents had to sign up front before the child was allowed unsupervised access. Children who did not get this signed could still work on assignments if they were in class with the teacher.
This seems like a much better idea than simply sending a daily log file of the childs activity. There still hasn't been any reply to the tracking of email either? Wouldn't this fit right in with the URL tracking plan?
I know most everyone has the best interest of child and parent in mind but you also have to step back and look at what effect these actions would really have on education and how the family interacts.
Pat-- Are you an EFF member yet?
He was kidding.
Parents should not decide things for their children. That only promotes immaturity.
This post is giving me an aneurism. It's rather obvious to me that you've never had children, also that you haven't an IOTA of an idea what limits are. You've spammed the thread with enough nay-saying and uninformed hogwash that I think you should do us a favor and exclude yourself from the thread after this point (And the Genepool, please).
I didn't learn anything from school. That's become obvious over the past six or seven screens of posts.
my favorite example is Deuteronomy 21:18-21 where God says to stone unrepentant children.
:)
(i'm joking here. i realize that this is in extreme cases)
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
...I thing hosts registered under national domains should be required to be physically located within the country. (Can you say *.nu?) If this succeeds, then maybe we can work on *.xxx. Maybe.
It would greatly amuse me to see Niue buy all of the *.nu servers. Then again, they probably have the money to do this by now.
...you'll noticed from my post that I only advocated censorship for children. Still, very intelligent slam and quite funny (if inaccurate).
-Eric
...and you'll see that I mentioned two other examples: hate sites (anti-black, anti-jewish, anti-gay, anti-christian, etc) and recruitment sites for cult-like organizations (like Heaven's Gate).
To those examples I would also add graphic depictions of violence.
-Eric
> However, I will certainly argue with that. Who
> decides these "certain things"? I certainly
> wouldn't be comfortable with your choices for
> what my kids should see, because I have no idea
> what your beliefs are - your religious
> convictions, your morals, even your taste in
> art.
> Can't have you deciding things for my kids.
We agree, I think, parents should decide what their children may or may not see. And the schools should facilitate your role as a parent by not exposing your kids to material (or allowing kids to expose themselves to material) that most parents find objectionable, including hate sites, graphic depictions of violence, and explicit sexual content. Now, if you as a parent decide that it's okay for little Billy to browse around at www.playboy.com or www.whitepower.org on your home machine, that's your business.
-Eric
And I realize my opinion is in the minority here. But in my defense, I should mention that my URL of "turbont" has nothing to do with Windows NT, my ISP is called "Turbo Net", and the domain name turbonet.net must already have beed taken. If it were up to me, I would be at "turbolinux.net" or somesuch.
-Eric
"re-education camps"??? How can children be re-educated if they haven't been educated in the first place? Let me be perfectly clear on this, I support the government regulations requiring children to be taught how to read and write and do basic math, and if that makes me a nazi, so be it.
I also support school vouchers to give parents more choice about where to send their kids, but that's another topic...
-Eric
Teachers are not Nazi Prison Guards. If you think they are, I suggest you look at some photographs from the Holocaust and see exactly what Nazi Prison Guards did.
-Eric
R-rated action movies and many TV shows don't teach children (and others) that violence is bad. It teaches them that it is not only a valid way to deal with problems but also "cool". The so-called heroes of these shows go around and blow away dozens of "bad guys" outside of the law, often killing them in creative and exciting ways. Also, exposing children to graphic violence from a young age desensitizes them to it. Look how the violent crime rates have increased since the 50's and 60's, in my mind increased availibility of violent TV & movie content to children has had no small impact in this.
-Eric
> Kids should be allowed to look at porn and shouldn't go to school.
Please, tell me that's sarcasm. If that isn't sarcasm, then I'm very afraid for the future...
-Eric
> As for graphic violence, I think it could do
> TV-watching kids a world of good if they
> occasionally got a dose of just how horrifying
> real murders, gun fights, and car wrecks can be.
Violence as depicted on TV and in movies is plenty graphic, but not realistic. The "heroes" of the worst of these pieces go around, killing indescriminately all of the "bad guys" in creative and "cool" ways. It teaches children that violence and murder are solutions to problems and, surprise surprise, violent crime rates have skyrocketed since this sort of material became accessable to children. Graphic violence and sexual material is not appropriate for all ages, it can cause psychological harm. Don't believe me, ask a psychologist, a responsible one will agree with me.
As for countering bad speech with good speech, I'm all for that, but that doesn't solve every problem. Many children have not yet developed intellectually to the point that they can separate good arguments from bad.
-Eric
> What's so bad about porn that kids shouldn't see it?
Sexually explicit material is psychologically harmful to young children. Pornography (which is a subset of sexually explicit material) objectifies people (usually women) and leads people to think of them only as objects. Look how the rape crime rates have risen since the 1950's. I'm not advocating censorship for adults, but it is completely reasonable to prevent children from seeing this material. In the long run, such a policy would result in fewer rape victims and cause more men to think of women as human beings rather than as slabs of meat.
> And why should kids go to school?
To learn how to read, write, and do simple math. Hopefully, to learn a bit more than that. To be a useful member of society in the 20th century, you need to have at least these basic skills.
> PS You are an idiot
In the Socratic sense, you are correct (let me know if you need for me to explain who Socrates was for you).
-Eric
> You are an idiot.
(shrug), I don't see how calling me names supports your case.
> Schools are for brainwashing, not for learning.
Give me a specific example of how schools brainwash children. And also explain, please, how graduates from the same public schools often have radically different political philosophies, religions, and beliefs. If they really were being brainwashed, they'd all agree.
-Eric
Everything you said is (IMHO) completely correct. The reason that schools should limit access to objectional material is so parents are free to decide to disallow access. I am not advocating the government to compel parents to limit access to this or that for their children. I am sorry if I did not make this clear.
-Eric
Basically it says, "Don't believe me. Ask anyone who agrees with me." Hmm.. nice. By your reasoning I could say that censorship is good, but don't believe me. Ask anyone. If they are sane and reasonably intelligent, they will agree with me. There. I totally countered your arguments.
Seriously though, I'm not actually disagreeing with everything you said, I just think you didn't make a very good argument there at the end.
I did not state that as well as I might have. Let me restate that argument, and then you can pick it apart again (if you want). It is my understanding that most child psychologists believe that explicitly violent and sexual material is harmful to young children. Those that disagree with this (as I understand things) are a small minority, and the fringe of current thought. I believe that this is the responsible view of things.
Probably sometime around 5th or 6th grade would be best. Anytime before that, they should either be supervised by a parent or closely supervised by a teacher. Even at the 5th or 6th grade levels, they should probably have teacher supervision if they are accessing the net from school. The rest is up to the parents.
I think everything should be up to parents until the child reaches adulthood (age eighteen), and the schools should not undermine this by allowing "unfettered access" to content that would be considered objectionable to many or most parents.
-Eric
Parents should not decide things for their children. That only promotes immaturity.
So if a six-year-old wants to stay home, watch cartoons, and eat candy all day instead of going to school, his parents should let him? Part of being a good parent is providing guidance and, yes, LIMITS.
-Eric
It's a perfectly logical reply to someone who wants to make illogical decisions for other peoples' children.
On the contrary, I wish to allow parents the opportunity to make decisions for their own children. When a school gives children unfettered access to the Internet, it robs parents of the right to decide which content their children should and should not be exposed to. I DO NOT wish to decide for the parents, or have the government decide, I wish to trust parents to make the correct decisions for their own children.
If you have that power, so do I, and by my power, I revoke your right to life, and order you dead by tomorrow by your own hand. Do you still feel so empowered?
Hmm, a death threat, an interesting method of debate... I guess that's easier to master than logic or facts.
-Eric
And cartoons are more educational than school
They are? Then give me one example of a cartoon that teaches children how to read an write.
-Eric
A 'right' they don't have. It is not the government's decision or the parents', it is the INDIVIDUAL'S
A young child is not a mature individual and should not have the right to decide everything for himself or herself. Children need to be parented and protected, they do not know enough to care for themselves. If you think otherwise, then you are obviously very ignorant of children and their abilities.
-Eric
"Sesame Street", you bloated sack of ignorance. A great deal of it is animated, and it's probably taught more children to read than the schools have.
"bloated sack of ignorance"? I bet you didn't learn THAT from Sesame Street. Anyway, Im glad you've found a solution to our education problems. Forget that school stuff, just plop kids in front of the TV for six hours a day, they'll learn a whole lot that way. Especially from the Jerry Springer show.
-Eric
I cannot and will not accept -- ever -- the notion that anything, be it sexual, militant, bigoted, or just plain Insensitive can be said to be Absolutely Inappropriate for someone on the basis of age.
That is your right. But other people have a right to make their own decisions for their own children; or do you believe it you have the right to tell other people how to raise their children?
-Eric
> Look how the rape crime rates have risen since the 1950's.
Correlation is not causation.
True enough, the old "ice cream causes skin cancer" argument demonstrates that. But if I cut my hand with a knife and my hand starts to bleed, it's fairly obvious what the causation was. And it's damned suspicious if not out-and-out undeniable what the causation is after 30 years of increasingly sexual explicit entertainment is mirrored by an dramatic increase in rapes. I could say (and have said) the same thing about graphic depictions of violence and violent crime rates. What people see and hear affect their behavior, so statistically, a subset of the population will engage in this sort of behavior who would otherwise not have. It only makes sense. If TV didn't affect behavior, noone would advertise.
-Eric
> do you believe it you have the right to tell other people how to raise their children?
That's kinda the crux of the issue: In an earlier post you said there were certain types of material that should never be provided to children. Doesn't that mean that you're telling "... other people how to reise their children"?
No, because I would leave it up to parents to decide how to raise their children at home. You would have the schools give the children access to whatever material the children want, robbing the parents of a choice.
Now, _I_ believe that children should not be given access to certain material, but I would NOT force parents to do what I would do. Each parent should be able to choose what material is appropriate for his or her child.
Where you have it wrong is that you seem to think this is a community issue. It isn't -- It's a family issue. There are no such things as "community standards," because communities are too diverse. Pretending community standards exist for no reason other than to set censorship guidelines is one of those things that makes foreigners think the US attitude towards their first amendment is a complete farce.
Foreigners can think what they like. Here is the text of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Now, please tell me how this can be interpretted to provide the right for children to look at pornography, even if their parents don't want them to. The first amendment guarantees freedom of religion, speech, assembly, and press, not the right to access any and all information. Additionally, the Bill of Rights provides rights for adults, not children. If it were otherwise, then children would have the right to bear arms under the second amendment.
-Eric
When you look at the First Amendment, you should be asking, "Does this deny rights to children or limit them to adults?" If the answer is "no" (and it most assuredly is in this case) then you can only conclude that the law is age-neutral.
Is the second amendment "age neutral" as well? Do six year olds have the right to purchase and use firearms?
Sorry, but this is complete twaddle. Courts have routinely held that children have a right to freedom of speech on every issue from school uniforms through to the CDA. If you think the First Amendment doesn't apply to children then I think you need to seriously reevaluate your stance on this issue with the knowledge that you are utterly incorrect in some of the basic assumptions that have contributed to your beliefs. To use common vernacular, your behaviour on this topic is un-American.
With all due respect, sir, I don't think there is anything "Un-American" about recognizing a difference between children and adults. There are age limits on driving vehicles and drinking alcoholic beverages, there is an age-limit on voting, and there are age restrictions for joining the military. Those restrictions are in place to protect children, or to keep them from participating in society in ways for which they are not yet prepared, and there is nothing "Un-American" about that. Similarly, parents should be able to protect children by limiting access to harmful material.
Frankly, I think your equating children with adults is a bit ridiculous when you take it to its logical conclusion. Should parents not have the right to ground their children or send them to their rooms because it constitutes unfair imprisonment without a trial before their peers? Should a child who gets in trouble be able to ascert a right to an attorney? Give me a break!
-Eric
On one hand you're talking about things like licenses to drive or serve in the military, which are based on a child's physical ability to do whatever tasks are in question (drive, fight, whatever).
On the other hand, you're talking about age limitations which have been chosen with absolute arbitrariness (the right to vote, buy a gun, drink, get grounded, etc).
The first category I'd argue are justified. The second category are not. The courts seem to agree with this in many instances (which is why, for instance, parents legally cannot ground their children; children can divorce their parents if they understand the issues and have good enough reasons, and why so-called minors have been able to join the military, legitimately or not).
That's hilarious, "parents legally cannot ground their children"? What a laugh, I'd like to see the Supreme Court decision that said that.
So you would honestly remove any and all authority from a parent to discipline or limit his/her children. That's amazing, that really is, I knew many
So does a parent have to ask permission before changing his/her baby's diapers? And does the baby have the right to refuse?
Should a child who gets in trouble be able to ascert a right to an attorney?
A child in trouble already has an absolute, incontrovertibe constitutional right to an attorney. Again, if you do not understand this you are not qualified to influence the course of this discussion.
I didn't know any "qualifications" were necessary to voice my opinion.
You seem to think that the law doesn't treat someone as a human being if they're too young -- Roughly analogous to the thinking a hundred years ago, where the law failed to treat certain people as human beings on the basis of their skin color, even though the constitution said nothing about blacks (or earlier this century when Germany said certain people were less than human due to their religion). You are incorrect. It is people like you that perpetuate the underclass I speak of above, just like people in the deep south perpetuated the idea that blacks were too stupid to understand the concept of "rights" for decades after the rest of the country had (sort of) come to the complete opposite conclusion. It's a very dangerous attitude, adopted despite thousands of years of history which shows that if a group considers its treatment at the hands of the more privileged to be unjust they just reach out and grab the rights they need whether the privileged ones let them or not.
Now you're equating PARENTING with SLAVERY, if you weren't serious, this would be hilarious. Blacks during American and European slavery were treated differently based on external appearance. That is WRONG. Children are treated differently because they are intellectually and emotionally immature, and NOT, as you would have us believe, because they are short.
Blacks are -NOT- too stupid to understand rights, but try discussing rights with a two year old. "Stupid" is not the right word, but it takes a child years and years before he/she is competent to look after him/herself. Parents are necessary to protect children and steer them away from bad choices.
And I don't know why you're railing against the U.S. in particular. There's not a country on the face of the Earth that doesn't treat children and adults differently under law. It would be foolish not to. You want to do away with all parental authority, that's insane, you must not be a parent.
-Eric
"Your Honor, I had to rape that woman. I saw a picture of a naked woman on line when I was a kid, so I had no choice!"
"Agreed. This court finds that the defendant is not responsible for his own actions, and is a rapist from forces beyond his control rather than from a deliberate, conscious choice to hurt other people. All charges are dismissed and the defendant is ordered released at once."
Straw man argument again, I never suggested direct mind control. But child's environment affects how he will grow up, and TV and movies are part of that environment. If you expose and desensitive children to graphic violence and sexual content, that will influence their development. That will move the population toward violence and mistreatment of women, so statistically, some men will become rapists who will not otherwise have done so. For the same reason, children of alcoholics have a higher rate of alcoholism.
Rapists/muderers/etc are still responsible for their actions, but it is fairly obvious (to me, here on Earth, I don't know where you are) that a child's environment affects how he will grow up, and the wrong environment can have disasterous consequences.
If TV didn't affect behavior, noone would advertise.
A rational person would say, "If people didn't think TV affected behaviour, no one would advertise."
Well, I've seen a study that shows that people buy name brand (i.e. widely advertised) products even if the price is higher and the quality of the competition is just as good. There is a statistically proven foundation for the effectiveness of advertisement. If there wasn't, hardly anyone would drink Budwieser.
-Eric
So you would honestly remove any and all authority from a parent to discipline or
limit his/her children. That's amazing, that really is, I knew many
extremists but this really is something.
I'm sorry, but this is pure hyperbole. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that I don't advocate that at all.
I made this statement after you said that a parent had "no legal right" to ground his/her children. If you want to modify your earlier statement, I will modify mine.
A Question and a Comment
by newt on Wednesday March 24, @08:31AM EST
(User Info) http://www.freebsd.org/~newton/cv.html
So you would honestly remove any and all authority from a parent to discipline or limit his/her children. That's amazing, that really is, I knew many
I'm sorry, but this is pure hyperbole. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that I don't advocate that at all.
Roughly analogous to the thinking a hundred years ago, where the law failed to treat certain people as human beings on the basis of their skin color, even though the constitution said nothing about blacks
Now you're equating PARENTING with SLAVERY, if you weren't serious, this would be hilarious. Blacks during American and European slavery were treated differently based on external appearance. That is WRONG. Children are treated differently because they are intellectually and emotionally immature, and NOT, as you would have us believe, because they are short.
I'm not talking about slavery, I'm talking about the past 20 - 100 years of American history where slavery has been and gone but blacks have still been treated badly.
There was serious academic research done in the 1920's and 1930's to show that african americans were, in an evolutionary sense, closer to apes than "good god-fearin' whitefolk." The results of that utterly bizarre research was, and sometimes still is, used to justify the most henious restrictions on the lives of black people even though slavery was abolished over a century ago.
Now back to the subject at hand and the parallels with the case presented above: From their early teens, so-called "children" are often a lot more mature than you seem to think they are. They can reason, use logic, make their own moral and ethical conclusions, learn from their mistakes and take responsibility for thier actions. Yet you refuse to believe this; you treat them as non-humans with non-human-rights, forcing them to use censorware against tieir will because you've made an arbitrary judgement about their maturity based on nothing more substantial than their age. You haven't even met the people you'd censor.
UEN in Utah serves the entire public school system and some public libraries; The restrictions it has in place affect "children" up to age 18 (!!! doesn't that set alarm bells running?) and adult teachers and library users (!!! doesn't that set even more alarm bells ringing?). We're not talking about 1 year olds crying because a nappy is being changed against their will, or petulant 8 year olds complaining about being grounded, we're talking about people who are fully functional adults by every measurable metric except the one defined by law, which treats them as children, regardless of their maturity, until age 18.
That is the injustice here. That is the parallel between the denial of basic human rights to these people and the denial of basic human rights to african americans. "Children" remain the only group of people in American society who are routinely denied basic rights for no reason other than prejudice, bad law and appearance.
You made no distinction for age before, it is only now that we are discussing teens specifically.
We can argue about what the age of majority should be (15 instead of 18?), but an age of majority protects those not yet ready to look after themselves. It is true that this is just number, a teenager doesn't magically become mature on his/her eighteenth birthday, but age is the only non-arbitrary way to handle this.
This is not discrimination on appearance, but discernment based on age and maturity. I will tell you, even though I am 23 I look like I am in my teens, yet I can vote and (if I wanted to) buy beer and such. The law doesn't discriminate against me based on my appearance.
I guess we could phase in rights more gradually, giving children->teens increasing amounts of control as they age. Do you have a specific suggestion? You're British, right (judging from your use of the word "nappy" and condescending attitude towards anything American)? How do they handle it in your enlightened monarchy?
I have no trouble believing that a 15 year old is capable of making decisions about the kind of content they want to see on the web. The Utah public school system, however, doesn't make any distinction whatsoever between that 15 year old and a five year old starting school for the first time.
If you want to distort this into "shoving porn into the faces of children," then go ahead and do it in the knowledge that you are being knowingly dishonest. That is not what this case is about, and it never has been. This case is about the ability of Utah parents to make their own decisions about the upbringing their children get instead of trusting the moral guidance of their treasured offspring to a piece of software.
Not shoving porn into faces of children (you had this in quotes, even though I never said it) but ignoring parental authority. A fifteen year old should be given more leeway than an eight year old, but it is for the parents to decide whether said fifteen year old should be browsing www.playboy.com or www.whitepower.org. Trust the parents, not the schools, and the schools should facilitate this by restricting access to material that most parents would object to. If parents want to provide access to material above and beyond this for their children, that is their business.
Let me also add that I am not an advocate for the software specifically, merely supervision.
Again, we can argue about what, exactly, the age of majority should be, but currently it is eighteen.
-Eric
So you would honestly remove any and all authority from a parent to discipline or
limit his/her children. That's amazing, that really is, I knew many
extremists but this really is something.
I'm sorry, but this is pure hyperbole. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that I don't advocate that at all.
I made this statement after you said that a parent had "no legal right" to ground his/her children. If you want to modify your earlier statement, I will modify mine.
UEN in Utah serves the entire public school system and some public libraries; The restrictions it has in place affect "children" up to age 18 (!!! doesn't that set alarm bells running?) and adult teachers and library users (!!! doesn't that set even more alarm bells ringing?). We're not talking about 1 year olds crying because a nappy is being changed against their will, or petulant 8 year olds complaining about being grounded, we're talking about people who are fully functional adults by every measurable metric except the one defined by law, which treats them as children, regardless of their maturity, until age 18.
That is the injustice here. That is the parallel between the denial of basic human rights to these people and the denial of basic human rights to african americans. "Children" remain the only group of people in American society who are routinely denied basic rights for no reason other than prejudice, bad law and appearance.
You made no distinction for age before, it is only now that we are discussing teens specifically.
We can argue about what the age of majority should be (15 instead of 18?), but an age of majority protects those not yet ready to look after themselves. It is true that this is just number, a teenager doesn't magically become mature on his/her eighteenth birthday, but age is the only non-arbitrary way to handle this.
This is not discrimination on appearance, but discernment based on age and maturity. I will tell you, even though I am 23 I look like I am in my teens, yet I can vote and (if I wanted to) buy beer and such. The law doesn't discriminate against me based on my appearance.
I guess we could phase in rights more gradually, giving children->teens increasing amounts of control as they age. Do you have a specific suggestion? You're British, right (judging from your use of the word "nappy" and condescending attitude towards anything American)? How do they handle it in your enlightened monarchy?
I have no trouble believing that a 15 year old is capable of making decisions about the kind of content they want to see on the web. The Utah public school system, however, doesn't make any distinction whatsoever between that 15 year old and a five year old starting school for the first time.
If you want to distort this into "shoving porn into the faces of children," then go ahead and do it in the knowledge that you are being knowingly dishonest. That is not what this case is about, and it never has been. This case is about the ability of Utah parents to make their own decisions about the upbringing their children get instead of trusting the moral guidance of their treasured offspring to a piece of software.
Not shoving porn into faces of children (you had this in quotes, even though I never said it) but ignoring parental authority. A fifteen year old should be given more leeway than an eight year old, but it is for the parents to decide whether said fifteen year old should be browsing www.playboy.com or www.whitepower.org. Trust the parents, not the schools, and the schools should facilitate this by restricting access to material that most parents would object to. If parents want to provide access to material above and beyond this for their children, that is their business.
Let me also add that I am not an advocate for the software specifically, merely supervision.
Again, we can argue about what, exactly, the age of majority should be, but currently it is eighteen.
-Eric
To those examples I would also add graphic depictions of violence.
...which would include a lot of medieval art, and most cave paintings.
It simply is not feasible to restrict access in any other way than to have a trusted person, such as a parent or a teacher, evaluate every single item.
Exactly what I would advocate, we agree entirely.
-Eric
Pick any other group and substitute their name in the place of "white males", the way I substituted for "children" -- and maybe you'll see how discriminatory and offensive your statement is. Every person -- child or adult -- is an individual. Censorship treats all those individuals the same, regardless of their different capabilites.
Not true, lack of censorship for children treats everyone the same despite their different capabilities. A white male and a black female of the same age have, statistically speaking, the same capabilities. A four-year-old and a thirty-four-year-old have very different capabilities.
-Eric
ahem... dear Burnsbert.
Could you please explain to me why the incidence of rape in Scandinavian countries is among the lowest in the world? Consider the fact that "hardcore" pornography is available to anyone over the age of 13.
Please don't insult our intelligence with your right-wing propaganda. Some of us have actually had a glimpse of life outside Smalltown U.S.A.
"right-wing propaganda", that's funny. I'm against the death penalty, support strong gun control laws, a progressive tax system, and am worried that welfare has been cut back too much. Newt Gingrich hates my guts, buddy.
But to answer your question, I am not familiar with Scandinavia, its laws, or its culture so cannot knowledgably comment on Sweden, Finland, or even, as much as I'd like to, Norway.
But when I say explicit material (graphic violence as well as pornography) is damaging to children, I am more concerned about pre-teens than those "over thirteen" (although, I'd be a bit skittish about providing a thirteen year old son of mine with hard core porn, to be honest). But, unlike you, I think it should be up to the parents to decide what material a child has access to until he/she reaches the age of majority. I don't think you or the schools are better equiped to know what a particular child is ready for better than that child's own parents.
Make of that what you will (and feel free to rail against America and all it stands for, it seems to be an international past-time for condescending, snobbish Europeans).
-Eric
...in certain circumstances. Thirteen-year-olds should not be allowed to use school resources to look at porn. We can argue about how to best restrict access (adult supervision is probably the best way), but what is inarguable is that children should simply not be allowed to view certain things (porn, nazi-propaganda, heaven's gate style religious fanatics recruitment page).
Adults using libraries is another issue. Personally, I would have the monitors be facing in such a way so that a number of people would be able to see what someone was looking at, so hopefully the shame factor would prevent library resources being used for less-than erudite purposes. Also, library resources are limited, and some people are trying to research papers and such, so there is every reason to discourage and even disallow web browsing for entertainment (this would include less objectionable content, too, not just porn and hate sites).
-Eric
> And why should kids go to school?
"To learn how to read, write, and do simple math. Hopefully, to learn a bit more than that. To be a useful member of society in the 20th century, you
need to have at least these basic skills."
Not American society. If your "at least" is reading, writing, and simple math, then you're in a world of hurt. "Readin' ritin' and cipherin'"
is a skillset adequate for a steam-powered thresher-driver of the late nineteenth century.
That's called the "straw man" argument, when you purposely misunderstand a person's view in order to rail against them. You knew that I made no such claim, inane sophistry notwithstanding.
You (or another AC) asked me why children should go to school. I listed the most basic skills imaginable that children typically learn from school (Reading, Writing, Arithmatic). I never suggested that this was the limit of what children should learn. But no one without these skills can become a useful member of society.
Now, my dear demagogue, how do you suggest children gain these skills if they don't attend school? Not enough parents stay home to make home schooling en masse a viable alternative. Do you suggest a means of education, or are you simply taking potshots for the fun of it?
-Eric
I found out long ago that my site was blocked by censorware... probably because it contains information on paganism and witchcraft and such... *sigh*
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
our university news server doesn't have a full feed either, but when you ask the postmaster for a certain newsgroup you'd like to read chances are it'll be added without any hassle.
small ISPs could make a system that if five or more clients want to read a certain newsgroup they'll patch it through, and removing alt.binaries.* articles after a day also saves a lot of space.
and for those who want other newsgroups there's always deja news.
the big problem is that the Internet is international. if certain content is illegal in the US then the sites containing that material will just move to somewhere outside the US. if, to counter that, it becomes illegal to download such content, how are you planning to enforce that? by evesdropping on somebody's internet communication, by infringing on the client's privacy?
legislation is still at least half a century behind. it has a lot of catching up to do, and until it does that there can't possibly be any effective laws on the internet.
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Censorship in anyway is bad.. parents just leave their kids on the computer to do whatever.. and when they run across the 1883123 legal highs at yer local drugstore and od.. they blame the internet.. lame lame alme
Victoria Palmer - I brake for unix.boys, Windows just breaks. - http://www.escape.com/~juliet
The history you were taught in school has been much edited to conform to the beliefs of the secular humanists who write most textbooks in use. The 27(IIRC) violations of human rights mentioned in the Dec. of Independence were taken straight out of the bible. 52 of the 54 founding fathers who wrote the Constitution were active members of their churches. Abolishonists (oops, bad spelling) in the 1800's who did so much to end slavery were mainly motivated by their belief that slavery was unbiblical. There are many other things like this...
The bible was an important part of America until liberal judges in the early 20th century decided to add a few things (like separation of church and state, for instance.)
You are only looking at half of the picture, and the more depressing half, too. The entire point of the New Testament is that God sends part of himself to earth to pay the price for ANYONE who accepts it. And the price he paid was a very very painful way to die. Read the book of Romans.
...the entire bible is a story of redemption, not comdemnation. And you say that I am neither decent nor non-brainwashed? Have you even read the Old Testament? Please tell me, Chapter and Verse, the part that leads "any decent non-brainwashed person to conclude that the Christian God is evil"?
And Christ's sacrifice isn't meant to impress you, its meant to save you.
I believe with every inch of my heart that my "religion is right" as you so nicely put it. And it doesn't make me want to harm you in any way.
Just because something is done in the name of God doesn't mean that it is Gods will. There is a big difference.
I think that in this case the definition of religion is really debatable. I would tend to believe that anything that involves beliefs or faith of some kind could be called religion (including stuff like atheism, deism, etc.) In other words, I think what the Constitution is saying is that we have the freedom to believe whatever we want to believe, and to have faith in whatever we want to have faith in.
Now as for who is right . . . ;)
Sadly, this IS what passes for history these days...oh well...its all in the hands of the textbook writers...
Well now we are getting into the question of whether there is universal truth or not...kind of a big bucket of worms, huh?
Well, here it goes. If heaven is only something that I have invented in my mind, then how can I be as right as everyone else? Or does my believing it create it? My mind must be pretty powerful...
The old testament is about the Law (as given in the 10 comandments), while the new testament is about the grace we recieve through Christ's sacrifice. The things in the old test. that you are talking about are the result of that law. God means Law just as much as it means Love.
The real interesting thing IMHO is that Christ's sacrifice was God's way of getting around his own laws...his love is strong enough that he didn't want to have to condem everyone to eternel separation from him (which is what hell really is IMO. Eternel loneliness...ugh).
I do know. (hahaha) I really do. Of course to defend that I have to answer your challenge. Ok, but you might not like it...
I would have to say that the reason for all of the other religions is the result of Satan being lose in the world. He knows he will lose in the end, but for the present he is trying to hurt God as much as possible by taking as much of God's beloved creation with him.
Pretty controversial, huh? Also, I believe that God's plan is to get as many people to heaven as possible. Since he is omniscent (all-knowing) he knows the best way to go about doing this. It explains predistination IMHO.
(putting on asbestos suit . . .)
Hi Analog. You sound really bitter about something. You want to talk about it? ;)
They were, but God did look sfter the gentiles too. For instance, in the new testament, Paul (who actually wrote most of the new test.) was specifically sent to non-jews.
The point is, this was God himself who did it to rectify sin. He didn't have to. He could of just let us all rot in hell, to put it plainly. But he gave a way out to anyone who wants it. And he did it out of love for everyone. And do you think taking the sins of the world upon himself was comfortable for this sinless being?
God is a God of Law just as much a God of Love. The punishment you mention is not a result of not worshiping him. It is a result of Adam's sin. Christ's sacrifice is like a get-out-of-jail-for-almost-free card. A lot for a little IMHO.
And being resurected is a fundamental part of what breaks death's eternal hold on us. It is part of the equation. Had he simply died and stayed dead, the equation wouldn't be complete and we would all go to hell still. From what I have always believed, Hell is simply eternal separation from God. Eternel loneliness, knowing that there IS a God and that you can never be with him...It might not sound bad at first, but after a few thousand years....
Sin is fundamentally counter to Gods nature. For example, by the nature of humans, we need certain conditions to stay alive. We can't just go live in space or on venus or in the ocean. Yes, I know about NASA, the space shuttle, submarines, etc. It all involves making little areas of Earth-like conditions, i.e. the closed environment of the shuttle. Maybe i'm rambling . . . :)
Its not that he doesn't want people in heaven (that is were Christ comes in), its that he can't let sinful people into his presence. There simply isn't a way for it to happen except by making them sinless. Thus, Christ's sacrifice. And since we were created with free choice, God has no way of simply declaring us sinless. He simply has the hope that as many people as possible will choose Jesus.
And by the way, hell is the state of being outside God's presence. It isn't his problem. What it is actually like, I really don't know but I am entitled to my opinion.
Yeah, thats why the book of Exedus is about him freeing his people from slavery.
I won't argue with you about that!
If its my "make believe God", then who are you to say that he wants people to suffer or not?
Thanks for the support. guys. For a while I was thinking that I was in a pretty lonely catagory all by myself here on slashdot.
Mabye he was bored . . .
Did a Christian kill your dad or something? Because you sound very bitter. Would you like to talk about it?
By the way, your statement about Christians who don't believe in medicine has a problem. That is a Christian Science teaching, not a Christian one. Dispite the name, It isn't the same religion. Christian Science is just a cult that capitallizes on the word Christian.
>If you want to prevent your child from viewing
>anything you find objectionable, I suggest you
>hold your child's hand and restrict, TV,books,
>movies, school, as well as anything else found
>outside your home.
If I had children I would be an active parent to them. That does not mean that I would let them raise themselves, or expect society to do it for me. And I'd spend the $20/month to give them basic Internet access. My government does not owe this to me. But you're missing the point.
By your account libraries are required to provide access to all things all of the time. This is not how libraries are run. Try asking for Club magazine (or some other sex publication) from the periodicals section of the public library next time you are there. See if they have it available for you. If not, scream censorship.
The whole point I was originally making was that blaming the software for the situation is downright silly! The software is a tool used to implement the policy. Everyone here that is screaming about censorship should be addressing the policy. If the software is blocking sites that the library did not want blocked, then that can be easily addressed (edit the smartfilter.site file or wait for the updated filter binary).
Blaming the software for the policy is like blaming the bullet for the shooting.
I am using Smartfilter for a 30-day eval period. (Squid version.) Like other filter vendors they do not publish the list of filtered sites. But there are also other configuration files that allow you to exempt sites and workstations. In short, there's flexibility.
With filtering in place, ACLU types bitch & moan about suppressed free speech. Without it, conservative types bitch & moan about subsidizing perverts.
Smartfilter was intentionally purchased to filter "objectionable" sites. It enforces a policy. If a user unsuccessfully attempts to access a "non-objectionable" site then the user should notify the IT person in charge. That site can then be exempted.
Smartfilter is not perfect. It is, however, flexible.
That's kinda the crux of the issue: In an earlier post you said there were certain types of material that should never be provided to children. Doesn't that mean that you're telling "... other people how to reise their children"?
Where you have it wrong is that you seem to think this is a community issue. It isn't -- It's a family issue. There are no such things as "community standards," because communities are too diverse. Pretending community standards exist for no reason other than to set censorship guidelines is one of those things that makes foreigners think the US attitude towards their first amendment is a complete farce.
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I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
See, this is exactly the point I was making about foreigners thinking it's bizarre that Americans don't even understand their own declaration of independence and constitution even though it's apparently so important to them.
If you live in a free country, when you look at your laws you should be asking, "What doesn't this prohibit?" instead of, "What does this permit?" One of the hallmarks of a free country is that everything is legal unless it's explicitly declared to be illegal.
When you look at the First Amendment, you should be asking, "Does this deny rights to children or limit them to adults?" If the answer is "no" (and it most assuredly is in this case) then you can only conclude that the law is age-neutral.
Now you tell me: What is so deficient about teenagers that it should be considered rational to deny them basic human rights, such as the unfettered access to information you expect and take for granted for yourself? Doesn't that strike you as a bit unjust, similar to the injustice inherent in denying someone rights due to their skin color or religion? Why does the United States permit the existance of a legal underclass with essentially no rights whatsoever?
And don't give me any crap about "protecting the innocence of children," because that kind of thing is predicated on the very wrong-headed notion that children have innocence to begin with. If a child is old enough to grasp the concept of free speech and understand that it's unjust that censorware inhibits their ability to use the Internet, they're old enough to have the right to get rid of the censorware. The fact that that right is often denied to them by the same people who claim the very same right for themselves says very nasty things about American society. Basically, it makes you look like a load of hypocrites.
The United States Supreme Court disagrees with you on this point. You have the right to access and/or publish any information you can find, up to and including classified documents (as the New York Times so dramatically demonstrated in the Pentagon Papers case). That's a direct consequence of the first amendment; If you don't understand that then you aren't really qualified to contribute to this discussion.
Sorry, but this is complete twaddle. Courts have routinely held that children have a right to freedom of speech on every issue from school uniforms through to the CDA. If you think the First Amendment doesn't apply to children then I think you need to seriously reevaluate your stance on this issue with the knowledge that you are utterly incorrect in some of the basic assumptions that have contributed to your beliefs. To use common vernacular, your behaviour on this topic is un-American.
They do.
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I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
On one hand you're talking about things like licenses to drive or serve in the military, which are based on a child's physical ability to do whatever tasks are in question (drive, fight, whatever).
On the other hand, you're talking about age limitations which have been chosen with absolute arbitrariness (the right to vote, buy a gun, drink, get grounded, etc).
The first category I'd argue are justified. The second category are not. The courts seem to agree with this in many instances (which is why, for instance, parents legally cannot ground their children; children can divorce their parents if they understand the issues and have good enough reasons, and why so-called minors have been able to join the military, legitimately or not).
Is there any magical age at which a child gains sufficient political maturity to be able to vote? Why is a person of 20 years and 364 days considered by the state to be unable to handle liquor, but the same person can buy it with impunity exactly one day later?
It gets even more bizarre when you consider that the very same people who clamour for censorship on the grounds of protecting childrens' innocence are often advocating putting children through adult courts and the adult prison system for certain crimes.
If a child understands the issues, they are old enough to make their own decisions based on those issues. The only person in the world qualified to work out if a child understands the issues is the child themselves. If a child feels oppressed due to state censorship efforts then the state should have no right to impose that censorship.
Why is this so hard to understand? How come WebSense and all the other bogus snake-oil censorware programs can be justified for 17.9999 year olds but not 18-year-olds? Why does the US, a supposedly free country, permit the existance of a "freedom underclass" based on something as arbitrary as age?
A child in trouble already has an absolute, incontrovertibe constitutional right to an attorney. Again, if you do not understand this you are not qualified to influence the course of this discussion.
You seem to think that the law doesn't treat someone as a human being if they're too young -- Roughly analogous to the thinking a hundred years ago, where the law failed to treat certain people as human beings on the basis of their skin color, even though the constitution said nothing about blacks (or earlier this century when Germany said certain people were less than human due to their religion). You are incorrect. It is people like you that perpetuate the underclass I speak of above, just like people in the deep south perpetuated the idea that blacks were too stupid to understand the concept of "rights" for decades after the rest of the country had (sort of) come to the complete opposite conclusion. It's a very dangerous attitude, adopted despite thousands of years of history which shows that if a group considers its treatment at the hands of the more privileged to be unjust they just reach out and grab the rights they need whether the privileged ones let them or not.
And that, my friend, is the power that the Internet gives to those children who are mature enough to understand that they're being treated unjustly by being forced to use censorware.
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I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
I'm sorry, but this is pure hyperbole. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that I don't advocate that at all.
I'm not talking about slavery, I'm talking about the past 20 - 100 years of American history where slavery has been and gone but blacks have still been treated badly.
There was serious academic research done in the 1920's and 1930's to show that african americans were, in an evolutionary sense, closer to apes than "good god-fearin' whitefolk." The results of that utterly bizarre research was, and sometimes still is, used to justify the most henious restrictions on the lives of black people even though slavery was abolished over a century ago.
Now back to the subject at hand and the parallels with the case presented above: From their early teens, so-called "children" are often a lot more mature than you seem to think they are. They can reason, use logic, make their own moral and ethical conclusions, learn from their mistakes and take responsibility for thier actions. Yet you refuse to believe this; you treat them as non-humans with non-human-rights, forcing them to use censorware against tieir will because you've made an arbitrary judgement about their maturity based on nothing more substantial than their age. You haven't even met the people you'd censor.
UEN in Utah serves the entire public school system and some public libraries; The restrictions it has in place affect "children" up to age 18 (!!! doesn't that set alarm bells running?) and adult teachers and library users (!!! doesn't that set even more alarm bells ringing?). We're not talking about 1 year olds crying because a nappy is being changed against their will, or petulant 8 year olds complaining about being grounded, we're talking about people who are fully functional adults by every measurable metric except the one defined by law, which treats them as children, regardless of their maturity, until age 18.
That is the injustice here. That is the parallel between the denial of basic human rights to these people and the denial of basic human rights to african americans. "Children" remain the only group of people in American society who are routinely denied basic rights for no reason other than prejudice, bad law and appearance.
I have no trouble believing that a 15 year old is capable of making decisions about the kind of content they want to see on the web. The Utah public school system, however, doesn't make any distinction whatsoever between that 15 year old and a five year old starting school for the first time.
If you want to distort this into "shoving porn into the faces of children," then go ahead and do it in the knowledge that you are being knowingly dishonest. That is not what this case is about, and it never has been. This case is about the ability of Utah parents to make their own decisions about the upbringing their children get instead of trusting the moral guidance of their treasured offspring to a piece of software.
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I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
Actually, it's evidence that age means a lot.
We had the same sort of thing in my old high school. They used the BESS filtering service, which used a proxy-based mechanism for filtering. Of course, as with pretty much every other service, it was guilty of some serious overkill. It blocked out *.geocities.com completely, and I believe *.tripod.com, too. Then again, our computer network was presided over by the school's librarian, who knows about as much about computers as my dog (she once told us that she thought one step up from a 386 was a 387). Anyway, to get back to my main subject, I figure that the best way to keep students from looking at porn is just to place the computers in such a way that their monitors can be seen from the librarian's desk. He/she can then regulate what the students are viewing without too much work, and it keeps the "overfiltering" out of the equation.
-mike kania
I didn't think the point was the fact that one thing or another was worth filtering or not. The point is, different people have different views on what should/should not be viewed (as we can see here). It's just a problem of one group of people trying to impose what they consider to be "right" on the general populace, which can be a Bad Thing (tm).
-mike kania
But there are also other configuration files that allow you to exempt sites and workstations. In short, there's flexibility.
It is unfair to expect this to serve in place of the vendor's inability to construct a sane blocking list. School officials and librarians cannot hope to keep up with the huge list of wrongly blocked URLs for SmartFilter and other censorware products. Librarians are not supposed to monitor the thousands of sites being added to the web daily - that's supposed to be the software's job.
In fact, as the report shows, certain blocks were overridden, such as Utah's own www.mormon.com (one wonders why that was blocked in the first place). But the list of wrongly censored sites dwarfs any attempt to catch up.
In short, this "flexibility" is a red herring.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
I agree with you're position, but I have an observation.
Many parents think "parenting" means teaching their children to have exactly the same opinions, prejudices, and stereotypes that they have. Other ideas, from whatever source, are a threat to this goal, so they seek to "protect" their children from "dangerous" ideas.
The problem is that one person's protection may indeed come at the expense of censorship of another.
Parents must talk to their children, true, but they must also listen to them, and prepare them intellectually to face new, different, strange, exotic, radical, unconventional ideas. And parents must also accept that their children may make different choices than the parents may wish.
This is truly one hard task of parenting, but one which must be accomplished. The old saw "Never believe what you read" has never been more true than in this Internet Age. Anyone can now publish anything, and make it look pretty darn authoritative. Only thinking people are safe from the charlatans on the 'net.
Oh yes, the Declaration of Independence is a positively radical document, cunningly calculated to strike fear into defenders of the status quo everywhere, even inside the Beltway. I'll bet we could find a Congressman or two who has never read the thing, and would try to repeal it if they did.
:-)
It is no less than a philosophical justification of revolution, and call to action of the average citizen, of all nations and of all times, to throw off their oppressors. A person not only has the right to "throw da bums out", but the obligation to do so, if the government has broken faith with the governed.
The great part about the U.S. is that our revolutions do not have to be violent, a thought I take with me into the voting booth each November.
In many states, there's nothing wrong with minors being married. Indiana law (http://www.law.indiana.edu/codes/in/31/31-7-2-2.h tml) says that you can be married with parental consent under the age of 18 in some cases. In many states, you may always get married at 17 with parental consent. (MN and FL appear to be 16.)
Where I work, they're using SmartFilter or something like it. Weirdly enough, I can look at Suck, but I can't read Omni Magazine...go figure. Try to land on the same banned page 3 times, an automatic report lands in your boss' email inbox.
But if I fire up AOL on my desktop, I can look at any damn thing I please. Apparently I'm tunneling thru the firewall & into AOL's server.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Not to suggest that you are pro-censorship, but why is this the only example pro-censorship forces present as a defense for their views: Kids looking at sexually explicit material? Are there no other compelling arguments? And if there aren't, then how compelling can this sole argument really be?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
The solution to your examples is not censorship, but more speech. I, too, would like to see hate groups and Scientology blasted off the face of the Earth, but the only way to do that is for people to become informed about what The Real Deal is. And the only way that can happen is through unfettered communication, which includes seeing the original "offensive" material.
Once the bright light of information is shone on them, exploitive cults and hate groups simply fall apart. OTOH, if you censor them, then you place yourself in a position that is considerably more difficult to defend: "What are you trying to hide?"
As for graphic violence, I think it could do TV-watching kids a world of good if they occasionally got a dose of just how horrifying real murders, gun fights, and car wrecks can be.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
First off I should preface this by saying that I was a high school student in Utah last year, and I have inside information on this whole situation. They know there are problems with the filtering system. They know SmartFilter sucks, they want to fix it and this last summer they planned on moving to a better system such as Bess which allows much more control over filtering and has a better site list. However Michael Simms created the whole controversy and as such for political reasons the tech guys were forbidden from changing the software. Had they been able to do so, the problems would have been fixed. Bess allows powerful filtering you can specific things like block sex but not sex and art or not sex and education etc, and generally their system is better. Had censorware minded there own business instead of trying to get kids hooked on porn the problems would have been at least reduced. Furthermore I know I don't want my kids going to some teacher's class who that morning looked up his latest kiddie porn on the net. I've seen the logs, believe me there are teachers out there doing this, unfortunately UEN is too scared to do anything about this. Not only that but kids are looking at porn, I caught them in the school library doing such when I went there. Without blocking it would happen a lot more, I don't care what anyone says but pornography is addictive. Until you turn 18, you shouldn't be able to access it, because it will mess you up, just look at Ted Bundy who attributed some of his problems to porn. I'm sorry, but I applaud UEN for what they are doing, and just wish people would leave them alone and allow them to fix the system. Sure it has problems, but they can be fixed, if they're not busy dealing with annoying requests from people. Additionally on the sites that were blocked, many of them at one time or another had inappropriate material and the server is being a bit cautious.
How are the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence offensive to people in the US?
I'm confused.
ebw
The way children are treated in this society... well, if any other group were treated in similar fashion, no one would be surprised when they rose up in armed revolution to fight for their rights.
this is almost funny. you're essentially arguing that children should have the same rights as adults. well, i agree... and they should have the same responsibilities too: work, pay taxes, etc.
please, the only one who would argue that children should be allowed to choose everything for themselves (as 'individuals') is a 14-year old whose mommy makes him go to bed at 10:00.
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
You're missing the point. If Utah were a "Mormon Republic," as you call it, wouldn't kids be able to look at the Bible online?
I find this symptomatic of America's desire for compromise at any cost, running over the civil liberties of left and right alike for the sake of quashing potential arguments. It's disgusting, don't you think?
"Even genius needs a competent technique."--Robert Fripp
ahem... dear Burnsbert.
Could you please explain to me why the incidence of rape in Scandinavian countries is among the lowest in the world? Consider the fact that "hardcore" pornography is available to anyone over the age of 13.
Please don't insult our intelligence with your right-wing propaganda. Some of us have actually had a glimpse of life outside Smalltown U.S.A.
First off, I should preface this by saying that I fully believe in your right to not look at porn, and your responsibilty to fight something you see as evil. However, I must refute the statement that pornography is addictive. Research has shown that viewing pornography does not damage children. The damage that many anti-porn advocates speak of is the combination of the social conditioning placed upon some children. All pre-teens and teens are interested in sex. This is a state of being human. The mistake is to fight this with cultural taboos. The "children" you caught in the school library looking at pornography were simply acting on natural impulses. Combine this with the excitement of doing something "bad, and the sexual arousal from the pictures, and the appeal is obvious. Any damage from viewing these images is done not by the pornography itself, but from the social conditioning placed upon these children. Any parent has a right to place conditioning upon their child, but I question the benefit of a cultural mindset that has to rely on censorship of information in order to stay undamaged.
-Ke
"Where do you get off thinking any OS is superior to DOS?"
People who are mean, suck. The opposite is not true.
It amuses me that once someone reaches the age of 18 (or 21), they are automatically assumed to have all the faculties of an adult, and are expected to act maturely from that point on. This is an unreasonable request. Perhaps if there were some sort of test to see if someone eligible for the title "mature". :)
-Ke
"Where do you get off thinking any OS is superior to DOS?"
People who are mean, suck. The opposite is not true.
Obviously they aren't very good at it yet. :)
"Where do you get off thinking any OS is superior to DOS?"
People who are mean, suck. The opposite is not true.
Mathematics is brainwashing. All those little numbers will make children believe that everything can be categorized into True/False, or ennumerated. Uncertaintity is the only way to be prepared for everything.
-Ke
"Where do you get off thinking any OS is superior to DOS?"
People who are mean, suck. The opposite is not true.
I stand in awe of your telepathic abilities. How I wish to know, as you do, the thoughts of the animals and plants around me.
Did the head of the other species give you this information or did you have to do your own research?
All in all, quite impressive.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
Perhaps this explains why politicians have been ignoring the constitution so much lately?
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
The bible is a pretty important part of American History.
Not sure I agree with "important", but it certainly did affect the development of our nation, just like things like slavery, the KKK, chinese/latino/etc. "workers", and so on. Heck, the '89 earthquake had a significant effect on San Francisco, but I wouldn't necessarily say it was a Good Thing.
The statement "In God We Trust" is on many pieces of our currency.
Sure enough. This was added in the late '60-'70s (1860-1870's) after the Civil War (IIRC!). Doesn't mean it's right, appropriate, or even constitutional. By placing that phrase on our coinage, we are alienating a significant portion of our citizenry. In any case, the idea behind the concept of separation of church and state is that you may not like the religion-of-the-month coming out of washington, so better to let everyone pick their own.
Besides, do you really want those morons in DC telling you what you should believe? 8^)
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Could you maybe elaborate on how the Bible is offensive?
I find it offensive. Me, myself, and I.
I just think that maybe filters, when packaged and sold, might need definitions of offensive.
Bingo. What's offensive to me, might not be so to you. I once saw a news article and accompanying photo about vandalism done to a school auditorium. Part of what had been done was to push a grand piano off of the stage and smash it to bits. I was physically sickened by it, in part due to my affinity for music and musical instruments. Others, on the other hand, might not see that picture as anything other than a simple news photo.
And how would filtering software figure that out? As far as I know, there is no technology even remotely capable of accurately determining what is or is not offensive to an individual save for his or her own native intelligence.
That is, I know what offends me/pisses me off/sickens me/pleasures me/etc, but it is unlikely that anyone else can truly, accurately guess at it, let alone some simplistic piece of software.
And so, we must allow each person to decide for themselves what they do or do not want to be exposed to.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
But doesn't it also mention somewhere that god stated that the Jews were his choosen people?
Isn't that racial discrimination?
Hehehe.
(Sorry if I am incorrect. Not being a christian, i have only read parts of the bible, usually having it forced on my back when i was in highschool.)
This sig is false.
Well, I am not a christian, nor do I hold faith in christian beliefs, but...
The bible is a pretty important part of American History. The statement "In God We Trust" is on many pieces of our currency.
Regardless of the fact that many of us don't like it, our "forefathers" were slave owning christians. And to understand the documents they produced (ie constitution) it is important to understand the context in which they were written (ie christianity, slavery, etc).
This sig is false.
The problem with that is that it is easy to take that a bit further.
Why not just mail the list of URLs to the Government. After all, parents don't want to supervise their children. They would rather the government do it for them.
And why just childern? Why not mail everyone's list of URLs to that government agency. I'm sure the FBI would have a much easier time catching terrorists and the like.
And why just terrorists? All of us "civilized" people know that every bit of malcontent has an effect on people. Anti-government material, pornography, violence...We should just jail anyone who looks at this stuff.
.
Bottom line is: If parents dont want to take the responsibility of supervising their children, they wont be.
And if the parents would take the responsibility of raising their children rather than letting machines raise them (ie TV, Computer), this would be a non-issue.
This sig is false.
Or even constitutional.
We study the good as well as the bad. If we don't , we repeat the mistakes of the past.
Plain and simple.
This sig is false.
Religion has a dominant part in our history. It is the greatest force for oppression and misery the world has ever known.
That is ***EXACTLY*** why it is important that we understand it.
Or would you rather try to live in ignorance and hope that you dont get oppressed?
This sig is false.
Information from a public library is not a commercial product. Thus the ACLU does have a vested interest, their interest being that libraries restrict public patrons access to information.
As for a perfect filter, I think it necessary to error on the side of caution and not restrict anyone to access information, negating the use of Internet filters.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Naturally, when your 16 year old daughter is visiting lot's of sites about birth control you're going to want to have a sit-down with her. The thing is, you should have that talk with her anyways.
My feeling is that most people who prefer to have Internet filters are mostly afraid of some information that their child, friends, family, (pet?) might find. The Internet certainly makes searches easier to find particular information as well increases the amount of information found.
However, your point that "you should have that talk with her anyways" brings to attention what the real use of filtering is for. I think many people think filtering is an easy solution for any institution to "babysit" their child.
My contention is that it is far more damaging to restrict or censor information to the general public for the main purpose of restricting information for a particular group of people (children being the most used example).
I think it's important for people to take responsibility for their own actions regarding informatoin and not have institutions or government do that.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
I appreciate your posts, I really do. :)
/., I would think you get more complaints from the word "TurboNT" in your URL. ;)
One cannot censor a group of people. You might be able to create some practicle limits in an elementary school for example; however, if you create censorship just because a child might have access to a computer in a public library, you are defeating the purpose of the library.
Glad you didn't take my post personally. Considering the OS demograhpics at
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
If you read my previous posts, I'm all against censorship or an institution restricting anyone's access to information.
However, this parenting argument is getting out of hand. I am now understanding where burnsbert is coming from. I'm not a parent myself, but I do recognize the fact that a parent might restrict access to certain information until the child is mature enough to understand it and relate to it.
I don't see any reason to take a nine year old to see a graphic rated R movie. It doesn't make sense. There is no reason a child should see such a thing. Now, I believe in a parents right to do that if they wish. That is where the parenting comes in. I don't believe R movies should be banned because of children, I just believe it is the parents choice to let them see it. I don't see that as censorship in that sense.
Parenting is about teaching the necessary skills to function in society. Simply exposing children to information or situations is not teaching. Otherwise, why don't kids learn calculus in first grade? Oh, maybe most kids are not ready for that.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
It is not U.S. law that libraries must have filters because of children. My wife is a librarian, and I would have to verify it with her, but to my knowledge, libraries cannot have restrictions to information: Freedom of Speech.
The lawsuits have nothing to do with law. Parents are just trying to have libraries do the parenting for them.
Now, it is true that libraries can (and DO) take the responsibility to not put books like sexual health next to children's books. It is also true that if someone is obviously displaying graphic pictures on a computer in a children's area, that person can be asked to do the research some where else in the library.
But this in no way limits one's access to information.
Perhaps there are state laws that ban information in libraries? Please elaborate if someone can!
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
I agree.
Slashdot: Please censor all posts by burnsbert. I find them offensive. It has the words porn and nazi which I do not agree with. Therefore the rest of the post is useless discussion that no one should ever read, especially non-adults. Further more, based on the word "burns" in burnsbert's URL, the web site must promote arson. A past survey on Slashdot proved there are minors observing this site.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Smartfilter was intentionally purchased to filter "objectionable" sites. It enforces a policy. If a user unsuccessfully attempts to access a "non-objectionable" site then the user should notify the IT person in charge. That site can then be exempted.
In libraries, we don't need a policy of what can and cannot be viewed. This is censorship, pure and simple. If you want to prevent your child from viewing anything you find objectionable, I suggest you hold your child's hand and restrict, TV, books, movies, school, as well as anything else found outside your home. I realize that might be much work, but in this manner others can find what they are looking for, regardless how objectionable I or you might find it.
By instituting a filter, you are instituting censorship. It is absolutely impossible to filter objectionable material without filtering non-objectinable material at the same time.
Don't forget, there are many non-objectionable site that use XXX. There will eventually be 10 web sites for the Super Bowls with XXX in it.
Also, how is one supposed to know if a filtered site is really not objectionable to whatever institution so that it can be brought to the IT manager's attention? That would preclude some unfiltered method of looking at web pages which would make filtering web pages useless.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
It's always wise to try to think about how others hold views you don't agree with before spouting potentially offensive comments.
The Book of Mormon is a very real thing to many of us. You don't have to believe what we believe, but please show at least a little respect.
Also note that the conferenc talks of LDS Church leaders were filtered by this software, so the kids couldn't access that either.
I beleive deep in my heart that my religion is the right one for me, it doesn't make me think that your religion is wrong though. I have enough respect for others beleifs.
hey the only true way to find if your religious beleif is the true one is to die. then you'll know for sure.
TESLA RULES
Every religion teaches a creator god or gods.
funny, i don't believe that everything around me, myself included, was created by a god.
and no i'm not an atheist.
you might also want to consider that back then christmas had almost nothing to do with the birth of christ. It was more a wild party in the streets, with people getting drunk and breaking into others houses, and then 9 months later a whole lot of ilegitimit children were born. there was no worshiping of the baby jesus born in the manger, nor was there santa claus, heck he wasn't even invented until the mid 18 hundreds.
christmas has never actually been strictly religious, it was put there to pull in non christians. so if you want to really look at it, chirstmas has always been a commercial holiday
If you can get there, if you're using censorware you probably won't be able to
I found out long ago that my site was blocked by censorware... probably because it contains information on paganism and witchcraft and such... *sigh* :)
Then again, much like Alluvial, you may have been blocked because your domain "home.student.utwente.nl" contains the word "stud".
Is that they found that for the most part, kids weren't actually trying to look at 'objectionable' material. Besides, who is going to go to the library to look at porn?
I want my own filtering software - one that will filter out geocities, aol, and all sites based in Utah.
-lx
I recently read that the Bible is on the banned book list in numerous public schools... Don't you love it? They block the Bible (and the Koran and Mormon documents as well), and then block you from reading all of the documents that give you the right to read them. Good grief.
Reminds me of the judge who was sued by the ACLU because he had the 10 commandments on his courtroom wall.... so I guess rules like "Thou Shalt Not Steal" and "Thou Shalt Not Kill" are outdated?
The best way to control a population is to take away their awareness of freedom, to deprive them of their identity, and to take away their hopes.
Without the Constitution, the Declaration and the religion, what have you??
A hard working middle class who lives to work and works to live.
Be productive, pay your taxes, watch television, drink Pepsi.
-- This message sponsored by the Psi Corps.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
The government does not have the right to censor speech or ideas. And neither does anyone else Of course people have the right to censor. If I own a computer, I can do what I will with it, including censoring what any children I may have see. The first amendment doesn't prohibit individuals from doing anything, only the government.
It's easy to be offended if you want to be.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Personally, I would have the monitors be facing in such a way so that a number of people would be able to see what someone was looking at, so hopefully the shame factor would prevent library resources being used for less-than erudite purposes.
It used to think this until I was in a couple libraries. Some people just don't care; some even use it in an exhibitionist manner. The librarians acted nervous and wouldn't do anything about it. It was quite obnoxious. I wish I'd had a program to send data with the URG bit high handy!
I still think it's a good idea; if people are reading explicit textual content, such as alt.abuse.sexual.recovery or informatoing about STDs, they can just use a small font size.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
In fact, as the report shows, certain blocks were overridden, such as Utah's own www.mormon.com (one wonders why that was blocked in the first place). But the list of wrongly censored sites dwarfs any attempt to catch up.
That could be because IIRC that site promoted polygamy, which is illegal in the U.S., and pedophilia in the sense of promoting that minors be `married'. I'm not sure if it still does, but I do know the Mormon Church definitely promote these things a number of years ago. I do not know what they promote now.
Most Mormons, of course, don't believe in pedophilia, but at one time the upper administration (bishops?) of the Mormon Church had a serious problem with this. (Note that many other Churches and also many non-religious organisations have the same problems with corruption and abuse in the upper ranks).
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
The Bible does have some pretty rough stuff in it, however, and most parents wouldn't like the material if they saw it out of context and rewritten in plain current usage. I agree, however: it wouldn't have a negative effect on children; if anything, it reenforces the child's idea of what is ethical and what is unethical.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
I don't mean 17 year olds; I'm talking young (13 yrs). In addition, the conditions of such marriages within the context of the Mormon church tended to be abusive. I'm not saying this is a reason to censor mormon.org; I'm saying it wouldn't be hard to find reasons to censor it. In any case, various state statutes don't affect the ethicality or unethicality of the situation. (I personally don't have a problem with people under the age of 18 getting married, but what do I know? I can barely write a decent Xserver.)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
I've heard of a few people marrying 16 year olds way back in the 1800's, but then that was the times.
My mother's aunt was married when she was barely 14. My (deceased) great uncle was 18. That was in the 1920's or 1930's (don't remember exactly when). My grandmother was married when she was 16 (and still is). And all quite happily, I should add (at least in the sense of their marriages--lots of other things were wrong, but not that aspect).
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
That said, the LDS church has not practiced polygamy since 1890, following numerous legal appeals of the law which made it against the law.
Huh? Maybe it's not *officially* practiced, but it definitely took place in recent times. I say this from personal conversation with people from Mormons (both in RL and via electronic media).
This is a fault of all religions, though. Some of the followers of the religion will be terrible people and make great straw men to beat up when we don't like a particular religion. Mormonism has quite a few straw men from which to select. But it's not a reflection against Mormonism itself (although it is pretty wild--I like the part about ruling planets in the next life).
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Seriously, I was in a school a while ago that had censorship, and it was terrible. It blocked useful sites and let some really bad stuff through (a pudgy kid in the back was hogging the printer--I can't believe no one said anything).
The only cure for this is to have adults monitoring their children when they use the Internet. Of course, that would require that a parent be involved in their child's life, and that really does take more effort than we'd like. The sad thing is that most parents don't realise how much worse the material on T.V. is. IMO (and IIRC there is research that confirms this) watching violence depicted in a moving picture is more harmful to a young child than seeing a still picture of a much worse seen. No-one wants to address these issues with the real solution, which is for parents to take care of their children. Everyone wants software and V-chips to do the parenting for them.
Cheers,
Joshua (hi Orwell!)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
First things first: I agree with you wholeheartedly that community resources like computing time in the library or in school shouldn't be wasted on browsing porn, etc. Of course, they shouldn't be wasted browsing the news, ESPN, or Slashdot either, unless that's an assignment or research project. It's a non-argument that schools and libraries exist to provide information, not entertainment, and when resources are limited, those with legitimate information needs should get preference over mere web browsers.
However, I will certainly argue with that. Who decides these "certain things"? I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with your choices for what my kids should see, because I have no idea what your beliefs are - your religious convictions, your morals, even your taste in art. Can't have you deciding things for my kids.
I'll go a step further and say that I may not even be a good person to decide which "certain things" we censor. Why, you ask? For all you know, I might be a militant flat-earther, a Luddite, or some other persuasion of thought that society generally sees as reactionary. Do you want me to decide that your kids shouldn't read about space travel, evolution, or medical information about the human body?
Granted, none of my examples address the examples that you mentioned. Personally, I happen to agree with you that I wouldn't be crazy about my kids learning how to treat women from pornography, or learning about the rest of the world from a Nazi viewpoint. However, I don't see censorship at school as a solution. Why?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Amen! Everybody has different taste and different ideas of what is and isn't offensive, and therefore ANY effective filtering software will be customizable to an extreme degree. The problem is that in order to do this, it will have to know the individual to a much higher degree than anybody is capable of telling. Perhaps someone could come up with something that would allow the parents to 'surf' around on random pages, rating each according to degree of offensive content, and maybe even specify which sections of the page are offensive.
Unfortunately, it would take so much time to adaquately train such an AI that it would be less time consuming (in the short run, say a few months) to simply 'parent your children'
Which is why 'filtering software' is usually assumed to conform (more or less) to a
Judaeo-Christian ethic. (Which is why it's funny that it blocks access to the bible!)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Living out here, I can tell you that, should the ACLU win the fight to un-censor the net, Utah schools will simply shut off all net access.
The buzzwords out here, like pretty much anywhere else, are: don't endanger the children.
Pornography is believed to endanger children out here. Should (hypothetically) censorship-free net access somehow be mandated, many parents will pull their children from school.
Considering the funding that schools would lose, the schools will simply figure some other way to keep the kids from the internet.
*************** Here follows my personal views, and Lest ye think otherwise, I've got a growing collection of magazines and videos that feature the undraped feminine form divine, and I'm all for porn.*******************
All in all, it's probably much better in this situation to just let the schools throw a censoring program on. (Do you REALLY want 10yr olds looking at genital-mutilation or bestiality sites? I've seen some. They're not for kids.)
The Mormons didn't come here voluntarily, and they've never forgotten it. Ever since the U.S. Army invaded Utah to put down the Mormon Rebellion (and lost), these people have hated the federal government.
Just treat Utahns like a damaged section of the Internet, and ignore them.
They ignore you.
By the way, Rob must be having sig file problems. The following witticism isn't mine. (always preview)
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
The Tucson Unified School District (http://www.tusd.k12.az.us) is using a censorship proxy server (websense).
I was involved in several labs while this was implemented (I am a freelance consultant/student). The District was sued (I seem to remember it was settled or dropped, don't have the exact reference) after students at one high school were suspended for printing and distributing throughout the school some musicale lyrics which the school has banned due to the content of the lyrics. The parents were suing based on the fact that they did not let their kids onto the Internet at home, and it was the schools fault for exposing them to this material. Now the entire districts Internet connection goes through the proxy (proxy.tusd.k12.az.us port 80), this includes all of the districts 102 schools. Also the district mandated that students must not be able to change the settings in the browser to bypass the proxy (they are too lazy to configure the routers to block direct port 80 requests, except to the proxy). This is a real pain for me, because the Linux version of Netscape (even when the preference file is locked and owned by root) allows you to change it during your current session. The proxy server slows down Internet access (two Uswest.net (AlterNet is the backbone for them, most of the time) T1 lines are the districts connection), and has been known to block access to sites that should not be blocked. When I built the linux-based lab at Corbett elementary school, we rearranged the entire lab, so that by being in the back of the room, you could see what was on every student's screen. The best way to monitor Internet usage in a school computer lab is supervision, and remote abilities to close the program (heheh). At the Academic computer center of the community college I attend, many students go to very inappropriate sites. Unfortunately the lab aids don't really want to approach the offenders, and since they are running windows, it's rather hard for them to do anything remotely (i.e. telnet in, do a ps ax | grep netscape, kill -9 Netscape's pid).
You made a key comment...
:)
Everyone wants software and V-chips to do the parenting for them.
I see increasing problems with the lack of responsibility parents are showing these days. With two income households becoming more the norm, parents have less time for their children so they are trying to burden the government, school districts and corporations to do the parenting for them.
IMHO censorship is the absolute worst thing a child can experience. One day they will be in a situation that they were censored from before, and now they have no point of reference to base an education decision on.
Parents need to sit down with their children while they're on the internet and learn with them (because you know the ones who know the least about it are the loudest advocators of bills like the CDA).
They need to explain to their kids what it is to have safe sex and use a condom (face it, it's going to happen, so better for them to hear it from you).
Make sure they have money to call a cab in case they "find" themselves at a party where they or their ride is too hammered to drive home. Hehehe...I "found" myself in quite a number of those situations
And so on...
Parents need to be parents, across the board, and the Internet is just one example. If they don't talk to their kids about what needs to be talked about, then they'll find out from their friends.
Who would you trust more?
Unfortunately, censorship programs rarely work very well on things like pornography sites. There are only really two ways to catch things like that:
1) Trying to second-guess the URLs the sites will use. It's already been shown just how badly this works. The filters _invariably_ manage to filter out something that isn't really offensive.
2) Constantly updating site lists. This requires continuous maintenance, and therefore drives up the cost of the software (and our taxes, if the schools use it).
Both of these things result in a cat-and-mouse game to a certain extent, as some providers alter their sites to get past the filters, and the filter makers try to keep up the filtering lists.
To boot, who are these content providers to say what is offensive? Some religious parents may find the text of the bible offensive, and not want their children to read it...
Taral
WARN_(accel)("msg null; should hang here to be win compatible\n");
-- WINE source code
Hmm... Look's like my company firewall won't let me into censorware! The proxy just says "incompatible with business use". Slashdot is, but censorware isn't? Little bit recursive, I feel :-)
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
Yeah, those Jewish gay communists are all out to get us. ;)
Peace,
--
Kaufmann
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
[ahem]
I _am_ Jewish (an atheist, yes, but Jewish nonetheless), and I don't find my comment offensive at all, because I comprehend the concept of satire. Other people got that, but you obviously don't.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
The funny thing is that people try to rationalize whether or not an all powerful being would be as mean as in the Bible.
Truth is like Immortals in Highlander: "There can be only one".
The merits of the truth are irrelavent if it is the truth.
I'm a Christian, I know the truth.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
God did not put a "gun" to Eve's head and say "Eat this", and Eve did not put a gun to Adam's head.
The issue is that we have 100% free choice (The FSF, in a perfect respect), and we can choose the path we lead.
You have currently chosen one, others have chosen a different one. You talk about 4000+ years in our terms (the Atrocities of God over that time), however to an omnipotent being which exists in eternity, 4000+ years would be a trivial amount of time for him to make us suffer for our great mistake, and in his mercy he gave us his only begotten Son to give us a second chance through grace, instead of the Law (though Christ did not abolish the law, only fulfilled it).
I do not believe God WANTS us to suffer, I believe he knows that it is the only way for us to learn the truth.
As a parent, I have learned one major fact, as humans we generally only learn "the hard way". Children eventually learn that HOT is a bad thing by actually touching something HOT! I have not come across an individual which just believed their parents when they told them that hot would hurt, they all had to learn for themselves. How much more true is it that God knows that we need to learn the pain of Sin through freedom to experiment with it.
The most common problem with facing the existence of God is that people want to know why he doesn't just Fix everything. This is the same exact mentality which creates the need for censor software, and public schools, so that the Government can "fix" our kids, instead of doing the job we were given (Wow, actually jumped back on topic for a second). The problem is, in a perfect world we would still want freedom, which creates an imperfect world, the eternal Catch-22 which put us where we are. (Eden was perfect, and included perfect freedom).
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
Three things:
1). Is it unfair that he gave us life?
2). All he did was give us pure freedom of choice, what the FSF is all about, what we constantly fight for he gave us, now you are mad that we made the wrong choice. And don't you DARE tell me that after a few hundred years you wouldn't have grabbed the apple, because you would have.
3). Maybe he was bored, why else create the Universe? Still doesn't change the facts.
(I feel like the Spanish Inquisition Sketch, I started with "Two Things:")
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
The scary thing is that I made reference to Monty Python also, and I hadn't seen this post yet ;^)
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
Speaking of offensive, how many here believe Christine Hughes, vice president of marketing for Secure Computing, when she says, "Generally, we try to review every site"?
I am not of the Jewish faith, but your linking another persons belief system to a lifestyle that Judaism expressly prohibits and a political system that more often has not has been guilty of genocide(s) is highly offensive and not funny.
I hope they moderate this comment down to 7734.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Umm.. Mormon.com used to be a pr0n site. I talked to someone at the Mormon church about this. When SmartFilter found out that it was no longer (someone emailed them), it was immediately removed.
Actually, it's not much of a moral issue. I spent a couple of months categorizing sites for a web filtering company (I won't say which one, but it happens to be particularly relevant to this discussion). The policies and categories were all tuned for use in a corporate environment, where the management doesn't want its users burning time looking at inappropriate things at work. When the company talks about "protecting" their users, they usually mean protecting them from sexual harassment lawsuits and time wasting employees, not "bad content".
:) (you're welcome)
This product includes categories that are regarded by some to be "potentially harmful" such as drugs, sex, hate speech, etc. It also contains oodles of entertainment/humor sites, job search pages, art and culture, general news sites like CNN, etc. The job I was doing was not "censoring" or even "blocking", I was just categorizing. The product is sold as an aide to system administrators to more accurately control what their users can access, and the system administrator can select categories to block based on their usage policy. If there are a few inaccuracies in the list, or the admin disagrees with how a site is listed, they can make an exception. Which takes no time at all, compared to making your own list of hundreds of thousands of sites organized by category.
P.S. I put slashdot on their exempt list a while back
yes, they even gave me a free copy of the King James Version of the Holy Bible. It was delivered by 2 nice young men who have never contacted me again without my explicit consent, and the did not sell my name and other info like some do.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Libraries are not there to babysit anyone. Common sense or no, it is none of their business.
Before I was able to afford my own computer and internet access after college, I paid a fee and used the local library's computers. Just because I could not, or would not, pay for my own access doesn't mean that they have a right suddenly to regulate all information i get there based on what they feel is in my best interest. Some ppl here seem to think that the library is for intellectual, erudite pursuits, but if you look at the collection of books in most local libraries you will find many books that are not very erudite. A good library has books which its patrons wish to read, not just what they should read. Why should the webpages available from library computers be any different?
Personally, i do look up medical information on the web, AND IN LIBRARY BOOKS. I do not use it to substitute for a doctor. Before a surgery I looked up what the doctor said was the problem and was able to not only confirm what he had told me but also to understand how he had come to that conclusion. I felt much better about the surgery which did solve the problem.
I did the same after another doctor visit and after reading several articles and not improving after a week, decided to get a second opinion. My doctor in that case got angry and refused even to recommend another for a second opinion. I am glad I saw someone else. Following the second doctor's advice, I quickly got better.
It is not always possible to ask all of my questions to the doctor when I am there. I think of things later, or just want to find out more. There are a lot of sites with solid information on the web.
Free Health Clinic's indeed! It is my body, my brain, and I will do as I please within the bounds of the law. The point of all of this is that the US Constitution as interpreted by the US Supreme Court says that libraries cannot censor adult access to the web!
I bet you would not like my opinion on what people should not read any more than i like yours. That is one reason the US Constitution has a bill of rights.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
I agree. We have porn filter software at work that not only blocks the bad stuff, but it also blocks access to legitimate pages -- I've even had it erroneously keep me from accessing a few network companies' pages!
On the other hand, filtering software is very useful for home use as long as it is used as a tool and not as a barrier to information. For example, a parent uses it to keep their pre-teenage son from filling their hard drive with porn. If it ever rejects a legitimate page such as a site discussing abortion that the boy needs to get to in order to finish a paper, all the parents have to do is turn off the software temporarily.
Perhaps it would be useful if teachers were in control of which sites the students accessed rather than some software company.
God did, supposedly (duh!), since Egyptian chariots were gaining on fleeing Israelites.
Now a counter-quiz:
Who send a bear to rend the 42 kinds who were taunting prophet Elija as 'baldhead'?.. How about the one who gave the command to kill all males who are old enough to piss standing and to take everyone else as slaves, or the commandment to kill all gays?..
Need more examples, or are we done with quizzing?
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
So you'd have no trouble with me walking up to your 8-year-old son, telling him that cocaine was really just as as harmful as powdered sugar, and since it was extracted from plants, its just as good as green vegetables? All you do is snort it up your nose and you won't have to eat green beans tonight! Maybe I could give him a pamphlet with directions to the nearest crack dealer.
You can try -- and I will tell him that you are lying.
Or what about hard pornography? You'd have no problem with me setting a stack of hard gay porn in front of your child's elementary school then?
To be honest -- no, I would not like it (not because of what it is, but because of what you mean by it), but I do not think that you should be prevented by law from doing so. The Western aversion to sex is purely a cultural artifact, and sexual imagery in and of itself will do my child no harm -- he will probably simply ignore it for lack of understanding of matters involved.
Whether or not YOU think any form of parental censorship is evil or not is NOT THE ISSUE. You are no better than the people you're trying to insult. Where they are trying to "impose" *their* censorship beliefs on others, you are trying to do the same on them.
I am? How so, pray tell? There is a big difference between 'censorship' and 'lack of censorship'.
To censor or not to censor. You have no right dictating what other communities should and should not do and how they should interpret their local laws. It's up to the parents, the community and the schools to decide how to go about educating and parenting their children, not you.
No, I have no such right. What I DO have a right to, is expressing my opinion about censorship. Do you have a problem with that -- or are you not bright enough to know the difference between expressing one's views and imposing them on others?
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
or the commandment to kill all gays?
I never heard about that one.
it's in Numbers, I think (it's actually in two different placed in Torah, but one is more clear than the other), something like 'and if a man lies with another man as if he were a woman, it is an abomination', and somewhere nearby it recounts how such 'abominations' should be stoned. If you really want the exact verse and chapter, I can look it up tonight.
BTW, I can't help thinking that I got more out of what I did read than you did.
Why -- because you only remember the 'nice' parts, and ignore the atrocities that god commands?.. or is it because you think that believing that horrible book makes you have gotten more out of it'..
--
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Victor Danilchenko
As far as I can tell, those who engage in censorship (even parents, but that's a different story) are either cowards who fear the truth, or idiots who think that they can actually accomplish something useful by censorship (or more likely, they are both).
I don't remember who said it, but I love the phrase: 'I hate everything you say, but I will fight for your right to say it'. I despise xianity and bible, I think they are total mind rot -- but I believe nobody has any business telling others what to look at, or not to look at. Since the library is a public facility, they should not censor content for anyone -- the only people who have business censoring content for kids, are their parents (and even then it's ethically questionable)
That being said, bible IS one of the most offensive books I have ever read (yes, I read all of it).
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
My goal as a parent of a 9 year old and a 7 year old is not to teach them what to think, but to teach them how to think. Yes, I am teaching them my opinions and values. I am also teaching them why those are my opinions and values. That is part of my job as a parent. Yes, it is the parent's responsibility to be there when their children surf the 'Net. It is also the parent's responsibility to see to it that their children are not shocked out of their socks when they are first exposed to many things in real life. Do I show my kids pornography? No, but they've already had "sex education" talks (and will have more) from my wife and I, and when they get older they will be told about porn. And drugs, and alchohol. Because this is MY responsibility, not some school teachers' (who may or may not even be able to teach math, english or other "concrete" subjects!).
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
I don't think any "ACLU types" are bitching and moaning in this case because the kiddies can't look at porn. The problem is the filtering system has been implemented in a terribly slipshod manner, and because of the laziness of the administratia involved, genuinely useful knowledge is being witheld.
If Smartfilter is as flexible as you are saying (don't know, haven't ever used it) then there really is no excuse for this. Someone (or lots of someones) isn't doing their job worth a damn, and needs to get off their lazy butt or else have it canned.
This whole incident is just stupid. Happy Dork Day, everyone.
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
The ENTIRE REASON the pilgrims came to America was to be able to live their own religion, to be able to interpret their scriptures the way they wanted. Religion, if not the Bible, has a VERY dominant part in our history, like it or not.
here in hingham massachusetts we have the same thing. it's called "bess" though. it blocks everything that some mediators determine offensive. these things often encircle what we need for reports/research and such.
www.ssec.org ---> the people that run bess
---bob
With the consent of parents, 12 years old is the minimum for marriage, and without consent, it is either 14 or 16. Every so often, young teenagers get married, and the newspapers run a story about it - it's not common at all, but it is legal. Florida has a history of small families widely spread out and lots of agricultal heritage. This is typical in the American South, and tends to promote youth growing up rather quickly. The age for full drivers licenses drops to either 12 or 14 if you live in a rural area, and can show that you live or work on a farm. Quite often, the kids need to drive tractors, or drive across the farm to do chores. If you've only been to Orlando or Miami, you haven't seen Florida. Those cities are tourist driven abberations compared to the majority of the state. --
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Please elaborate on how you think the Bible constitutes an important part of American history.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
As an alumnus of the U of U I find it VERY objectionable that this is happening. I would expect this sort of mentality from the "school in the south" (btw FUBYU), but not the resplendant bastion of education and free-thinking that I remember the U of U being. However, things may have changed drastically in the years since I have left the bunker of technology known as EMCB, and mayhaps someone stumbled over some old footage in the film labs, and decided to translate that late 1930's footage from German, and decided to put censorship to good use. As I have stated time and time again. " If you don't want your kids stumbling across porn or questionable material on the 'Net', then MONITOR what your kids are doing on it!"
GO UTES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
WTF are they blocking the documents that founded this country? Oh YEAH I forgot.... The dounders (misspelled intentionally) of 'tah were kicked out of every other state till they came down emigration canyon and setup the brothel and brewery in that barren valley..... Of course they want the Constitution blocked
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
Of course in true flame action. I had jumped to conclusions, and in my haste to let my fingers fly on the keyboard, I didn't research the situation completely. Thank you for clearing that up
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
Once again, I am seeing the reaction of my inflammatory actions. (see above posting on flame)
Thank you for the opinion, and YES I do agree that filterings sites in K-12 should be implemented, I jumped to the conclusion that the Universities were doing it, which could be another very touchy conflict indeed.... Thank you
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
Once again... please look above for my apology on flaming out
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
I consider myself a Utard not a 'tahn
since I've lived there enough of my life to get brainwashed,(and to have a few towns named in my family) Yes the mentality is very different, but I enjoy having something SOLID to fight against...
Especially as a Republican from 'tah
/e dons the asbestos for the ensueing flames
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
Censorship is just another way that religion is trying to control us.. Think about it.. It's corrupting to the fullest.. The shouldn't censor, they should allow us to see what ever. It the power of knowlage, but they don't want us to know the truth of the real world. They make up lies and make the adults think that having access to so called 'evil' information makes kids do 'evil' things. All it comes down to is that religion is leaking into government through the highlevel posistions. I think we really need to put a halt on the goverment and change everything back to the fundementals. If we don't act, we will have no freedoms left to use. This is all IMO.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
The post was a parody of the reactionary fringe of American politics. Look up Pat Buchanan sometime -- he's spoken in derogatory terms about all three. (Well, okay, I haven't seen a specific quote of him denouncing gays...)
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
FYI: "Mormons" as previously stated, is a "nickname". The proper name of the church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Bible contains prophesies and teachings of Jesus Christ through his personal ministry. The Book of Mormon is Another Testament of Jesus Christ, and is a second witness of his divinty. Each is used for the insight they provide to better understand the life and teachings of the Master.
(Consider the Book of Mormon the "Open Source" to many of the Bible's teachings...)
Back to the censorship issue.... I don't believe censorship should be used to prohibit access to information of any sort, however, it is our duty as parents to protect our children and teach them so they will have the proper resources to decide for themselves what they want/don't want to view... much like a hen will protect her chicks until they can fend for themselves.
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
Lets rephrase that quote from:
...and the omnipotence is answered. It's not that God isn't powerful enough, (because he truly is powerful enough), but that you simply wouldn't want to be there as an unclean individual.
(god) can't let sinful people into his presence.
to:
as a sinful person, you wouldn't want to be in God's presence.
From your challenge, it appears as though you have no respect for God. His mercy and grace (through Jesus Christ) are even enough to cover your pompus attitude...
I want to compliment you on getting one (1) thing right... God Does Want Us To Suffer! We are here to experience opposition in ALL things: pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, success, failure, etc. by experiencing these things we learn how to be more divine ourselves...
I'll try to relate that in other words: How can you create a perfect software package w/out first failing at sometime or another?
You must work for Microsoft.
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
I'm sorry to hear Arizona has become "redneck" country... ignorant to people of ethnic and religious backgrounds other than your own.
Personally, here in Southern California, I don't see or experience the same racial/religious intolerance you are describing. We have an extreme ethnic and religious diversity throughout each community. The consulting engineering firm I work for is minority owned and run. I (white and christian) am a minority here... and I like that.
Someday, when you grow up, get out and see the world around you, you'll find that ethnic and religious differences bring a 'spice' into life. Each person brings talents and perspectives which become inspirational and essential to the growth of the company and each of us here as individuals.
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
the bumpersticker that my friends got after they were busted in utah says it all...eat, drink, and be merry for tommorrow we may be in utah. make that the mormon 'republic' of utah even. orwell was right.
use Signature::Witty;
It's silly to argue about this stuff, the Bible and religion in general are such important parts of America that they were given protection by the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights, not the second, not the 10th, but the first. Religion is more important than privacy in that respect.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
The school would no longer be babysitting them and it gives the parents the information they need if they want to restrict their children. I've always felt that if your kids are viewing porn and you don't want them to for some ethical reason then you need to explain that to them and make them understand that, blocking it out just makes it more interesting makes them more curious.
I'm only suggesting this for use in schools. Kids can still go out and look at whatever they want, they just have to know that their parents might find out about it. I don't think it's using fear because most kids won't have anything to fear, it would just be those few who have the wacko parents but it's those parents who are trying to get the surfwatch censorware installed in the first place.
Also I don't think school is the place for children to circumvent their parents. Kids will naturally test limits and rebel, that is part of growing up, but the worst thing a school can do is to choose the child's side and help them rebel against their parents, especially in matters like this which often cause spiritual and ethical lines.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
We should still try to make it perfect but it never is.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
I agree that it's not perfect and it won't please everybody but it doesn't lock up information and it leaves the disciplinary aspect of it to the parents. If the parents don't care then the kid isn't prevented from accessing anything, if the parents do care then compliance is monitored. It's the smae thing that goes on with sex ed classes, kids take a note home and their parents sign it or not. (I think they have backwards notes now where the parents have to sign it to get the kid out of the class)
I'm just trying to come up with something better. It's terrible to censor and it's criminal to let kids go out and view pornography (for good reasons) there has to be some sort of middle ground and it all hinges upon the parents taking responsibility for their children.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Naturally, when your 16 year old daughter is visiting lot's of sites about birth control you're going to want to have a sit-down with her. The thing is, you should have that talk with her anyways.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
I attended East High School which is in the Salt Lake City School district and have had experiences which pretty much summs puts most of those individuals in charge of UEN to be completely biased against anyone getting freedom. I inquired one indivudual who worked for the district as a network admin. I asked about this particular case that apparently has found new ground. He said that supposedly they keep log files up to 100Gb in size and that they just in the article didn't do it intentionally. This is just complete crap. As for how they treat people just look at their web page for yourself EHS and see for yourself about the way they run things. Pretty much what they do at all schools happens there except that they are the best of the bunch. They have the most highly developed sence of fairness. Most of the webpages they have there are completely useless. They almost never update them on a regular basis. Students cannot get a page with out practally having to sign a statement in blood about what they will do with it and then it cannot have any outside content without getting the school in dutch. All my statements are true and factual in regard to their policies. They just don't want to have any problem at all with the slightest thing. They ran through sever content filtering services including Bess. The filtering got so blatant that they filtered all free web page providers including geocities, tripod, etc.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Censorship in public schools is nothing new. My own public high school offers the internet to those students (and teachers) willing to sign an elaborate 3 paged form which basically takes away any and all rights. You can't visit political sights (including federal sights, and slashdot), e-mail political activists....the list goes on and on and on. You are required to give them a list of all the sights you visit, and let them read your e-mail and any programs or files you might use. Unsurprisingly, however, everyone I know has signed their rights away without so much as blinking. Mandatory education is teaches more than ABCs...it teaches obedience.
jalen
I'm not sure why the U.S. Constitution was considered offensive.
But the Declaration of Independence is a "subversive document". It advocates revolution, don'tcha know.
The U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's office actually prohibited copies of the Declaration of Independence from being distributed on one Army base about eight or nine years ago. The reason given was that it is a "subversive document." Source: Army Times (I forget the exact date)
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
When this kind of censorship becomes as easy as one librarian setting up a standard preference file for all of the software, we are entering dangerous waters.
Where do we draw the line? Should our kids be able to access provocative materials? Such as Kant, or Marx, or philosophy that is unpopular in our society? What about Free Software, after all, the educational system is getting a very big discount from Microsoft and Apple. It might offend them if we let these kids fill up the browser's cache with info on their competitors.
Yes, this is a bit ridiculous, but when we begin to censor material that a controlling minority chooses, what happens to all dissenting viewpoints? Is it even acceptable to censor material that the majority of people find distasteful?
I don't have the answers, but it disturbs me to see such widespread censorship there, of areas that are essential to being a U.S. citizen.
Any comments, Ideas, Feelings?
K
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is not shared." -St. Augustine
Please note that this does not apply to most state universities in Utah. The SUU library doesn't filter any access to the Internet (but the Univ. administration has been on my back about that lately).
But in cases involving young children (and even not so young children) lack of anonymity, guilt and shame are precisely what keep people from seeking professional help. I think in general the hope is that internet resources (like public service announcements and all those brochures you see at doctors offices) will give people enough information and culture enough confidence for them to seek out more professional resources.
You'll all be pleased to know that Smartfilter also automatically locks out Censorware.org for the reasons of:
sex drugs extreme hatespeech crime worthless sales gambling personal jobs sports games humour
alternate entertainment lifestyle opinion
Hmmm... not holding a grudge are they?
The one thing we have noticed is it only takes 8 or 9 attempts to download the new filter everytime they post an update. And then three weeks to re-unlock the sites that we need on a daily basis
(It has regularly locked out our Corporate home page for the reasons of SEX... much to the annoyance of the VP's.)
And we won't even address the weasels in their Tech (un)support dept...
*A)bort, R)etry, I)nfluence with large hammer.*
Of course, it's not that simple. The actual impact of the first ammendment extends beyond restricting Congress; various court cases dating back to the 19th century have held that the Bill of Rights applies not only to the U.S. congress but also to various state and local governments and to other bodies that receive funding from the government (e.g. universities, schools, and libraries). And, of course, if you are interested in keeping your common carrier status (as most telephone companies are, for instance) then you can't excercise any editorial control other than removing illegal material that you know exists on your system.
Large ISPs ought to be granted common carrier status; that would prevent a lot of these legal squabbles. Small ones might have problems putting together the resources needed to be a true common carrier (e.g. carrying a full Usenet feed, ugh).
--Sumnerrage, rage against the dying of the light
ummm
#include what?
[iain@tigermilk iain]$ gcc perfect.c perfect.c:1: `#include' expects "FILENAME" or
looks like gcc don't like it, doesn't even get past the preprocessor.
Personally, I would have the monitors be facing in such a way so that a number of people would be able to see what someone was looking at, so hopefully the shame factor would prevent library resources being used for less-than erudite purposes.
Wonderful solution. There go the support sites for everything from sexual abuse to herpes.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
'and when they run across the 1883123 legal highs'
Is that number acurate jewl? =)
Here's a pardox for you! Schools will censor things like religious elements of Christmas programs, and prayer in schools. But jails and prisons will allow ministers to come in and basically have church, preaching, distributing Bibles, the works. That's a captive audience if I've ever heard of one! It doesn't seem make sense that these elements would be stripped from the schools and welcomed into the prisons. I support welcoming them in both arenas rather than excluding them from both.
I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes we miss the forest for the trees. We forget what goal it is that we're trying to accomplish. And we confuse the means for the end. We start with the desire to train children in a healthy environment,
and before everything is said and done, we're censoring the U.S. Constitution and the Bible. That may be accidental--the SmartFilter may simply not have been as smart as someone thought it was--but the fervor for this kind of artificial control is what drove something like that to be installed. I agree with Joshua (jerodd) on this point. The V-chips and SmartFilters are artificial. Parenting is where it's at. I'm afraid the problem is to complex to solve it by simply saying, "Parents...DO BETTER!" What is the root of this problem? Are there solutions more effective than V-chips and SmartFilters?
Respectfully,
There's no place anywhere near this place that's anything like this place, so this must be the place.
There's no place anywhere near this place that's anything like this place, so this must be the place.
I agree censorware is the problem, although not in the way you mean. I mean censorware in the generic sense of software filtering.
Any automated system will always be fatally flawed notwithstanding any attempt to separate sex and art. Even human beings can not do so; witness the homoerotic photographs by Robert Maplethorpe, which virtually all photographers would call art, but which you might reasonably not. An automated system can never come close to even this level of cognition. The state of the art at this time is some limited language parsers and extremely limited image recognition. Until computers are far more intelligent than us, an automated system will always have many false positives and false negatives.
No human system can be close to complete. Unless you have a "human proxy" (a person checking each page in real time before the recipient views it), or an accepted list instead of a banned list you cannot come close to blocking objectionable material with a human system.
Furthermore I know I don't want my kids going to some teacher's class who that morning looked up his latest kiddie porn on the net. I've seen the logs, believe me there are teachers out there doing this First of all, the fact that you know this almost certainly constitutes a criminal invasion of privacy. Even the organization you hate did not have access to the identities of the accessors. Secondly, a teacher can view a kiddie porn magazine in the bathroom, should you install cameras in there to monitor this (manned by perfect image recognition software of course).
The only solution is to ban Internet access altogether or station a censor at every monitor. As I have pointed out all censorware is fundamentally flawed for the technical reasons stated above.
I don't care what anyone says but pornography is addictive. Until you turn 18, you shouldn't be able to access it, because it will mess you up, just look at Ted Bundy who attributed some of his problems to porn. You would put the statements of a serial killer above the freedoms of a child? I think that speaks for itself. I hope that you didn't try to for this information on Yahoo since the serial killers section was blocked.
This report was truly well researched and eye opening. As a fairly
liberal person and a college student, I have always been opposed to
censorship in any form. Censorship of the Internet seems to me to be
the most insidious form of censorship possible since it limits the
absolutely magical thing about the Internet, free flow of ideas without
national borders or monetary exchange.
I believe that your report will go a long way to reassure zealots that
students in school are extremely restrained, even inhibited. Anyone who
thinks about the matter for more than a few moments must realize that
this would be the case, no student wants to be caught with sallacious
materials on their screen.
Truly the Internet has a great deal of lousy content and even some
criminal content, but the potential for unfettered information gathering
is unprecedented. I think that we should be far more worried about the
corporate influence on the internet and students' viewing of banner ads
than we should about the inadvertent or intentional viewing of
pornography.
Finally, should we force searches of backpacks for copies of The
Anarchist's Cookbook or Playboy? Should we monitor notes passed in
class for sexual content and innuendo? Or should we teach students
about beauty, science, knowledge, and community, and trust them to push
the back button when they stumble upon the slums of the Internet.
Thank you for bringing this issue to the forefront, a perfect example of
the immense positive potential of the Internet.
The ACLU can bitch and moan all they want, and nothing can be done about it; it is a commercial product, not government-funded nor -developed, and thus it is completely out of the realm of the ACLU since use is voluntary. Sure they can complain, or even sue, but, if the judge is impartial, they wouldn't get anywhere.
I was also pleasantly surprised to the articles posted on their webpage that detracted from their product; kind of unusual for a commercial vendor to do as such.
And as far as perfect filters, I'll have to agree with Lurking Grue; it would be nigh unto impossible to get the "perfect" filter... a flexible one is perhaps the best we can hope for, and it may actually be what we want.
Could you maybe elaborate on how the Bible is offensive? I am not disagreeing, or trying to point you elsewhere, I just think that maybe filters, when packaged and sold, might need definitions of offensive. Like, lewd (religion doesn't matter here in most cases), openly vouching violence against others (religion could matter), etc. Maybe, by elaborating the reasons sites are chosen would help illuminate what kind of filters work, and may even assist in individuals in picking one (for instance, you could have a Christian filter and a Muslim filter, to help shelter the kids).
Yeah, and of course we all know the Internet is THE place for medical advice and counseling, especially when we have free Health Clinics in most everyplace there is a library (i.e. - Department of Health). And of course the doctors there could possibly know how to treat disease, or counsel an abuse victim. Yes, anonymity is good, but relying on the internet in cases like this, where your health is on the line, is not practice common sense.
I know not where you live, Jaime, but here in the South, the word "mormon" is almost as bad as naming The Dark Prince... a lot of the Christian element here in the South do not view the Mormon church as a denomination of Christianity, but rather a perversion of it. I suppose that the private religious schools (which also happen to abound here) would want that site blocked. If this still doesn't make since, then perhaps an explanation of the differences need to made, but I will only do that if necessary.
That is what I thought you might say. I guess, to appease the paying customers, perhaps an option for sites pertaining to the major religions for filtering based on there beliefs might be effective, but overall it would be awfully cumbersome (not trying to squash the littles guys their :)
I feel perhaps my aim at sarcasm missed the mark, in fact, I think I hit the bystanders...
I was not trying to say that the library did not serve the people by providing both information and methods of entertainment; they do accomplish both of these. I was trying, perhaps too caustically, to point out that sole reliance on a library, and hence the internet, is neither wise nor prudent; it is a tool, and is what you make of it, as you eloquently showed to us. Your right... I just overstepped the bounds of what I was trying to point out... hmmm... guess that means I need to work on the sarcasm bit...
Whoops... sorry... wasn't trying to be inflammatory. I was merely trying to state the religious setting of my native region; the prior posts in no way reflect my personal religious beliefs (which I will keep out of this matter). Sorry I came across that way... Your right, though; to make ensure my posts are better worded.
Umm... appearently (to be nit-picky) you confuse the pilgrims with the Puritans. The pilgrim truely did exercise religious freedom (granted they were all Chrisitians). The Puritans, when they arrived in Massachusettes in the late 1620s - early 1630s, they forced everyone to conform with their brand of Christianity, they forced down peoples throats...
If you are going to slam someone, slam the right one...
I agree I think its pitiful that so many "clean sights" (what ever that means)are let on yet so many of the help full sights arent i was in high school not to long ago and are school had censor ship out the (place explative here)and many things such as the bible and other science related sights werent accesable.
panic chaos disorder, my work here is done
After having personally read (parts) of the Bible i fail to see any reason it should be censored. The examples provided above are not overly graphic not the type of thing that would have a negative effect on children. And I am curious about your definition of unscientific ideas.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
I actually think that the Roman Empire had become more "civilized" by that point and started crucifying, burning, and feeding people to lions by that point.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
actually new testament gentile converts (Christian) were not required to become Jewish (ie circumcised).
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
Exodus 22:29 just says to "give" your firstborn to God not to sacrifice. If you continue reading through the old testament it goes on to describe how first born children must be "redeemed" with an animal.
I would not exactly call circumcision mutilation (certainly no worse than tatoos and piercings people get today).
I also lean more on the side of Child Pornography and Hate literature as harmful to children but you are entitled to your opinion.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
[Tangent Topic Discussion but then where would /. be without them.]
....? because I am having trouble grasping the entire concept of omnipotence :) .
The following is the opinion of the author, and from what I have experienced many Christians.
God created the Universe, God created man in this Universe, man was created with a free will in the image of God, and man was created perfect.
From this I fail to see where we can blame God for pain and suffering. Man was created perfect, what more could we ask for. Somehow we (mankind) has managed to ruin this good deal. Again we ruined our own lives, and now in many cases we come crying back to God as if it was his fault. He then makes payment for the trouble we got ourselves into through his Son Jesus Christ. Then some of us refuse this free gift and again come down on God for his solution. We messed our lives up in the first place and I, personally am happy to accept his solution.
From this I can see no reason why God is somehow obligated to do things our way, IMO he should, and does know best.
My Faith in the above is based upon the Fact that I have seen in personal searching.
I would have more to say about the AC's comments about if God is omnipotent then why did he
Thanks for your posts, Puff and Tenareth. (You too of course AC, and thanks for the interesting questions a welcome break from Engineering Finals)
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
To avoid repetition I agree with Puff.
:)
On the issues mentioned by Analog, I believe that the "truth" of something does not depend on what anyone believes therefore you could go find two people who believe opposite things (one Flat Earth believer, one Round Earth believer) and despite what ever either person believes and how much faith they put in their view there is a "true" view.
extreme sarcasm to be taken in following comment.
I am not right about everything, just closer than everyone else
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
Looks like your company firewall is using Smartfilter. Of course, censorware.org is banned under "Criminal Skills". Try the sltrib.com site, they posted a copy of the report there.
I have to disagree with you... You can't make a ruling on the items your child will see or avoid seeing from the underlying parent-child relationship. That's why those programs don't work, because you can't have a one-size-fits-all approach.
:-)
:-). From then on they didn't have to worry about what I was doing, I came up to them with questions before doing stupid stuff. And I think that's extremely positive for the parent-child relationship.
My mother was a psychologist. I grew up around books. Every wall of every hallway in my childhood home was full of books of all types (psychologists read pretty creepy stuff)
As a young kid, there was so much to read, I didn't even care about the nasty stuff (there was always something else around that was equally interesting). By having my parents participate in my personal reading by suggesting really good, interesting books and discussing them afterwards I learned to pick my reading carefully. Very soon I was reading anything that I could get my hands on. Never even cared about the dirty stuff.
When I turned 13 I was "given free range" to any book in the house (not that they ever actually stopped me from grabbing a book, but I was actually told I could now). There was *a lot* of psychology stuff, WW II stuff detailing the horrible Nazi period and their psychological aftermath, and other miscellaneous books my mom used as case studies, most of them with content decidedly not for children or even teenagers.
Of course I started by reading pretty heavy stuff, but then that got boring and came back to the stuff I was really interested in (and kept just a couple of "ugly" topics I was interested in, which I dropped after a couple of years). I read a lot of really nasty stuff, but by then my general culture was enough that it didn't disturb me. And I always had somebody to talk about it.
I guess my point is, it depends on the parent and on the child. I realize most parents wouldn't get that involved, and I guess they are the kind who would buy those filters anyway.
But if you care about your kids, you'll encourage them to go to good pages, keep them entertained with cool stuff, and if they demonstrate they're a little ahead of their age on this or that topic, don't stop them from investigating things, but always stress the "use your brain" side of web browsing. There's a lot of good material out there. Problem is - it takes work. But look at it this way: You'll actually have a meaningful relationship with your child, and that will positively influence his/her entire life. And who doesn't want that for their kids?
I am married, and planning on having children soon. I intend to put the kids' computer either next to mine, or in the family room, and I intend to try to be around when my kid browses the first few years and from then on play it by ear, depending on how mature he/she turns out to be about it. Not very different than the way I was educated, I guess.
I don't really have a solution for libraries and public places. But I do know it takes adult involvement, but not censure.
But look at it this way, by starting early, my parents were able to "release me from the leash" at 13 (your mileage may vary)
- No Sig Today
Look at it this way. If you were a school principal and you DIDN'T run filtering software, what would you do when a lawsuit lands on your desk courtesy of a parent claiming their child accessed 'harmful' content through your school's computers?
It's a business decision. Even if the risk of losing such a lawsuit is small, the cost of losing would be so enormous that it offsets the reward.
I don't pretend to like any part of that situation, but I don't think I could take such a risk, especially somewhere like Utah.
Graham
In most cases, circumcision is much, much worse than any piercing or tatoo: It is not performed on consenting adults, but on defenseless children.
Yes, I KNOW some circumcision are performed on more mature people, but many are performed on children. BTW, the judaeo-christian sects aren't the worst in this regard--many African muslim sects are far worse.
-Kvan.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
It simply is not feasible to restrict access in any other way than to have a trusted person, such as a parent or a teacher, evaluate every single item.
-Kvan.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
For one example, abused children seeking counseling or information on the net. I know, they could just see their school counselor, but maybe they don't have that much faith in the system (and some of them may have reason not to).
And that's just one example. In final analysis, however, kids are simply much smarter than most parents give them credit for. The best you can do for them is give them access to all information and let them make their own decisions. Without fear that their parents might find out if the decision was something they didn't want to share.
-Kvan.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
Yeah my page caused a bit of a stir in my schools "executive" body (yes they call themselves that) and they had parts specifically banned, i dunno why. Every school in aust has to have censorship software running to filter out any page with words such as bomb, gun etc, effectively rendering the schools net access useless for research. Oh well hmmm
Just because you feel the Bible is offensive, and you think that nobody reads the Declaration of Independence, doesn't mean they should be censored. They're both very important parts of America's history, and should be able to be read by anyone.
Speak of Utah, someone will speak of "Mormons"
It's inevitable my friends, inevitable.