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Passing Porn, Banning the Bible
Please read this press release from The Censorware Project. Their target today is Bess, a new piece of protect-the kiddies software from N2H2 that seems to be even more defective than some of its competitors. Look at the list of sites Bess bans (it's in the Censorware Project press release), and at some of the ones it allows to pass. Then laugh. I did, but sadly, because many U.S. legislators want this kind of software installed in all public schools and libraries. I could go on and on here, but why bother? Read the Censorware Project press release for yourself. It may lead you to a few porno sites, but at least they're ones that have passed Bess's scrutiny, and that's all that counts, right?
I couldn't work in a company that would block deja.com, or anyway I'd certainly lose a lot of time searching for technical problems while the answers are certainly in the news already.
Dejanews saved me numerous times !
Dejanews is a fount of knowledge and it would be an enormous error to block it, even if you can also waste time reading alt.sex.whatever...
Wow. No dejanews? That's got to suck. I've found dejanews to be one of the most usefull sources of computer related information available on the net. I use it to look up obscure UNIX error messages or problems all the time, and I can find what I am looking for probably 3 out of 5 times, which I think is pretty good. If they banned that where I work, I'd have a fit.
Shawn Asmussen
How can you get porn blocked from public labs where all screens are viewable to everyone?
Politely inform the person in question that (s)he is disturbing people who are trying to get their work done, and politely ask him/her to view the porn in a more private setting.
Politely inform the lab admin that the person in question is distracting you.
Find another computer/terminal where you can work uninterrupted.
Censorship is morally reprehensible. There is no excuse for it. But people should be considerate of others.
The problem is not so much violence which has, after all, been around as long as the human race (if not longer -- some animals are pretty violent).
The problem is the increasing need for instant gratification, without thinking about the consequences, whatever they might be. Kids learn "I want that -- gimme that!" at a very young age, and that mentality leads to more social problems than exposure to the Seven Dirty Words or to nudie pix ever will.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Censorship is something that works porely. On the other hand one thing that I have seen that works quite well is the the installation of an authentification proxy and a web page that lists where people have been on the internet. The general effect is that no one's web visits are anonymous, and it is up to you decide whether you want everyone to know that you have been visiting xxx.com.
Okay, this has its disadantages too, but I tend to prefer it to a dodgy piece of censorship software that does not adapt to the culture.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Censorship is something that works badly. On the other hand one thing that I have seen that works quite well is the the installation of an authentification proxy and a web page that lists where people have been on the internet. The general effect is that no one's web visits are anonymous, and it is up to you decide whether you want everyone to know that you have been visiting xxx.com.
Okay, this has its disadantages too, but I tend to prefer it to a dodgy piece of censorship software that does not adapt to the culture.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Your point hits too many people right in the innards, and brings them to think about the dangers of bringing something like right to public speach to a dangerous level. I actually want to buy this software for the purpose you suggest. I've been looking for a filtering system for linux for a while just like this.
~
Smoking indoors here in CA, USA is illegal. Why should we go spending millions to stamp out air polution everywhere *and* protect someones right to poison everyone else in the room?
Are we advocating that we ban filtering software? What kind of setting would that actualy be justified? The 6:00 news leaves us with a feeling of being up to date on the world yet, we have just watched a whole program of *only what they wanted us to see*. Thats not a conspiracy allusion, that is corporate decision.
Should my computers be impounded becuase I put this software in my home? Should I be slapped with a fine becuase I put this software in my company? How about my internet caffe or library?
ISP's libraries, etc... are providing a service. Would you demand regulation of those services so some junkie can not miss the latest mpg of the week?
Censorship this isn't. Cesorship is shutting up the person speaking. This is just choosing not to listen to them or taking responsibility for what they say in my school, work, or home.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^
If you wanted to understand what makes other countries laugh at the United States, you have got to see this article.
KJV Bible thumping literalists are offended by the Jefferson Bible because all the fairy tale stuff that they believe in was removed by Jefferson leaving only a story portraying Jesus as a person who wanted others to be good to each other.
/ wkn_table.cgi?People/Jefferson
/ wkn_table.cgi?Religion/Christianity/Bible/ Condensed/OT/Genesis/Three%20Tales
Here's some writings of Jefferson:
http://www.dma.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/dmahurin/wkn
In actuallity, the regular Christian Bible has much more to be censored. Rape, incest, child sacrifice, ethnic cleansing in the name of the mountain god...
Here's a fairly complete common mans version of Genesis. You'll be surprised what it says...
http://www.dma.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/dmahurin/wkn
Now, I don't have kids atm, but I know I wouldn't want these people making moral judgements for my children. I remember in my highschool, we were not allowed to read certain books in English class. That really pissed me off. But if you complain, you are marked as a trouble maker. That only leaves pulling your children out of that school, and many people don't have that option.
I was sent to a very, very small High School operated by Benedictine monks. We could read any books we wanted. Senior year (as class assignments) we read "The Handmaids Tale", "The Last Picture Show", "Native Son" and other books you would never, ever see in a public high school. We were proud that the faculty believed us mature enough to handle these novels.
When students are treated as adults, they tend to act as such. By using filtering software, you are telling the students they are not mature enough to be trusted. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
this is a good idea. i wish more people would think this way!
>Certainly not
all bible thumpers are like this,
Glad to hear you make this admission. Unfortuneately, there are some Christians who go around doing these things, giving the rest of us a bad image.
I think I'd have better odds of learning something useful from porn.
Why don't you try WATCHING it? You might LEARN something...
1- Any program that recives federal funding is considerd to be at least partially at federal program, and therefore cannot violate federal laws, or the constitution. This is why universities in the US (such as Bob Jones) that desire to discriminate based on race recieve no federal funds whatsoever (not even in scholarships).
2- There is a legal idea in the United States known as incorporation. It states that because the 14th amendment (passed in order to require southern states to give newly freed slaves rights) prohibits states from taking away 'life, liberty or property without due process of law,' that they cannot violate 'fundamental' rights (such as the 1st amendment. Most of the rights in the Bill of Rights have been incorporated, and are therefore binding on the states.
3- Most state constituions contain provisions extremely similar to those in the Bill of Rights.
Romen
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
Sun Tzu, are you the same ST whose captain of Team /. at starshiptraders? I'm asking here because I can't get through to your home page. Anyway, email me.
cheers,
-matt
I wonder how much they pay the people who look at sites and determine if they are pornographic or not? Where else can you get a job at involves looking at naked women all day and you can tell people that you save children for a living?
The problem is much larger than if your filtering soft is busted or not. You got to rethink this whole idea why you are censoring the net:
In my experience it's quite rare to land on a porn page by mistake, people landing on porn pages at the very least has clicked on a porn banner.
that leads us to:
The "law" that schools use, at least in the State of Ohio, is called in local parentice. It basically states that when students are in school, whether they are 18 and above or not, the school system has the right to act as each student's "parent" in order to maintain a semblance of order in schools.
Personally, I think that this is good for a school to have and use, especially where there are so many students that a high school full of students spouting off about First Amendment infractions against them would grind a school to a halt. OTOH, it can also allow schools to employ severely draconian measures in a school and turn it into a "military" facility.
It just takes a good balance of both on the part of the administration to keep everything running.
Brian T Glenn
delink.net Internet Services
An ISP that exercises editorial control. How brave.
Once the Prodigy case was decided, I didn't think I'd see this again.
I used to work for an ISP (Though it shames me), we used N2H2 for filtering. It actually runs on Linux, possibly with a modified Linux kernel...do they publish source??? let's not be too critical of them, seeing as the've used linux for a while, and despite the fact that net filtering is a joke, albeit a real one, they are using linux...not to advocate using free and open software for censorship...it's a bit ironic...I didn't see where anyone noticed this, thought you might like to know.
Are you writing from a school with Internet access or another place? I *do* think 'net access is suited for places such as libraries and public places (such as the one you were in). I just question whether there is a *need* for it in schools. I'm sure a great education just takes great teachers and good parents, not an hour a day on the net. Yes, there is a multitude of information on the 'net, but like a double-edged sword, there is also false information. I'm just reiterating back to blocking sites: do the best things about the Internet outweigh the negative things in terms of accessing it from a school?
. We have recieved very few complaints even though there are loopholes
who would complain? the clueless parants who obviously have no desire to look for porn, or the kids who really want porn and get it? my guess would be none.
I'm assuimg that this is an "opt in" type of thing. also, how *does* it work anyway? does it just filter port 80? or do the parents setup the proxy server or what?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Um, the US Supreme Court has given its opinion on this matter quite a while ago. You are not a full citizen, protected by the Constitution until you are an adult. It sucks but that's the way it is. It is why administrators and police can search lockers at school and bust a student if they find dope. The 4th Amendment doesn't apply to them. Same goes for censoring content of school newspapers. One the hundreds of reasons while school sucks until college.
-d
I've got two words for you: configure junkbuster.
Mostly, I like the ability to get rid of ad banners (which is what it was designed for) and filter cookies. But you can configure it to deny specific sites and censor pages by keywords, and that is a good start.
I guess the more annoying step is to make sure that the user can't kill the proxy, or run the proxy on some other machine and allow no other access to the web...
Not that I'm in favor of censorware, but I also am not in favor of ads, or poorly written software...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Secondly, there is an idea buried here. Perhaps the parent feeds the browser (or router) a list of approved sites and/or site domains. The parent can then add sites as needed or wanted (as kiddo whines, "Can I link to megasportssite.com?").
If software were instrumented this way, you could also create a small industry of selling site lists. I could then subscribe to a site list, and they would send me a list of approved sites every month that I could "install" as part of my master list. Depending on my parental style, I could get my list from anybody from "Toys R Us" to Billy Graham (or even multiples--any site on any list can be accessed).
This would cause a very restricted browsing experience, but the restrictions could be dropped by parental control.
This doesn't help on accessing the Web from places other than home, but I'm not sure anything shy of "1984" would.
--The basis of all love is respect
You joke, but some censors have seriously accused us of shilling for the porn industry. We've got a really sarcastic and informative response to that, which you could read in our Admin section if it weren't totally slashdotted at the moment. Oh well.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
My understanding is that students in school do not enjoy the same degree of Constitutional protection that adults do. Minors (under 18) simply do not have the same rights as adults. They don't have the same responsiblities, either. (I am not saying I agree or disagree with this.)
While the Supreme Court stated in one opinion that Constitutional rights do not end at the schoolhouse gate (sorry, I forget the case), they also have held that the need to maintain order in the school will often override a student's freedom of expression. This is the basic justification for dress codes and prohibited clothing such as Nazi armbands, gang colors, etc.
The whole issue of Constitutionally-protected speech gets a lot more complicated when dealing with minor students. It's a fascinating area, but get ready to be shocked and angered every once in a while if you decide to research it.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Filtering software is just a joke. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Move all the porn to .adu domains. That'll allow "responsible" adults to make their own decisions about how they want to spend their time at home, and parents can easily monitor what their kids are looking at.
Ideally, this would be done by self regulation, not by some broad-sweeping, ignorant government legislation. I honestly can't see any weaknesses to this approach, but I'd like to know what everyone else thinks.
A college that can afford a decent computer network can probably afford some tech support type people. Especially if they are students which they can pay peanuts. Just tell the tech support kid to toss anyone using the labs for non-academic work.
... but maybe I'm simply stupid.
Why do we have to have a filtering proxy anyway? First off, it isn't as "secure" as it should be. Sencondly, if you tell someone, (s)he mustn't do something, (s)he will get interested in, why not and will try to find out.
Instead of relying on a piece of crabby software you should talk to your child why (s)he shouldn't go visiting pornsites and if you explain real good (s)he will understand and leave it be.
Besides, I really don't think nudity is a bad thing. Instead of hypocritically denying the existence of nudity, try something else: sex enlightenment. A (possible) side-kick will be that your child will know enough to not getting (someone else) pregnant.
So maybe we need something like Open Directory but just for kids, or rather only pertaining to limited sensibilities. A list of sites that are good instead of rules for sites that are bad. Sure, it would still limit the horizons of kids, but something open and dynamic like that would certainly be more fulfilling than just slashdot and freshmeat (no offense CmdrTaco and Scoop!)
I find religious bigotry extremely offensive. I find racism extremely offensive. I find Microsoft extremely offensive.
However, when I'm at the public library, I do not expect to be protected from looking up and seeing someone viewing bigotted, racist, or even Microsoft web sites.
Do we censor pornography while Pat Robertson, Aryan Nation, and Bill Gates get protection for their public speech because we are worried about the effects that seeing and hearing "bad" things has on our children or because we, as a society, are just really uptight about sex?
Or do we block those other "bad" things at our public libraries, too? And where does that end?
You know, maybe if we weren't such a sexually frustrated society we wouldn't need all that pornography anyway. Just a thought.
Firstly, my objection to spam is that it is a waste of my time and computing resources. My objection to unsolicited proseletysing is similar - it is a waste of my time and a waste of the mental effort required to try to argue coherently with people who have been trained in advertising strategies that would make the Saatchis jealous. The fact is that I was raised a Christain and deliberately stopped attending church, because I feel the whole basis for the organised religion is mistaken - you cannot argue that I do not know the 'truth' - I know it and have decided against it, so proseletysing me is a waste of everyone's time.
You say these Christians are acting out of charity. I don't believe you. The churches here (and I'm not an Amercian - YMMV) that go in for this style of 'missionary work' tend to be the ones that teach that personal salvation depends on spreading the word to others. Many of these 'missionaries' seem to me to be acting out of fear, and a great deal of 'Chrisitian' thought seems to be motivated similarly. The Jehovah's Witnesses seem to organise their whole church as a kind of giant religious pyramid scheme.
I guess I'm hosed. I grew up with my dad's shotgun in the closet and his Playboys in the bathroom. I've played Quake and watched the season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! I guess I'm going to snap and become a psychopathic homicidal rapist any second now....
.adult / .xxx TLD, many 'honest' porn site operators are forced to pedal their wares (not warez) in the .com namespace. I'm sure that if a .xxx TLD were commissioned, many sites would happily convert over. Blocking .xxx from schools/libraries, etc would be much easier than going through every page on the planet. No, it wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it would make life easier and reduce the need for such draconian censorware.
.com, you'd better own the trademark (thus getting us out of "I had floorg.com first, but Floorg Inc wants to take it from me!) .art for movies / entertainment, .home for personal pages...No commerce allowed. .net stays around for ISPs/network services. .oss for Open Source projects. (We the geeks demand our own TLD), .ref for scientific / reference materials. The Library of Congress, Project Gutenburg, etc. With a combination of checking credentials on registration and an organization for reviewing complaints ("recommending" that you move your domain name to a new TLD, or simply suspending it if you've been warned before)
Or not. Seriously, what would you rather have? Junior's eyes bugging out on www..com or out scoring crack? I mean, for the most part, it's something he's going to see anyways at some point in his life. Even the most zealous guardians of moral righteousness have to breed sometime.
Of course, our current domain name system is partially to blame for this. Without a
Moving forward, we need to look at enforcing the distinction between TLDs. If you want blah.org, you should be a registered non-profit organization. If you want
Now, if all the money put into developing / purchasing censorware was put into fixing our fsck'd up Domain Name Registration, we'd be in a lot better position.
Just my 2 fractional monetary units.
Such a system already exists and is supported by IE (versions 3.0 onwards) and Netscape (4 onwards). It's called RASCi - http://www.rasc.org/
It helps if many sites register for the scheme and if people know how to use it. In Netscape you have to go to Help menu to set it up!
--
he said it was a service, meaning that people can chose to turn it on. no one can sue someone for somthing they requested....
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Such a system already exists and is supported by IE (versions 3.0 onwards) and Netscape (4 onwards). It's called RASCi - http://www.rasc.org/
It helps if many sites register for the scheme and if people know how to use it. In Netscape you have to go to Help menu to set it up (it's under NetWatch)! IE's setup is in a more logical location (with the other preferences).
--
is is just me, or is every site blocking software full of holes? gotta love swiss cheese security.
woohoo, first post!
You joke, but some censors have seriously accused us of shilling for the porn industry. We've got a really sarcastic and informative response to that, which you could read in our Admin section
:)
I read your admin section, and I must say I agree with you about HTML editors *DOWN WITH HTML EDITORS* RETURN THE WEB TO THOSE WITH A BRAIN!!
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This list is far from complete.
Um deja.com and deja.com/=dnc are exactly the same, from what i can tell...
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Had it at the high school I just graduated at. It was an unquestionalbe load of garbage. Some form of transparent proxy and it appended to any HTML file you loaded.
What I enjoyed was discussing the legal issues of this software with my friends. After all, my homepage isn't "Powered by N2H2" as it says when loaded. This neat little banner is added to every page. So tell me, can they legally DO that? Modifiy the look of MY webpage?
It was quite a fun topic, the administrators at the school library HATED the thing, they just had to install it, orders from above.
Censorship has no place in a free society. Information access does not lead to crime, nor to hairy palms. The source point of problems in minors is the home. It begins with lack of parental involvement.
Then it is compounded when they get to school, and become the subjects of more noble experiments in teaching methods given in rooms in which discipline is almost impossible to achieve.
Blocking access to nudity while allowing access to pictures of mayhem, war, and other atrocities is truly insane.
If blocking is to be allowed, then I think we should make certain that the technology is developed to the point where discrimination can be against proselytizing rather than information.
I have no objection to children having unrestricted access to information, but I do object to their having unsupervised access to pitchmen, whether the pitch is religion, war, drugs, or sex.
Unfortunately, as difficult as it appears to be for the blocking software to get it right based on content, it will be even more impossible if based on intent.
Meanwhile, let freedom ring: open access for all.
--- Bill
Actually I work for an ISP that uses Bess for it's filtering service. We have recieved very few complaints even though there are loopholes. Luckily I am not in charge of the decision making for filtering so I don't really have to worry about it. If anyone can suggest anything better for a filter (besides having the kids parents looking over there shoulder) lemme know. I may bring it up in the next staff meeting :)
The problem is much larger than if your filtering soft is busted or not. You got to rethink this whole idea why you are censoring the net:
In my experience it's quite rare to land on a porn page by mistake, people landing on porn pages at the very least has clicked on a porn banner.
that leads us to: why is your kid trying see the naked ladies? And if you don't approve - what about sitting down and tell your kid why?
A young aspiring hacker loves nothing more than a challenge - is it so hard to see hat the solution to this problem never can be coded into some proxy ?
Civil rights kick ass :D
:D
One of my teachers (Ms. S) at Stuyvesant High School in NY would let people sign their own absence notes if they were 18+.
OTOH, we can cut classes all we want in college anyway
Fantastic post, but one thing. Monitary handouts from the government do not help. That promotes lazy, greedy parents who depend on a force (gov't) which exists only to take from those who produce.
Remember, the government does not produce ANY wealth. They can only tax it from the citizens. Printing cash does not produce money.
Corndog
OK, let's see. My fictitious school has
FACILITIES:
10 classrooms, at $300 per month each
(financing + operating costs + utilities)
1 cafeteria with kitchen, at $1000 per month
lunch for 14 staff at $5 per day ($2135 per
month)
School supplies (including books), guessing
about $500 per month per classroom (book
costs are amortized over their lifetime)
STAFF:
10 teachers, at $3750 per month each
(this is MUCH more than teachers make now)
1 principal, at $4583 per month
1 secretary, at $2083 per month
1 nurse, at $4583 per month
1 gourmet chef, at $2500 per month
SUB-TOTAL BUDGET:
$57884 per month
WHAT TO CHARGE TO BREAK EVEN:
at 20 students per classroom: $289 per month
( $3468 per year )
at 25 students per classroom: $232 per month
( $2784 per year )
at 30 students per classroom: $193 per month
( $2316 per year )
at 35 students per classroom: $165 per month
( $1980 per year )
Of course you might want to bump it up 40%
for insurance, attorneys, the unexpected, and
profit. But that still gives you 20 students
per classroom at $405, or 35 at $231. And
some companies might be able to get by with a
20% markup instead of 40%.
Note that I am not including the price of the
kids' lunches. They have to eat whether they
go to school or not. I assume it costs the same.
I am also not including taxes.
I also forgot to include a school library. I
think an extra 10% would cover a library, a
librarian, and buying so many books per year.
There are startup costs that are not included.
When you start out you have to buy about 10,000
library books and about 7 textbooks for each
kid. Still, though, if a school makes a small
profit, it can apply that toward financing and
get a loan for these startup costs.
All of these are probably covered by the 40%.
Where do you get 16K per year?
-- An Ayn-onymous Coward
I don't know why but it seems that Highschools have really terrible techs, our school even had a TEK club witch was basicaly slave labor for running there shitty mac network (beacuse they knew kids knew how to use computers.
we even had a terrible "multiuser" system that ate files...
but at least there was no filtering software. I went to ames highschool
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Of course, they just made some adolescent dork really happy by listing a whole screenfull of porn sites that weren't banned....I wonder if they get paid for product placement.
So what you're saying is that context _matters_.
Which is what everyone here is saying isn't happening. Sites that are informative being blocked is what the fight is about.
There is a perfect blocker. It's called a parent.
jeff
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds.
The pessimist fears it is true.
--Robert Oppenheimer
but I've never heard porn drive people to go door-to-door and irritate people,
It's called SPAM, and the porno "industry" sure does produce *a lot*
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
As of 16:19EST (give or take) this site is completely slashdotted.
Should we be warning people that their sites are about to be completely swamped???
Werd.
I'm sure most of us are laughing along with the folks at the Censorware site, at the lame attempts by various software houses to "protect the children." But I'll be cynical here: I don't expect that it will make much difference until big media houses latch onto the inherent problems with censorware. And even then, I'm suspicious that the "well, nothing's perfect" attitude will still lead to fairly widespread use (think it can't happen? Lemme tell you a story about an OS developed in Redmond ...). It looks like part of a slow erosion.
But don't let the cynic in ya keep you down. I suppose that folks interested in this issue should develop an anti-censorware HOWTO and take the message to the streets, Congress and (since I am well aware of my own country's flaws in this respect) to the House of Commons. But far be it from me to tell Americans what they ought to do ... at least until the takeover is complete... heh heh.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Please, Please please.
Shut up. this is not an apropriate thread for this drivle. MODIRATORS!!!
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If my employer restricted my ability to visit www.footfetish.com, it wouldn't really make a difference to me (although they wouldn't have to steam clean the carpet as often.) This is trivial. Now if they blocked slashdot, productivity here would go through the roof! Of course we'd all quit after a couple of weeks, but we'd be able to get a lot more work done in those 2 weeks. This only applies to the techies, but if you replace slashdot with ebay or investor.msn.com it would apply to the sales and marketing department as well. Why don't we see blocking software that filters out popular time wasting sites?
--Shoeboy
Actually your wrong, there is *far* more then enough food in the world to feed everyone. In fact the state of Iowa *alone* is capable of feeding everyone on the planet. Right now, food production capability is growing more than twice as fast as human population (more advanced techniques, genetics, etc). The problem is that some countries are run by corrupt power mongers, with out the constitutional and democratic safeties that protect us from the corrupt power mongers running *this* country (the US). so for right now, nudity is not really *that* bad a thing. and most people I know get nude to take showers as well, witch is *defiantly* a good thing.... for more information check out http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon.ht ml, or wired 5.02 in print with nice little graphics and stuff : )
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I wish someone would stand up and tell the schools government, and parents that even with software, the www isn't a babysitter.
...
... also parents would be able to set up their kids on a certain for-kids site and know they can't wander off ...
... 8-(
Now, having said that, considering how people use it as a baby sitter, maybe filtering software isn't going in the right direction
When I was learning to ride my bike, I was only allowed to ride on certain streets. My parents simply told me what streets I *could* ride on, they didn't try to list every street that I *couldn't* ride on. If filtering software worked this way, it would IMHO be better for corporations and libraries that want their net connected computers to be information appliances (no need to go to most sites)
I realize that this leaves most of the net unaccessable, but for the 12 year olds, and the libraries that want online news access, book reviews, etc. wouldn't this be "better"?
Personally I believe that everyone should grow up and learn to live without censorware, but that isn't going to happen any time soon
--Wuzoe
I'm a nice person. People like me.
I can't believe some of these restrictions. It's... almost inconceivable. Consider their ban on "Message/Bulletin Boards" - "Sites that permit semi-permanent messages to be posted and read by others." Heaven forbid the little kiddies should have a free discourse of any kind. Posted and read by others? Why, who knows what those ravening internet users might post! Swear words! Heretical leanings! Thoughts! I wouldn't be surprised to discover /. is banned under this clause. Too free.
Then there's their block on unfiltered searches. Consider this corrupting search string:
"http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=women". Egads, cover their sweet little eyes! They might be looking up such horrendous topics as women in the military, or the accomplishments of women! All, no doubt, in a sick demonic attempt to see nude bodies - we all know that women have no interest apart from the sexual.
Of course, they also ban "Free pages". Because of course, unless you have Big Money behind the site, you know it will all end in tears. The entire geocities complex is blocked, including such appalling sites as my blood-and-lust-centric Lucy Test. I don't like the banner ads either, but how many times have I been shunted to a geocities page when researching something that intrested me? Not for Bess users, though. Good old Bess, she doesn't have time to spend, say, THINKING about the worth of certain sites. She'd rather toss a pure white blanket over the lot and be done with it.
Frankly, I can't imagine the distorted hairy-palmed little trolls who rate sites for companies like this one. They spend their days looking at a good sight more porn and dementia than I ever do. Straight-backed Christians of the world - if you believe that information corrupts, then do you really want these polluted individuals deciding what your children see?
This has ruined my day.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I think I read this somewhere on ZDNet, of all places, and it sounded like a really good idea. I'm not that familiar with the techical aspects of web domains, but what about adding a few new domain suffixes, like .xxx or .adu? I'm sure the porn site operators wouldn't mind, and it would certainly make filtering easier for paranoid parents and scholl administrators who are too busy to actually supervise the fragile little minds of "the children".
More like the short-sighted leading the stupid.
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
The Stasi were the East German secret police, not Russian.
Oh, I know that much, and I don't agree with that either, but remember that even if you are 18, you still don't have your full rights as long as you are still in school.
It doesn't matter if you're an adult or not, as long as you're in a high school, and probably a college as well, you waive some of your (more important) adult rights. Why? I don't know, but I'd love to see people fight it.
Heck, it doesn't matter if you're in college or not, they'll still try to censor your newspapers and restrict the content you see. They just have less of a legal basis to do so...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Okay, so now everyone has to pay 16k a year for each kid to go to school (that's how much private schools cost, I used to go to one [hated it]). What about families that don't make that amount in a year in toto, let alone having that much to spend on education for each kid? Schools need subsidizing if they are to remain accessible to everyone, a goal which I support.
Also, do you really want to have the libraries guarantee 100 copies of each bestseller? What about more obscure books, are they not worth reading? If that happened, libraries would all become more specialized, and I fear most would lean toward the bestseller route, with only books that make the NY Times/London Times Bestseller lists. Some would specialize in other topics, but because they would be used less, they would also cost more. So, libraries need to be subsidized as well, if they are to remain the centers of information that they are intended to be.
Also, would you deny 'bums' access to books? How can anyone ever improve themselves without learning? That is one of the most important tenets behind public libaries: that everyone has access.
All private institutions are taxed. I believe that private schools, at least, get a break, and I assume that private libaries do too.
---
END OF LINE
I interviewed at N2H2 before taking my present job at a Large Internet Retailer in the same city. So here's a load of irony for you:
:).
1) Bess runs on Linux. Exclusively.
Yes, the whole system. When a company or school (they have a near-lock on the academic market) decides to buy Bess, N2H2 sends out a tech to install a linux box (or boxen). Those boxen all talk to more linux boxen to keep the URL lists current.
2) N2H2 funds free software projects.
They paid for outside developers' time to get ipfwadm finished, and they are active in the perl circuit.
3) Most of the people who work there don't think that censorware should be installed for anyone older than 12, but they can't say no to a client.
4) Robots go out on the net and flag suspect sites, and the call on whether or not to block a flagged site is made by a human. So if something is being blocked, then someone decided to block it. The converse, of course, is not the case.
5) They drag their feet when making offers to perl hackers, and the perl hackers go to work for Large Internet Retailers instead
I'm sorry I came to this discussion late-- hopefully this post will bubble up a bit.
The reason why schools are allowed to search lockers is that the school loans the locker to the student and never actually relinquishes ownership of it. The 4th amendment (made applicable to the states via the 14th amendment) still applies to minor students.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Well accually legally I believe that your backpack belongs to your parents. So they force you to take your parents property to school everyday (obviously this part your parents probably consent to). Then at random times without consulting your parent, (or you, which your parent by loaning it have entrusted such desisions) they search your backpack. Doesn't sound very legal to me, could easily be challenged. Though schools could just have a letter at the beginning of the year requesting a parent waive all rights concerning you (HAHAH).
Do like we do here at the labs: you can't use the labs for non-university-related things. Then everybody who wants pr0n will try to hide it.
/.) they won't even bother.
Of course the admins and techers here are not anal about it; the worse they will do is to warn you (and then you hide it correctly). And when it's harmless (like reading
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
Actually your wrong, there is *far* more then enough food in the world to feed everyone. In fact the state of Iowa *alone* is capable of feeding everyone on the planet. Right now, food production capability is growing more than twice as fast as human population (more advanced techniques, genetics, etc).
The problem is that some countries are run by corrupt power mongers, with out the constitutional and democratic safeties that protect us from the corrupt power mongers running *this* country (the US). so for right now, nudity is not really *that* bad a thing. and most people I know get nude to take showers as well, witch is *defiantly* a good thing....
for more information check out the Doomslayer in wired archives, or in wired 5.02 with nice little graphics and stuff : )
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The problem isn't the Book *itself*, its the religion that sorounds it, and the fact that people veiw it not as a book, but as the word of god.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I think that they're really looking out for what
they see as our good. It makes sense, I've talked
with many of them at length, and they really do
seem to believe in heaven, hell, god, angels,
yaddayadda. I happen to think they're wrong, and
as such I still am bothered when they come and
bother me, but I really can't blame their motives.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I am an adult site administrator, and I can say that all the adult webmasters I know would welcome with open arms their own suffix (i.e. .xxx, .adu, etc) to separate them from "mainstream" content...if for no other reason than to quell the phone calls from husbands caught putting these charges on their credit cards, then explaining to their wives "Oh, little Johnny must have done it" (I have received many such calls, invariably with the wife in the background screaming). If Johnny cant read, he can sure as hell type "www.xxx.com", cant he? (And apparently Johnny can also figure out his parents checking account number to sign up on some of these sites too) The whole filtering software issue is a joke. The webmasters are gonna try everything to get past it, and so are the kids. You will never be able to intelligently filter porn from non-porn when its all mixed together.
I have a 2 year old son, and you can bet his mother and I WILL monitor what he does on the net, like responsible parents. The alternative is having a bunch of 70 yr old so-called "representatives" tell us what we can or cannot do, or what our children can or cannot do.
I haven't seen anyone mention Active Guardian.
http://www.activeguardian.com/
They are listed in freshmeat. Work in combination of squid. They are an open source project. There are some drawbacks at the moment. They were looking at one time for someone to set up a database to help rate site.
Right now it uses four methods to filter sites.
1) PICS Ratings
2) Ban word list
3) Ban site list
4) approved site list
I am sure they can use any help they can get
JC
that's probably what you were thinking of
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
See it at http://www.censorware.org/press /press_07-28-99.html! The full text is here (in case that they fix it): PASSING PORN, BANNING THE BIBLE: N2H2'S BESS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS The Censorware Project Issues A Report on a Dangerous Product Popular in Schools FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jamie McCarthy Phone: 616-381-4893 Email: cwp@censorware.org New York, New York, July 28, 1999. The Censorware Project , an activist group which opposes the use of blocking software in schools and libraries, today released its new report, "Passing Porn, Banning the Bible: N2H2's Bess in Public Schools", a study of the Bess Internet blocking software from N2H2 Inc., a company planning to go public later this week. Bess, a network-based product, is used in approximately 8,000 schools, affecting more than 7.3 million students, according to documents filed by N2H2 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "We were not surprised to determine that the product lets through substantial amounts of hard core pornography," said Jamie McCarthy, a software developer who is a founding member of the group. "Our report contains links to porn sites, most of which have obvious, sex-related names and URL's, which were not blocked by Bess." "The Net is essentially unfilterable," McCarthy added. "Recent statistics indicate that there are about eight hundred million pages on the Web, a number which grows by leaps and bounds every week. N2H2 claims that Bess blocks eight million of them, a small fraction. Anyone who claims that censorware is a substitute for parental supervision is selling you a bill of goods. But N2H2, which stands to benefit greatly if Congress passes Senator McCain's S.97 e-rate legislation, is the first company to seek a public offering based on these kinds of claims." The group also found a substantial number of innocuous sites blocked by the software. James Tyre, a Pasadena, California attorney who is also a founding member of the group, said, "These included a version of the Bible compiled by Thomas Jefferson, a site on Darwin and evolution, an issue of Redbook Magazine, and sites dealing with issues as diverse as Serbia, baseball, psychiatry and celibacy." One of the blocked sites identified by the group is Friends of Lulu, , which promotes involvement of girls and women in the comic book industry. "Friends of Lulu is a national nonprofit organization devoted to getting more women and girls involved in reading and producing comic books and graphic novels...Our organization promotes the use of comics as an educational medium (especially for literacy) and as a literary and an entertainment medium. Why anyone would want to block access to our site is baffling to me," said Jackie Estrada, President of the Friends of Lulu, which maintains the site. The report also examines N2H2's Searchopolis search engine, which it promotes as a safe tool for use in schools. "The search simply ignores words it doesn't like," McCarthy said. "For example, a search on 'cancer' returns 692,742 hits. But a search on 'testicle cancer' returns...exactly the same 692,742 hits! N2H2 ignores any body parts they think are naughty. How educational is that?" The group, founded in 1997, has previously issued reports on the CyberPatrol, Smartfilter, X-Stop and Websense products. Its website is located at http://censorware.org.
Implicit in this entire discussion is the assumption that children can be harmed by reading or viewing inappropriate material. I don't believe this is true. I'm not aware of any studies showing it to be true, nor am I aware of any adults in therapy due to teen-age hours wasted viewing erotica.
The true goal of most censors is to protect themselves and others like them from annoying questions from precocious children.
I have a six-year-old daughter. She's not old enough to be surfing the net, but in two or three years she will. I've no plans to install blocking software or even monitor her computer usage. When she's sophisticated enough to look for something, I expect she'll be mature enough to handle what she finds. I hope that we will be close enough for her to talk to me about anything that bothers her.
I was an intellectual and irreligious child growing up in a small blue-collar town. If the internet had existed then, I'm sure I would have been happier knowing that I wasn't alone in the world, just in my town.
"Personally I believe that everyone should grow up and learn to live without censorware, but that isn't going to happen any time soon ... 8-( "
Agreed. So I wonder if it there was no censorware if we'd already have laws against "indecent" or "Inappropriate" material on the net. I know it has been defeated twice before, but part of the justification for that defeat was the existence of filters.
Is it better to have imperfect filters that are driven by the market demand or a government demand banning registration or viewing of material THEY deem inappropriate?
I know neither is a realistic solution, but for me laws with *selective* enforcement are the worst kind and the kind that are passed more and more often by those in Washington.
An "opt-in" filter wouldn't work at the ISP (or school district) level ...
... (like the library of congress, or other one stop resource) ... for example in my school library, there is a computer labeled "online card catalog". It's just like any other computer, but pointed to a school district web site.
... or if the child wants to link, the parent can come over to the computer, and unlock the site the child wants to go to.
... you can probably see where I am going ...
...
But it seems reasonable when you are restricting a computer to be an "infomation appliance". In this case you would only care about definate certain areas
At home, a parent can choose a suitable site and restrict a child to that one site
The thing we have to realize is the censors can only read over a fraction of the web. What do we do with the rest? Assume it's good, or assume it's bad?
But If there isn't a parent there to check out and unlock a site a kid wants to go to, this becomes A Bad Thing(tm)
...
Like I said before, censorship is bad.
--Wuzoe
I'm a nice person. People like me.
It scares me to think that someone such as yourself has children.
What Fools These Mortals Be!
It certainly seems to advocate this kind of
thing.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Although I have no kids of my own, I've volunteered for the Big Brother's organization, and had the following experience. My "Little", as they're called, will simply refer to as johnny. His mother will be referred to as Jane.
Now, knowing that I'm a computer geek, Jane asked me to monitor Johnny's surfing if I let him access the internet from my computers. She, like the creators of BESS along with it's users, wanted to protect him from obscene material. No problem, I thought, I'm not exactly the irrisponsible sort, that's why I volunteered in the first place.
So one day, Johnny and I are over at my house, and he asks if he can get on the internet. I proceed to fire up my FreeBSD *blatent plug* gateway's ppp connection and a browser app for him to use.
Out of curiousity, I didn't make any mention of monitoring, or restricting his destinations. I just let him go, and watched quietly. What I saw absolutely horrified me! No, it wasn't porn, or a gay rights site, or subliminal satanic messages... It was the most blatently grotesque commercial site I'd ever seen. Run by the General Mills Corp, and targeted at impressionable young children, the http://www.yourschoolrules.com site - Johnny's favorite - is nothing but pathetic brain-washing type kids games and puzzles and stories. Strewn throughout each are the cartoon characters of all of GM's breakfast cereals.
If you ever thought Saturday morning kids TV shows were bad, with the constant barrage of kid-targeted commercials - check out this site! To access the "full" site, the kids have to "sign up" and give GM a bunch of info about themselves. This helps them market their products better. Of course, they have the standard "be sure to ask Mom or Dad if it's ok to tell us this" message. But since you can't access anything without complying, I can't see kids really worrying about such a detail. Johnny sure didn't, and my PC was filled the GM cookies like you wouldn't believe.
This exploitation of children, knowing full well how impressionable they are, is far more of a threat than seeing words like shit and ass - or God forbid... a REAL breast!
Anyway, just had to share this. I tried to explain to Johnny why *I* didn't approve of that site. Jane, she wasn't much help, as long it wasn't "obscene", it was ok with her. Frankly I find the commercial brain-washing of children far more "obscene" than a breast!
Very true!
But then again when was the last time you got SPAM from a bible thumper?
chown -R us.
I sent this message to the highschool that I graduated from (my younger brother attends now). It's under the GPL if you'd like to copy, modify it for your needs, and send it to your local school.
------
I would highly recommend you read the following report about the "Bess" censorship software that is used in Yorkville Highschool's internet LAN.
http://censorware.org/reports/bess/
Please reevaluate the use of software which costs taxpayers, yet does not function well enough to justify those costs. More importantly, however, please question the morality of blocking perfectly acceptable yet educational websites.
--
Michael Chisari
I use junkbuster personally, but the problem with most ignorant schools and businesses is that they only use programs for what they say they're for.
:P
They wouldn't touch junkbuster unless it was renamed "Open Source Web Patrol Nanny", and even then it would probably need a cute little puppy mascot before those sort of people considered it.
-Joe
As my subject states, does the Internet add more education to children in their schooling years? It seems that some teachers may see the web as an excuse not to give the same amount of homework out each night, and instead, take the class to the computer room and surf the web. What ever happened to regular schooling? Comps with 'net access should be at home, since if a younger child goes on the web, a parent can be there to supervise. In my opinion, computers help students write papers and spell check; there is no need for 'net access in schools.
Rajiv Varma
The Bible has good things and bad things in it. Certainly I wouldn't advocate following everything in there, but it's not like it doesn't have anything good to say about anything, either. Besides, I do not advocate banning anything, no matter how personally despicable I may or may not find it. Only through knowledge can you be truly free.
Congratulations, you've just reinvented RSACi, and poorly.
Yeah, right. What about all the kids wanting to know more about insects who go to http://www.ladybugs.com ?
At 57 I am old enogh to take care of myself,without anyone's nosey laws or knowing what is good for me.
icey
The computing labs at my uni. are arranged kinda like that. I don't think it's for that reason though. It's still really annoying ... you never know when someone might be looking over your shoulder...
Um deja.com and deja.com/=dnc are exactly the same, from what i can tell...
On the front page they are. (And power search page also...) But search results and reading messages gets you none of that funky stuff around the edges (ratings, 'explore more', 'top 5' totally irrelevant things) with the =dnc/ link. Also messages show up in monospaced font instead of proportional (to me this is essential...)
From what I noticed, when you use the /=dnc advertisements don't show up either.
This post is in direct reply to a post with a score of 3. It contains factual information directly relevent to the post with a score of three, and at least in my opinion is more well thought out and interesting. It certainly did not deserve to be moderated down. Could it be that someone is letting their own prejudices cloud their judgement?
What does this have to do with the First Amendment? Schools have every right to limit what you can do with their equipment.
Remember, the First Amendment says "Congress may make no law...". It places limitations on what Congress can do; it does not guarantee that citizens can read or say whatever they want in any circumstance. It certainly does not say that people aren't allowed to restrict how equipment they own is used.
The blocking of websites in high schools is stupid, for a few reasons being that most people in high school are smart enough to know that you shouldn't be looking at porn in the classroom or the lab because you'd get your ass busted, and from my personal experience.. My teacher tells me to research about the effect that the atomic bomb had on japan.. takes us to the computer lab which is hooked up the the internet of course.. and gee.. most sites I tried to go to from yahoo were blocked by the goddamned proxy.. I go home to finish researching it, I go to the same sites.. there was NO porno in it, there was NO profanity.. it was a straight research page about Oppenhimer..
My suggestion: GET RID OF THE FUCKING THING out of high schools.. maybe make it better and stick it in the 6th grade classrooms where they're teaching sex ed.. that's where its most needed.. but HIGH SCHOOL!?!? We're the voting age and we know better..
I'm now a senior at my local High School and BESS has not been my friend. First, I didn't like the blatant censoring and blanket blocking of Free Homepage sites. Then, the little BESS trailer (a constant reminder that I was being "protected" by BESS) started driving me batty. I could accept these, they weren't that bad.
This last year, the final straw came.
A D V E R T I S I N G
I couldn't belive my eyes when I saw the new BESS Blocked Page. They were bloody advertising for a) themselves and b) other companies. I mean, I come to school to learn, to feed my brain, and now I'm being bombarded with advertising in school!
Does not N2H2 make enough money providing BESS? Does it need extra money from advertisers to pay its bills? I sure hope not, 'cause that indicates to me financial instability.
It would be nice to have a censor-free learning environment, but it won't happen in my school district. Fear of legal responses to children stumbling across Porn and "Indecent for Minors" material is too great for most school districts.
If I could offer an alternative to this BESS-type filtering, it would be one created by a K12 Tech Administrator. Instead of Proactive Blocking, I'd use Reactive Blocking. Although it would be an interesting invasion of privacy, I'd use Squid and its user authorization features to monitor student's web surfing, grep weekly for possible "bad words" , and go after those who violate the "no porn" policy of my school. Hey, it's been done by Steve Tonnesen.
Well, that's my two cents.
Austin B.
My entire school district, which thankfully I graduated from a year ago, used Bess as their net filter. This included at the public library, where I worked for quite some time as a Technical Handyman, for lack of a better term, in the children's computer room.
:)
It was positively the worst net filter I've ever seen--and that's saying something, considering the rather pitiful quality of even the best ones out there. More often than not, all it did was hinder students from finding information for school reports (I've seen everything ranging from abortion topics to the Emancipation Proclimation be blocked by Bess.)
First of all, putting filters on the computers within the high school always seemed a bit silly to me...who is actually going to look at porn in the middle of a large room that is almost constantly filled with students and teachers? It was such a non-issue it became somewhat of a joke among those of us who actually understood the system.
Second, it became SO MUCH of a hinderance that the librarians (because they didn't know how to use the damn thing themselves) actually enlisted my help on more than one occasion to teach the class how to turn Bess off so that they could finish their reports. No one ever said they were the brightest librarians in the world
Third, at a public library...well, it's all been covered before. The only new idea I have to add is that in two and a half years of working there, not once did any kid actually come in with the intention to surf the web and find porn. As amazing as this may be to the bureaucrats back in DC, most children do not like going to the library. Therefore, they're only going to be there when they actually have valid work to do. The few kids who actually do enjoy being in libraries are not the ones you have to worry about. That leaves......no one. Again, I had to turn off the damn thing numerous times so that students could actually do their assigned work.
Filters just suck.
-
How can you get porn blocked from public labs where all screens are viewable to everyone?
The same way you get printed porn blocked in public labs where it's viewable by everyone: when they guy opens up his copy of Hustler Magazine in plain view, you say "Excuse me, but would you please wipe off your chair and take that home to read in privacy?"
Common decency is common decency. You can enforce it on a person-to-person basis, without resorting to strip-searching people when they enter a public area. What is so special about electronic media that we expect it to be regulated automatically?
Blockbuster books, you can't be serious. I agree that oftentimes I need to wait a little while to read new books that come out, if I want to get them from the library. If you really can't wait go buy it, otherwise there is a whole library, imagine that, of other books, some of which are probably more worth your time than the book you're looking for. I bought Cryptonomicon because I wanted a quick fix, but when I go to the library and they don't have what I'm looking for I can always find something else that's just as interesting if not more so.
On a sidenote would you really want the Blockbuster mentality, I'm sure they would want to censor your best sellers, think Showgirls.
First off, I'm atheist, so I will not defend the bible.
But I honestly do not think a BOOK can do any harm. Harm comes from what you make of it. And in that point, you are right.
Bess the Beaver Dog, we meet again. I remember all of those fond times that you would be stuborn, or even worse act like a pinball table. But, I had found the proverbial Beaver Dog wistle. Or simply, I learned the password to unblock the pages.
Are you still up to your old tricks, blocking whole domains? I remember when you did the amazing feat when you blocked everything beneath ml.org. Well now I am free, free!
But, alas, there are still some under your tortured guidance.
--HED
Use http://www.deja.com/=dnc/ instead of just deja.com if you don't like all that new fancy stuff.
Now, if Dejanews can get all their other problems fixed...
On a legal basis a filter that you admit is bad can cause you mucho grief. In the Loudon Library case the suit was based on a person suing because the library was restricting their rights. The Library lost (the policy had been forced on them by their board) and ended up paying $100,000 in legal fees.
In the case of ISPs whose clients knowingly choose to be filtered there are still problems. As the press release shows, legitimate sites are blocked--what happens when Amazon gets blocked for carrying "The Joy of Sex"? Lawsuit.
One of the funnier ones I've heard of getting blocked (by a dictionary based blocker) was Nasa's pages for the Mars Explorer.
The bill of rights is binding upon state governments, and state governments organize school districts (though they usually delegate control to local school boards). So the bill of rights is binding on school districts. For that matter, any entity (such as a school board) that is the recipient of tax money is bound by the bill of rights.
Set up a blocker that rules like this:
"That which is not explicitly permitted is absolutely forbidden"
Then request sites that want to be listed. Have the staff check them out, and if acceptable (publish acceptance criteria), put them onto the permitted list. Ends the silliness of lexical analysers and other automated processes that have no sense.
Market it and make money with the updates.
It's easy to rag on schools or libraries for caving in on filtering software, but let's face it - this is something that they have to do because of lawsuit-phobia. Parents don't want to take responsibility for teaching their kids right and wrong, and how to make good choices in life. And god forbid that students are actually held accountable for making bad choices. Instead, they'll just sue the school.
Why not have a tag? Perhaps a or a ? This would allow the AUTHORS to be filtered by all filters, at virtually $0.00. Why would one want to do that? How much $$$ do you think _sex_word_.com makes on 14 year olds? Yet they still have to pay for the bandwidth...
Clearly this would not make filters perfect. It would, however, reduce the number of 'holes' available...
And it's Canadian too!
Now, I don't agree with the catholic church at all, they've been bumbling fools since their inception but to associate their ineptitude with the bible is like blaming violence in society on computer games. i mean crusades, witch hunts, spanish inquisition are all great examples of ppl misinterpreting the bible. (geez, the bible explicitly says killing is bad, it's not that hard to put 2 and 2 together). I've seen a lot of ppl make this erroneous argument about not separating people's mistakes with the bible.
Next, you're also wrong about sex leading to procreation not being that bad a thing. It's the worst thing actuallly. The biggest problem in the world today is overpopulation. If there were 1/10 the number of ppl in the world then instead of thousands dying in wars, it would only be hundreds. Instead of millions starving, only thousands would be starving. See how reducing global population solves everything? =)
jacob
Hate to perpetuate an offtopic thread, but this argument is intellectually unsound.
The problem is that the Bible itself has many morally "bad" passages, especially the Old Testament. You'll find God commanding His followers to rape, murder, pillage, etc.
When reading the Bible, it is important to understand the goal of various passages. Most of the morally "bad" passages you refer to are in historical books written to describe what happened. This is quite different from prescriptive passages which were intended to be instructional.
Despite saying in one place that killing is bad, God commands His followers to kill all the male children prisoners, and keep the female children prisoners for sex slaves.
Note the difference between murder - unlawful and malicious or premeditative slaying of another, and killing in wars where another country is being morally judged. A prohibition on murder by no means disallows war.
Finally, the directive to kill all males and keep women and children was designed for moral and religious purity. In male-dominated cultures, killing all the men prevented dilution of their religious views with "heathen" populations. And there's no indication that the females were to be used as "sex slaves"; they became members of the conquering nation (an accepted wartime practice of the day) and were married just like "native" women.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
: One of the funnier ones I've heard of getting blocked (by a dictionary based blocker) was Nasa's pages for the Mars Explorer. Sounds so familiar... The company I work for applies a sort-of-a-filter between our firewall and the Internet. Obviously it's a very simple regexp-based blocker: One of the funniest one was, while working on a project with M$ Excel, I was banned from all URLs containing "msexcel"!-)
A while ago a director of a Christian camp program (a small group of college-aged students attend this camp for nine months at a shot) asked me what I would recommend to ensure that "innapropriate" sites are not visited by the camp's computer (singular).
I suggested he keep the campers from viewing innapropriate pages the same way he kept the campers from buying porn mags - teaching them why such things are discurraged and trusting people to make their own decision. It took a few hours of talking, but he eventually agreed that was the best course of action for people of this age group.
One less facility using censorware is a good thing. An administrative type trusting in personal responsibility is a miricle that I have thanked God for, and hope to witness again in my life.
You wouldn't believe what kids have to go through! barely are they born, sucked up their first breath of fresh air and they get a nipple stuffed in their mouths! Stop this abuse! make bottlefeeding mandatory!
This all makes just as much sense as any other attempt at censorship.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
In a way there is a point here, but it points to the wrong place. While this reply is purely based on bible and what it has to say, I should say it is in no way incorrect, because if you do read the bible, and I mean the whole bible - or at least the pieces that matter the most -, and think about it all logically, you'll see this is so. (BTW, I have not read even 1% of bible, but I GET it).
The bible should not be accused of anything that is wrong. It is the abuse of bible that screws things up. You ever heard of pharse "guns don't kill people; people kill people"? In a way, that describes the situation: when we demand that guns should not be sold freely or that guns (or TV) are the reason of all killing and evil, we miss the point. It is us that make these things happen, not the tools.
Now, bible can give your basic enthusiastic abuser an Idea. It can make your die-hard religionist kill the other die-hard religionist. Fanatic religion of any sorts is really BAD. This happens in any religion, bible or not.
As far as I can see, you can't say that the bible made the priests do the killings or rapings or set up the inquisition. Or, well, you can say that, but the correct view is that these people completely misinterpreted the bible! Does the bible not say: thou shalt not kill? It also says that you should love others as much as you love your self.
All the evil in the world is in us people. Get that.
Given parents that value ignorance so highly they take steps to *enforce* it, I think a young couch potato is the best we can hope for.
It's already been done. The Church of $cientology distributed filtering software to its members that filters out material critical of the Church or only available to members who have completed specific training courses (AKA the secret scriptures, NOTS etc.)
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If you consider pamphlets in my physical
mailbox, probably about a week ago. OTOH, I
get less spam from bible thumpers than I do
from porn sites... Hmm...
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Schools are allowed to search more than JUST lockers. At any point they can search you backpack without your permision. Now, I don't know about you but my school didn't loan out backpacks. I remember quite clearly an assembly that was manditory that all students attend that they searched all the backpacks on the way in, whether you wanted the to or not. When you are under 18 you do not have your full rights as a citizen.
As for the other comment on the same level as the one that I replied to about colleges being allowed to censor and search, public schools are not allowed. I don't know about private schools, they may, depending on what you have to sign. I remember that in order for a resident advisor to search your closet they need your permision or a search warrent with police accompeniment. Also, the school cannot restrict what you see, read or hear. There are ways that they may take to reduce the ability to see that information, like restrictions of information viewed on lab machines, but they cannot prevent you from that information. If the school offers internet access they cannot block you from seeing sights, they can fire your teachers for visiting some sights, but they cannot restict your access as a student.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Yes, I too graduated from a high school that, along with several others, tunneled all of its student/teacher (administrators had their own subnet that was unblocked) HTTP requests through Bess. It almost made it pointless to have all of that grant-funded bandwidth (we were a pilot site for some sort of custom ATM-based videoconferencing that was grossly underutilized) be choked by Bess and have the lower-bandwidth administrative subnet (10Mbps cable bandwidth provided by Time Warner) run free like the wind.
Of course, this is also the same school district that recently set up two student labs with unswitched 10BT networking and no remote-access/remote-administration software.
And the printers had unrestricted TCP/IP-based printing, too.
Sigh...
I strongly believe that censorship of the Internet is a battleground that will become increasingly important to religious fundamentalists as time goes on. When television, radio, paper and other traditional methods of media delivery are absorbed into the Internet (as is already beginning to happen), it becomes increasingly possible for people to live in a totally politicized infosphere, cut off from what we today think of as "mainstream media".
For example, imagine the Christian Coalition passing out copies of censorware to its members that blocked from their view any neutral or positive depictions of homosexuality, abortion, feminism, non-Christian religions, etc. These people--and, more alarmingly, their children and patrons of any public places like libraries they've been able to force to use this software--would effectively live in a world where homosexuality is evil and silenced, where women do not have a voice, and where religious diversity is unknown.
Our modern reality is largely constructed by the media. We know nothing firsthand about what is happening beyond the reach of our own two eyes and ears. Everything else, everything about our reality that we haven't witnessed ourselves, comes from the media. And censorware intimates the specter of a future where political groups--whether governmental or otherwise, benevolent or evil--can manipulate what the public perceives as reality, what people think is true about the world around them. It's the Catholic Index, the Cultural Revolution, the killing fields, all over again, but this time in a way that could--theoretically--succeed in the long-term.
It scares me. I think it should scare you, too.
The currently-fashionable bashing of public schools ignores the fact that school systems can differ radically from county to county.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It banned a lot of gaming sites like voodooextreme.com. It took me all of 10 seconds to turn off the proxy settings in IE (yuk). I found out that my high school gets a big discount on MS products if they use IE exclusively as their browser. The proxy works so well they need to reboot it about once a day.
I'm surprised that some disgruntled enterprising young coder whose school is filtering him/her hasn't done this yet.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
I used to teach, so point me to a legal decision if you think I'm wrong. If you are 18, you are an adult, and the legal relationship between the school and the student changes. One day you're at their mercy, and the next day thay can NOT violate the constitutional rights that you share with every adult. All public schools I have dealt with received some Federal funds, and all were supported by of tax dollars. They are governmental institutions and are subject to Constitutional prohibitions on violating your rights (unlike private schools). Of course, they don't tell you this. If you don't know you have rights, schools can violate them with little consequence.
On the other hand, 18-year-old students who threaten to break their teachers face can be expelled, charged with assault, and tried and sentenced as an adult (smiles at the memory).
Bible people brought a video of Jesus to my door and gave it to me, free. Unfortunately, after all my years of faithful support, pr0n people have yet to do the same.
Anybody want to trade? One unused Jesus video, still in wrapper....
Maybe Bess stinks, but where I am currently, URLABS' (recently purchased by Symantec nee' Seagate) software I-Gear is a whole lot smarter. Not only do they have people whose only job is to check out sites, but it filters on a context sensitive scoring system. Ir also has such specific filter groups as Sex - Health Education to catch a lot of erronuous filtering.
:)
So there is capable software out there. Picking Bess is like saying all Server software is bad based on NT
Plus you can email authors...email countries...most of them that I have ever e'd were quite helpful. Imagine a kid reaching out to a wired author? I certainly can't imagine anything greater.
As long as it's treated as a tool and not merely "fun" (OK, it is fun but you know what I mean), it can be a great advantage. I agree with the posters who say teachers and old library ladies don't know how to use the net, or a computer period. I used to work for the public library, and man, I've *been* there (the library's website even totally sux! e me for the URL. I could design something so way better!)
Using one of those secure OSes that has a clue about who a user is (Unlike Blowz9x), keep one log of login activity and one log of http proxy requests and make sure to turn on full name resolution (no getting around readability by using IP addr). Then, write a perl script to be run nightly that manages the logs and sorts the request log by requestor IP so you have a log for each workstation. Next break apart the workstation log by the timestamps of the user logins and your done.
You now have a complete surf report for each student. Make it available to the parents so that they can discuss what thier children are accessing on the internet with them if they so chose. If parents don't like this, they can request the student's account be suspended.
The only TRUE way to solve this crap is for governments shove back and tell parents to take care of thier own fucking kids. If they're so concerned with what the child is doing on the net, then they can put down the business section, the beer can, or the gossiping phone call long and at least pretend they care about what's going on in thier child's little world. Perhaps parents would learn that the kid has an interest in music, dinosaurs, cars, or even LINUX:)! In the end, this would do far more good than any pipe dream of filtering software could be sold to paranoid techno-illiterates.
Where I formerly attended high school, Berea City School District, we were forced to use Bess.
You see, almost *EVERY* northeastern Ohio school goes through a placed called 'LNOCA,' which assists schools in getting net connectivity.
LNOCA is required by either the state of Ohio, or it's own rules, nobody can get an answer on which, to filter *ALL* traffic through Bess. And they don't do it on site. No. You go to the LNOCA POP, which then goes over to a proxy in their main offices, which then goes to check the Bess database in BFE, which then answers back, and then lets you continue.
So, what does Bess censor?
Geocities, Angelfire, the bible, the government, the WWF, Playboy, Linux, etc.
What doesn't Bess censor?
Fetishwear websites, Microsoft, porn banners, many porn sites, etc.
And they want this babysitting kids? Somebody needs to forcefeed these morons a clue. Just like the TV, the web is NOT A FREAKING BABYSITTER. If you can't watch your kids, then you shouldn't have had kids. I'm damn sick and tired of all these parents whining and complaining about all the porn out on the net. I'm sorry, but you don't find porn if you don't look for it, and if you can't make sure your kids aren't looking for it, then what kind of parent are you?
Quite frankly, I don't care if I offended you. Hell, if this offends you, GOOD. It SHOULD. I have no respect or tolerance for parents who cannot accept responsibility for their children. The computer is not your babysitter. If you're so scared about your kids seeing 'naughty' or 'dirty' websites, then don't let them use the computer, or better still; DON'T BUY A COMPUTER. Gods.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
your company here.
shelby != ford
you've got a really good point. Check out Salon's cover story today - teen girls and sex ed online.
Penis movies always get press, but do something labial and no one will touch it!
There are other ways to control access without going all out and blocking things blindly. First, some background... I do the BOFH thing for a school district, so we deal with this stuff constantly.
OK, first, run Squid. If you don't, start. Then, block port 80 going out from everything but the Squid box(es). Get everyone to install the auto proxy config in Netscape or Exploder and you're done.
The filtering/limiting comes into play by using ACLs. It's trivial to add things to it (edit text file, squid -k reconfigure) and you can even rig stuff so that the people _at the schools_ can handle blocking for their own IP ranges and leave us out of it.
Yes, it sucks, but the boss types demand it. I've chopped my own holes of course, so it doesn't affect me one bit.
Oh yes, in case the eagle eyed types among you notice that I didn't block 3128 or any of those other handy ports, that's because I believe in letting the clued out. If you're a kid in my district and you know enough to run a proxy on the outside and rig your browser to get to it, more power to you. That's what I would have done if I went to a high school with such an environment...
No one who goes without comment to mandatory government schooling should complain too much about what Internet sites aren't allowed to be seen.
But on the other hand, anyone who notices the bizarre ill-logic of not allowing kids to see the information about testicular cancer while giving a free pass to youngcollegepussy.com (or whatever) should also consider whether the State should be in the indoctrination business at all.
timothy (a believer in amendment 1 and 2 -- at least)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
It seems, though, that the schools do not want to provide guidence to the children. They do not want to take an active role in the child rearing. Perhaps that would be too much trouble? Instead, they let the TV or internet bring up a child. It is too much trouble to be actively involved in a child's activities, so they want to buy a box that will do the parenting for them. That is the real problem: many people are hoping that some commercial product can replace parental guidance, and teaching.
We know that web censorship can not work because we understand how vast and uncharted the web truly is. However, there are more fundamental problems with the scheme: this is an improper application of technology. Software can never replace parental care and intervention. Never.
Also: kids are going to find their way to illicit material no matter what their guardians do. When I was a kid in the pre-web world, we all had access bomb guides, satanic writings, and porn. We were curious, so we explored. Very few got wrapped up in it, and we're all balanced adults now. The web doesn't fundamentally change children's curiousity, it just makes information more accessible.
Finally, let me say that the importance of good teaching is terribly overlooked in American schools. I think that the money schools are spending on computers, televisions, and internet access could be much better applied to finding good teachers and paying them reasonably. I took my HS CS courses with archaic hardware and software, but I had a fabulous teacher and, as a result, learned a great deal. Tech is glittery and exciting, but no replacement for old-fashioned good teaching
--Lenny, who is ranting more than normal today.
Ooo, maybe we should let people decide what content they should view, after all, at least some popular censorware does a worse job than they would, themselves...
...that's what I thought. And we know that the extreme right wing moral majority is all in favor of the Constitution, and at least the Second Amendment... why not the First Amendment?
:)
Actually, your average elementary school student either has no concept of "porn", or is disgusted by it. And if they aren't, is that so bad? Maybe they're just a little ahead of their time...
Which brings us to our third point. Let's look at a scenario here.
1) User: I want to go to www.foo.com.
2) Stupid Proxy: www.foo.com is blocked. Sorry.
3) User: Why? I want to see it.
4) Stupid Proxy: Sorry, www.foo.com is blocked.
5) User: Well, I'll just find another way to get there, then, I really need to see that.
6) Stupid Proxy: ???
7) User: There, see, I knew it was okay.
Now, I'm all in favor of teaching children how to *hack* at an early age, I just find it pitiful when you have to do that to get *work* done. I had to in High School, because of the excessive, draconian security measures. I wasn't really popular with the computer administrators, but I could save my files to a disk, or use a DOS command if I wanted to, and that's what counted.
Where does it say in the Constitution, that students or children aren't people, and therefore don't deserve those basic rights that everyone else has?
My advice: if you don't like the First Amendment, then shut up.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
you guys have forgotten something that was rightfully identified as sinister by the arms of the press that picked up on it. The Church of Scientology (*spit*) gives censored Internet access to its members - making them install censorware on their home machines. And what does it censor? Dangerous anti-Scientology thought, of course.
Remember that the CoS is a cult. (What is the difference between a cult and a religion? Let's not go there) It brainwashes its members. And it likes censorware.
'nuff said
One other quick point, while I'm being moderated down to "ZERO" (which, given the overarching topic of censorship, open-mindedness, and 1st amendment blah-smack makes for irony you can't fake) on the subject of Bible Thumpers vs. Porn-Purveyors.
We all, from time to time, have our personal space invaded. Most often it is through unsolicited email. Very often this unsolicited email is from online pornography outfits that want you to come visit their website, so they can get advertising dollars, or sell you a subscription to some online porn feed, or in some other way take your money.
Those who SPAM with PORNLINKS almost always does so while hiding behind anonymous remailers and other trickery to make sure you can't really even know who sent it. The reason is obvious- if they did, they'd get flooded with angry replies! They are absolute cowards, and they are afraid to face the people they badger and spam directly, for fear we'd slap them!
Much less frequently, we might have a Christian knock on the doors of our homes or apartments, wanting to share the gospel. On the off chance that this does occur, most people react with anger and send the "Bible Thumpers" packing. Laughing at them. Maybe cursing at them. It isn't surprising that this happens! What IS surprising is that this doesn't discourage most Christians involved in this sort of ministry from knocking on the next door. And the next. Come what may.
Though it might be hard to believe, these people are not going to get a commission check if they can con you into going to church. Nor are they going to get some sort of kickback by selling you some magazine. They can't hide behind some anonymous remailer in doing this- they are looking you in the eye when they deliver their unsolicited message. They do this because their religion teaches them to "go forth unto all men sharing the good news". They do this because they believe that they have been forgiven of their sins, saved from Hell, and they feel the urgent need to share this "good news" with others who might choose to believe it. At the risk of looking stupid. At the risk of being despised by many. (At the risk of being told to s.t.f.u.)
Although most people don't ask the obvious question, "Why would these people risk looking stupid / being belitted / getting turned away if they geniunely didn't care or believe that what they were doing was worth risking these depressing responses?" But it is a worthwhile question.
At this point, many readers will already be incredulous, furious, ready to bail out on my message and complain to Cmdr Taco and Hemos that there is rampant offtopic nonsense going on. This is because the idea of Hell (common to ALL monotheistic religions, BTW) is so alien and offensive to so many people that to mention it engenders more hostility than contemplation. Hate it, love it or yawn-when-you-hear-it, this is what Christianity is about. Christ himself talked a lot more about Hell than he did about Heaven.
I hope that at least one single reader will labor carefully enough on my words to understand my point.
You can choose to hate or mock the Christian who knocks on your door and leaves you a bible or a free videotape, if you want to. But try to understand that those who go so far as to risk so much do so 99 times out of 100 because they believe that there is nothing more important they can do than share the Gospel. Than to help others find salvation, just as they have.
well, seriously, the reason why is because coporations and other places are using the same censorware that was intended to "protect the average 12 year old" ...
Now, lets stop talking about this before we give the Evil Censorware People a new product idea 8-)
--Wuzoe
I'm a nice person. People like me.
Yes, it's truly revolting when as a society we censor works of art such as Kuberik and allow junk to be presented. Ironic? yes....
I call all this stuff Suitware - basically software requested by ingnorant suits to bypass the work of a competent administrator. They always swallow it, and usually there is another suit responisble for selling it.
I used to work at what was once a highly technical systems integrator, until we merged with another local company.
After the merger, a so called 'Internet Team' was formed, and their technical person (in my opinion a gobshite moron with the competence of my mother's cat) was put in charge.
Firstly he installed a firewall - we went without email, web and FTP access for a week, and FTP access was badly broken for months afterwards. This was made worse by the fact that this idiot was out of the office for days at a time, and did not let anyone else configure his system. My department was effectivly crippled for a whole week, as we used the web and email to log support-calls and obtain patches.
The next issue was to install a simillar filtering system - I can't remember the name of it. It blocked access to critical sites used by my support team - Novell, Banyan etc - as well as the local sunsite mirror. There was a revolt in my team until this hopeless pile of software was removed. Ironically, most porn or other contentious sites were still avaialble. I was unable to work for a whole week - again. I think a second such system was later tried - but I was working out of the office at the time and luckily didn't witness it.
There was also the virus-wall farce - he never managed to get it to work - I don't think he understood the concepts. (He once tried to get me to a customer site to fit a second network card to an NT server. When I got there, I discovered the reason for fitting the card was to obtain a second SMTP port to allow two processes to listen on the same port!)
What angers me the most is he was selling these systems to others, and not giving value added support. He gave my company a bad name, and most of his customers quickly cancelled contracts. He also had the opinion that Lotus Notes was the best web-server platform going. He also repeatedly forwarded on all the hoax virus alerts.
I left them this year, after many years service. They may be still in business, but the web site has not been updated in months. He was wasting more money on Notes based Internet systems, and feeding misleading PR to technical magazines.
My highschool didn't have internet access when I was there, so I guess I can't fully appreciate the problem, but...
One thing that seems obvious (at least, from talking to a few still in highscool [different school, btw]) is that the librarians that have to deal with this software hate it just as much as the students do. I guess it is one of those mandates from the "heavens"--you know, those totaly detached school administrators who believe they know what is best for the children. Most of them have either never taught in highschool or haven't taught in quite a while.
Now, I don't have kids atm, but I know I wouldn't want these people making moral judgements for my children. I remember in my highschool, we were not allowed to read certain books in English class. That really pissed me off. But if you complain, you are marked as a trouble maker. That only leaves pulling your children out of that school, and many people don't have that option.
I guess the solution is to start working for change at the state government level, and try to get some of these silly regulations changed.
Just my cents x2.
This sig is false.
{fray} is a collection of first-person, true stories, each with its own posting area after it. We've hit on a lot of the big emotional issues - love, sex, freedom - and I happen to know we have a ton of high school posters.
For {fray} to be blocked from schools is ridiculous. There is nothing obscene about the site, few foul words (unless you count "naked" which is on the front page right now, and probably why it was blocked), and no pornographic images.
They're depriving high schoolers from a valuable avenue of self-expression (that I've worked very hard to make accessible) and I, for one, am pissed.
-- D
but first let me tell you my experience with that n2h2 people: i have a site on the net that is critical towards a right wing fundamentalist sect. (http://www.mond.at/opus.dei but please do not slashdot my old 486.. :-) ) one day when i read the refer-logs i noticed that someone from n2h2 has visited my site. i was curious to find out if my site would be blocked by them.. (one page contains the words: "Draw up her skirts, tear down her panties and give it to her in the ass!! In the Ass!" which is a quote from the founder of the sect (who has been beatified by the pope!!). i did not find a way to check if my site would be blocked but i would not have been surprised, since i suspect that people who run censorship sits are a bit right wing as well.. anyway: i wrote to the n2h2 people and they assured me that my site would not be blocked.. then i read a bit in their rules and this decision was consistent with their policy. political text, medical and scientific works, historical quotes etc.. will not be blocked even if they contains some "dirty" words..
now i do not want to advocate their censorship but i think it is the legitim right of this people to rate and classify web pages according to what ever criterion they may have. in the end: how is that different from what the slashdot moderation does? (BTW: i have my treshhold on -1 for that reason.. i want to decide for myself what i want to read and and what not.. one post i did a while ago as AC was moderated to -1 because obviously the moderator did not understand the humor/sarcasm there..). as for the people who set up n2h2 based filters they are able to decided if they only allow sites that have been reviewed by the n2h2 people and there they can select from different categories or if they allow everything except things that have been rated bad by the n2h2 censors..
see: http://www.n2h2.com/categories/
so while i do not want to advocate censorship i would say that people should not blame it on the n2h2 company but on administrators who set up the filtering policy. filtering hard core porn for children below a certain age might make some sense.. thought i think the potential dangers of censorship still outweighs the benefits.. children who have experienced censorship in their youth might advocate that when they are grown up...and then maybe not just for porn but for political context as well..and we know where that could leed too.. then on the other hand: where do we draw the line between moderation and censorship?
greetings
mond.
See what happens when you're only paying half-attention to the Discovery channel while you're online?
---
seumas.com
I'm 17 years old. Almost everything I know about computers has come from a combination of books and the WWW in the past five years or so. If at any time my parents decided they didn't trust me, and could only allow me to see a tiny fraction of the web, I would probably be your average computer luzer today.
I've spent countless hours on the web when my parents are gone. Does that mean it's my babysitter?
Apparently one of the blocked words was toys, but I tried it anyway and here is a sample of some of the results (what kind of "gross motor skills" are we talking about here?):
Feathered Kids 'N Stuff
Playmates Toys
Famous Kid Concoctions - The Recipes for Fun
Playmates Toys - About Us
Toys that enhance Gross Motor Skills!
Toys that stimulate the auditory senses
Dr. Tongue's Link's Page
Technology can only solve some problems. Use imagination to create behavioral disincentives!
If you don't want your child to visit pr0n sites, then move the family computer to the living room. If libraries don't want people visiting pr0n sites, then move the library computers so their screens are visible from all over the library. Don't hide the computers in a private corner of the library. Put them near the librarian's desk.
Had this as the school's internet filter back when I was in high school. It was set at the same level for the whole school district so what was "inapropriate" for an 8 year old is also filtered for an 18 year old. They censored free homepage websites, free email sites, and heck, they even censored Dateline NBC's site at one point.
Even then, it's not even effective. Some sites launch more windows at you with porn ads and they went through fine.
Heck, trying to do research with such devices in place is near impossible. Heck, did a research paper on Hinduism and Jainism, and they censored half the words on the page with XXXX's.
I'm glad someone's at least giving them a critical view that others will listen to.
You know, that opinion is remarkably parallel to the idea that 'evil movies' like the Matrix or South Park or whatever cause violence and maladjusted children.
(And how many of the people who fought in the Crusades got to read the Bible, anyway?)
Going against the grain here. Really what this says is that right now it is difficult to censor out pornographic and violent sites. This does not mean that such censorship is a bad idea.
Myself, I am not sure that when my kid gets old enough to use a computer that I will even let him use the internet without supervision. The blocking software is not effective, and I think that he would be too young to exercise self control.
I think that a better solution would be to legislate an xxx domain. All blatantly pornographic and violent sites would have to use this, both for web sites, and as the address from which to send their spam, with big big fines for non-compliance. Then blocking would be easy.
From the little that I have dabbled in pornography, I know that it does have a damaging effect upons one life. Now I am married, and I would say that my past experiences have adversely affected my marriage.
I know that you guys are gun ho on the 1st ammendment, but pornography is exploitive, and it is evil.
As far as I can figure, the major successful civilization/country/world powers have been at their most successful when they have exercised sexual purity, and have rapidly declined when they have moved towards sexual freedom (I am thinking of say the Roman Empire, and the British Empire). Right now people in the USA enjoy a very good standard of living. The USA is pretty much top dog, not only politically, but technologically and even ethically (not that the USA is in any way perfect ethically, just a bit better). I don't think that it will stay like this, and maybe in 20 years time the US infrstructure will be in such ruins that you won't have the best computers to play with.
Well, I may be out on a limb with you guys, but at least I can take comfort that a large portion of the legislative body, and a large proportion of the population agrees with me.
If the pamphlets in your physical mailbox didn't have postmarked stamps on them, and weren't deposited there by the mailman, the people who put them there broke a Federal law and can be prosecuted. It's an easier rule to get enforced than anything related to electronic-spam. Just complain to the postmaster.
This article was quite enlightening. I have always argued that censorware did no good. Therefore the only way to protect children from the filth that these days runs unfettered through my personal mailbox and the web at large is simply to prohibit Internet access completely.
/. standards) porn photo as a top level MIME body part. What if the kids had been around? A SpamCop report got the guy's e-mail and web site accounts yanked and a $2000 ISP abuse charge on his Visa card - yes!)
/.!
/dev/null.
(It was once true that you had to go looking for porn and other offensive content to find it - that's no longer true. Now it arrives in neatly packaged daily doses of spam - I got one the other day with a gross (even by
I know this seems unthinkable, but, really, will education suffer in the least without the Internet? We managed to educate people 100 years ago far better than we educate people today, and we did it without any high technology. The web is easy, but very shallow. I really don't even think it's a very valid tool for research of the k-12 kind. Teach kids the importance of primary sources and how to use a library and they'll truly have learned something useful.
There are times I am truly thankful I send my children to a school that doesn't even have a computer lab, much less access to the Net. I've been in the IT business for a long time, and was one of the first computer students in public schools, and I can assure you that real literacy is far more important than "computer literacy" - something that is easily borne out in the most casual session of reading
Just say NO to Internet access in schools. There's really nothing to lose (except higher tax bills for a bunch of overpriced, obsolete computers), and our children to save.
Send flames to
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
There's a serious danger in the argument here.
You're talking about the dangers of censorship, but absolutely none of your arguments discuss censorship. Instead you're talking about buggy products (buggy including fundamental design flaws).
NOBODY with a brain (who doesn't already agree) is going to take you seriously if you keep indulging in this misdirection.
If this is bad because it's censorship, then argue against censorship (and I suppose you'll have to also persuade people that it actually is censorship -- many including myself don't buy that).
If it's bad because its buggy, argue that -- and for heaven's sake, don't pull the tabloid trick of exaggerating the headlines to say something the story can't.
-Billy
Unbe-FUCKING-lievable!
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
'nuff said...
In a public computer lab, I sat in the back row, surfing the web with trusty Netscape 1.0. It was a new program and people were really excited that you could see pictures on the web...porn was free...the world was happy.
One row in front of me, some kid was looking at some rather raunchy pictures....he either didn't know I was there, or didn't think I'd care.
Either way, he was making it nearly impossible for me to work. ...and he was getting alittle TOO much work done if you know what i mean....
How should public computer labs prevent this sort of mis-use. Frankly, I don't think users should have to glace up and see porn in a public lab. It's no different IMHO than allowing peep shows to show pornos to people walking by on the streets of NYC or something.
What do you think? How can you get porn blocked from public labs where all screens are viewable to everyone?
Werd.
This is meant as mostly humor, but the people I
know who spend a lot of time with porn generally
tend to be a lot more pleasant than people who
spend a lot of time with the bible. Certainly not
all bible thumpers are like this, but I've never
heard porn drive people to go door-to-door and
irritate people, advocate execution for violation
of the 10 commandments (or sexual 'deviancy'),
etc.
As Tom Lehrer says "I do have a cause, it's
obscenity. I'm for it"
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Why is a group that opposes censorship
complaining about bad censorware? I think
censorware with "holes" in it is great. It's
almost as good as none! (In fact, that is how
I can access Slashdot from work, even though
my company subscribes to a censorware
service that blocks -- Deja News??!!)
Anyway, it is not censorship if you own a
computer and tell others they can't surf
certain cites on your dime. Nor is it
censorship if a radio station refuses to
air ads for a competing radio station. That
is owners deciding what to do with their
private property, which is still legal. Some
owners have bad judgment, I know, to trust
these companies, but nobody's perfect. If you
don't like their terms, then get your own access.
What? Public schools and libraries are not
private property? How true -- That is the root of
the problem. The logical solution might be to
privatize the schools and libraries.
I'd trade a dozen bum-ridden public libraries
for a Blockbuster Books with 100 copies of each
bestseller, guaranteed in stock... and private
schools have ALWAYS been better than public
ones. They have to be, or their staffs end up
on skid row. But now, private schools and
libraries are taxed to pay for public ones. What
an outrage!
-- An Ayn-onymous Coward
I am glad someone is banning the bible
More pain and suffering has happened because of that book, then any other thing I am aware of.
We only have to look at the massive sexual abuses by priests and such, the crusades, witch hunts, and any number of other things.
Nudity doesn't cause these problems, most people I know get naked for sex, the biggest problem I see is that creates more people, which really isn't a bad thing anyway.
If we're going to censor everything to fix the world, then why do we also need to monitor everything with something like FIDNET?
What it really comes down to is that it does not matter. Uncle Sam and his inbred minions will simply subvert any legal opposition to these infringements by doing it underground. The Russian's had nearly every citizen spying on every other citizen at one time and they were about as free as a chained mutt. Does anyone really think they need our permission or public 'okay' to proceed with these things?
I hate thinking this way, but it seems like a lost cause. All of this 'Constitution' stuff is useless. It's time to stick those tracking chips in us, give us those Smart-Cards, harvest our DNA, urine, finger-prints, and walk right into THX-1138, Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 and stop all this fucking individualist stuff. It's obvious that we can't handle freedom and it is best portioned out when, how, and to whom the fat career politicians and goodie-two-shoe religious types see fit.
C'mon... You know you're tired of all this working and thinking and self-expression. Wouldn't your life be much simpler if Mother [insert country here] took care of all your needs and addressed all your ills?
---
seumas.com
Keep em off altogether if you are worried. I would. I think that libraries are better places to gather information anyway. When I first got on the www my skills in searching for info at the library gave me all the skills I needed to surf. I have seen my nephew, who grew up on the www not be able to find a book in the library because it did not have a link to it anywhere. I think the web is making idiots out of our children anyway.
By the way fuck censorship, I liked Mark Twain....
I personally question the need for site filtering in schools. If the school is truly that concerned about what students visit, all the administration need do is use some sort of logging proxy. Matching time/date/IP to the local fileserver access logs is easy work, and from there it's just a matter of grabbing the username and issuing penalties. Reckless preventative censorship is basic violation of freedom of information whereas URL logging with the intent to check access to data which directly conflicts with school policy, though annoying, would be relatively unproblematic both politically and technically speaking. Not that I'd want all my accesses logged, mind you, but it seems an acceptable alternative to me, albeit one that requires a few seconds more worktime on the part of the moderators (hmm...sounds like a basic case of "Let's get technology to do what we really don't have time/don't want to do!" A.K.A.: Technology as Babysitter/Parent).
Cheap way to shirk responsibility? Maybe so...
"The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is allev
Frankly I find the commercial brain-washing of children far more "obscene" than a breast!
After all, children generally get to see breasts pretty early on in life. Its not like there's any big secret to keep.
PS. I agree totally with the above - subtle advertising as described is a much worse influence than soft port is likely to be.
Let's suppose a kid wants to learn about digital video. There are quite a few sites on the net about it. What are the odds that the administrators of those sites would know about my new filtering service? Probably pretty low. So what you wind up doing is enormously limiting the possible inquiries your kid could make.
That seems bad to me. Kids have an unlimited amount of curiosity about the world. I think this should be encouraged, and it can only be encouraged by unlimited or nearly unlimited access to information. If a kid hits a brick wall every time he wants to do something, he's going to get discouraged and watch TV.
I really don't think we want that to happen.
D
----
I think banning the bible would do the world some good. That and any other work of religious hokey that serves to keep people from using reason and logic. How I wish for a day when the world is free of religion, and people use common sense and rational thinking. oh well, wishful thinking.
As for filtering software, why? Are we that afraid of our children being exposed to sex? It's pretty much built into human nature.. why hide it?
*elevator music plays*
Passing porn is definitely a bad thing, but the Bible, IMHO, should also be banned by these types of things. All material should be judged by the same criteria, regardless of whether the title of the book is "Huckleberry Finn" or "Fahrenheit 451" or "The Bible."
"Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." -Numbers 31:17-18
Is that the type of filth we want our children to be allowed to read? Should we be teaching them that killing male children is OK, and if they're female children, keep them alive to use as sex slaves?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I will use squirm/squid/regexp to block all religeous sites and make sure my children's minds are not contaminated with that poison.
support gun control: take guns from cops
It can't be that difficult to create an HTML ratings system, much like TV or movies. More like TV now with all those "D" "L" "S" etc. added to a show's ratings. The makers of porn/adult/etc. sites would add the appropriate letters in some form of tag, or even in the header of their page, and the web browser software could be configured to block whatever the user didn't want to see. True, you would probably have to put the tags into all of your pages, but global replaces aren't hard with decent html software.
The makers of "adult" sites would likely welcome this too, since this would, in a logical world (hah!) obviate the need for censorship legislation and software. They'd be seen as doing the right thing to keep kids away from their sites, putting nice little halos on their heads.
Presumably nobody would put the "hardcore porn" tag on their Thomas Jefferson Bible site. Also, there could be lots of non-porn tags. There are probably lots of folks who don't want to see detailed medical images, so they could set up THEIR filters on THEIR software to show them what they want to see. I could definitely see the argument for blocking K-6 kids from seeing really detailed medical images at home or school, but not Jr or Sr High kids, who are theoretically more mature and might need to study this material. There could be lots of levels of granularity.
Of course, this requires that web browsers be set up with a decent password scheme so that different users would have different access levels, and most high school geeks could probably crack it shortly, but then they'd be subject to whatever punishment they get from their school for any cracking.
It can't be that simple, can it?
Every day I hear about "harmful" material, about how damaging it is to our kids' tender psyches to see porn. It seems like people take this for granted; I've seen almost nobody question the proposition that porn is bad for kids.
I don't think there's anything that annoys me more than a proposition people take for granted, asserted in a million different ways but proved in none. This is especially true when I see the undeniably bad effects trying to get rid of the stuff has on people.
Thoughts?
D
----
Sounds like the perfect call for an open source filter proxy. After all, if the source code were available to every user, they could do what they want with it, set up their own taboo lists, and not have to pay site licenses for this sort of bullshit. Maybe keep two different 'allow' and 'deny' lists, like tcpd does.
;-)
Oh, and while we're at it, we could make it strip off ad banners too.
-Joe
Personally, I would filter out the religous crap becuase I find that offensive.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
It has been shown that throughout all history that the more any state (govt) tries to repress or ignore a certain set of ideas, that it eventually comes back to bite them in the butt. Namely in the form of a revolution. With that said, maybe this company and its software are the first steps twords that. This is a shoddy product that is used by many different branches of govt. Cities, counties, and in at least one case, a state itself. Slowly, and ever so, people are begining to realize what is happening, and when/if that critical mass of people do wake up, there will be trouble.