My site's average processing time is.7922 seconds per page. This is good for a number of reasons:
- The database server is on the same box as the web server, which is a p166 mmx
- I host an online dictionary with thousands of words. When it does not know a word, it sends a request to m-w.com to get the definition (taking a couple seconds).
- The server is also used for relatively heavy email and web traffic. 10,000 hits per day.
- The server has an area with thousands of student photos (for a local high school) that must be resized via gd occasionally (taking a LOT of cpu time)
The overhead of this db-logging mechanism is almost nothing.
I know my website has kept an md5 of every page sent. I store it in a mysql database along with information about the client (referer, browser, variables posted) and page processing time.
Gotta love apache! Lets throw this patent out!
A list of email addresses at the district
on
Sean In The Middle
·
· Score: 1
Intel has been proving that they only want to be on top with #s... they say they have the "fastest PC processor" just because it is clocked at 1.5Ghz, yet their own processor downclocks itself when it actually reaches full usage at 1.5Ghz to less than half that.
Is it just me or does a dual athlon sound good right now?
Anyone know the status on the dual athlon chipset arriving and motherboards shipping with it? I'm ready!
I recently purchased an account on HostPro.net in order to host a light database driven site.
I was doing some benchmarking on their database box I was assigned to... it running mysql, a VERY fast database server.
I executed a fairly complex query, something like:
SELECT warps1.sector as warp1, warps2.sector as warp2, warps3.sector
as warp3, warps4.sector as warp4, warps5.sector as warp5,
warps6.sector as warp6, warps7.sector as warp7, warps8.sector as
warp8, warps9.sector as warp9 from warps as warps1, warps as warps2,
warps as warps3, warps as warps4, warps as warps5, warps as warps6,
warps as warps7, warps as warps8, warps as warps9 where
warps1.sector=7 and warps1.dest=warps2.sector and
warps2.dest=warps3.sector and warps3.dest=warps4.sector and
warps4.dest=warps5.sector and warps5.dest=warps6.sector and
warps6.dest=warps7.sector and warps7.dest=warps8.sector and
warps8.dest=warps9.sector and warps9.dest=200 LIMIT 1;
and the query took 26 minutes and 30 seconds on their server.
On my AMD box running at 350Mhz with only 64 ram, the query ran in 5 seconds.
I initiated a support request with HostPro regarding the issue and it was ignored. They also promised PHP 4 support, but they were running PHP3 and initially refused to upgrade.
This is not the only host I've had these same problems with.
Is it the goals of such hosts to just screw us people over? We need more nerd-friendly businesses.
>1) Do you think you can change the attitude of
>the company?
Of course he doesn't! That is why he is asking/. !!!
>2) Don't forget that it's not your company; you
>are an employee, and it's their way or the
>highway.
WRONG. Any employee is a portion of a company. A company is nothing without employees. Each employee has the responsibility to make sure his company succeeds. Spamming will not help this cause.
You have taken the attitude of many idiotic Americans that work for big businesses, like Microsoft, Sprint, AOL, AT&T, etc. You think that one person cannot change a company, but you are VERY VERY VERY wrong. One person, with the right motivation, can cripple any one of those companies.
>3) You can do the job you are being paid to do.
I do not do any task I morally have problems agreeing with. I don't give a damn if my employer wants me to do this or that, if it is wrong then I will NOT do it.
>Spam is not illegal where you are?
Illegal is different than being banned on the network. Most, if not all, major backbone providers have tough policies against spam.
In addition, post fake forwards of spam that you supposedly sent, to a few mailing lists... such as dc-stuff
add in the company name, phone number, address, president's name, his home phone number, etc.
Mention in the email to have the people give the president a call and tell him what they think. It will get them (your employer) to stop asking you to spam
Take the lists of addresses and emails, pretend you are really spamming thousands, while in reality you only spam a couple of accounts (yours and your boss's)... fake the logs
Make them think "spam: bad, it never attracts clients"
Also, tell your ISPs that you are working at a company that only got their Internet connection to spam from.... get the ISP to terminate the account after a few days... get this arranged with their head admin. Make it look totally real.
That is at xbox.com! This does prove the webpage is not a fake. Sadly I must wonder why these companies do stuff like this.... if Xbox is all so great, you don't need to touch up stuff... it will be rendered "perfect" live
If indeed it is bared on the MAC address, wouldn't it be possible to just start posting MAC address / Registration code pairs on an engine like astalavista? Then you just manually change your MAC.
Or better yet, make a utility that takes the MAC address as input and pumps out a valid serial #:)
N2H2 executives had no official position and privately opposed the legislation that made filtering mandatory in schools and libraries.
That is BULL SHIT! N2H2's CEO, Peter Nickerson, testified before Congress recommending that legislation be passed to require filtering in public schools.
The OpenNap efforts of many individuals are not about piracy. OpenNap only
indexes and allows easy searching of content already available online.
Instead of wasting your money going after servers and hosts, you should
target the individuals who host content.
Since the servers do not enable or promote piracy which was not already
available to other clients, they only index content, they do not have to
accept any terms given them by you. Of course there are more individuals
than there are servers, which explains your flawed strategy of attacking
OpenNap servers, because servers are not in violation of any legislation...
only the clients sharing your files are.
I must question what RIAA has plans to do as more secure, anonymous,
sub-networks are developed that do not rely on single-host entities that
index content. RIAA is throwing money out the window in efforts to stop the
sharing of information.
Things are changing in today's world. Software is becoming free. Large
corporations are being turned upside down by the availability of that
software. Information is being made free, for all to use, not just the
people that have a big wallet. RIAA cannot accept these changes and RIAA's
business model is flawed in that it cannot deal with such changes. RIAA has
attempted to utilize the court systems to stop such changes in society, but
it will only hinder one aspect of it... that hinderance will lead to
stronger weapons against RIAA.... like Freenet. The massive media attention
RIAA has gotten from these series of bull-shit legal battles has lead to
RIAA's own destruction.
You have kicked the chair out from under you and now the rope has
tightened... it will be over in a few seconds.
-
It looks like 90% of the "legitimate" sound recordings in the United States
are being shared... something music was made for. Ohh my.
If I record the sound of my own fart, will it be "legitimate" ? Probably
not... Why don't you write what you mean, instead of trying to scare people
off by saying they do illegitimate things and attempting to scare them with
legal terms and shit. If you want the people to listen, speak their
language. It is okay to cry sometimes and say "We have a failed business
model, we need to find a better way to make money besides sueing everyone
up-the-butt for excessive amounts of money that will never be paid."
If, indeed it is a modified squid, then why have I not been able to duplicate the common squid "errata" that it should produce with strange HTTP requests?
I do not believe it is squid, unless it has been heavily modified.
I should be getting raw accesslogs from an N2H2 server (5 CDs of them) and they will be posted online (hopefully). If the logs look very close to squid, then we might just need to go fishing:)
My web server hosts this web site and it has been gaining more hits on a daily basis. I have been informed that the Clark County School District has been in contact with N2H2 on this issue (although I could not verify that fact) and that this FOIA request (documented in this paper) may be one of the reasons that N2H2 has stopped their goals of making money in such ways.
It is definately worth a read, especially the idea of being able to bypass BESS by GOING straight through it with tunnelling.
Yes, it will start in the early days of the Federation. It will start with First Contact and detail the years of war and destruction that followed. I think First Contact will be a great place to start, since it really does tie in well with not only one, but TWO other star trek series...
The show, if I remember correctly, will be called something like "Star Trek: Birth of a Federation" (I know thats not it... but it will be quite similar)
Don't companies already track what we consumers buy? Some stores do special discounts if you use their card, each card has a name / address associated with it. Of course that is optional...
But what happens when you go to the local 7-11 and buy a super big gulp daily (or twice daily here).... they actually do track that. They have to in order to keep the story stocked with enough pepsi and penguin mints!
Is it bad? No way!
Same thing with cans. Who cares, its like a serial bar code that allows them to easily process the cans, instead of having to clumsily move them over a laser scanner.
Normal bess configurations only allow connections on port 80 to the BESS filter. You cannot access any other system.
In order to bypass BESS, you must establish a two-way tunnel that can transfer data between two hosts (one inside and the other outside the filter). Their data must appear as HTTP requests in order to be proxied.
This is called tunnelling and is very useful.
You can also do something called DNS tunneling (slower, but it works).
My recommendation would be to start on the process of gaining information that would publically embarass your school district immediately. Below is proof that it takes a LOT of time to get information. The document is available at: http://www.ispep.cx/files/ccsd/bess/
I recommend visiting the URL, since it will always be updated and it is HTML formatted with LOTS of important links.
-----------
BESS filter
at the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, NV.
Ben Efros (Ben@Efros.com)
2:30AM February 1, 2001. Last updated 12:45AM Feb 17, 2001.
What is BESS?
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics at CCSD
Should Artistic nudity be blocked?
My Efforts to Fix the Problem
CCSD Blocked Categories List
Advertisers get Privileges
Blocked Sites
What Parents need to know
Bypassing BESS
More Information
What is BESS?
The BESS filter at the Clark County School District is used to filter Internet usage for the entire district, limiting pornographic content, controversial subjects, information on drugs, and much more. Unfortunately the BESS filter blocks an incredible amount of educational and useful content also, including controversial subjects, information on drugs, and information on illegal acts, such as rape and even how to defend yourself.
If a student needs to write a paper on tobacco marketing or common ways tobacco is used in society, [s]he cannot do it whil at school for the simple reason that any site discussing tobacco's "recreational use" or "advertising tobacco" is blocked by BESS. The same goes for research on a number of other subjects.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Many parents feel that Internet filtering by programs such as BESS really does work effectively. But, by blocking information from reaching students by means of an automated filter actually causes more harm than good. Teachers have forgotten their duty to supervise students while they use the Internet. Many students often try to "press the limits" of the filter and try to gain access to topics that are normally filtered, such as pornography. One student who attends a school district other than CCSD has told me that "students now go into the library and try to access pornographic sites seeing how many are not blocked. The librarians have relaxed a bit now and don't actively supervise students, since they believe the filter stops access to such sites. Today, more students access pornographic sites from school than before BESS was installed, just because they want to prove that they can. It is funny how before we had BESS, nobody ever dared to go to a pornographic site."
The same thing happens here in Clark County. Not only do students try to access pornographic and adult content knowing that it is against the "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP), but they also break that same AUP by accessing content such as jokes, online video games, online clothing stores, and more. One incident regarding the blocked category of Lingerie now comes to mind... Just this past week I was in class and two girls who were looking at clothing online which was not blocked by BESS, although it was definitely lingerie. They did not even know that they were accessing a site that BESS should have blocked.
An incredible number of educational sites are blocked by BESS for a number of reasons. N2H2, the creators of BESS, has publicly stated "our staff of 100+ Human Web Reviewers personally examines every site we categorize." Yet, still students can access pornographic sites through BESS and are then denied access to very educational sites. This is no surprise considering that more than 100 pages are added to the Internet every second, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. A team of 500 people reviewing websites would have trouble keeping up, even if they worked 24-hour shifts just adding sites. But the Internet is constantly changing, pages are changed all the time. With well over 15 million web pages blocked by N2H2, a staff of one hundred employees, reviewing 300 pages a day, would take more than a year to make sure their blocked sites are blocked appropriately. Can they really be reviewing each and every page? They have hired a staff of one hundred people (many who work only part time) to do the jobs that even a team of 500 people would have trouble keeping up with.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics in the Clark County School District:
Category Reason it should not be blocked
Weapons You cannot learn the advancements in weapon technologies over the past few thousand years without seeing diagrams of how weapons work. Weapons have been around for thousands of years, why would we only now stop the ability to learn about them?
Alcohol A student in Health class was assigned to write a paper on substances that can physically damage your body. This student cannot find out what the common alcohol-related causes of death are and from what type of drinks, because they are blocked by BESS.
Violence Are you telling me that I should not be allowed to see a person's death? Well, just last night I saw an Isreali soldier thrown out of a police station window and murdered by a mob on CBS. I've also seen a boy shot up in his own father's arms. Seeing those video clips on TV touched me, they helped me to feel sorrow and compassion. Is BESS trying to raise us students to be like machines without emotion? Sadly, you cannot form an opinion on the problems of violence without actually seeing it.
Chat What if a student wishes to discuss, in real-time, what is happening in foreign countries with the people living there? The ability to communicate with foreign students can be a very educational experience.
Free Mail By blocking access to email services, students are denied a means of communication with the rest of the world. How often do you see email blocked in business offices?
Gambling I cannot see why a computer program that emulates a slot machine is banned from my site... instead, I have to run down to the local 7-11 store and see the real-thing. Funny how the government does not ban minors from looking at slot machines in the physical world, yet it is banned in the virtual.
Profanity I was just watching PBS and heard the word "nigger." And I just read that book Grapes of Wrath and the guy said "These goddamned Okies are thieves." There are situations that profanity is used to document history and the mood of society, with all of its emotions, that people lived in at the time.
Message Boards Many message boards contain information about what problems or issues other people have faced and also responses and ideas of how to fix them. The learning benefits from message boards are incredible.
Tasteless / Gross If I am trying to learn the common ways ancient civilizations would sometimes "mutilate" their dead or learn how the ancient Egyptians would remove organs from a body before mummifying it, I cannot because BESS doesn't think my stomach can handle it. I think I can decide for myself and do not need someone else to tell me what I cannot learn about.
Murder / Suicide It is an issue many teens have thought about. Every year students in the Clark County school district commit suicide. We cannot just hide this issue by sweeping it under the carpet, students need to be able to learn about it.
School Cheating A student can learn about views which other students have on topics, such as their theories to why historical events happen. You can only gain such knowledge of what other people believe, by reading their works which may sometimes be term papers or essays
Hate / Discrimination You cannot teach students about the wrongs of discrimination without actually showing both sides. By teaching only one side of the story, students will not solidify their understanding of such issues. Discrimination and acts of hate are vital parts of history. If we cannot learn from society's mistakes in the past, how do we prevent them in the future?
Jokes Laughing is a proven way to relax a person. Relaxation at school is a proven way to learn. Learning is a proven way to get good grades. Getting good grades is a good way to secure a good job, impress parents, and satisfy the Dept. of Education.
Free Web Pages Free web hosts provide a place for information to be shared, freely, without cost to the author. There is an incredible amount of research and educational information on Geocities, Homestead, and many other free website hosts. What if an author cannot afford to buy "LearningMath.com" but still feels the information is important enough for others to read so [s]he posts it to Geocities? Is it right to deny students the ability to learn, just because the author cannot afford another way of getting their message out?
Illegal Sure, bomb making information is available on the Internet, but it isn't something that needs to be feared... instead parents should fear the idea that they have chemicals under their kitchen sinks that if consumed can kill a person and if mixed wrongly with other chemicals can kill a whole houseful of people by releasing deadly gasses. If we are to ban learning about explosives, then why don't we require that all kitchen cabinets contain locks on them to prevent unauthorized access to chemicals? Why don't we require people to be 18 years old to buy household cleaners at the local supermarket, too?
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
It has been agreed upon that blocking pornography and adult content is fine, but the question always comes up about artistic nudity. I will not try to persuade any readers of this article with my opinion... instead I would like you to form your own conclusion.
Artistic nudity is defined by N2H2, the creators of BESS, as "images of bare or visible genitalia, pubic hair, buttocks, female breasts, etc.... that is not pornographic."
National Geographic routinely publishes photographs from different eras in human history and even hires photographers to seek out the way that certain people live throughout the world. Some natives in the rainforests do not wear clothing. Such photographs usually contain nudity and are then blocked. Time Magazine has also published photographs which contain female breasts and buttocks. (Although I cannot back this up, I bet that they have also published pictures containing visible genitalia and pubic hair. Email me if you know what issues contain such.) If I recall correctly, I have seen photographs of babies where their genitals are showing in magazines available at school. Open up an Encyclopedia Britannica and you will find an incredible amount of nudity while researching artwork from a few hundred years ago, nudity obviously isn't something new.
Why do schools often subscribe to such magazines? Probably because of the educational value contained within them. Why aren't such "dangerous" magazines banned from school, if nudity is so incredibly bad?
In my Pre-calculus / Trigonometry class we have a poster with a series of paintings on it. One of these paintings contains a man and woman, both fully naked!!! Funny how people in class never even pay attention to it, except as being a form of art. It isn't like us students stroll into class and just stare at the artwork all class period because it has nudity.
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
My efforts to fix the problem of filtering within the School District
After seeing that so much information valuable to my education has been blocked by BESS, I wanted to figure out how to fix the problem. I decided to start by sending the school district a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Freedom of Information Act entitles citizens of the United States to request government documents from any government agency. In this case, I requested three things from CCSD on November 10th, 2000 :
All documentation regarding the implementation of the Bess web proxy system provided to CCSD by N2H2.
All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter.
Documentation regarding the effectiveness of Bess at blocking Internet sites deemed inappropriate for minors and sites that have been mis-categorized by Bess.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
I waited one month for a response before writing another letter to check on the status of my request on December 10th, as CCSD had not replied or notified me of any delays in processing such a request. (Notification of a delay is required by the FOIA)
My follow-up letter requested the information below:
What is the status on my request? Why has CCSD not responded?
The Freedom of Information Act requires response within a twenty-day period. Why have I not been contacted by CCSD yet?
Who currently is assigned to handle my request? How may I contact that person?
Is the information I requested being destroyed in any way? This could mean data deletion, removal of tape archives, or the simple process of removing logs from the servers.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
CCSD finally responds!
A few days after the draft and mailing of my second letter, I received my first response from CCSD dated December 12th, 2000. As expected, CCSD did not work very hard to satisfy my request for information. Their their responses are below:
In response to my request for "All documentation regarding the implementation of the BESS web proxy system at CCSD by N2H2" they sent me a little marketing brochure [ front | back ] which N2H2 uses to try to sell it's service. Also they sent me a copy of the "Internet Filtering Procedures" [ page 2 | page 3 ] that provides a list of which categories are blocked by BESS. And finally, the third document they included with their mailing was a print-out of an email from Dan Wray (wray@ccsd.net) to Dr. Karlene R. Lee which was actually written by N2H2 and available online or on this website.
In response to my second question, "All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter," they asked for me to be more specific on which information from the access logs I am requesting.
In response to question three, about the effectiveness and mis-categorization of websites by BESS, it says that information on "blocking inappropriate Internet sites has been attached." The brochure and filtering categories documents satisfy the request. But, what about my question regarding sites that are mis-categorized? Well you could say that N2H2's "5 Step Review Process" never lets that happen, since they have over one hundred people working to review content and categorize it. So why do we still have so many sites being blocked that are educational!?
CCSD finally responds! (again)
I was sent via second letter, this time via certified mail, which was a response to my second letter (dated Dec 10th) around December 23rd (I can't remember the date). This response was certified to help legally cover CCSD's butt in case I chose to take legal action, because of their slow response times. They were really pushing the 20 day limit that the FOIA gives for an initial response time.
[ Click here to see the certified letter ]
In the meantime...
While I was preparing an updated FOIA request to gain access to the log files, I discovered that N2H2 has been selling those log files to companies for profit... while I can't even get my hands on them. On January 26, 2001 the Wall Street Journal broke this news [ mirror of article ] about N2H2. A discussion on Slashdot (which CCSD's BESS blocks access to) quickly erupted about the selling of such information and privacy concerns. One particular quote that hits on a few of the major points is shown below:
drDugan (jmd2120@eMail.com) wrote:
"I think this is pretty scary... just from the privacy implications alone. Lets summarize the situation:
The government requires kids to go to school.
Schools require kids to use the Internet.
Government requires special software in schools to monitor the actions of people there while online.
Sellers of the software can do whatever they want with the data, without any oversight.
The people being monitored (the school kids) have no say or recourse to affect the situation."
The bullet saying that the government requires filtering software in schools is referring to the "E-rate" program setup to give funding to help pay for Internet access in schools. Only schools under this program are required to filter.
After reading and taking part in the discussion myself, I decided to finalize writing my new FOIA request and get it into the mail as well as put this website up online.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
The idea that N2H2 is collecting information, about me, while I am at school without my consent and then turning around and selling it to third parties is quite disturbing. In addition to my privacy being violated, N2H2 is charging CCSD to use its filtering service. So N2H2 is getting paid to collect data which is then sold to marketers to make even more profit. And of course, they have a captive market since most schools want to be part of the "E-Rate" program funded by the government, which means they must have filtering of some kind installed. I wonder if CCSD knew that this information was being collected and then sold to third parties... after all they cite confidentiality as the reason which they cannot just provide me full access to the logs (see their response to my first FOIA request) yet they allow N2H2 to possess it.
Now I am waiting for a response from Dr. Karlene Lee.
CCSD Blocked Categories List
ADULT
PORN
ALCOHOL *
FREEMAIL *
GROSS *
MBB *
SCHOOLCHEAT *
WEAPONS *
PERSONALS
DISCRIM *
SEX
CHAT *
FREEPAGES * LANGUAGE *
NUDITY *
SUICIDE / MURDER *
AUCTION
SWIMSUIT
ILLEGAL *
VIOLENCE *
DRUGS *
GAMBLING *
LINGERIE
PERSONALINFO
TOBACCO *
JOKES *
* Listed above as a category which should not be filtered
Advertisers don't get filtered
BESS filter does an interesting thing that most filters do not. BESS adds a little search box and links to advertisers at the bottom of each page that is requested. These advertisements are certainly questionable considering that we the students are being forced to see them by the schools every time we have a project that requires Internet access from the school. So now the school district is forcing students to watch advertising on EVERY page they go to.
N2H2's business practices are questionable when they do not block access to the websites of sponsors and advertisers but when they do block access to similar sites. For example, I took the very first search result on google.com when searching for "penis" and compared it with the Encarta encyclopedia web page for "penis." Students must research the human body in an anatomy science course. Not surprisingly, both pages contain a diagram of the penis (or a link to it) and both describe the anatomy similarly. BESS blocks the non-advertiser's page (Anatomy of the Penis) which is quite educational, but the filter still allows you to access Encarta's page (Reproductive System). N2H2 is basically giving advertiser control over what students have access to and where they can find information by blocking sites and allowing their advertising instead.
What kind of advertising are they doing? BESS has banner advertisements for "Online Credit Reports." Funny how even with the "Personal Information" category being blocked by BESS, we can still go to their advertiser (Consumer Info) that "Collects personal information."
Blocked Sites
I will add new sites to this list after CCSD sends me a couple CDs of log files.
Textfiles.com - Contains text files collected from the 70s, 80s, and 90s which document the era of early computer networks and modem-based BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems)
@Stake - Security News Network - Reports news on computer security related events. This site does not promote crime in any way, instead it reports with a unique perspective on issues that matter to the online community, including privacy, online rights, security breeches, and more. @Stake is a professional company that conducts research on computer security and is definitely a safe site for school children even though it isn't very interesting. (Feb 5, 2001: This site may now be unblocked - N2H2 states that it never was blocked)
Devil Worship - An interesting read and definitely not harmful in anyway.
Teendate.de - A teen match-making site in German. Interestingly the English version of this site is not blocked.
Fire Damage - A very obvious educational site about four types of fire-related damage.
Virtual Prostitution Museum - Documents history of prostitution in the western United States. Does not advocate prostitution, instead it informs the reader of its history..
Classinfo - The site of a teacher at Chaparral High School in Las Vegas. Can't even access the page from at the school.
What Parents need to know
Often views as a parent regarding the Internet define what is good/bad and what is okay to access or not. But your child's views may differ from yours in many areas, including the idea of censorship itself. This is normal. As a parent, please remember that for a child to learn about the world around him/her, [s]he needs to be able to communicate with that world. Cutting off their best communications medium (the Internet) deprives the child of a potentially great education.
Freedom of expression, one of the basic rights of citizens here in the United States, is critical to the survival of this country. You may think it is okay to block websites that describe illegal acts, weapons, online chatting, etc, but there are more benefits to allowing your son/daughter to learn than to just deny access to information. When you prohibit online chatting and email, you are denying your child the right to communicate with others... it is as if you are forcing your child to go to school without being able to speak to others (or even the teacher). Online communications are quite similar to normal communications in a face to face meeting.
I know many close-minded parents are going to disagree with me about allowing students access to information which may document how illegal acts are performed. N2H2 says that learning about computer hacking and security is illegal and should be filtered. Computer security sites that discuss how crackers (commonly known as hackers) penetrate computer systems ranging from the Department of Defense to your local credit union are blocked by filters such as BESS. You may think "Great! Now my kid cannot become an evil criminal!" but it isn't that simple. These sites often discuss how to prevent such malicious actions too. I am a computer programmer and for my job I need to know how to create programs that are safe for public use and impenetrable by malicious users when in production environments. I cannot explain how useful such sites are to the development of protections, whether it be from buffer overflows, race conditions, symbolic link issues, print string vulnerabilities, or a number of other common computer security issues. (Just for the record, I am paid as a working student well over seven times what minimum wage is doing what I do, so it isn't like I do not know what I am talking about on this issue.) The importance of sites that are classified as "illegal" is more valuable than you may believe to a person's education.
Parents must realize that depriving their children of their ability to determine for them self what is appropriate can endanger a child even more than exposing a child to pornographic material. If your child cannot learn to see the line between appropriate and inappropriate while growing up in your home with your supervision, what happens when he/she moves out into the "real world" and no longer has your supervision and strict regulation of his/her life? If you son/daughter does not realize the harmful effects of drugs on their body now, what will stop them from overdosing as soon as they are exposed to it in the "real world" ? My point is that you need to guide your children in being able to make decisions for themselves, but not "protect" them from finding out truthful information about drugs or other controversial topics.
The Justice Abraham Fortas of the US Supreme Court once stated that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Your son or daughter still possesses the rights to learn what is outside of the approved curriculum of schools. Please do not limit their education and ultimately hurt their ability to survive in the open job market after their graduation from high school. Do what is truly best for your son or daughter.
Many parents think that if an Internet filter is installed, then their child will be blocked from accessing content such as pornography. Well, most likely you cannot access www.playboy.com, but that doesn't mean all sites containing nudity and pornography are blocked. Finding nudity, hardcore photographs, or adult sex stories is not difficult even with the BESS filter active. Anyone seeking such content will be able to find it from within any school using the BESS filter.
Do not rely on a filter to protect your child. BESS is not your child's babysitter! You are your child's babysitter. You are there to shield, protect, and guide your offspring in an acceptable manner, not a [capitalist] company and certainly not a computer program. The government's job is not to make sure your child grows up and learns the way you want him/her to learn... that is your job. Supporting laws which give government more control over what information is accessible to your child is not the way to go, instead teaching morality and how to make righteous decisions is the best way.
Bypassing BESS
There are ways to bypass / disable the effectiveness of BESS. There always will be. I will try and figure out how to write a few ways in this spot later, when it isn't 3:35 AM and I can figure out how to explain them without getting too technical.
More Information
MSNBC reports on the US Department of Defense's purchase of BESS log files (the same thing that CCSD does not want public)
EPIC's FOIA request to the Pentagon
Peacefire
Another Slashdot Article and Discussion
N2H2
Clark County School District
No Filters (nofilters.org)
A Student Essay on Filtering
American Library Association's (ALA) resolution on use of filtering in Libraries
American Library Association's (ALA) Statement on Internet Filtering (I recommend reading this one... change the word library to "school")
I host a very interesting paper on BESS. It is available at http://www.ispep.cx/files/ccsd/bess/and it is cut / pasted below in text form.
-----------
BESS filter
at the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, NV.
Ben Efros (Ben@Efros.com)
2:30AM February 1, 2001. Last updated 12:45AM Feb 17, 2001.
What is BESS?
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics at CCSD
Should Artistic nudity be blocked?
My Efforts to Fix the Problem
CCSD Blocked Categories List
Advertisers get Privileges
Blocked Sites
What Parents need to know
Bypassing BESS
More Information
What is BESS?
The BESS filter at the Clark County School District is used to filter Internet usage for the entire district, limiting pornographic content, controversial subjects, information on drugs, and much more. Unfortunately the BESS filter blocks an incredible amount of educational and useful content also, including controversial subjects, information on drugs, and information on illegal acts, such as rape and even how to defend yourself.
If a student needs to write a paper on tobacco marketing or common ways tobacco is used in society, [s]he cannot do it whil at school for the simple reason that any site discussing tobacco's "recreational use" or "advertising tobacco" is blocked by BESS. The same goes for research on a number of other subjects.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Many parents feel that Internet filtering by programs such as BESS really does work effectively. But, by blocking information from reaching students by means of an automated filter actually causes more harm than good. Teachers have forgotten their duty to supervise students while they use the Internet. Many students often try to "press the limits" of the filter and try to gain access to topics that are normally filtered, such as pornography. One student who attends a school district other than CCSD has told me that "students now go into the library and try to access pornographic sites seeing how many are not blocked. The librarians have relaxed a bit now and don't actively supervise students, since they believe the filter stops access to such sites. Today, more students access pornographic sites from school than before BESS was installed, just because they want to prove that they can. It is funny how before we had BESS, nobody ever dared to go to a pornographic site."
The same thing happens here in Clark County. Not only do students try to access pornographic and adult content knowing that it is against the "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP), but they also break that same AUP by accessing content such as jokes, online video games, online clothing stores, and more. One incident regarding the blocked category of Lingerie now comes to mind... Just this past week I was in class and two girls who were looking at clothing online which was not blocked by BESS, although it was definitely lingerie. They did not even know that they were accessing a site that BESS should have blocked.
An incredible number of educational sites are blocked by BESS for a number of reasons. N2H2, the creators of BESS, has publicly stated "our staff of 100+ Human Web Reviewers personally examines every site we categorize." Yet, still students can access pornographic sites through BESS and are then denied access to very educational sites. This is no surprise considering that more than 100 pages are added to the Internet every second, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. A team of 500 people reviewing websites would have trouble keeping up, even if they worked 24-hour shifts just adding sites. But the Internet is constantly changing, pages are changed all the time. With well over 15 million web pages blocked by N2H2, a staff of one hundred employees, reviewing 300 pages a day, would take more than a year to make sure their blocked sites are blocked appropriately. Can they really be reviewing each and every page? They have hired a staff of one hundred people (many who work only part time) to do the jobs that even a team of 500 people would have trouble keeping up with.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics in the Clark County School District:
Category Reason it should not be blocked
Weapons You cannot learn the advancements in weapon technologies over the past few thousand years without seeing diagrams of how weapons work. Weapons have been around for thousands of years, why would we only now stop the ability to learn about them?
Alcohol A student in Health class was assigned to write a paper on substances that can physically damage your body. This student cannot find out what the common alcohol-related causes of death are and from what type of drinks, because they are blocked by BESS.
Violence Are you telling me that I should not be allowed to see a person's death? Well, just last night I saw an Isreali soldier thrown out of a police station window and murdered by a mob on CBS. I've also seen a boy shot up in his own father's arms. Seeing those video clips on TV touched me, they helped me to feel sorrow and compassion. Is BESS trying to raise us students to be like machines without emotion? Sadly, you cannot form an opinion on the problems of violence without actually seeing it.
Chat What if a student wishes to discuss, in real-time, what is happening in foreign countries with the people living there? The ability to communicate with foreign students can be a very educational experience.
Free Mail By blocking access to email services, students are denied a means of communication with the rest of the world. How often do you see email blocked in business offices?
Gambling I cannot see why a computer program that emulates a slot machine is banned from my site... instead, I have to run down to the local 7-11 store and see the real-thing. Funny how the government does not ban minors from looking at slot machines in the physical world, yet it is banned in the virtual.
Profanity I was just watching PBS and heard the word "nigger." And I just read that book Grapes of Wrath and the guy said "These goddamned Okies are thieves." There are situations that profanity is used to document history and the mood of society, with all of its emotions, that people lived in at the time.
Message Boards Many message boards contain information about what problems or issues other people have faced and also responses and ideas of how to fix them. The learning benefits from message boards are incredible.
Tasteless / Gross If I am trying to learn the common ways ancient civilizations would sometimes "mutilate" their dead or learn how the ancient Egyptians would remove organs from a body before mummifying it, I cannot because BESS doesn't think my stomach can handle it. I think I can decide for myself and do not need someone else to tell me what I cannot learn about.
Murder / Suicide It is an issue many teens have thought about. Every year students in the Clark County school district commit suicide. We cannot just hide this issue by sweeping it under the carpet, students need to be able to learn about it.
School Cheating A student can learn about views which other students have on topics, such as their theories to why historical events happen. You can only gain such knowledge of what other people believe, by reading their works which may sometimes be term papers or essays
Hate / Discrimination You cannot teach students about the wrongs of discrimination without actually showing both sides. By teaching only one side of the story, students will not solidify their understanding of such issues. Discrimination and acts of hate are vital parts of history. If we cannot learn from society's mistakes in the past, how do we prevent them in the future?
Jokes Laughing is a proven way to relax a person. Relaxation at school is a proven way to learn. Learning is a proven way to get good grades. Getting good grades is a good way to secure a good job, impress parents, and satisfy the Dept. of Education.
Free Web Pages Free web hosts provide a place for information to be shared, freely, without cost to the author. There is an incredible amount of research and educational information on Geocities, Homestead, and many other free website hosts. What if an author cannot afford to buy "LearningMath.com" but still feels the information is important enough for others to read so [s]he posts it to Geocities? Is it right to deny students the ability to learn, just because the author cannot afford another way of getting their message out?
Illegal Sure, bomb making information is available on the Internet, but it isn't something that needs to be feared... instead parents should fear the idea that they have chemicals under their kitchen sinks that if consumed can kill a person and if mixed wrongly with other chemicals can kill a whole houseful of people by releasing deadly gasses. If we are to ban learning about explosives, then why don't we require that all kitchen cabinets contain locks on them to prevent unauthorized access to chemicals? Why don't we require people to be 18 years old to buy household cleaners at the local supermarket, too?
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
It has been agreed upon that blocking pornography and adult content is fine, but the question always comes up about artistic nudity. I will not try to persuade any readers of this article with my opinion... instead I would like you to form your own conclusion.
Artistic nudity is defined by N2H2, the creators of BESS, as "images of bare or visible genitalia, pubic hair, buttocks, female breasts, etc.... that is not pornographic."
National Geographic routinely publishes photographs from different eras in human history and even hires photographers to seek out the way that certain people live throughout the world. Some natives in the rainforests do not wear clothing. Such photographs usually contain nudity and are then blocked. Time Magazine has also published photographs which contain female breasts and buttocks. (Although I cannot back this up, I bet that they have also published pictures containing visible genitalia and pubic hair. Email me if you know what issues contain such.) If I recall correctly, I have seen photographs of babies where their genitals are showing in magazines available at school. Open up an Encyclopedia Britannica and you will find an incredible amount of nudity while researching artwork from a few hundred years ago, nudity obviously isn't something new.
Why do schools often subscribe to such magazines? Probably because of the educational value contained within them. Why aren't such "dangerous" magazines banned from school, if nudity is so incredibly bad?
In my Pre-calculus / Trigonometry class we have a poster with a series of paintings on it. One of these paintings contains a man and woman, both fully naked!!! Funny how people in class never even pay attention to it, except as being a form of art. It isn't like us students stroll into class and just stare at the artwork all class period because it has nudity.
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
My efforts to fix the problem of filtering within the School District
After seeing that so much information valuable to my education has been blocked by BESS, I wanted to figure out how to fix the problem. I decided to start by sending the school district a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Freedom of Information Act entitles citizens of the United States to request government documents from any government agency. In this case, I requested three things from CCSD on November 10th, 2000 :
All documentation regarding the implementation of the Bess web proxy system provided to CCSD by N2H2.
All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter.
Documentation regarding the effectiveness of Bess at blocking Internet sites deemed inappropriate for minors and sites that have been mis-categorized by Bess.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
I waited one month for a response before writing another letter to check on the status of my request on December 10th, as CCSD had not replied or notified me of any delays in processing such a request. (Notification of a delay is required by the FOIA)
My follow-up letter requested the information below:
What is the status on my request? Why has CCSD not responded?
The Freedom of Information Act requires response within a twenty-day period. Why have I not been contacted by CCSD yet?
Who currently is assigned to handle my request? How may I contact that person?
Is the information I requested being destroyed in any way? This could mean data deletion, removal of tape archives, or the simple process of removing logs from the servers.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
CCSD finally responds!
A few days after the draft and mailing of my second letter, I received my first response from CCSD dated December 12th, 2000. As expected, CCSD did not work very hard to satisfy my request for information. Their their responses are below:
In response to my request for "All documentation regarding the implementation of the BESS web proxy system at CCSD by N2H2" they sent me a little marketing brochure [ front | back ] which N2H2 uses to try to sell it's service. Also they sent me a copy of the "Internet Filtering Procedures" [ page 2 | page 3 ] that provides a list of which categories are blocked by BESS. And finally, the third document they included with their mailing was a print-out of an email from Dan Wray (wray@ccsd.net) to Dr. Karlene R. Lee which was actually written by N2H2 and available online or on this website.
In response to my second question, "All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter," they asked for me to be more specific on which information from the access logs I am requesting.
In response to question three, about the effectiveness and mis-categorization of websites by BESS, it says that information on "blocking inappropriate Internet sites has been attached." The brochure and filtering categories documents satisfy the request. But, what about my question regarding sites that are mis-categorized? Well you could say that N2H2's "5 Step Review Process" never lets that happen, since they have over one hundred people working to review content and categorize it. So why do we still have so many sites being blocked that are educational!?
CCSD finally responds! (again)
I was sent via second letter, this time via certified mail, which was a response to my second letter (dated Dec 10th) around December 23rd (I can't remember the date). This response was certified to help legally cover CCSD's butt in case I chose to take legal action, because of their slow response times. They were really pushing the 20 day limit that the FOIA gives for an initial response time.
[ Click here to see the certified letter ]
In the meantime...
While I was preparing an updated FOIA request to gain access to the log files, I discovered that N2H2 has been selling those log files to companies for profit... while I can't even get my hands on them. On January 26, 2001 the Wall Street Journal broke this news [ mirror of article ] about N2H2. A discussion on Slashdot (which CCSD's BESS blocks access to) quickly erupted about the selling of such information and privacy concerns. One particular quote that hits on a few of the major points is shown below:
drDugan (jmd2120@eMail.com) wrote:
"I think this is pretty scary... just from the privacy implications alone. Lets summarize the situation:
The government requires kids to go to school.
Schools require kids to use the Internet.
Government requires special software in schools to monitor the actions of people there while online.
Sellers of the software can do whatever they want with the data, without any oversight.
The people being monitored (the school kids) have no say or recourse to affect the situation."
The bullet saying that the government requires filtering software in schools is referring to the "E-rate" program setup to give funding to help pay for Internet access in schools. Only schools under this program are required to filter.
After reading and taking part in the discussion myself, I decided to finalize writing my new FOIA request and get it into the mail as well as put this website up online.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
The idea that N2H2 is collecting information, about me, while I am at school without my consent and then turning around and selling it to third parties is quite disturbing. In addition to my privacy being violated, N2H2 is charging CCSD to use its filtering service. So N2H2 is getting paid to collect data which is then sold to marketers to make even more profit. And of course, they have a captive market since most schools want to be part of the "E-Rate" program funded by the government, which means they must have filtering of some kind installed. I wonder if CCSD knew that this information was being collected and then sold to third parties... after all they cite confidentiality as the reason which they cannot just provide me full access to the logs (see their response to my first FOIA request) yet they allow N2H2 to possess it.
Now I am waiting for a response from Dr. Karlene Lee.
CCSD Blocked Categories List
ADULT
PORN
ALCOHOL *
FREEMAIL *
GROSS *
MBB *
SCHOOLCHEAT *
WEAPONS *
PERSONALS
DISCRIM *
SEX
CHAT *
FREEPAGES * LANGUAGE *
NUDITY *
SUICIDE / MURDER *
AUCTION
SWIMSUIT
ILLEGAL *
VIOLENCE *
DRUGS *
GAMBLING *
LINGERIE
PERSONALINFO
TOBACCO *
JOKES *
* Listed above as a category which should not be filtered
Advertisers don't get filtered
BESS filter does an interesting thing that most filters do not. BESS adds a little search box and links to advertisers at the bottom of each page that is requested. These advertisements are certainly questionable considering that we the students are being forced to see them by the schools every time we have a project that requires Internet access from the school. So now the school district is forcing students to watch advertising on EVERY page they go to.
N2H2's business practices are questionable when they do not block access to the websites of sponsors and advertisers but when they do block access to similar sites. For example, I took the very first search result on google.com when searching for "penis" and compared it with the Encarta encyclopedia web page for "penis." Students must research the human body in an anatomy science course. Not surprisingly, both pages contain a diagram of the penis (or a link to it) and both describe the anatomy similarly. BESS blocks the non-advertiser's page (Anatomy of the Penis) which is quite educational, but the filter still allows you to access Encarta's page (Reproductive System). N2H2 is basically giving advertiser control over what students have access to and where they can find information by blocking sites and allowing their advertising instead.
What kind of advertising are they doing? BESS has banner advertisements for "Online Credit Reports." Funny how even with the "Personal Information" category being blocked by BESS, we can still go to their advertiser (Consumer Info) that "Collects personal information."
Blocked Sites
I will add new sites to this list after CCSD sends me a couple CDs of log files.
Textfiles.com - Contains text files collected from the 70s, 80s, and 90s which document the era of early computer networks and modem-based BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems)
@Stake - Security News Network - Reports news on computer security related events. This site does not promote crime in any way, instead it reports with a unique perspective on issues that matter to the online community, including privacy, online rights, security breeches, and more. @Stake is a professional company that conducts research on computer security and is definitely a safe site for school children even though it isn't very interesting. (Feb 5, 2001: This site may now be unblocked - N2H2 states that it never was blocked)
Devil Worship - An interesting read and definitely not harmful in anyway.
Teendate.de - A teen match-making site in German. Interestingly the English version of this site is not blocked.
Fire Damage - A very obvious educational site about four types of fire-related damage.
Virtual Prostitution Museum - Documents history of prostitution in the western United States. Does not advocate prostitution, instead it informs the reader of its history..
Classinfo - The site of a teacher at Chaparral High School in Las Vegas. Can't even access the page from at the school.
What Parents need to know
Often views as a parent regarding the Internet define what is good/bad and what is okay to access or not. But your child's views may differ from yours in many areas, including the idea of censorship itself. This is normal. As a parent, please remember that for a child to learn about the world around him/her, [s]he needs to be able to communicate with that world. Cutting off their best communications medium (the Internet) deprives the child of a potentially great education.
Freedom of expression, one of the basic rights of citizens here in the United States, is critical to the survival of this country. You may think it is okay to block websites that describe illegal acts, weapons, online chatting, etc, but there are more benefits to allowing your son/daughter to learn than to just deny access to information. When you prohibit online chatting and email, you are denying your child the right to communicate with others... it is as if you are forcing your child to go to school without being able to speak to others (or even the teacher). Online communications are quite similar to normal communications in a face to face meeting.
I know many close-minded parents are going to disagree with me about allowing students access to information which may document how illegal acts are performed. N2H2 says that learning about computer hacking and security is illegal and should be filtered. Computer security sites that discuss how crackers (commonly known as hackers) penetrate computer systems ranging from the Department of Defense to your local credit union are blocked by filters such as BESS. You may think "Great! Now my kid cannot become an evil criminal!" but it isn't that simple. These sites often discuss how to prevent such malicious actions too. I am a computer programmer and for my job I need to know how to create programs that are safe for public use and impenetrable by malicious users when in production environments. I cannot explain how useful such sites are to the development of protections, whether it be from buffer overflows, race conditions, symbolic link issues, print string vulnerabilities, or a number of other common computer security issues. (Just for the record, I am paid as a working student well over seven times what minimum wage is doing what I do, so it isn't like I do not know what I am talking about on this issue.) The importance of sites that are classified as "illegal" is more valuable than you may believe to a person's education.
Parents must realize that depriving their children of their ability to determine for them self what is appropriate can endanger a child even more than exposing a child to pornographic material. If your child cannot learn to see the line between appropriate and inappropriate while growing up in your home with your supervision, what happens when he/she moves out into the "real world" and no longer has your supervision and strict regulation of his/her life? If you son/daughter does not realize the harmful effects of drugs on their body now, what will stop them from overdosing as soon as they are exposed to it in the "real world" ? My point is that you need to guide your children in being able to make decisions for themselves, but not "protect" them from finding out truthful information about drugs or other controversial topics.
The Justice Abraham Fortas of the US Supreme Court once stated that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Your son or daughter still possesses the rights to learn what is outside of the approved curriculum of schools. Please do not limit their education and ultimately hurt their ability to survive in the open job market after their graduation from high school. Do what is truly best for your son or daughter.
Many parents think that if an Internet filter is installed, then their child will be blocked from accessing content such as pornography. Well, most likely you cannot access www.playboy.com, but that doesn't mean all sites containing nudity and pornography are blocked. Finding nudity, hardcore photographs, or adult sex stories is not difficult even with the BESS filter active. Anyone seeking such content will be able to find it from within any school using the BESS filter.
Do not rely on a filter to protect your child. BESS is not your child's babysitter! You are your child's babysitter. You are there to shield, protect, and guide your offspring in an acceptable manner, not a [capitalist] company and certainly not a computer program. The government's job is not to make sure your child grows up and learns the way you want him/her to learn... that is your job. Supporting laws which give government more control over what information is accessible to your child is not the way to go, instead teaching morality and how to make righteous decisions is the best way.
Bypassing BESS
There are ways to bypass / disable the effectiveness of BESS. There always will be. I will try and figure out how to write a few ways in this spot later, when it isn't 3:35 AM and I can figure out how to explain them without getting too technical.
More Information
MSNBC reports on the US Department of Defense's purchase of BESS log files (the same thing that CCSD does not want public)
EPIC's FOIA request to the Pentagon
Peacefire
Another Slashdot Article and Discussion
N2H2
Clark County School District
No Filters (nofilters.org)
A Student Essay on Filtering
American Library Association's (ALA) resolution on use of filtering in Libraries
American Library Association's (ALA) Statement on Internet Filtering (I recommend reading this one... change the word library to "school")
At 150 degrees F, that temperature is extremely hot!
Since its so hot, I must wonder... how long can people survive at 150?
Cooling chambers that are naturally warm like that would require a LOT of energy. It doesn't make sense, money-wise, to attempt to cool them. I know I sure wouldnt want to pay $20 to see crystals in an airconditioned cave.... I want to see them at 150 degrees and in their natural environment!
The frozen north will hatch a flightless bird, who will spread his wings and dominate the earth.
And cause an empire by the sea to fall
To the astonishment, and delight of all.
Don't purchase anything that runs on Cold Fusion. CF is _extremely_ slow and unreliable... PLUS its EXPENSIVE. If you really want a good web-based application, program it in PHP or perl. (or buy it)
Many states adopted the FOIA at their state levels. Also, any local school receiving federal money would have to comply with the FOIA at the federal level.
So pretty much any public school district (Since most do receive federal cash) must comply.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux- 2.4.4.tar.bz2
Or any mirror near you! Just goto:
http://www.[countrycode].kernel.org/pub/linux/kern el/v2.4/linux-2.4.4.tar.bz2
For example, Albania is abbreviated "al" so you would go to:
http://www.al.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/lin ux-2.4.4.tar.bz2
My site's average processing time is .7922 seconds per page. This is good for a number of reasons:
- The database server is on the same box as the web server, which is a p166 mmx
- I host an online dictionary with thousands of words. When it does not know a word, it sends a request to m-w.com to get the definition (taking a couple seconds).
- The server is also used for relatively heavy email and web traffic. 10,000 hits per day.
- The server has an area with thousands of student photos (for a local high school) that must be resized via gd occasionally (taking a LOT of cpu time)
The overhead of this db-logging mechanism is almost nothing.
I know my website has kept an md5 of every page sent. I store it in a mysql database along with information about the client (referer, browser, variables posted) and page processing time.
Gotta love apache! Lets throw this patent out!
janthony@mckinneyisd.net; cadams@mckinneyisd.net; sadams@mckinneyisd.net; cjohnson@mckinneyisd.net; zjohnson@mckinneyisd.net; anjohnson@mckinneyisd.net; bjohnson@mckinneyisd.net; ajohnson@mckinneyisd.net; sijohnson@mckinneyisd.net; sjohnson@mckinneyisd.net; ljohnson@mckinneyisd.net; byjohnson@mckinneyisd.net; kajohnson@mckinneyisd.net; jsmith@mckinneyisd.net; clsmith@mckinneyisd.net; josmith@mckinneyisd.net; cysmith@mckinneyisd.net; alsmith@mckinneyisd.net; asmith@mckinneyisd.net; jlsmith@mckinneyisd.net; msmith@mckinneyisd.net; csmith@mckinneyisd.net; dosmith@mckinneyisd.net; lsmith@mckinneyisd.net; trsmith@mckinneyisd.net; tsmith@mckinneyisd.net; LJsmith@mckinneyisd.net; tasmith@mckinneyisd.net; jamismith@mckinneyisd.net; swood@mckinneyisd.net; jwood@mckinneyisd.net; wanderso@mckinneyisd.net; kanderson@mckinneyisd.net; manderson@mckinneyisd.net; mlanderson@mckinneyisd.net; janderson@mckinneyisd.net; vkyle@mckinneyisd.net; kroberts@mckinneyisd.net; jhansen@mckinneyisd.net; shansen@mckinneyisd.net; thansen@mckinneyisd.net; barnold@mckinneyisd.net; aarnold@mckinneyisd.net; garnold@mckinneyisd.net; marnold@mckinneyisd.net; tphillips@mckinneyisd.net; jphillips@mckinneyisd.net; rphillips@mckinneyisd.net; tkphillips@mckinneyisd.net; nhill@mckinneyisd.net; chill@mckinneyisd.net; lhill@mckinneyisd.net; dhill@mckinneyisd.net; vhill@mckinneyisd.net; ghill@mckinneyisd.net; hhill@mckinneyisd.net; nfjames@mckinneyisd.net; njames@mckinneyisd.net; djames@mckinneyisd.net; sjames@mckinneyisd.net; cjames@mckinneyisd.net; alang@mckinneyisd.net; brichards@mckinneyisd.net; mrichards@mckinneyisd.net; ncannon@mckinneyisd.net; vmason@mckinneyisd.net; jamiller@mckinneyisd.net; jmiller@mckinneyisd.net; dmiller@mckinneyisd.net; jlmiller@mckinneyisd.net; rmiller@mckinneyisd.net; mmiller@mckinneyisd.net; kmiller@mckinneyisd.net; amiller@mckinneyisd.net; mgmiller@mckinneyisd.net; afitzgerald@mckinneyisd.net; nthompson@mckinneyisd.net; vthompson@mckinneyisd.net; dsmith@mckinneyisd.net; ansmith@mckinneyisd.net
Intel has been proving that they only want to be on top with #s... they say they have the "fastest PC processor" just because it is clocked at 1.5Ghz, yet their own processor downclocks itself when it actually reaches full usage at 1.5Ghz to less than half that.
Is it just me or does a dual athlon sound good right now?
Anyone know the status on the dual athlon chipset arriving and motherboards shipping with it? I'm ready!
I recently purchased an account on HostPro.net in order to host a light database driven site.
... it running mysql, a VERY fast database server.
I was doing some benchmarking on their database box I was assigned to
I executed a fairly complex query, something like:
SELECT warps1.sector as warp1, warps2.sector as warp2, warps3.sector
as warp3, warps4.sector as warp4, warps5.sector as warp5,
warps6.sector as warp6, warps7.sector as warp7, warps8.sector as
warp8, warps9.sector as warp9 from warps as warps1, warps as warps2,
warps as warps3, warps as warps4, warps as warps5, warps as warps6,
warps as warps7, warps as warps8, warps as warps9 where
warps1.sector=7 and warps1.dest=warps2.sector and
warps2.dest=warps3.sector and warps3.dest=warps4.sector and
warps4.dest=warps5.sector and warps5.dest=warps6.sector and
warps6.dest=warps7.sector and warps7.dest=warps8.sector and
warps8.dest=warps9.sector and warps9.dest=200 LIMIT 1;
and the query took 26 minutes and 30 seconds on their server.
On my AMD box running at 350Mhz with only 64 ram, the query ran in 5 seconds.
I initiated a support request with HostPro regarding the issue and it was ignored. They also promised PHP 4 support, but they were running PHP3 and initially refused to upgrade.
This is not the only host I've had these same problems with.
Is it the goals of such hosts to just screw us people over? We need more nerd-friendly businesses.
>1) Do you think you can change the attitude of
/. !!!
>the company?
Of course he doesn't! That is why he is asking
>2) Don't forget that it's not your company; you
>are an employee, and it's their way or the
>highway.
WRONG. Any employee is a portion of a company. A company is nothing without employees. Each employee has the responsibility to make sure his company succeeds. Spamming will not help this cause.
You have taken the attitude of many idiotic Americans that work for big businesses, like Microsoft, Sprint, AOL, AT&T, etc. You think that one person cannot change a company, but you are VERY VERY VERY wrong. One person, with the right motivation, can cripple any one of those companies.
>3) You can do the job you are being paid to do.
I do not do any task I morally have problems agreeing with. I don't give a damn if my employer wants me to do this or that, if it is wrong then I will NOT do it.
>Spam is not illegal where you are?
Illegal is different than being banned on the network. Most, if not all, major backbone providers have tough policies against spam.
Stupid people, wake up and fight big business...
x-empt
In addition, post fake forwards of spam that you supposedly sent, to a few mailing lists... such as dc-stuff
add in the company name, phone number, address, president's name, his home phone number, etc.
Mention in the email to have the people give the president a call and tell him what they think. It will get them (your employer) to stop asking you to spam
Take the lists of addresses and emails, pretend you are really spamming thousands, while in reality you only spam a couple of accounts (yours and your boss's)... fake the logs
Make them think "spam: bad, it never attracts clients"
Also, tell your ISPs that you are working at a company that only got their Internet connection to spam from.... get the ISP to terminate the account after a few days... get this arranged with their head admin. Make it look totally real.
http://www.xbox.com/games/amped/assets/amped-image -1.jpg
That is at xbox.com! This does prove the webpage is not a fake. Sadly I must wonder why these companies do stuff like this.... if Xbox is all so great, you don't need to touch up stuff... it will be rendered "perfect" live
If indeed it is bared on the MAC address, wouldn't it be possible to just start posting MAC address / Registration code pairs on an engine like astalavista? Then you just manually change your MAC.
:)
Or better yet, make a utility that takes the MAC address as input and pumps out a valid serial #
Woah, smart Microsoft!
N2H2 executives had no official position and privately opposed the legislation that made filtering mandatory in schools and libraries.
That is BULL SHIT! N2H2's CEO, Peter Nickerson, testified before Congress recommending that legislation be passed to require filtering in public schools.
Peacefire's Bennet Haselton wrote a great report about BESS (which links to the testimony) here: http://www.peacefire.org/amnesty-intercepted/.
To: Piracy@RIAA.com
...
...
Mr. Whitehead,
The OpenNap efforts of many individuals are not about piracy. OpenNap only
indexes and allows easy searching of content already available online.
Instead of wasting your money going after servers and hosts, you should
target the individuals who host content.
Since the servers do not enable or promote piracy which was not already
available to other clients, they only index content, they do not have to
accept any terms given them by you. Of course there are more individuals
than there are servers, which explains your flawed strategy of attacking
OpenNap servers, because servers are not in violation of any legislation
only the clients sharing your files are.
I must question what RIAA has plans to do as more secure, anonymous,
sub-networks are developed that do not rely on single-host entities that
index content. RIAA is throwing money out the window in efforts to stop the
sharing of information.
Things are changing in today's world. Software is becoming free. Large
corporations are being turned upside down by the availability of that
software. Information is being made free, for all to use, not just the
people that have a big wallet. RIAA cannot accept these changes and RIAA's
business model is flawed in that it cannot deal with such changes. RIAA has
attempted to utilize the court systems to stop such changes in society, but
it will only hinder one aspect of it... that hinderance will lead to
stronger weapons against RIAA.... like Freenet. The massive media attention
RIAA has gotten from these series of bull-shit legal battles has lead to
RIAA's own destruction.
You have kicked the chair out from under you and now the rope has
tightened... it will be over in a few seconds.
-
It looks like 90% of the "legitimate" sound recordings in the United States
are being shared... something music was made for. Ohh my.
If I record the sound of my own fart, will it be "legitimate" ? Probably
not... Why don't you write what you mean, instead of trying to scare people
off by saying they do illegitimate things and attempting to scare them with
legal terms and shit. If you want the people to listen, speak their
language. It is okay to cry sometimes and say "We have a failed business
model, we need to find a better way to make money besides sueing everyone
up-the-butt for excessive amounts of money that will never be paid."
Sorry to say this, but
Get a new job, Mr. Whitehead.
--
Your friendly mentor,
x-empt
If, indeed it is a modified squid, then why have I not been able to duplicate the common squid "errata" that it should produce with strange HTTP requests?
:)
I do not believe it is squid, unless it has been heavily modified.
I should be getting raw accesslogs from an N2H2 server (5 CDs of them) and they will be posted online (hopefully). If the logs look very close to squid, then we might just need to go fishing
My web server hosts this web site and it has been gaining more hits on a daily basis. I have been informed that the Clark County School District has been in contact with N2H2 on this issue (although I could not verify that fact) and that this FOIA request (documented in this paper) may be one of the reasons that N2H2 has stopped their goals of making money in such ways.
It is definately worth a read, especially the idea of being able to bypass BESS by GOING straight through it with tunnelling.
x-empt
Yes, it will start in the early days of the Federation. It will start with First Contact and detail the years of war and destruction that followed. I think First Contact will be a great place to start, since it really does tie in well with not only one, but TWO other star trek series...
The show, if I remember correctly, will be called something like "Star Trek: Birth of a Federation" (I know thats not it... but it will be quite similar)
Don't companies already track what we consumers buy? Some stores do special discounts if you use their card, each card has a name / address associated with it. Of course that is optional...
But what happens when you go to the local 7-11 and buy a super big gulp daily (or twice daily here).... they actually do track that. They have to in order to keep the story stocked with enough pepsi and penguin mints!
Is it bad? No way!
Same thing with cans. Who cares, its like a serial bar code that allows them to easily process the cans, instead of having to clumsily move them over a laser scanner.
Normal bess configurations only allow connections on port 80 to the BESS filter. You cannot access any other system.
In order to bypass BESS, you must establish a two-way tunnel that can transfer data between two hosts (one inside and the other outside the filter). Their data must appear as HTTP requests in order to be proxied.
This is called tunnelling and is very useful.
You can also do something called DNS tunneling (slower, but it works).
My recommendation would be to start on the process of gaining information that would publically embarass your school district immediately. Below is proof that it takes a LOT of time to get information. The document is available at: http://www.ispep.cx/files/ccsd/bess/
... that is not pornographic."
I recommend visiting the URL, since it will always be updated and it is HTML formatted with LOTS of important links.
-----------
BESS filter
at the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, NV.
Ben Efros (Ben@Efros.com)
2:30AM February 1, 2001. Last updated 12:45AM Feb 17, 2001.
What is BESS?
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics at CCSD
Should Artistic nudity be blocked?
My Efforts to Fix the Problem
CCSD Blocked Categories List
Advertisers get Privileges
Blocked Sites
What Parents need to know
Bypassing BESS
More Information
What is BESS?
The BESS filter at the Clark County School District is used to filter Internet usage for the entire district, limiting pornographic content, controversial subjects, information on drugs, and much more. Unfortunately the BESS filter blocks an incredible amount of educational and useful content also, including controversial subjects, information on drugs, and information on illegal acts, such as rape and even how to defend yourself.
If a student needs to write a paper on tobacco marketing or common ways tobacco is used in society, [s]he cannot do it whil at school for the simple reason that any site discussing tobacco's "recreational use" or "advertising tobacco" is blocked by BESS. The same goes for research on a number of other subjects.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Many parents feel that Internet filtering by programs such as BESS really does work effectively. But, by blocking information from reaching students by means of an automated filter actually causes more harm than good. Teachers have forgotten their duty to supervise students while they use the Internet. Many students often try to "press the limits" of the filter and try to gain access to topics that are normally filtered, such as pornography. One student who attends a school district other than CCSD has told me that "students now go into the library and try to access pornographic sites seeing how many are not blocked. The librarians have relaxed a bit now and don't actively supervise students, since they believe the filter stops access to such sites. Today, more students access pornographic sites from school than before BESS was installed, just because they want to prove that they can. It is funny how before we had BESS, nobody ever dared to go to a pornographic site."
The same thing happens here in Clark County. Not only do students try to access pornographic and adult content knowing that it is against the "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP), but they also break that same AUP by accessing content such as jokes, online video games, online clothing stores, and more. One incident regarding the blocked category of Lingerie now comes to mind... Just this past week I was in class and two girls who were looking at clothing online which was not blocked by BESS, although it was definitely lingerie. They did not even know that they were accessing a site that BESS should have blocked.
An incredible number of educational sites are blocked by BESS for a number of reasons. N2H2, the creators of BESS, has publicly stated "our staff of 100+ Human Web Reviewers personally examines every site we categorize." Yet, still students can access pornographic sites through BESS and are then denied access to very educational sites. This is no surprise considering that more than 100 pages are added to the Internet every second, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. A team of 500 people reviewing websites would have trouble keeping up, even if they worked 24-hour shifts just adding sites. But the Internet is constantly changing, pages are changed all the time. With well over 15 million web pages blocked by N2H2, a staff of one hundred employees, reviewing 300 pages a day, would take more than a year to make sure their blocked sites are blocked appropriately. Can they really be reviewing each and every page? They have hired a staff of one hundred people (many who work only part time) to do the jobs that even a team of 500 people would have trouble keeping up with.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics in the Clark County School District:
Category Reason it should not be blocked
Weapons You cannot learn the advancements in weapon technologies over the past few thousand years without seeing diagrams of how weapons work. Weapons have been around for thousands of years, why would we only now stop the ability to learn about them?
Alcohol A student in Health class was assigned to write a paper on substances that can physically damage your body. This student cannot find out what the common alcohol-related causes of death are and from what type of drinks, because they are blocked by BESS.
Violence Are you telling me that I should not be allowed to see a person's death? Well, just last night I saw an Isreali soldier thrown out of a police station window and murdered by a mob on CBS. I've also seen a boy shot up in his own father's arms. Seeing those video clips on TV touched me, they helped me to feel sorrow and compassion. Is BESS trying to raise us students to be like machines without emotion? Sadly, you cannot form an opinion on the problems of violence without actually seeing it.
Chat What if a student wishes to discuss, in real-time, what is happening in foreign countries with the people living there? The ability to communicate with foreign students can be a very educational experience.
Free Mail By blocking access to email services, students are denied a means of communication with the rest of the world. How often do you see email blocked in business offices?
Gambling I cannot see why a computer program that emulates a slot machine is banned from my site... instead, I have to run down to the local 7-11 store and see the real-thing. Funny how the government does not ban minors from looking at slot machines in the physical world, yet it is banned in the virtual.
Profanity I was just watching PBS and heard the word "nigger." And I just read that book Grapes of Wrath and the guy said "These goddamned Okies are thieves." There are situations that profanity is used to document history and the mood of society, with all of its emotions, that people lived in at the time.
Message Boards Many message boards contain information about what problems or issues other people have faced and also responses and ideas of how to fix them. The learning benefits from message boards are incredible.
Tasteless / Gross If I am trying to learn the common ways ancient civilizations would sometimes "mutilate" their dead or learn how the ancient Egyptians would remove organs from a body before mummifying it, I cannot because BESS doesn't think my stomach can handle it. I think I can decide for myself and do not need someone else to tell me what I cannot learn about.
Murder / Suicide It is an issue many teens have thought about. Every year students in the Clark County school district commit suicide. We cannot just hide this issue by sweeping it under the carpet, students need to be able to learn about it.
School Cheating A student can learn about views which other students have on topics, such as their theories to why historical events happen. You can only gain such knowledge of what other people believe, by reading their works which may sometimes be term papers or essays
Hate / Discrimination You cannot teach students about the wrongs of discrimination without actually showing both sides. By teaching only one side of the story, students will not solidify their understanding of such issues. Discrimination and acts of hate are vital parts of history. If we cannot learn from society's mistakes in the past, how do we prevent them in the future?
Jokes Laughing is a proven way to relax a person. Relaxation at school is a proven way to learn. Learning is a proven way to get good grades. Getting good grades is a good way to secure a good job, impress parents, and satisfy the Dept. of Education.
Free Web Pages Free web hosts provide a place for information to be shared, freely, without cost to the author. There is an incredible amount of research and educational information on Geocities, Homestead, and many other free website hosts. What if an author cannot afford to buy "LearningMath.com" but still feels the information is important enough for others to read so [s]he posts it to Geocities? Is it right to deny students the ability to learn, just because the author cannot afford another way of getting their message out?
Illegal Sure, bomb making information is available on the Internet, but it isn't something that needs to be feared... instead parents should fear the idea that they have chemicals under their kitchen sinks that if consumed can kill a person and if mixed wrongly with other chemicals can kill a whole houseful of people by releasing deadly gasses. If we are to ban learning about explosives, then why don't we require that all kitchen cabinets contain locks on them to prevent unauthorized access to chemicals? Why don't we require people to be 18 years old to buy household cleaners at the local supermarket, too?
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
It has been agreed upon that blocking pornography and adult content is fine, but the question always comes up about artistic nudity. I will not try to persuade any readers of this article with my opinion... instead I would like you to form your own conclusion.
Artistic nudity is defined by N2H2, the creators of BESS, as "images of bare or visible genitalia, pubic hair, buttocks, female breasts, etc.
National Geographic routinely publishes photographs from different eras in human history and even hires photographers to seek out the way that certain people live throughout the world. Some natives in the rainforests do not wear clothing. Such photographs usually contain nudity and are then blocked. Time Magazine has also published photographs which contain female breasts and buttocks. (Although I cannot back this up, I bet that they have also published pictures containing visible genitalia and pubic hair. Email me if you know what issues contain such.) If I recall correctly, I have seen photographs of babies where their genitals are showing in magazines available at school. Open up an Encyclopedia Britannica and you will find an incredible amount of nudity while researching artwork from a few hundred years ago, nudity obviously isn't something new.
Why do schools often subscribe to such magazines? Probably because of the educational value contained within them. Why aren't such "dangerous" magazines banned from school, if nudity is so incredibly bad?
In my Pre-calculus / Trigonometry class we have a poster with a series of paintings on it. One of these paintings contains a man and woman, both fully naked!!! Funny how people in class never even pay attention to it, except as being a form of art. It isn't like us students stroll into class and just stare at the artwork all class period because it has nudity.
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
My efforts to fix the problem of filtering within the School District
After seeing that so much information valuable to my education has been blocked by BESS, I wanted to figure out how to fix the problem. I decided to start by sending the school district a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Freedom of Information Act entitles citizens of the United States to request government documents from any government agency. In this case, I requested three things from CCSD on November 10th, 2000 :
All documentation regarding the implementation of the Bess web proxy system provided to CCSD by N2H2.
All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter.
Documentation regarding the effectiveness of Bess at blocking Internet sites deemed inappropriate for minors and sites that have been mis-categorized by Bess.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
I waited one month for a response before writing another letter to check on the status of my request on December 10th, as CCSD had not replied or notified me of any delays in processing such a request. (Notification of a delay is required by the FOIA)
My follow-up letter requested the information below:
What is the status on my request? Why has CCSD not responded?
The Freedom of Information Act requires response within a twenty-day period. Why have I not been contacted by CCSD yet?
Who currently is assigned to handle my request? How may I contact that person?
Is the information I requested being destroyed in any way? This could mean data deletion, removal of tape archives, or the simple process of removing logs from the servers.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
CCSD finally responds!
A few days after the draft and mailing of my second letter, I received my first response from CCSD dated December 12th, 2000. As expected, CCSD did not work very hard to satisfy my request for information. Their their responses are below:
In response to my request for "All documentation regarding the implementation of the BESS web proxy system at CCSD by N2H2" they sent me a little marketing brochure [ front | back ] which N2H2 uses to try to sell it's service. Also they sent me a copy of the "Internet Filtering Procedures" [ page 2 | page 3 ] that provides a list of which categories are blocked by BESS. And finally, the third document they included with their mailing was a print-out of an email from Dan Wray (wray@ccsd.net) to Dr. Karlene R. Lee which was actually written by N2H2 and available online or on this website.
In response to my second question, "All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter," they asked for me to be more specific on which information from the access logs I am requesting.
In response to question three, about the effectiveness and mis-categorization of websites by BESS, it says that information on "blocking inappropriate Internet sites has been attached." The brochure and filtering categories documents satisfy the request. But, what about my question regarding sites that are mis-categorized? Well you could say that N2H2's "5 Step Review Process" never lets that happen, since they have over one hundred people working to review content and categorize it. So why do we still have so many sites being blocked that are educational!?
CCSD finally responds! (again)
I was sent via second letter, this time via certified mail, which was a response to my second letter (dated Dec 10th) around December 23rd (I can't remember the date). This response was certified to help legally cover CCSD's butt in case I chose to take legal action, because of their slow response times. They were really pushing the 20 day limit that the FOIA gives for an initial response time.
[ Click here to see the certified letter ]
In the meantime...
While I was preparing an updated FOIA request to gain access to the log files, I discovered that N2H2 has been selling those log files to companies for profit... while I can't even get my hands on them. On January 26, 2001 the Wall Street Journal broke this news [ mirror of article ] about N2H2. A discussion on Slashdot (which CCSD's BESS blocks access to) quickly erupted about the selling of such information and privacy concerns. One particular quote that hits on a few of the major points is shown below:
drDugan (jmd2120@eMail.com) wrote:
"I think this is pretty scary... just from the privacy implications alone. Lets summarize the situation:
The government requires kids to go to school.
Schools require kids to use the Internet.
Government requires special software in schools to monitor the actions of people there while online.
Sellers of the software can do whatever they want with the data, without any oversight.
The people being monitored (the school kids) have no say or recourse to affect the situation."
The bullet saying that the government requires filtering software in schools is referring to the "E-rate" program setup to give funding to help pay for Internet access in schools. Only schools under this program are required to filter.
After reading and taking part in the discussion myself, I decided to finalize writing my new FOIA request and get it into the mail as well as put this website up online.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
The idea that N2H2 is collecting information, about me, while I am at school without my consent and then turning around and selling it to third parties is quite disturbing. In addition to my privacy being violated, N2H2 is charging CCSD to use its filtering service. So N2H2 is getting paid to collect data which is then sold to marketers to make even more profit. And of course, they have a captive market since most schools want to be part of the "E-Rate" program funded by the government, which means they must have filtering of some kind installed. I wonder if CCSD knew that this information was being collected and then sold to third parties... after all they cite confidentiality as the reason which they cannot just provide me full access to the logs (see their response to my first FOIA request) yet they allow N2H2 to possess it.
Now I am waiting for a response from Dr. Karlene Lee.
CCSD Blocked Categories List
ADULT
PORN
ALCOHOL *
FREEMAIL *
GROSS *
MBB *
SCHOOLCHEAT *
WEAPONS *
PERSONALS
DISCRIM *
SEX
CHAT *
FREEPAGES * LANGUAGE *
NUDITY *
SUICIDE / MURDER *
AUCTION
SWIMSUIT
ILLEGAL *
VIOLENCE *
DRUGS *
GAMBLING *
LINGERIE
PERSONALINFO
TOBACCO *
JOKES *
* Listed above as a category which should not be filtered
Advertisers don't get filtered
BESS filter does an interesting thing that most filters do not. BESS adds a little search box and links to advertisers at the bottom of each page that is requested. These advertisements are certainly questionable considering that we the students are being forced to see them by the schools every time we have a project that requires Internet access from the school. So now the school district is forcing students to watch advertising on EVERY page they go to.
N2H2's business practices are questionable when they do not block access to the websites of sponsors and advertisers but when they do block access to similar sites. For example, I took the very first search result on google.com when searching for "penis" and compared it with the Encarta encyclopedia web page for "penis." Students must research the human body in an anatomy science course. Not surprisingly, both pages contain a diagram of the penis (or a link to it) and both describe the anatomy similarly. BESS blocks the non-advertiser's page (Anatomy of the Penis) which is quite educational, but the filter still allows you to access Encarta's page (Reproductive System). N2H2 is basically giving advertiser control over what students have access to and where they can find information by blocking sites and allowing their advertising instead.
What kind of advertising are they doing? BESS has banner advertisements for "Online Credit Reports." Funny how even with the "Personal Information" category being blocked by BESS, we can still go to their advertiser (Consumer Info) that "Collects personal information."
Blocked Sites
I will add new sites to this list after CCSD sends me a couple CDs of log files.
Textfiles.com - Contains text files collected from the 70s, 80s, and 90s which document the era of early computer networks and modem-based BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems)
@Stake - Security News Network - Reports news on computer security related events. This site does not promote crime in any way, instead it reports with a unique perspective on issues that matter to the online community, including privacy, online rights, security breeches, and more. @Stake is a professional company that conducts research on computer security and is definitely a safe site for school children even though it isn't very interesting. (Feb 5, 2001: This site may now be unblocked - N2H2 states that it never was blocked)
Devil Worship - An interesting read and definitely not harmful in anyway.
Teendate.de - A teen match-making site in German. Interestingly the English version of this site is not blocked.
Fire Damage - A very obvious educational site about four types of fire-related damage.
Virtual Prostitution Museum - Documents history of prostitution in the western United States. Does not advocate prostitution, instead it informs the reader of its history..
Classinfo - The site of a teacher at Chaparral High School in Las Vegas. Can't even access the page from at the school.
What Parents need to know
Often views as a parent regarding the Internet define what is good/bad and what is okay to access or not. But your child's views may differ from yours in many areas, including the idea of censorship itself. This is normal. As a parent, please remember that for a child to learn about the world around him/her, [s]he needs to be able to communicate with that world. Cutting off their best communications medium (the Internet) deprives the child of a potentially great education.
Freedom of expression, one of the basic rights of citizens here in the United States, is critical to the survival of this country. You may think it is okay to block websites that describe illegal acts, weapons, online chatting, etc, but there are more benefits to allowing your son/daughter to learn than to just deny access to information. When you prohibit online chatting and email, you are denying your child the right to communicate with others... it is as if you are forcing your child to go to school without being able to speak to others (or even the teacher). Online communications are quite similar to normal communications in a face to face meeting.
I know many close-minded parents are going to disagree with me about allowing students access to information which may document how illegal acts are performed. N2H2 says that learning about computer hacking and security is illegal and should be filtered. Computer security sites that discuss how crackers (commonly known as hackers) penetrate computer systems ranging from the Department of Defense to your local credit union are blocked by filters such as BESS. You may think "Great! Now my kid cannot become an evil criminal!" but it isn't that simple. These sites often discuss how to prevent such malicious actions too. I am a computer programmer and for my job I need to know how to create programs that are safe for public use and impenetrable by malicious users when in production environments. I cannot explain how useful such sites are to the development of protections, whether it be from buffer overflows, race conditions, symbolic link issues, print string vulnerabilities, or a number of other common computer security issues. (Just for the record, I am paid as a working student well over seven times what minimum wage is doing what I do, so it isn't like I do not know what I am talking about on this issue.) The importance of sites that are classified as "illegal" is more valuable than you may believe to a person's education.
Parents must realize that depriving their children of their ability to determine for them self what is appropriate can endanger a child even more than exposing a child to pornographic material. If your child cannot learn to see the line between appropriate and inappropriate while growing up in your home with your supervision, what happens when he/she moves out into the "real world" and no longer has your supervision and strict regulation of his/her life? If you son/daughter does not realize the harmful effects of drugs on their body now, what will stop them from overdosing as soon as they are exposed to it in the "real world" ? My point is that you need to guide your children in being able to make decisions for themselves, but not "protect" them from finding out truthful information about drugs or other controversial topics.
The Justice Abraham Fortas of the US Supreme Court once stated that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Your son or daughter still possesses the rights to learn what is outside of the approved curriculum of schools. Please do not limit their education and ultimately hurt their ability to survive in the open job market after their graduation from high school. Do what is truly best for your son or daughter.
Many parents think that if an Internet filter is installed, then their child will be blocked from accessing content such as pornography. Well, most likely you cannot access www.playboy.com, but that doesn't mean all sites containing nudity and pornography are blocked. Finding nudity, hardcore photographs, or adult sex stories is not difficult even with the BESS filter active. Anyone seeking such content will be able to find it from within any school using the BESS filter.
Do not rely on a filter to protect your child. BESS is not your child's babysitter! You are your child's babysitter. You are there to shield, protect, and guide your offspring in an acceptable manner, not a [capitalist] company and certainly not a computer program. The government's job is not to make sure your child grows up and learns the way you want him/her to learn... that is your job. Supporting laws which give government more control over what information is accessible to your child is not the way to go, instead teaching morality and how to make righteous decisions is the best way.
Bypassing BESS
There are ways to bypass / disable the effectiveness of BESS. There always will be. I will try and figure out how to write a few ways in this spot later, when it isn't 3:35 AM and I can figure out how to explain them without getting too technical.
More Information
MSNBC reports on the US Department of Defense's purchase of BESS log files (the same thing that CCSD does not want public)
EPIC's FOIA request to the Pentagon
Peacefire
Another Slashdot Article and Discussion
N2H2
Clark County School District
No Filters (nofilters.org)
A Student Essay on Filtering
American Library Association's (ALA) resolution on use of filtering in Libraries
American Library Association's (ALA) Statement on Internet Filtering (I recommend reading this one... change the word library to "school")
Got a site? Email ben@efros.com to add it here!
I host a very interesting paper on BESS. It is available at http://www.ispep.cx/files/ccsd/bess/and it is cut / pasted below in text form.
... that is not pornographic."
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BESS filter
at the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, NV.
Ben Efros (Ben@Efros.com)
2:30AM February 1, 2001. Last updated 12:45AM Feb 17, 2001.
What is BESS?
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics at CCSD
Should Artistic nudity be blocked?
My Efforts to Fix the Problem
CCSD Blocked Categories List
Advertisers get Privileges
Blocked Sites
What Parents need to know
Bypassing BESS
More Information
What is BESS?
The BESS filter at the Clark County School District is used to filter Internet usage for the entire district, limiting pornographic content, controversial subjects, information on drugs, and much more. Unfortunately the BESS filter blocks an incredible amount of educational and useful content also, including controversial subjects, information on drugs, and information on illegal acts, such as rape and even how to defend yourself.
If a student needs to write a paper on tobacco marketing or common ways tobacco is used in society, [s]he cannot do it whil at school for the simple reason that any site discussing tobacco's "recreational use" or "advertising tobacco" is blocked by BESS. The same goes for research on a number of other subjects.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Many parents feel that Internet filtering by programs such as BESS really does work effectively. But, by blocking information from reaching students by means of an automated filter actually causes more harm than good. Teachers have forgotten their duty to supervise students while they use the Internet. Many students often try to "press the limits" of the filter and try to gain access to topics that are normally filtered, such as pornography. One student who attends a school district other than CCSD has told me that "students now go into the library and try to access pornographic sites seeing how many are not blocked. The librarians have relaxed a bit now and don't actively supervise students, since they believe the filter stops access to such sites. Today, more students access pornographic sites from school than before BESS was installed, just because they want to prove that they can. It is funny how before we had BESS, nobody ever dared to go to a pornographic site."
The same thing happens here in Clark County. Not only do students try to access pornographic and adult content knowing that it is against the "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP), but they also break that same AUP by accessing content such as jokes, online video games, online clothing stores, and more. One incident regarding the blocked category of Lingerie now comes to mind... Just this past week I was in class and two girls who were looking at clothing online which was not blocked by BESS, although it was definitely lingerie. They did not even know that they were accessing a site that BESS should have blocked.
An incredible number of educational sites are blocked by BESS for a number of reasons. N2H2, the creators of BESS, has publicly stated "our staff of 100+ Human Web Reviewers personally examines every site we categorize." Yet, still students can access pornographic sites through BESS and are then denied access to very educational sites. This is no surprise considering that more than 100 pages are added to the Internet every second, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. A team of 500 people reviewing websites would have trouble keeping up, even if they worked 24-hour shifts just adding sites. But the Internet is constantly changing, pages are changed all the time. With well over 15 million web pages blocked by N2H2, a staff of one hundred employees, reviewing 300 pages a day, would take more than a year to make sure their blocked sites are blocked appropriately. Can they really be reviewing each and every page? They have hired a staff of one hundred people (many who work only part time) to do the jobs that even a team of 500 people would have trouble keeping up with.
Is BESS really doing any good?
Wrongfully blocked topics in the Clark County School District:
Category Reason it should not be blocked
Weapons You cannot learn the advancements in weapon technologies over the past few thousand years without seeing diagrams of how weapons work. Weapons have been around for thousands of years, why would we only now stop the ability to learn about them?
Alcohol A student in Health class was assigned to write a paper on substances that can physically damage your body. This student cannot find out what the common alcohol-related causes of death are and from what type of drinks, because they are blocked by BESS.
Violence Are you telling me that I should not be allowed to see a person's death? Well, just last night I saw an Isreali soldier thrown out of a police station window and murdered by a mob on CBS. I've also seen a boy shot up in his own father's arms. Seeing those video clips on TV touched me, they helped me to feel sorrow and compassion. Is BESS trying to raise us students to be like machines without emotion? Sadly, you cannot form an opinion on the problems of violence without actually seeing it.
Chat What if a student wishes to discuss, in real-time, what is happening in foreign countries with the people living there? The ability to communicate with foreign students can be a very educational experience.
Free Mail By blocking access to email services, students are denied a means of communication with the rest of the world. How often do you see email blocked in business offices?
Gambling I cannot see why a computer program that emulates a slot machine is banned from my site... instead, I have to run down to the local 7-11 store and see the real-thing. Funny how the government does not ban minors from looking at slot machines in the physical world, yet it is banned in the virtual.
Profanity I was just watching PBS and heard the word "nigger." And I just read that book Grapes of Wrath and the guy said "These goddamned Okies are thieves." There are situations that profanity is used to document history and the mood of society, with all of its emotions, that people lived in at the time.
Message Boards Many message boards contain information about what problems or issues other people have faced and also responses and ideas of how to fix them. The learning benefits from message boards are incredible.
Tasteless / Gross If I am trying to learn the common ways ancient civilizations would sometimes "mutilate" their dead or learn how the ancient Egyptians would remove organs from a body before mummifying it, I cannot because BESS doesn't think my stomach can handle it. I think I can decide for myself and do not need someone else to tell me what I cannot learn about.
Murder / Suicide It is an issue many teens have thought about. Every year students in the Clark County school district commit suicide. We cannot just hide this issue by sweeping it under the carpet, students need to be able to learn about it.
School Cheating A student can learn about views which other students have on topics, such as their theories to why historical events happen. You can only gain such knowledge of what other people believe, by reading their works which may sometimes be term papers or essays
Hate / Discrimination You cannot teach students about the wrongs of discrimination without actually showing both sides. By teaching only one side of the story, students will not solidify their understanding of such issues. Discrimination and acts of hate are vital parts of history. If we cannot learn from society's mistakes in the past, how do we prevent them in the future?
Jokes Laughing is a proven way to relax a person. Relaxation at school is a proven way to learn. Learning is a proven way to get good grades. Getting good grades is a good way to secure a good job, impress parents, and satisfy the Dept. of Education.
Free Web Pages Free web hosts provide a place for information to be shared, freely, without cost to the author. There is an incredible amount of research and educational information on Geocities, Homestead, and many other free website hosts. What if an author cannot afford to buy "LearningMath.com" but still feels the information is important enough for others to read so [s]he posts it to Geocities? Is it right to deny students the ability to learn, just because the author cannot afford another way of getting their message out?
Illegal Sure, bomb making information is available on the Internet, but it isn't something that needs to be feared... instead parents should fear the idea that they have chemicals under their kitchen sinks that if consumed can kill a person and if mixed wrongly with other chemicals can kill a whole houseful of people by releasing deadly gasses. If we are to ban learning about explosives, then why don't we require that all kitchen cabinets contain locks on them to prevent unauthorized access to chemicals? Why don't we require people to be 18 years old to buy household cleaners at the local supermarket, too?
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
It has been agreed upon that blocking pornography and adult content is fine, but the question always comes up about artistic nudity. I will not try to persuade any readers of this article with my opinion... instead I would like you to form your own conclusion.
Artistic nudity is defined by N2H2, the creators of BESS, as "images of bare or visible genitalia, pubic hair, buttocks, female breasts, etc.
National Geographic routinely publishes photographs from different eras in human history and even hires photographers to seek out the way that certain people live throughout the world. Some natives in the rainforests do not wear clothing. Such photographs usually contain nudity and are then blocked. Time Magazine has also published photographs which contain female breasts and buttocks. (Although I cannot back this up, I bet that they have also published pictures containing visible genitalia and pubic hair. Email me if you know what issues contain such.) If I recall correctly, I have seen photographs of babies where their genitals are showing in magazines available at school. Open up an Encyclopedia Britannica and you will find an incredible amount of nudity while researching artwork from a few hundred years ago, nudity obviously isn't something new.
Why do schools often subscribe to such magazines? Probably because of the educational value contained within them. Why aren't such "dangerous" magazines banned from school, if nudity is so incredibly bad?
In my Pre-calculus / Trigonometry class we have a poster with a series of paintings on it. One of these paintings contains a man and woman, both fully naked!!! Funny how people in class never even pay attention to it, except as being a form of art. It isn't like us students stroll into class and just stare at the artwork all class period because it has nudity.
Should artistic nudity be blocked?
My efforts to fix the problem of filtering within the School District
After seeing that so much information valuable to my education has been blocked by BESS, I wanted to figure out how to fix the problem. I decided to start by sending the school district a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Freedom of Information Act entitles citizens of the United States to request government documents from any government agency. In this case, I requested three things from CCSD on November 10th, 2000 :
All documentation regarding the implementation of the Bess web proxy system provided to CCSD by N2H2.
All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter.
Documentation regarding the effectiveness of Bess at blocking Internet sites deemed inappropriate for minors and sites that have been mis-categorized by Bess.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
I waited one month for a response before writing another letter to check on the status of my request on December 10th, as CCSD had not replied or notified me of any delays in processing such a request. (Notification of a delay is required by the FOIA)
My follow-up letter requested the information below:
What is the status on my request? Why has CCSD not responded?
The Freedom of Information Act requires response within a twenty-day period. Why have I not been contacted by CCSD yet?
Who currently is assigned to handle my request? How may I contact that person?
Is the information I requested being destroyed in any way? This could mean data deletion, removal of tape archives, or the simple process of removing logs from the servers.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
CCSD finally responds!
A few days after the draft and mailing of my second letter, I received my first response from CCSD dated December 12th, 2000. As expected, CCSD did not work very hard to satisfy my request for information. Their their responses are below:
In response to my request for "All documentation regarding the implementation of the BESS web proxy system at CCSD by N2H2" they sent me a little marketing brochure [ front | back ] which N2H2 uses to try to sell it's service. Also they sent me a copy of the "Internet Filtering Procedures" [ page 2 | page 3 ] that provides a list of which categories are blocked by BESS. And finally, the third document they included with their mailing was a print-out of an email from Dan Wray (wray@ccsd.net) to Dr. Karlene R. Lee which was actually written by N2H2 and available online or on this website.
In response to my second question, "All access logs that are recorded by the Bess proxy filter," they asked for me to be more specific on which information from the access logs I am requesting.
In response to question three, about the effectiveness and mis-categorization of websites by BESS, it says that information on "blocking inappropriate Internet sites has been attached." The brochure and filtering categories documents satisfy the request. But, what about my question regarding sites that are mis-categorized? Well you could say that N2H2's "5 Step Review Process" never lets that happen, since they have over one hundred people working to review content and categorize it. So why do we still have so many sites being blocked that are educational!?
CCSD finally responds! (again)
I was sent via second letter, this time via certified mail, which was a response to my second letter (dated Dec 10th) around December 23rd (I can't remember the date). This response was certified to help legally cover CCSD's butt in case I chose to take legal action, because of their slow response times. They were really pushing the 20 day limit that the FOIA gives for an initial response time.
[ Click here to see the certified letter ]
In the meantime...
While I was preparing an updated FOIA request to gain access to the log files, I discovered that N2H2 has been selling those log files to companies for profit... while I can't even get my hands on them. On January 26, 2001 the Wall Street Journal broke this news [ mirror of article ] about N2H2. A discussion on Slashdot (which CCSD's BESS blocks access to) quickly erupted about the selling of such information and privacy concerns. One particular quote that hits on a few of the major points is shown below:
drDugan (jmd2120@eMail.com) wrote:
"I think this is pretty scary... just from the privacy implications alone. Lets summarize the situation:
The government requires kids to go to school.
Schools require kids to use the Internet.
Government requires special software in schools to monitor the actions of people there while online.
Sellers of the software can do whatever they want with the data, without any oversight.
The people being monitored (the school kids) have no say or recourse to affect the situation."
The bullet saying that the government requires filtering software in schools is referring to the "E-rate" program setup to give funding to help pay for Internet access in schools. Only schools under this program are required to filter.
After reading and taking part in the discussion myself, I decided to finalize writing my new FOIA request and get it into the mail as well as put this website up online.
[ Click here to see the letter ]
The idea that N2H2 is collecting information, about me, while I am at school without my consent and then turning around and selling it to third parties is quite disturbing. In addition to my privacy being violated, N2H2 is charging CCSD to use its filtering service. So N2H2 is getting paid to collect data which is then sold to marketers to make even more profit. And of course, they have a captive market since most schools want to be part of the "E-Rate" program funded by the government, which means they must have filtering of some kind installed. I wonder if CCSD knew that this information was being collected and then sold to third parties... after all they cite confidentiality as the reason which they cannot just provide me full access to the logs (see their response to my first FOIA request) yet they allow N2H2 to possess it.
Now I am waiting for a response from Dr. Karlene Lee.
CCSD Blocked Categories List
ADULT
PORN
ALCOHOL *
FREEMAIL *
GROSS *
MBB *
SCHOOLCHEAT *
WEAPONS *
PERSONALS
DISCRIM *
SEX
CHAT *
FREEPAGES * LANGUAGE *
NUDITY *
SUICIDE / MURDER *
AUCTION
SWIMSUIT
ILLEGAL *
VIOLENCE *
DRUGS *
GAMBLING *
LINGERIE
PERSONALINFO
TOBACCO *
JOKES *
* Listed above as a category which should not be filtered
Advertisers don't get filtered
BESS filter does an interesting thing that most filters do not. BESS adds a little search box and links to advertisers at the bottom of each page that is requested. These advertisements are certainly questionable considering that we the students are being forced to see them by the schools every time we have a project that requires Internet access from the school. So now the school district is forcing students to watch advertising on EVERY page they go to.
N2H2's business practices are questionable when they do not block access to the websites of sponsors and advertisers but when they do block access to similar sites. For example, I took the very first search result on google.com when searching for "penis" and compared it with the Encarta encyclopedia web page for "penis." Students must research the human body in an anatomy science course. Not surprisingly, both pages contain a diagram of the penis (or a link to it) and both describe the anatomy similarly. BESS blocks the non-advertiser's page (Anatomy of the Penis) which is quite educational, but the filter still allows you to access Encarta's page (Reproductive System). N2H2 is basically giving advertiser control over what students have access to and where they can find information by blocking sites and allowing their advertising instead.
What kind of advertising are they doing? BESS has banner advertisements for "Online Credit Reports." Funny how even with the "Personal Information" category being blocked by BESS, we can still go to their advertiser (Consumer Info) that "Collects personal information."
Blocked Sites
I will add new sites to this list after CCSD sends me a couple CDs of log files.
Textfiles.com - Contains text files collected from the 70s, 80s, and 90s which document the era of early computer networks and modem-based BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems)
@Stake - Security News Network - Reports news on computer security related events. This site does not promote crime in any way, instead it reports with a unique perspective on issues that matter to the online community, including privacy, online rights, security breeches, and more. @Stake is a professional company that conducts research on computer security and is definitely a safe site for school children even though it isn't very interesting. (Feb 5, 2001: This site may now be unblocked - N2H2 states that it never was blocked)
Devil Worship - An interesting read and definitely not harmful in anyway.
Teendate.de - A teen match-making site in German. Interestingly the English version of this site is not blocked.
Fire Damage - A very obvious educational site about four types of fire-related damage.
Virtual Prostitution Museum - Documents history of prostitution in the western United States. Does not advocate prostitution, instead it informs the reader of its history..
Classinfo - The site of a teacher at Chaparral High School in Las Vegas. Can't even access the page from at the school.
What Parents need to know
Often views as a parent regarding the Internet define what is good/bad and what is okay to access or not. But your child's views may differ from yours in many areas, including the idea of censorship itself. This is normal. As a parent, please remember that for a child to learn about the world around him/her, [s]he needs to be able to communicate with that world. Cutting off their best communications medium (the Internet) deprives the child of a potentially great education.
Freedom of expression, one of the basic rights of citizens here in the United States, is critical to the survival of this country. You may think it is okay to block websites that describe illegal acts, weapons, online chatting, etc, but there are more benefits to allowing your son/daughter to learn than to just deny access to information. When you prohibit online chatting and email, you are denying your child the right to communicate with others... it is as if you are forcing your child to go to school without being able to speak to others (or even the teacher). Online communications are quite similar to normal communications in a face to face meeting.
I know many close-minded parents are going to disagree with me about allowing students access to information which may document how illegal acts are performed. N2H2 says that learning about computer hacking and security is illegal and should be filtered. Computer security sites that discuss how crackers (commonly known as hackers) penetrate computer systems ranging from the Department of Defense to your local credit union are blocked by filters such as BESS. You may think "Great! Now my kid cannot become an evil criminal!" but it isn't that simple. These sites often discuss how to prevent such malicious actions too. I am a computer programmer and for my job I need to know how to create programs that are safe for public use and impenetrable by malicious users when in production environments. I cannot explain how useful such sites are to the development of protections, whether it be from buffer overflows, race conditions, symbolic link issues, print string vulnerabilities, or a number of other common computer security issues. (Just for the record, I am paid as a working student well over seven times what minimum wage is doing what I do, so it isn't like I do not know what I am talking about on this issue.) The importance of sites that are classified as "illegal" is more valuable than you may believe to a person's education.
Parents must realize that depriving their children of their ability to determine for them self what is appropriate can endanger a child even more than exposing a child to pornographic material. If your child cannot learn to see the line between appropriate and inappropriate while growing up in your home with your supervision, what happens when he/she moves out into the "real world" and no longer has your supervision and strict regulation of his/her life? If you son/daughter does not realize the harmful effects of drugs on their body now, what will stop them from overdosing as soon as they are exposed to it in the "real world" ? My point is that you need to guide your children in being able to make decisions for themselves, but not "protect" them from finding out truthful information about drugs or other controversial topics.
The Justice Abraham Fortas of the US Supreme Court once stated that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Your son or daughter still possesses the rights to learn what is outside of the approved curriculum of schools. Please do not limit their education and ultimately hurt their ability to survive in the open job market after their graduation from high school. Do what is truly best for your son or daughter.
Many parents think that if an Internet filter is installed, then their child will be blocked from accessing content such as pornography. Well, most likely you cannot access www.playboy.com, but that doesn't mean all sites containing nudity and pornography are blocked. Finding nudity, hardcore photographs, or adult sex stories is not difficult even with the BESS filter active. Anyone seeking such content will be able to find it from within any school using the BESS filter.
Do not rely on a filter to protect your child. BESS is not your child's babysitter! You are your child's babysitter. You are there to shield, protect, and guide your offspring in an acceptable manner, not a [capitalist] company and certainly not a computer program. The government's job is not to make sure your child grows up and learns the way you want him/her to learn... that is your job. Supporting laws which give government more control over what information is accessible to your child is not the way to go, instead teaching morality and how to make righteous decisions is the best way.
Bypassing BESS
There are ways to bypass / disable the effectiveness of BESS. There always will be. I will try and figure out how to write a few ways in this spot later, when it isn't 3:35 AM and I can figure out how to explain them without getting too technical.
More Information
MSNBC reports on the US Department of Defense's purchase of BESS log files (the same thing that CCSD does not want public)
EPIC's FOIA request to the Pentagon
Peacefire
Another Slashdot Article and Discussion
N2H2
Clark County School District
No Filters (nofilters.org)
A Student Essay on Filtering
American Library Association's (ALA) resolution on use of filtering in Libraries
American Library Association's (ALA) Statement on Internet Filtering (I recommend reading this one... change the word library to "school")
Got a site? Email ben@efros.com to add it here!
At 150 degrees F, that temperature is extremely hot!
Since its so hot, I must wonder... how long can people survive at 150?
Cooling chambers that are naturally warm like that would require a LOT of energy. It doesn't make sense, money-wise, to attempt to cool them. I know I sure wouldnt want to pay $20 to see crystals in an airconditioned cave.... I want to see them at 150 degrees and in their natural environment!
If they had some open hardware, like a nice server.... maybe then they will be able to keep their site online while being slashdotted.
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Don't purchase anything that runs on Cold Fusion. CF is _extremely_ slow and unreliable... PLUS its EXPENSIVE. If you really want a good web-based application, program it in PHP or perl. (or buy it)
Many states adopted the FOIA at their state levels. Also, any local school receiving federal money would have to comply with the FOIA at the federal level.
So pretty much any public school district (Since most do receive federal cash) must comply.
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