At one point, i heard about a company doing just that. They had two teams of developers, a "dirty" team that looked at the sources and a "clean" team that had never seen them. Lawyers watched all interactions between the two to make sure the clean team didn't get dirty.
i would think you could get the dirty team to look through the source, write up specs from it, and give those to the clean team to build the clean drivers. Of course, IANAL.
The MITM would have to either have the target server's private key (in which case you're screwed anyway), or be in the middle of your connection to the key database as well (like DNS spoofing, this would be key spoofing). Otherwise, he couldn't see the contents of your request (e.g. "GET/index.pl HTTP/1.0") and so couldn't send you back the proper data.
However, as an option, if all servers ALSO had signed keys which could be checked...
Wouldn't they already have signed keys, specifically the ones you used to encrypt the inital transmission?
If you aren't careful in implimenting this, your plan will remove all anonymity from all communications on the net. For email it's not that big a deal, since anonymous email is already difficult without using the specialized relays for this purpose. But would you really want every website you visit to know who you are and exactly which pages you've ever looked at? Even if your key didn't contain a name or any other personal information, it is still a global unique identifyer that would make targeted advertisers' jobs infinitely easier.
You could possibly design web servers, anonymous ftp daemons, and other one-to-many services where anonymity is important to do something like this. My terminology may be a bit off, so bear with me. Note that gpg uses two keys for a message: the public-key cypher (e.g. DSA, ELGamal, RSA) is used to encrypt the one-time symmetric cypher key (e.g. Blowfish, CAST5, IDEA) used for the actual data.
User sends a request encrypted with the server's public key, containing the symmetric key expected for the reply (which may not be the same symmetric key used for this transmission) and the data request (http GET, ftp login, etc)
Server sends back the data, encrypted with the requested symmetric key and signed with the server's private key. Only the requesting client should know the symmetric key to be able to decrypt this. The signature can be used to verify that someone didn't just send back garbage while pretending to be the server, and that the transmission wasn't tampered with.
This way, the user gives no identifying information besides that already given with non-keyed http/ftp/etc.
Many old programs used 9/9/99 or 99/99/99 as a date value to mark an invalid record, an EOR marker, or a "never" date (e.g. When should this data expire? never == 9/9/99).
Unfortunately, few in the media got this right. An AP story picked up by the local paper here thought that 9/9/99 would be interpreted as some sort of 9999 stop-execution command, never mind that dates are very infrequently interpreted as any sort of command...
Actually, people are complaining about the particular drinking age, and the way that the government forced all states to adopt that age. But i digress.
The problem with censorship is that it opens the door for further censorship, both direct (more restrictions) and indirect (can't sell it, so won't risk coming close to making it). Several other posts go into better detail, so i won't bother.
Remember that poem about slowly eroding freedoms? It's been rewritten so many times; "First they came for X, but i wasn't X so i didn't complain. Then they came for Y, but i wasn't Y so i didn't complain... etc etc etc... Finally they came for me, and there was no one left to complain." Think on that next time you say "this doesn't affect me".
AFAIK, it actually is legal for a minor to consume alcohol if the minor is under the direct and constant supervision of his or her legal parent or guardian, and remains under that supervision (e.g. can't go off drunk after he finishes the beer and use this as an excuse). Or perhaps the laws vary in different areas of the country...
Despite the uproar, I think the case [ignoring non-voters] should've been decided that this IS A REASONABLE PREREQUISITE for attention-which would spur more registrations.
Only one problem with that. The voting age is 18 in the US. So you're proposing the government ignore the wishes and welfare of anyone who wasn't yet 18 in the latest election? Which, remember, can include even 21-year-olds in certain years, or nationalized citizens of any age.
How about people who were attacked, knocked out, held hostage over election day? They may have been planning to go to the poles but never made it because of these events beyond their control. No vote, ignore them too?
Given the number of people in the country, what if the gov office of vote-checking got confused and said Bob Jones did vote, even though the Bob Jones in question didn't? Or what if they miss Jane Smith, because she was unmarried (therefore, known by her maiden name Jane Doe) when she voted in the last election? Again, the system breaks down...
there are NO SIMPLE ANSWERS in life.
That's my point, too. Even if you realized this when you wrote the point i contested, i'm sure there are others who wouldn't make that connection.
Is there any candidate who won't be bought out by all the special interests, or who won't fold in hopes that he/she will get ahead in another issue by making a consession?
Whole big discussion on the good and bad aspects of having your apps on a central server. From my point of view, the general concensus was that this is just a way for the corporations to make more money and to get more control over the averate user than they could get with normal apps.
And i still want to know what happens when the central server dies, or some construction people accidentally cut the 'net (phone, T1, whatever) lines, or the net is just really really slow with all these remote-running GUI apps, etc. No one can get any work done, because no software is local...
Possibly the first part could be solved with DNA synthesizers (which we've had for many years), but that will require the human genome project to be completed so we can turn the correct flags on and off.
NAME
gdna - GNU project DNA sequencer
SYNOPSIS
gdna [ option | genome ]
WARNING
The information in this man page is an extract from the full documentation of the GNU DNA sequencer, and is limited to the meaning of the options.
This man page is not kept up to date except when volunteers want to maintain it. If you find a discrepancy between the man page and the software, please check the Info file, which is the authoritative documentation.
If we find that the things in this man page that are out of date cause significant confusion or complaints, we will stop distributing the man page. The alternative, updating the man page when we update the Info file, is impossible because the rest of the work of maintaining GNU DNA leaves us no time for that. The GNU project regards man pages as obsolete and should not let them take time away from other things.
For complete and current documentation, refer to the Info file `gdna' or the manual Using and Porting GNU DNA (for version 2.0). Both are made from the Texinfo source file gdna.texinfo.
The alarm clock went off one morning, and none of my higher brain functions were functional. i somehow managed to turn off the alarm clock, and when i woke up again later it had fixed itself (:
The concept behind SDNS is that a device should always have the same IP but the name can change.
Why would you do this? Just randomly change the name associated with everyone's static IPs to confuse them? Part of the point of static IP addresses is that you can then use static DNS (specifically, a name-to-ip database without capability for easy rebinding) and still keep the same name corresponding to your device.
Basically, you just said the exact same thing with slightly different terminology, without making any more sense than you did the first time.
Unless you're using some odd definition of DNS, the IP address and name are always bound together. The new idea in dynamic DNS is that this binding can be easily and quickly changed, the purpose being that the changes in IP->name binding will match those in device->IP binding, giving an apparent binding of device->name even though it's really just carefully managed co-incidence.
With static DNS, the IP is bound to a device and the name changes.
With static DNS, the IP is bound to the device, but the name doesn't change. Since the device always has the same IP, the name can be tied to device or IP with the same effect. Because it's easier, the name is bound to the IP.
With dynamic IP assignment, the name is bound to the IP as above, because that's how the database was written. But since the IP is not bound to any particular device, both the device's name and IP change. If you manage to get the same IP assigned, you'll have the same name.
As a side note, in DDNS the name is still bound to the IP in the name server database. The difference is that this binding is changed when the device is assigned a new ip, so that the name is effectively 'bound' to the device.
The fact that MS supports a new open standard like DDNS before your favorite OS does is a reason to start working on an open DDNS client, not an excuse to bash MS.
i don't think a client has anything to do with this, in the standard terminology. Instead, the DHCP server just lets the (D)DNS server know that the machine with MAC number xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx was just given ip address zzz.zzz.zzz.zzz. The DNS server then updates the DNS record corresponding to machine xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx. All the client needs is a plain, olf-fashioned dhcp client. Of course, i could be off on this. micros~1 probably did it differently anyway, to break compatibility. Don't flame, just correct.
i am sure, however, that the bind version 8 name server does allow dynamic DNS updates. bind 8 has been out for Linux for quite a while. Also, several dhcp servers have the ability to automatically use this feature of bind 8. So you can't exactly say that "Linux/*BSD/whatever" doesn't have this ability, since it is already available and has been proven (which micros~1's hasn't yet).
A lot of the M$ bashing is because of two points.
The article claims Linux has no support for dynamic DNS (as do you). This is incorrect, see above.
M$ has a history of taking something that works and changing it enough that their client/server only works with their server/client. Especially since they're claiming this is something new and something that won't work with Linux, there's reason to believe they will do so again.
Admins are also worried that there will be problems when micros~1 tries to tie WINS computer names into the dns database. Especially since many don't even know how to change their computer name, so you'll end up with 20 computers named "workstation"...
Linux, or Windows-only? CD Paranoia for Linux does a very good job at ripping without skips. For Windows, the best i've found so far is EAC. It also oversamples a damaged area to attempt to correct for problems, and warns when even this isn't enough. It also works well with the BladeEnc DLL; if properly setup it doesn't even create an intermediate wav file. And it has CDDB lookup.
CD Paranoia and BladeEnc is one of the best combinations i've come across, and better yet they're both free (beer and speech, at least as much as BladeEnc can with the weird patent issues...).
Windows-wise, the best i've found so far is BladeEnc for encoding with EAC. As usual with Windoze software, though, EAC isn't free speech. But it does do a good job ripping...
As for grip, i found it so annoying to use that i went ahead and wrote my own frontend using perl-tk and CDDB.pm from CPAN...
"Before" being defined as 20 years or so. Think back to the era of mainframes on college campuses, where you has a certain amount of CPU time in your account. Just about all the apps were on the mainframe server, your terminal just displayed the output.
So, micros~1's proposal is different how? You pay them for X amount of CPU time to run your app on their server (the only viable way to keep us from pirating the rented copy, otherwise crackers will steal the downloaded code from RAM or HD and deactivate or spoof the self-destruct/reporting system), and probably for X megs of data storage space. Companies start selling systems with only the minimum power needed to contact the server, and we're back to the centralized-server-and-dumb-terminal era (except this time around you can't trust the people who run that centralized server;)
And what happens when NT 6.66 (or whatever the micros~1 server runs) crashes, or there's a "router problem" or "bad weather"? All of a sudden, all productivity halts...
In evaluating a site for inclusion in the list, we consider the effect of the site on a typical twelve year old searching the Internet unaccompanied by a parent or educator.
Besides, 12-year-olds don't have to bother with the Internet to find things CyberPatrol would consider bad. All they need is to hang around with some other teenagers in a situation without strict parental supervision. What's the use of blocking the 'net when the kids hear it from their babysitter?
There's a standard to do exactly that, it's called PICS. You describe the content in your page (nudity, violence, etc), and then the web browser can be configured with various filters.
If you want to describe the content on your site easily, you can rate with RSAC, which gives you a standard baseline and spews out the appropriate PICS metadata for your web page, and you copy and paste it into your HTML document. Easy.
And useless. First off, this can't work unless there's some sort of international law mandating that every single website uses it. Otherwise, most people are going to ignore it because ratings don't work well (see below). Then, you're left with a choice: block all the sites that don't rate themselves, even the good ones, or allow the non-rated sites, even the (relatively few) bad ones.
Have you looked at the RSACi rating system? For one, it's more suited to video games than webpages (how often have you seen a webpage with "destruction of realistic objects" as violence?). For another, there's only 5 levels for each of the four categories. What if you have a website with pictures of David and other classic [possibly nude] art? Oops, that's "Frontal Nudity", your site gets a 3 (on a scale 0-4) in that area. What if you're writing about the history of war? "Aggressive violence or death to humans", maybe even "Rape or wanton gratuitious violence" depending on the particular war. Oops! There's a 3 or a 4 in that category. Would a database of sex offenders (FBI Wanted List?) get a 3 or 4 because it has to say what they did?
And finally, who's to decide which rating your content deserves? The Christian Coalition? Neo-Nazis? Bill from Arkansas? Slashdot posters? Everyone has different standards as to what exactly is good and bad. In certain countries, pictured of women in bathing suits in the Sears Catalogue would be censored as porn. Remember, it's the World Wide Web. If you want a rating system that can differentiate between all the variations, you'll end up with something not even a lawyer can understand, 2M blocks of rating data on every page, 1G programs to parse it all, and people will STILL claim sites are improperly rated.
There is no solution that will work for everyone. Not laws, not software, not rating systems.
why should she have to run a gauntlet of teenagers who are watching movies of woman having sex with animals?
Why isn't this against the library policy, and why doesn't the librarian kick these people out? It doesn't take government coersion or fancy software to protect your kids, just a realization of what is and is not allowed in a public place and enforcement of that in the case someone is stupid enough to break the mores.
I assume your library would kick someone out who brought in a bunch of porn magazines, spread them around the table, and stared at them. But if they're in the guy's breifcase and he doesn't remove them (or sit staring into the briefcase) then what's the problem? [The analogy: not looking using the library's computer]
----- kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling). kernel: lp0 off-line kernel: lp0 out of paper
Go read this thread, then come back if you have any questions.
BTW, why should 10-year-old Joe's geocities website be assumed adult when he doesn't know what 'adult' even is to rate his site? Why should i and everyone else with a non-adult website have to go through and add your rating to every single page, then re-upload them all, to state the obvious (i.e. no adult content)? Are you willing to foot the bill for all that?;)
----- kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling). kernel: lp0 off-line kernel: lp0 out of paper
Nobody's reading this thread by now, but I'll respond anyway.;)
i'm still watching for replies to my posts though;)
if browsers supported this tag, and every adult site voluntarily added it, most of the pro-filter crowd would be appeased.
That's quite a huge if, though. What are the chances of every adult site voluntarily installing your tag, including the adult sites on GeoCities and such that move every two weeks once the sysadmins discover and delete them?
And there's still the matter of what constitutes an adult site. Where do you draw the line between art and pornography? Other people draw the line differently, and that's why everyone will never be satisfied.
There's no way to satisfy everyone; whatever solution is proposed, someone will have a problem with it.
On the subject of content labeling, a few years back i did a paper on censorship and examined the major labeling methods of the day, and found that they were all too vague to cover the possible distinctions. Even the ones that tried the hardest had that problem, and were too complex for the average web author to reliably create without being in violation (which was against the terms of use for the rating system).
----- kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling). kernel: lp0 off-line kernel: lp0 out of paper
...as a humor columnist. How else can you explain the comments at the end, saying the window's VAX/VMS old (dead) technology will deatroy *nix's old (still quite alive) technology? Not to mention the continual references to "Open Sores", the analogy between Y2K and W2K, and other minor jokes.
He's been reading too much Dave Barry, and wants to take over his job now;)
----- kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling). kernel: lp0 off-line kernel: lp0 out of paper
Who decides what's 'indecent' or whatever buzzword you're using? Me? You? Libertarians? The Christian Coalition? What's 'indecent' in one part of the country or to one group may not be to another. Yet with your proposal, the meta tags would have to choose one viewpoint to enforce.
This only proposes to cover minors. Ok, fine. Does that mean we go with what's indecent for a 5-year-old? A 10-year-old? A 17-year-old? Something a 17-year-old can see with no ill effects might give a 5-year-old nightmares for a month. Yet the word 'minors' makes no distinction.
How enforcable is this? Let's ignore for the moment that the Internet exists outside the US. Someone decides they don't agree with a particular site's rating, and sues to get it changed. This will end up adding even more pointless lawsuits to the court system, and the particular definition of 'indecent' STILL goes back to the problems i mentioned above! There actually was a case like this at one point, IIRC someone in Tennissee sued the operators of a BBS in California for something legal in CA but not in TN. Even if you mandate one interpretation throughout the country, there are still going to be differences in interpretation of that interpretation between one area and another, and this is going to end up restricting web publishing to only those who can afford to have a lawyer check everything they want to put up. "You can't use that logo! Someone might consider it too phallic! We'd get sued!"
What happens when someone thinks that, for example, the pictures of bloody Kosovan refugees in Newsweek are unsuitable for minors? She sues, wastes the courts' time, and eventually gets a ruling that requires Newsweek to rate its stories. Since they don't want to lose readership, they stop writing stories with such content, as do most other news-related organizations. Suddenly, you can't find any important current events online. Someone else decides that those thin models are harming our daughters, gets them banned. No more pictures of people on the net at all, except on personal websites. Even there, the authors are required to rate their pages as "potentially harmful" just because they have a picture of someone thin.
Think this is a little over the edge? Maybe it is. But maybe it isn't, and do you really want to take that risk?
----- kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling). kernel: lp0 off-line kernel: lp0 out of paper
Note that Debian uses RPM's (thanks to Redhat) to increase its distributability.
Actually, Debian doesn't use rpms at all. Debian supports the rpm format so that proprietary software (or free software that hasn't yet been debianized) that is distributed in rpm format can be easily installed. Debian uses the deb format, which is considered by many to be superior to rpm.
Don't flame, i've just stated a simple fact: many consider deb superior to rpm. Others consider the exact opposite.
----- kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling). kernel: lp0 off-line kernel: lp0 out of paper
Slashdot Mirror
i would think you could get the dirty team to look through the source, write up specs from it, and give those to the clean team to build the clean drivers. Of course, IANAL.
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The MITM would have to either have the target server's private key (in which case you're screwed anyway), or be in the middle of your connection to the key database as well (like DNS spoofing, this would be key spoofing). Otherwise, he couldn't see the contents of your request (e.g. "GET /index.pl HTTP/1.0") and so couldn't send you back the proper data.
However, as an option, if all servers ALSO had signed keys which could be checked...
Wouldn't they already have signed keys, specifically the ones you used to encrypt the inital transmission?
-----
You could possibly design web servers, anonymous ftp daemons, and other one-to-many services where anonymity is important to do something like this. My terminology may be a bit off, so bear with me. Note that gpg uses two keys for a message: the public-key cypher (e.g. DSA, ELGamal, RSA) is used to encrypt the one-time symmetric cypher key (e.g. Blowfish, CAST5, IDEA) used for the actual data.
- User sends a request encrypted with the server's public key, containing the symmetric key expected for the reply (which may not be the same symmetric key used for this transmission) and the data request (http GET, ftp login, etc)
- Server sends back the data, encrypted with the requested symmetric key and signed with the server's private key. Only the requesting client should know the symmetric key to be able to decrypt this. The signature can be used to verify that someone didn't just send back garbage while pretending to be the server, and that the transmission wasn't tampered with.
This way, the user gives no identifying information besides that already given with non-keyed http/ftp/etc.-----
Unfortunately, few in the media got this right. An AP story picked up by the local paper here thought that 9/9/99 would be interpreted as some sort of 9999 stop-execution command, never mind that dates are very infrequently interpreted as any sort of command...
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The problem with censorship is that it opens the door for further censorship, both direct (more restrictions) and indirect (can't sell it, so won't risk coming close to making it). Several other posts go into better detail, so i won't bother.
Remember that poem about slowly eroding freedoms? It's been rewritten so many times; "First they came for X, but i wasn't X so i didn't complain. Then they came for Y, but i wasn't Y so i didn't complain... etc etc etc... Finally they came for me, and there was no one left to complain." Think on that next time you say "this doesn't affect me".
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Only one problem with that. The voting age is 18 in the US. So you're proposing the government ignore the wishes and welfare of anyone who wasn't yet 18 in the latest election? Which, remember, can include even 21-year-olds in certain years, or nationalized citizens of any age.
How about people who were attacked, knocked out, held hostage over election day? They may have been planning to go to the poles but never made it because of these events beyond their control. No vote, ignore them too?
Given the number of people in the country, what if the gov office of vote-checking got confused and said Bob Jones did vote, even though the Bob Jones in question didn't? Or what if they miss Jane Smith, because she was unmarried (therefore, known by her maiden name Jane Doe) when she voted in the last election? Again, the system breaks down...
there are NO SIMPLE ANSWERS in life.
That's my point, too. Even if you realized this when you wrote the point i contested, i'm sure there are others who wouldn't make that connection.
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Whole big discussion on the good and bad aspects of having your apps on a central server. From my point of view, the general concensus was that this is just a way for the corporations to make more money and to get more control over the averate user than they could get with normal apps.
And i still want to know what happens when the central server dies, or some construction people accidentally cut the 'net (phone, T1, whatever) lines, or the net is just really really slow with all these remote-running GUI apps, etc. No one can get any work done, because no software is local...
-----
NAME
SYNOPSIS WARNING and so on...-----
The alarm clock went off one morning, and none of my higher brain functions were functional. i somehow managed to turn off the alarm clock, and when i woke up again later it had fixed itself (:
-----
Why would you do this? Just randomly change the name associated with everyone's static IPs to confuse them? Part of the point of static IP addresses is that you can then use static DNS (specifically, a name-to-ip database without capability for easy rebinding) and still keep the same name corresponding to your device.
Basically, you just said the exact same thing with slightly different terminology, without making any more sense than you did the first time.
Unless you're using some odd definition of DNS, the IP address and name are always bound together. The new idea in dynamic DNS is that this binding can be easily and quickly changed, the purpose being that the changes in IP->name binding will match those in device->IP binding, giving an apparent binding of device->name even though it's really just carefully managed co-incidence.
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With static DNS, the IP is bound to the device, but the name doesn't change. Since the device always has the same IP, the name can be tied to device or IP with the same effect. Because it's easier, the name is bound to the IP.
With dynamic IP assignment, the name is bound to the IP as above, because that's how the database was written. But since the IP is not bound to any particular device, both the device's name and IP change. If you manage to get the same IP assigned, you'll have the same name.
As a side note, in DDNS the name is still bound to the IP in the name server database. The difference is that this binding is changed when the device is assigned a new ip, so that the name is effectively 'bound' to the device.
-----
i don't think a client has anything to do with this, in the standard terminology. Instead, the DHCP server just lets the (D)DNS server know that the machine with MAC number xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx was just given ip address zzz.zzz.zzz.zzz. The DNS server then updates the DNS record corresponding to machine xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx. All the client needs is a plain, olf-fashioned dhcp client. Of course, i could be off on this. micros~1 probably did it differently anyway, to break compatibility. Don't flame, just correct.
i am sure, however, that the bind version 8 name server does allow dynamic DNS updates. bind 8 has been out for Linux for quite a while. Also, several dhcp servers have the ability to automatically use this feature of bind 8. So you can't exactly say that "Linux/*BSD/whatever" doesn't have this ability, since it is already available and has been proven (which micros~1's hasn't yet).
A lot of the M$ bashing is because of two points.
- The article claims Linux has no support for dynamic DNS (as do you). This is incorrect, see above.
- M$ has a history of taking something that works and changing it enough that their client/server only works with their server/client. Especially since they're claiming this is something new and something that won't work with Linux, there's reason to believe they will do so again.
Admins are also worried that there will be problems when micros~1 tries to tie WINS computer names into the dns database. Especially since many don't even know how to change their computer name, so you'll end up with 20 computers named "workstation"...-----
-----
Windows-wise, the best i've found so far is BladeEnc for encoding with EAC. As usual with Windoze software, though, EAC isn't free speech. But it does do a good job ripping...
As for grip, i found it so annoying to use that i went ahead and wrote my own frontend using perl-tk and CDDB.pm from CPAN...
-----
So, micros~1's proposal is different how? You pay them for X amount of CPU time to run your app on their server (the only viable way to keep us from pirating the rented copy, otherwise crackers will steal the downloaded code from RAM or HD and deactivate or spoof the self-destruct/reporting system), and probably for X megs of data storage space. Companies start selling systems with only the minimum power needed to contact the server, and we're back to the centralized-server-and-dumb-terminal era (except this time around you can't trust the people who run that centralized server ;)
And what happens when NT 6.66 (or whatever the micros~1 server runs) crashes, or there's a "router problem" or "bad weather"? All of a sudden, all productivity halts...
For further information, man bofh
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Besides, 12-year-olds don't have to bother with the Internet to find things CyberPatrol would consider bad. All they need is to hang around with some other teenagers in a situation without strict parental supervision. What's the use of blocking the 'net when the kids hear it from their babysitter?
-----
If you want to describe the content on your site easily, you can rate with RSAC, which gives you a standard baseline and spews out the appropriate PICS metadata for your web page, and you copy and paste it into your HTML document. Easy.
And useless. First off, this can't work unless there's some sort of international law mandating that every single website uses it. Otherwise, most people are going to ignore it because ratings don't work well (see below). Then, you're left with a choice: block all the sites that don't rate themselves, even the good ones, or allow the non-rated sites, even the (relatively few) bad ones.
Have you looked at the RSACi rating system? For one, it's more suited to video games than webpages (how often have you seen a webpage with "destruction of realistic objects" as violence?). For another, there's only 5 levels for each of the four categories. What if you have a website with pictures of David and other classic [possibly nude] art? Oops, that's "Frontal Nudity", your site gets a 3 (on a scale 0-4) in that area. What if you're writing about the history of war? "Aggressive violence or death to humans", maybe even "Rape or wanton gratuitious violence" depending on the particular war. Oops! There's a 3 or a 4 in that category. Would a database of sex offenders (FBI Wanted List?) get a 3 or 4 because it has to say what they did?
And finally, who's to decide which rating your content deserves? The Christian Coalition? Neo-Nazis? Bill from Arkansas? Slashdot posters? Everyone has different standards as to what exactly is good and bad. In certain countries, pictured of women in bathing suits in the Sears Catalogue would be censored as porn. Remember, it's the World Wide Web. If you want a rating system that can differentiate between all the variations, you'll end up with something not even a lawyer can understand, 2M blocks of rating data on every page, 1G programs to parse it all, and people will STILL claim sites are improperly rated.
There is no solution that will work for everyone. Not laws, not software, not rating systems.
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Why isn't this against the library policy, and why doesn't the librarian kick these people out? It doesn't take government coersion or fancy software to protect your kids, just a realization of what is and is not allowed in a public place and enforcement of that in the case someone is stupid enough to break the mores.
I assume your library would kick someone out who brought in a bunch of porn magazines, spread them around the table, and stared at them. But if they're in the guy's breifcase and he doesn't remove them (or sit staring into the briefcase) then what's the problem? [The analogy: not looking using the library's computer]
-----
kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
kernel: lp0 off-line
kernel: lp0 out of paper
Go read this thread, then come back if you have any questions.
BTW, why should 10-year-old Joe's geocities website be assumed adult when he doesn't know what 'adult' even is to rate his site? Why should i and everyone else with a non-adult website have to go through and add your rating to every single page, then re-upload them all, to state the obvious (i.e. no adult content)? Are you willing to foot the bill for all that? ;)
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kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
kernel: lp0 off-line
kernel: lp0 out of paper
i'm still watching for replies to my posts though ;)
if browsers supported this tag, and every adult site voluntarily added it, most of the pro-filter crowd would be appeased.
That's quite a huge if, though. What are the chances of every adult site voluntarily installing your tag, including the adult sites on GeoCities and such that move every two weeks once the sysadmins discover and delete them?
And there's still the matter of what constitutes an adult site. Where do you draw the line between art and pornography? Other people draw the line differently, and that's why everyone will never be satisfied.
There's no way to satisfy everyone; whatever solution is proposed, someone will have a problem with it.
On the subject of content labeling, a few years back i did a paper on censorship and examined the major labeling methods of the day, and found that they were all too vague to cover the possible distinctions. Even the ones that tried the hardest had that problem, and were too complex for the average web author to reliably create without being in violation (which was against the terms of use for the rating system).
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kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
kernel: lp0 off-line
kernel: lp0 out of paper
He's been reading too much Dave Barry, and wants to take over his job now ;)
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kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
kernel: lp0 off-line
kernel: lp0 out of paper
This only proposes to cover minors. Ok, fine. Does that mean we go with what's indecent for a 5-year-old? A 10-year-old? A 17-year-old? Something a 17-year-old can see with no ill effects might give a 5-year-old nightmares for a month. Yet the word 'minors' makes no distinction.
How enforcable is this? Let's ignore for the moment that the Internet exists outside the US. Someone decides they don't agree with a particular site's rating, and sues to get it changed. This will end up adding even more pointless lawsuits to the court system, and the particular definition of 'indecent' STILL goes back to the problems i mentioned above! There actually was a case like this at one point, IIRC someone in Tennissee sued the operators of a BBS in California for something legal in CA but not in TN. Even if you mandate one interpretation throughout the country, there are still going to be differences in interpretation of that interpretation between one area and another, and this is going to end up restricting web publishing to only those who can afford to have a lawyer check everything they want to put up. "You can't use that logo! Someone might consider it too phallic! We'd get sued!"
What happens when someone thinks that, for example, the pictures of bloody Kosovan refugees in Newsweek are unsuitable for minors? She sues, wastes the courts' time, and eventually gets a ruling that requires Newsweek to rate its stories. Since they don't want to lose readership, they stop writing stories with such content, as do most other news-related organizations. Suddenly, you can't find any important current events online. Someone else decides that those thin models are harming our daughters, gets them banned. No more pictures of people on the net at all, except on personal websites. Even there, the authors are required to rate their pages as "potentially harmful" just because they have a picture of someone thin.
Think this is a little over the edge? Maybe it is. But maybe it isn't, and do you really want to take that risk?
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kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
kernel: lp0 off-line
kernel: lp0 out of paper
Actually, Debian doesn't use rpms at all. Debian supports the rpm format so that proprietary software (or free software that hasn't yet been debianized) that is distributed in rpm format can be easily installed. Debian uses the deb format, which is considered by many to be superior to rpm.
Don't flame, i've just stated a simple fact: many consider deb superior to rpm. Others consider the exact opposite.
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kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
kernel: lp0 off-line
kernel: lp0 out of paper