I'm now a senior at my local High School and BESS has not been my friend. First, I didn't like the blatant censoring and blanket blocking of Free Homepage sites. Then, the little BESS trailer (a constant reminder that I was being "protected" by BESS) started driving me batty. I could accept these, they weren't that bad. This last year, the final straw came. A D V E R T I S I N G I couldn't belive my eyes when I saw the new BESS Blocked Page. They were bloody advertising for a) themselves and b) other companies. I mean, I come to school to learn, to feed my brain, and now I'm being bombarded with advertising in school! Does not N2H2 make enough money providing BESS? Does it need extra money from advertisers to pay its bills? I sure hope not, 'cause that indicates to me financial instability. It would be nice to have a censor-free learning environment, but it won't happen in my school district. Fear of legal responses to children stumbling across Porn and "Indecent for Minors" material is too great for most school districts. If I could offer an alternative to this BESS-type filtering, it would be one created by a K12 Tech Administrator. Instead of Proactive Blocking, I'd use Reactive Blocking. Although it would be an interesting invasion of privacy, I'd use Squid and its user authorization features to monitor student's web surfing, grep weekly for possible "bad words" , and go after those who violate the "no porn" policy of my school. Hey, it's been done by Steve Tonnesen.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm now a senior at my local High School and BESS has not been my friend. First, I didn't like the blatant censoring and blanket blocking of Free Homepage sites. Then, the little BESS trailer (a constant reminder that I was being "protected" by BESS) started driving me batty. I could accept these, they weren't that bad.
This last year, the final straw came.
A D V E R T I S I N G
I couldn't belive my eyes when I saw the new BESS Blocked Page. They were bloody advertising for a) themselves and b) other companies. I mean, I come to school to learn, to feed my brain, and now I'm being bombarded with advertising in school!
Does not N2H2 make enough money providing BESS? Does it need extra money from advertisers to pay its bills? I sure hope not, 'cause that indicates to me financial instability.
It would be nice to have a censor-free learning environment, but it won't happen in my school district. Fear of legal responses to children stumbling across Porn and "Indecent for Minors" material is too great for most school districts.
If I could offer an alternative to this BESS-type filtering, it would be one created by a K12 Tech Administrator. Instead of Proactive Blocking, I'd use Reactive Blocking. Although it would be an interesting invasion of privacy, I'd use Squid and its user authorization features to monitor student's web surfing, grep weekly for possible "bad words" , and go after those who violate the "no porn" policy of my school. Hey, it's been done by Steve Tonnesen.
Well, that's my two cents.
Austin B.