Very true... One of the guys originally involved in managing one of the world's largest USENET servers in days of yore, was talking about the decisions he and others made as to what was worthy of being moved to a long-term archive. He now deeply regrets preserving primarily technical discussion while discarding reals of messages about abortion, women's rights, Communism, and _many_ other historically significant issues from the very time they were still living issues. Just try searching Google Groups for any of these subject with a time constraint that puts you back to the dawn of USENET. However, a search for say the eccentricities of some mod to System V on some peculiar piece of hardware will probably have survived.
I happen to attend Lee university in Cleveland, Tennesee. It is located on the orrigional campus of Bob Jones University. In some ways -- though not as rabidly -- Lee has maintained some of the "conservative" nature that was -- and still is -- Bob Jones U. To that effect, they use a product called iPrism by St. Bernard technologies. It censors what they would considder offensive content such as adult entertainment sites, but it also blocks thigs such as the nmap site (http://insecure.org/nmap/) or http://peacefire.org/ incorrectly as "anonymizer" and blocks many pieces of OSS as "hacking tools." In some ways, the way people here view technology are frighteningly simmilar to: http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.4 2056.2147.html . Also, as of late, they have implimented a new security device that requires Windows users to install a product called "Cisco Clean Access" in order to gain access to the school's network. "Clean Access" forces users to install and use AV software and ever single Windows Update within a short period of its releas -- sooner than any normal power user would normally dare to install an update for fear of breaking something -- in order to validate the machine for access. It is intended in the near future to require Mac and Linux users to run some sort of AV software as well -- even though Macs have no viruses and Linux users tend to practice "safe computing." At the moment, the system is already performing Nessus scans on machines on the network with little warning of this.
To conclude, the use of internet censorware is problematic and generally a bad idea regardless of the intent unless there is only a specific selection of networked content that needs be available -- such as is the case of networked cashregisters at FYE where they only have access to parts of the FYE web site.
Note, IANAL, but... (Does that ever stop anyone on/.?) It could be argued that since you are a member of a subscription service that grants you access to any of the content you might choose to archive "temprarily," that you are merely time-shifting your access to the content, so it _may_ not be _entirely_ illegal. However, it is quite certain that any continued use of the archived material would most likely be illegal.
I know... We have Spotlight in Tiger -- and it works superbly I might add, but what about all those using older versions of the OS? I know I might have thought twice about upgrading so early if a Google Desktop Search were available to me.
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Very true... One of the guys originally involved in managing one of the world's largest USENET servers in days of yore, was talking about the decisions he and others made as to what was worthy of being moved to a long-term archive. He now deeply regrets preserving primarily technical discussion while discarding reals of messages about abortion, women's rights, Communism, and _many_ other historically significant issues from the very time they were still living issues. Just try searching Google Groups for any of these subject with a time constraint that puts you back to the dawn of USENET. However, a search for say the eccentricities of some mod to System V on some peculiar piece of hardware will probably have survived.
Good call... sort of....
4 2056.2147.html . Also, as of late, they have implimented a new security device that requires Windows users to install a product called "Cisco Clean Access" in order to gain access to the school's network. "Clean Access" forces users to install and use AV software and ever single Windows Update within a short period of its releas -- sooner than any normal power user would normally dare to install an update for fear of breaking something -- in order to validate the machine for access. It is intended in the near future to require Mac and Linux users to run some sort of AV software as well -- even though Macs have no viruses and Linux users tend to practice "safe computing." At the moment, the system is already performing Nessus scans on machines on the network with little warning of this.
I happen to attend Lee university in Cleveland, Tennesee. It is located on the orrigional campus of Bob Jones University. In some ways -- though not as rabidly -- Lee has maintained some of the "conservative" nature that was -- and still is -- Bob Jones U. To that effect, they use a product called iPrism by St. Bernard technologies. It censors what they would considder offensive content such as adult entertainment sites, but it also blocks thigs such as the nmap site (http://insecure.org/nmap/) or http://peacefire.org/ incorrectly as "anonymizer" and blocks many pieces of OSS as "hacking tools." In some ways, the way people here view technology are frighteningly simmilar to: http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.
To conclude, the use of internet censorware is problematic and generally a bad idea regardless of the intent unless there is only a specific selection of networked content that needs be available -- such as is the case of networked cashregisters at FYE where they only have access to parts of the FYE web site.
Note, IANAL, but... (Does that ever stop anyone on /.?)
It could be argued that since you are a member of a subscription service that grants you access to any of the content you might choose to archive "temprarily," that you are merely time-shifting your access to the content, so it _may_ not be _entirely_ illegal. However, it is quite certain that any continued use of the archived material would most likely be illegal.
I know... We have Spotlight in Tiger -- and it works superbly I might add, but what about all those using older versions of the OS? I know I might have thought twice about upgrading so early if a Google Desktop Search were available to me.
Anyway, I think it would be better to have an open standard. That way we can break it more easily. :-)