Even in defeat, I try to be entertaining

[elfs]

Well, I finally had to give up and install a household filter. Omaha will protest that this was a lot more work than it should have been, and I would be inclined to agree with her if it handn't been a simple matter of installing two pieces of software the old-fashioned way: ./configure && make && sudo make install. I had forgotten just how underpowered the household router is: it's a Pentium M, 286MhZ machine with 32MB of ram and a 4GB drive. Still, it's been an absolute rock for the past six years. But we might have to up it a bit if we're asking it to do filtering.

Part of me is convinced that this is a failure: I haven't taught my kids well enough about what's good to put into their minds, and what isn't. On the other hand, I still can't watch them all the time, even when their computer is in the den where everyone can see it. And using SARG will at least give me an idea if they're trying repeatedly to get into things that I need to talk to them about.

Don't Go There

But you know me. I can't leave well enough alone. I hated the template for the warning, so I pulled it up in emacs and edited it. Omaha and I posed for a photograph. This is what you see if you try to navigate to Fleshbot. Whaddya think?

Comments

Re: As someone who is planning on having kids...

[omahas.livejournal.com]

I'm really sorry, because I wasn't intending that the response be perceived as responding to a criticism. Basically, I just wanted to show that (1) we are always making censorship decisions and the kinds that we end up making and (2) the kind of censorship/filtering we do for our kids really comes down to individual situations and how we perceive our kids can handle said situations.

The ending may have especially come across as being sharp, and I'm sorry...I was actually getting in a hurry, as I saw that I was going to be late for my bus and I was trying to get my thoughts out as quickly as possible. Heh.

If you are asking about how we decided about using this *particular* kind of filtering software, well that comes down to having tried to use Glubble and found it totally lacking in what we wanted...which was to allow the girls to have the ability to do things like searching online, while still not allowing them to access the actual sites that they found that might not be appropriate, and yet allowing them to talk to us about getting access anyway.

Glubble allowed for the conversation (in a very difficult manner) but there was no ability to, for example, search using Google or any other search tool. If you didn't already know where you wanted to go (and thus, one would perceive, most likely already have the permission) you couldn't find out about it/explore it to get the permission in the first place. And that just didn't work for us. Nice UI though. :)

I read a great review of Glubble that mirrored my views about it and then in the comments everyone lauded Dansguardian and OpenDNS (which we haven't implemented yet). So we decided to try it out, and it seems to do exactly what we want. So we'll see if it works, alter the filters over time as the kids get older, etc, and hope that it does the things we needed.

But I do believe that making sure the kids know that the filtering software is in place and why is absolutely essential. That is making them a part of the process of protection and exploration. They understand why this is happening, and more importantly why it will change over time and how they can feel empowered by it, rather than restricted by it.

Hope this helps and comes off as not being nasty. :)