On Sat, 27 May 2000 10:42:57 +0200 (MET DST), Bernie wrote:
> Sam Heywood wrote:
>> Also it is a
>> waste of time when you are looking for a page having technical data on
>> IC chips and you go to a page having a title that sounds like what you
>> are looking for only to find that you are accessing a porn page. (This
>> actually happened to me once!
> I often start my searches with "-porn -nude -sex -xxx -naked", that will
> remove all, or atleast most of, these pages that so often come up. Of
<snip>
Hello Bernie:
One of the problems with "Surf-Watch" and other programs designed to
prevent children from accessing "bad" sites is that these programs are
not capable of performing "smart exclusions". These kinds of programs
will prevent children from accessing many sites dealing with the subject
of astronomy, a subject in which most children have a keen and wholesome
interest. Many of the astronomy pages have a lot to say about what one
can observe with "the naked eye". Also, if you exclude pages containing
the word "sex", you will prevent children from being able to access lots
of information that has no intent whatsoever in appealing to any prurient
interests on the subject. The problem is that the programmers that are
developing the "Surf-Watch" type of programs seem to have no interest
in teaching the computer to perform "smart exclusions". As a result
children will become confused in trying to figure out just what it is that
their parents and other well-meaning adults consider to be "bad". Some
children are so confused that they think that any adult who mentions the
words "sex" or "naked" is a bad person who might be inclined to approach
them with evil intentions. I have heard about some parents who have set
up their "Surf-Watch" type of programs so as to exclude pages having the
word "evolution", even though this term is used in many contexts that
are not at all related to some scientific theories that are contrary to
the religious beliefs of the parents. Some children think it is a "bad"
word. The simple fact is that it is just another word for "change".
Sam Heywood
-- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client
