even though this list perhaps shouldn't be used for a discussion like this i'll gladly add my opinion. though this time, from a "child's" point of view (since i've almost been through that beeing 18 now).
i must say that i do agree with all of you're opinion. isn't it generally almost a fact, that just restricting a child to not do something, it will (often, but certainly not always) pretty much "encourage" them to find a way to get around it?! so, if you consider your "relationship" (as in understanding/"getting on with"/beeing able to explain things to your child) very well and you have the feeling they do too, then it definately is easier to just explain it to them (even if your "relationship" with them isn't "all that good" my opinion is, that you will, sooner or later have to explain this, and other things to them) and thus very likely prevent them from viewing offensive sites (at least at young ages - as the scotish standup comedian Billy Connolly explains in one of his sketches men/"young boys" generally do get a certain "urge"..). though for Michael's problem (work) the only thing you can really do (imho) is to block a "few selecte" hosts to keep the porn-banners from literally popping up in your face. i'd also suggest that this would be useful at home, though you wouldn't get around setting up squid/squidguard properly, that's the problem. for windows: there are various applications like netnanny for instance, though then you can easily have problems, like Susie wrote that children can't access hotmail.com from at home. as susie also said you could install mozilla and bannerblind, or in the case of using windows there are quite a few bannerblocking apps (not quite sure on the possibilities for other OS's) the problem you end up with in the end is that extensive "configuration" in the sense of adding sites manually is needed, as in my opinion it isn't the best idea to filter sites by just basically doing a few regexp matches on it's content - that will lead to unnecessarily blocked sites far too often. a little note to susie: well done on discouraging your son from using acros. i know what it's like when (some) people at school (accidentally?) use them, and it just scares me... luckily i never got into the habit of using them outside of irc-networks/e-mails/instant messangers. but to get back to the main point, as mentioned before: "well done" (even if it may not have been "all that much work" ;) -Brian -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
