First, a heads-up on the free speech debate on MSN Encarta this month. I found out about it because it was featured (sans URL, of course) on the NBC Nightly News. Here's the URL they missed: http://www.msn.com/encarta/otr/mar/otthis.htm One of the major axes of debate is whether programs like SurfWatch are sufficient to keep pornography out of the hands of children. One concern that was raised more than once is that children tend to be more technically sophisticated ("computer-literate") than parents. I think there is a point there. My dad just got Internet access this afternoon. Basically, all he needed was to install a PPP dialer and Netscape on his Mac, but it was a bit too much for him, so he had a friend come over and help him out. I had tried to guide him over the phone, but that just didn't work out (among other things, Netscape really needs to change their "DNS failure on the following hosts" error message to "you don't have a connection to the Internet, dummy"). Adding SurfWatch or something similar might not have been possible at all. So here's a random idea: have an ISP that essentially firewalls the Internet connection to the house, so that it is very difficult to get unwanted stuff over the wire at all. The ISP can maintain and update the latest high-tech tools, including filtering by URL, filtering by keyword, and other stuff like detecting proxies. While they're at it, they can filter out junk email. Just a random thought. Raph (whose son, Alan Mathison, was born Sunday morning at 5:01 am)