Digital Ignorance (was Re: Protocols at the point of a gun)

[Steve Reid]

SR> the best place for content filtering is at the application layer.

> 	No, the best place for content filtering is in that grey lump
> mounted between the shoulders of most humans.  But that relys too much
> on personal responsibility for the NetNannies to accept.  Besides the
> fact that most of the NetNannies don't seem to use that grey lump that
> often.

It *should* be at the "noodle layer", but I think it will be a lot more 
practical to install it at the application layer, unfortunately. :-/

[Note: What follows is a rant, but I think it's an important rant.]

I think parents probably are expecting the internet to be a babysitter
like they expect TV to be. A certain elected official (Exon?) tried to
explain the net, and said it was "like a telephone"... <sigh> In a world 
where TV is about as high-tech as most people get, people don't even 
understand the potential of a single unlinked computer, nevermind the 
potential of the internet and crypto.

Maybe the average person is trying to learn these things without learning
the basics, and thus ends up clueless about everything... If people don't
understand how text, programs, images, sound, video, and eventually ALL
THINGS can be described as a series of ones and zeros, how can they
understand the potential of the internet? It would be like trying to
understand light bulbs without knowing what electricity is. 

=====================================================================
| Steve Reid - SysAdmin & Pres, EDM Web (http://www.edmweb.com/)    |
| Email: steve at edmweb.com   Home Page: http://www.edmweb.com/steve/ |
| PGP Fingerprint: 11 C8 9D 1C D6 72 87 E6  8C 09 EC 52 44 3F 88 30 |
|              -- Disclaimer: JMHO, YMMV, IANAL. --                 |
===================================================================:)