Ban software will NEVER be effective, as the net grows faster than any organization can index it. Every year, a smaller and smaller percentage of the net is actually indexed by search engines (it's now arround 15%), so you see, banning sites is a doomed approach.

Instead, (and this is bassed on some feasability work I just did for an ethics class) I suggest you alter your approach so that the "Protected" mode works on a disallow-by-default approach.

This means you ADD allowed sites (a pain in the ass, but this WORKS, and the other aproach does not). So in the "Unprotected" mode, the button would be a "Permitted" button, and it would add the current site to the permitted list.

With a little extra hacking, the "Protected" mode browser could have a "Request" option on the pop-up menu, so that when you logged on in the "Unprotected" mode, you could review links that the kid had requested access to, and allow them if you wanted to.

Think about the numbers involved, and you will see that I am right.

Your arrogance is pretty amazing. "..you will see that I am right".

If you actually read the whole post up there, you'll see that's *exactly* what he's doing. And ever further, if you tried it, you'd that's what it's written to do. It's pretty cool.

So quick to judge, so slow to think, evaluate.

Much as a tool like this is a good idea, I don't think mozilla is the place to implement it.

It is too easy to bypass (by just using another browser), what is needed is software which examines each packet as it goes down the line. It should not be possible to quit the software.

I can see some situations where this would work really well. Suppose your 10 year old kid is doing a paper on dinosaurs for her 4th ot 5th grade class and you'd like to let her research the subject some without sitting over her shoulder. Maybe you've got to help your other kid with his piano lessons or something. So you sit down at the compter, log onto the discovery.com domain and click a button that locks the browser into that domain. This seems like a great solution to one of the problems of internet supervision. Sure, it's not _the_ answer, but is is _an_ answer and it seems pretty reasonable to me.

The one rule of the internet is that it CAN'T be controlled. You can't stop things like Napster and you can't top what people look at online. Not with software at least. The kids could just install another browser. So the only software solution would to build it right into the OS but I would hate the feeling that Microsoft or any other company for that matter could find out what I or my kids where looking at just look at the whole real player thing. I mean it is just a bad idea. Bottom line the internet is the real world in a mirror don't let your kids into it until they are ready to be in the world or you can trust them not to do "bad" things online.

Obviously, the people that responded above did not understant what you are trying to do... You wan't to allow access to ONLY CERTAIN (pre-determined by yourself) sites and block the rest. We have something like that in our classroom environment. When a user goes to linux.com or freebsd.org and other Unix/Linux sites ... it will let them through based on address. If they go to something else, or go through a search engine and click on a disallowed site ... they get re-directed to our school home page instead.

The only way for the kid to get around that is to break the firewall. Your kid is not in the business of breaking firewalls ... is he?

Obviously, the people that responded above did not understant what you are trying to do... You wan't to allow access to ONLY CERTAIN (pre-determined by yourself) sites and block the rest. We have something like that in our classroom environment. When a user goes to linux.com or freebsd.org and other Unix/Linux sites ... it will let them through based on address. If they go to something else, or go through a search engine and click on a disallowed site ... they get re-directed to our school home page instead.

The only way for the kid to get around that is to break the firewall. Your kid is not in the business of breaking firewalls ... is he?

http://www.examiner.com/skink/skinkDec14.html

This article (written in 1997 by Rebecca Eisenberg, probably the best journalist on the net) mostly applies to the available "net nanny"-style software, which is obviously far more foul, more evil, and more bigoted than this proposal.

However, some of the points it raises (about the inaccurate use of the word "protection", for instance) are still very valid.

(However, if we're talking about 6-year old children or whatever, I don't object as strongly to such censorship and parental control, so there is kind of a legitimate use for it.)

--sam

Chill out people, this is just one simple tool that works very well for the purposes it was written for. No, it's not going to solve all the problems that blocking and filtering software bring up, but if you want your kid to only go to Disney.com, it works fine.

Christ, give him a break. I personally think it's very cool, shows what you can do with Mozilla, and it solves a problem that one person had. Isn't sharing those solutions with everyone else the whole point of OSS?

I emailed Mr. Turner, and he clarified. When the button is pushed, it does prevents the browser from leaving the current site untill the browser is unlocked.

The kid could still use IE to bypass the lock. Netscape Navigator isn't the only browser installed on most computers. Two locks are needed unless IE and all other browsers are uninstalled. He needs to lock Mozilla in as the only browser that can be used to access the internet.

Crutcher and Tanyel, the meaning of "lock" as used was perfectly clear. I understood it and so did most of the other people posting here, evidently.

So instead of wasting bandwidth on lame semantic arguments meant to prove that you're right and the author is wrong, why don't you just shut up and stop removing doubt?

-Ugg, who has little patience for people who can't see the forest for the semantics.

well, our upcoming solution maybe just right: blocks the browser entirely, no search function any more, just one URL possible (of course links away from that URL, too). So depending on the URL you allow surfing is much limited. please send requests for release information (soon) to: WebLock@onlinehome.de thanks!