[ale] Niece's laptop

Christopher Fowler cfowler at outpostsentinel.com
Mon Jul 31 14:14:06 EDT 2006


One idea I'm thinking about for my daughter is Squid.  It does not solve
your problem but I'm planning on using it to only allow her to visit
sites I approve of.  If she needs to go to a new site then I will add
that to the list on the Squid server.

On Mon, 2006-07-31 at 12:40 -0400, Joshua Kite wrote:
> I've played with filtering in a number of ways.  One of the better
> solutions for MS machines is Safe Eyes.  The software has to be
> installed on every MS machine.  Safe Eyes does offer an appliance
> which is based on linux, but there is no linux version available, and
> the appliance is cost prohibitive for home use. 
> 
> For our home I've been considering setting up a proxy through which
> all traffic will travel using either dansguardian or censornet.  I've
> not begun working with either of them, so I can't comment on their
> impact on performance or their effectiveness.  It looks like censornet
> follows the traditional URL filtering method while dansguardian
> actually dynamically studies the page and determines whether to allow
> it through based on bayesian filtering. 
> 
> Of course, both of these solutions requires setting up a proxy.  I
> don't know whether you could set either of these could be set up to
> run on a single machine to filter it and only it.  Even if that were
> possible, her hardware might not be up to that sort of task. 
> 
> Good luck.  This is a problem all of us parents will have to face for
> a long time.
> 
> On 7/31/06, Dow_Hurst <dhurst at mindspring.com> wrote:
>         My niece has a IBM Thinkpad 770Z that had Win98 on it.  She
>         does mainly AIM messaging and watches DVDs.  I think she
>         browses the web some but this is thru AOL's security enabled
>         browser that blocks most inappropriate content.  The DVD
>         player stopped working and the machine would lock up alot.  I
>         offered to put Linux on it and set it up for her.  Right now,
>         I have SUSE 10.1 on it, DVDs will play, and firefox runs.  Of
>         course it is slow, but it is useable.  However, the concern is
>         the lack of any oversite on the browsing of the web.  The
>         machine is pushed to the max just running 10.1 and KDE.  I
>         tried XFCE but it is so plain that I am sure the more usual
>         graphical environment of KDE is what my neice will use.  How
>         can I filter out bad sites as well as AOL security center
>         would?  Can the machine manage that and get updated on it's
>         own somehow?  Is there a service or site that does what AOL's
>         software does for protecting kids while browsing the web? 
>         
>         Kopete will manage online messaging just fine.  Abiword is
>         fast enough for word processing for school.  Firefox is great
>         for browsing.  I even had a wifi card from Edimax that will
>         work well with SUSE.
>         
>         The machine is a PII at 366MHz with 128Mb RAM.  Has a small
>         10Gb hard drive that is a bit noisy.  She earned the money and
>         bought the machine herself.  I hate to say to her that I can't
>         help and I need to put Win98 back on it with AOL's software
>         just to please my sister and brother-in-law.  Any ideas on
>         what would be best? 
>         
>         There is a Linksys wifi WRT54G router in the house she will
>         connect thru.  I believe there is a service from Linksys for
>         filtering web pages available there.  I'd love comments.  Even
>         a new laptop as a gift would still need to have good filtering
>         of web browsing.  I just can't plan on being able to manage
>         the filter list manually as I don't have that kind of time or
>         dedication! 
>         Thanks,
>         Dow
>         
>         
>         No sig.
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