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Mar. 21, 2007 When I was still in Los Angeles, I used to use public computers at the Los Angeles Public Library and on the campus of USC, which was near where I lived. In the LAPL, in order to reserve a computer, you have to type in your library card number, which is linked to the ID that you presented in order to get the card in the first place. What I think the computer does is check your age from those records, and if you are under 18, you are allowed computer time only in the youth section, where I believe the computers have filters to keep out pornography. If you are over 18, you are allowed to use the general computers, which have no filters. In fact, sometimes by mistake you may click into a website with the most indecent trash imaginable, and often you cannot get rid of it. You close the screen and two minutes later, the lewd picture is back. It's very embarrassing when people walk behind you, and, it looks for all the world as if you are gazing at raw pornography, straight or gay. Other than for what I surmised about LAPL, I didn't know anything about filters till I got to Argentina. In Argentina, every cyber café's computers are equipped with one of a number of monitoring programs, or filters. One of them is called NetPurity. But there are others too; I just don't know the names. With most of the filters, what happens is that, if a web page has an objectionable word, a pop-up screen appears and you are denied the page. In most cyber cafés, if that happens, you go to the attendant, and ask him to disable the filter. If you are over 18, he does this by clicking on the icon, typing in a code and then canceling the action with another click. In fact, at one cyber café, they told me the code eventually, so I could disable it myself. Elsewhere, I always have to ask. The problem is that if, on Yahoo Search, for example, you have opted to have 100 search results displayed, and if any one of them has a 'naughty' word, either in Spanish or English and maybe some other languages, you are immediately blocked. For example, say you type in 'violinist', because you are trying to remember some violinist's name. Yahoo reports that there have been 155,000 search results, the first 100 of which are listed below. If the 93rd search result is from some blog, where someone says that the local night club has a faggot violinist, the whole page is blocked. You have no access to those 155,000 search results. You can try to change your keyword to dodge the block, or you can go to the proprietor. In one cyber café in downtown Buenos Aires that is spread over three floors, the filter cannot be disabled, perhaps because they can't keep track of all the adolescents wandering around. So you're stymied. With some other monitoring services, you don't get a pop-up screen, but you find that objectionable words have been removed one at a time. For example, I wanted to reread my articles on homosexuality. One article was entitled, "Is Homosexuality Wholesome? Part 5". But on the expurgated screen, the title read "Is Wholesome? Part 5". This is entirely meaningless and ridiculous. I think this can probably be counterproductive. I don't know how filters in US libraries work, but if a youngster were doing homework on dinosaurs or algebra, and some blogger had a piece of semiliterate obscenity that appeared somewhere on the same search-results page, it would stop the homework. And isn't there some blogger like that on every search-results page? ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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