[ale] Niece's laptop

[Christopher Fowler]

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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