[Vision2020] Stay out of jail - beware of spyware

[Paul Rumelhart]

Chasuk wrote:

> Here Paul and I part ways.  If you have children of an age that
> NetNanny might be tempting, keep the computer in the living room.
> Peruse their browser history occasionally and talk to them about
> anything that you find which is objectionable.  I have two children
> whom I safely navigated to adulthood as they navigated the Internet
> hundreds of hours a year, all without mishap.  Yes, the wife and I
> both worked full-time.  Nanny software is no replacement for good
> parenting.  Besides, any moderately intelligent teen can easily
> subvert NetNanny-type products.


Not having kids, I haven't had to worry about this.  I agree that it 
makes sense that actual parenting would beat a software censorship 
product hands down.  I've never used NetNanny or their ilk, and was 
taking it on faith that they did a reasonable job.  I should never have 
recommended something I've never personally used.

>
> Yes!  I run Windows, but I also run Linux.  If you want a copy of
> Ubuntu, I will provide it for you for the price of a blank CD.  If you
> provide the CD,  I will provide Ubuntu gratis.


I would also be happy to burn Ubuntu or one of it's brethren (Kubuntu, 
Xubuntu) onto a CD if someone needs it and provides the CD.  It should 
be mentioned that these are so-called "live CDs", meaning that you can 
boot from them and try them out without disturbing your system in the 
slightest.  If you decide to, you can use the same CD to install the 
operating system with.  If you like what you see but don't have an extra 
computer lying about to try it out on and don't want to give up Windows 
completely, then I'd suggest buying a cheap harddrive and getting it put 
into your computer and setting things up to dual-boot.  This way you 
have a choice when you turn your computer on.  You can run mainly in 
Windows and try out Linux when you feel like it, or you can keep your 
main desktop in Linux and reboot to Windows only when you have to.

Soon, the virtualization stuff will be far enough along that you could 
run linux easily with a virtual copy of Windows running on the same 
machine at the same time.  I haven't messed with that yet, though, so I 
don't know how usable it is right now.

For those other Linux geeks out there that might be lurking... I'm 
relatively new to Linux and run Debian stable at the moment.

Paul