billso.com

From USA Today and news.com: According to a Federal study, approximately 1% of files listed on Google and Microsoft search engines are pornographic.The study was commission by Federal lawyers to support the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. COPA required web sites to collect a credit card number before allowing a user to view adult materials. The law was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1998. A 2000 law that required libraries and schools to install and use Web filters was upheld by the Court in 2003. An earlier 1996 law that banned online pornography was overturned by the court in 1997, in part because the law employed a broad definition of porn.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) supports filters, claiming that highly restrictive filters can block a majority of adult web sites. However, many porn sites are operated outside the United States, and porn sites tend to use popular non-pornographic keywords in attempts to direct new users to the sites.

Tech: Kids are becoming more adept with computers, but sometimes they turn into bullies. When I was a child, you had to insult someone to their face. Children who have grown up with technology may be more likely to launch craven and cowardly attacks through weblogs, IM and anonymous postings. They distribute pictures and videos of each other on P2P networks.

Beware the forward button, people. Once you send a message, you’ll never stop it.

Users sign and forward petitions though e-mail. Adults like “King” Peter Chung of the Carlyle Group and Trevor Luxton of Credit Lyonnais thought they could brag about anything and everything in an e-mail message. It all just makes me wonder sometimes.

USA: Yahoo! News - Students Worry Handwriting to Affect SAT: Her first pencil-and-paper pop quiz in college will be quite a shock to Carol. So will that first pen computer. Sloppy handwriting is doesn’t help her cause at all. “‘As an adult in today’s work world, you don’t write anything,’ said Carol Maoz, head of the upper school (grades 7-9), adding she couldn’t think of an occasion students would write out a longhand essay. ‘You type everything. There really is no need for proper handwriting.’ ”

Tech: Outsourced IT staff fingered porn stash banker - from The Register: I find it funny because his own IT staff burned him, and his last name is similar to mine.

“Porn-surfing bank supremo Michael Soden was caught with his browser down last week by the very same staff he outsourced to HP at the start of his reign at the Bank of Ireland.

Soden hit the headlines last year in Ireland when staff took industrial action in protest of the department’s shift to Hewlett Packard. Staff were unhappy about the prospect of becoming HP employees, as they had enjoyed considerable perks at the Bank of Ireland: favourable mortgage and loan deals for instance. Now it seems that he has been forced to resign thanks to the very department which he sent merrily on its way.

Staff informed the bank that they had discovered pornography on Soden’s machine on Wednesday last week, during routine maintenance. Soden resigned his post on Saturday, after the internal investigation into the discovery was leaked to the local press.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that the ‘routine maintenance’ was anything other than that, but it’s clear that Soden’s machine was thoroughly attended to.

The outsourcing move was Soden’s second high-profile decision after his appointment as chief executive. His first was to update the acceptable use policy that prohibits staff from accessing porn using company equipment.”