[vox] Web Browsers for Kids

[Micah Cowan]

On Thu, 2006-12-21 at 19:36 -0800, Dave Margolis wrote:
> On Dec 21, 2006, at 4:35 PM, Micah Cowan wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure I agree that technology can't act as a foolproof
> > safeguard... obviously, it can't work against an older child who is
> > deliberately working to get around it (I know this quite well, having
> > been that "older child" in the past ;) )... but obviously, a
> > restrictive /etc/hosts with no name resolution, possibly combined with
> > very restrictive firewalling, would make a /quite/ effective tool for
> > restricting access to specific sites. Of course, that sort of
> > globally-applied restriction isn't quite what I want, but there should
> > be a way to do the same thing for a specific application/user.
> 
> Well if we're talking whitelist, I totally agree with you.  Finding  
> an app-specific way to say something like "deny from all, allow from  
> pbskids.org" would totally work.  Setting up a local proxy sounds  
> like one (perhaps overkill, but effective) way to do it.  I'd like to  
> hear what you come up with.

Actually, as I read the suggestion, it was to set up a /fake/
(non-existant) proxy, and use Firefox exemptions to use direct
connections for the sites I'm interested in, which is a good deal
easier.

A proxy could still be useful if I ever want a more complicated setup,
though. And would be a very good idea for when they're older, and I just
want to keep tabs.

I think I'm going to go for the Firefox w/ fake proxy method for now,
combined maybe with a minimalistic window manager in lieu of a desktop
environment.

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer...
http://micah.cowan.name/