Why should people who make policies, be required to know about the subject at stake!

[alexander]

Firstly the source, this might not stay here for too too long, so i will copy and paste the interesting parts of this, because it's so hilarious, original source: Thurston County Sheriff's Office

 

highlights:

 

The "Information Super Highway," which is made up of commercial online services such as Prodigy, America Online, CompuServe, and the Internet

And the Internet? lol and it continues

allows millions of people around the world to communicate anonymously in a virtually uncontrolled electronic world

LOL, a, the internet is not anonymous, and hasn't been for many years, and the electronic world is very much controlled...

As parents, you should notify the ISP (Internet Service Provider) or BBS (Bulletin Board System) SYSOP (system operator) of the problem.

Lol, BBS, it's really hard to find one today, there are probably a few in the world still operating... Make sure you stress to your kids how important it is to keep their horse clean, cavalry is an important part of modern battle-field.

 

Most parents have no clue what an ISP is, never mind how to contact them, or that usually ISP has nothing to do with the abuse they mention above, like:

Do not respond to anyone who leaves you obnoxious, sexual, or menacing email.

or

Be aware of undesirable chat rooms and bulletin boards. Use the "parental discretion" options when necessary to block these areas.

 

gets us to the best section ever, if your child does this, they might be a computer criminal:

withdraws from friends, family, "lives on the computer," and may lose interest in social activities

ok, thats like 1/2 the people who use computers, or just aging :)

Use of a new, unusual vocabulary, heavy with computer terms, satanic phrases, sexual references or a sudden interest in related hard rock or satanic oriented posters, music, etc.

LOL

Look for related doodling or writing using of words such as: Hacking, Phreaking, or any words with "ph" replacing 'f"

Yes, lol, and if they are involved with drugs, look for drug-related doodling, marijuana leafs, words like crack, meth, acid, or any chemical terms you might not be familiar with.

Lack of interest in self and appearance, grooming and hygiene, or indications of lack of sleep, sudden drop in school grades, and unauthorized absences from classes.

Unauthorized absence from computer classes is what gets people to write articles like this....

The computer and modem are running late at night, even when unattended

Computer files ending in GIF, JPG, BMP, TIF, PCX, DL, GL, FLI, MPG, AVI, MOV - these are picture or graphic files and parents should know what they illustrate. Image files may be pictures of a sexual nature and can be of very high quality, moving pictures, and even include sound.

lol moving pictures... yes, keep sex secret from your high-schooler, lol, and interest in the opposite sex in the beginning stages of child's sexual maturity is a clear indication of criminal activities

Names on communication programs that seem satanic, pornographic, rude, or vulgar in nature

Yes, like irc programs, such as mirc, xchat, etc (there are many more), or anonymity programs like tor, all share this trend...

An obsession with fantasy adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Trade Wars

rotflamao

Use of the computer to scan or run telephone or credit card numbers

and how are parents to find out about this exactly, oh right

If the computer is showing a series of changing numbers, the computer may be running a hacking program trying to identify calling card "pin" numbers, long distance access numbers, or be attempting to validate credit card numbers.

someone's been watching too much TV, lol...

 

So, bottom line is, how do we disallow policy-makers from making policies about subjects they haven't the first clue about? This is funny, but it is scary because most people don't know any better but to follow those guide-lines, trusting the gov-t office to "know best", and it's sad that the people behind crap like this don't even care enough to try to make the best advise they can actually make that is relevant to today's world...

 

Something to think/talk about.

[JMJones0424]

Competency is never a requirement for public office.

 

The Sheriff's office has already removed its thoughtful tips for keeping kids safe from the menace of the interwebs, but in case you missed the nuggets of wisdom, here is the google cache-

Thurston County Sheriff's Office

[Chacmool]

I hope all of you have permission from your parents to be on this forum!

 

:hihi:

[C1ay]

Should we make some Sysop badges to go with our moderator badges :hihi:

[alexander]

I hope all of you have permission from your parents to be on this forum!

Ugh, fine.... Muuuuuuum, can i read and post on this Forum?

Should we make some Sysop badges to go with our moderator badges

Real question is, should we make a command-line interface for Hypo to make it a BBS, then we can all have SYSOP badges...

Competency is never a requirement for public office.

Lol, no it's not...

 

on that same note, we can't really post the text in the article, since quoting large portions of it would be violating some law, i'm sure, but check out screenshots i took of my new firefox theme and the cool dock at the bottom :)

[freeztar]

Should we make some Sysop badges to go with our moderator badges :shrug:

 

Sounds good, but only if they are in ANSI. :)

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Ok you've proven them idiots which of course was entertaining but when you gonna get to the why part?:)

 

Sides this prolly was part of some wannabe hacker's community service antwayz.

 

Reminds me of the crap I had to do for the JP in exchange for reduced fines and time.

[alexander]

Sounds good, but only if they are in ANSI.

You mean ASCII? ANSI is the international standards organization :)

 

Mr D is grumpy today... Mr D, most disease we can cure, stupidity or ignorance we can't, and that is the fact of life...

 

Well, thing is, they did take it down, and now there are NO ways for the parents to find out if their kids are involved in computer crime, and don't have any inspiratinal ideals to take computer courses and learn about how computers work for real, though i think most of the computer courses don't really teach that anyways, but still, there might be a chance... What do we do about that?

[Turtle]

...

Well, thing is, they did take it down, and now there are NO ways for the parents to find out if their kids are involved in computer crime, and don't have any inspiratinal ideals to take computer courses and learn about how computers work for real, though i think most of the computer courses don't really teach that anyways, but still, there might be a chance... What do we do about that?

 

i suggest finding a dedicated, yet youngish & computer savy, smart-*** to rewrite a good set of parental guidelines for childrens' safe computer use and submit them to this crowd of critics and then on approval by we, some people, submit them to said civil authority who now lacks any such guidelines. who knows; such a good set might get spread around to other departments. :rolleyes:

[freeztar]

You mean ASCII? ANSI is the international standards organization :rolleyes:

 

Nope, I meant ANSI. :phones:

I'm familiar with the standards institute, but this is different. ANSI, in this context, is the extended ASCII set that is used in ANSI art (known in BBS days as just "ANSI").

 

ANSI art is a computer artform that was widely used at one time on BBSes. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS environments. ANSI art also contains special ANSI escape sequences that color text with the 16 foreground and 8 background colours offered by ANSI.SYS, an MS-DOS device driver loosely based upon the ANSI X3.64 standard for text terminals. Some ANSI artists take advantage of the cursor control sequences within ANSI X3.64 in order to create animations, commonly referred to as ANSImations. ANSI art and text files which incorporate ANSI codes carry the de facto .ANS file extension.

 

[lemit]

Many, if not most, county sheriff's offices show the same ignorance of some subject or other. In a course I had in State and Local Governments, one of the better political analysts around at that time said that county governments are by far the most corrupt of any system.

 

But there is also a fundamental issue here.

 

Democracy shouldn't ever be confused with meritocracy. It's the very definition of democracy that the people decide who's going to represent them. They don't always want to be represented by the best and the brightest. Even the best and the brightest don't always want to be represented by the best and the brightest. If you can combine in one person the ability to encapsulate the dreams and hopes of a diverse population, the ability to then create policies that will so define those dreams and hopes as to create a majority of fellow politicians, and then finally the ability to find and hire administrators who will turn to the appropriate expert for each dream or hope, then you should vote for that person, even if he or she is an idiot in terms of the particular part of human endeavor you yourself are obsessed with. That is how democracy should work: it should fill governments with experts at government. I'd love to run a campaign like that instead of what I've generally got stuck with, people who resemble the proverbial dog chasing a car.

 

--lemit

[Turtle]

... That is how democracy should work: it should fill governments with experts at government. I'd love to run a campaign like that instead of what I've generally got stuck with, people who resemble the proverbial dog chasing a car.

 

--lemit

 

however, the offending party is a sheriff's office whose specialty is investigating, and ostensibly, preventing crime. i don't want those guys simply being experts on running/managing an office. not only was their blurb on protecting children from "computer" crime laughable, it was virtually useless. that it was taken down indicates to me at least one person there at the office got that much. (did we , i mean Alex, single-handedly draw enough attention to this that it was taken down? ...sorry; ratcheting down my megalomania. :phones: )

 

so anyway, we shouldn't assume someone in that office wrote all that, though that may be the case, and perhaps they just put up some guidelines passed along from some other department or marginally informed source.

 

Alex (et al), if you didn't get my hint, what i meant to ask you is to write a set of suggestions that in light of the reality of the web might actually afford young people some modicum of safety on the web by informing both them and their parent(s). :phones:

[UncleAl]

The Intertubes is an enema of the people with USB ports so thumbs can drive. "Flush your cache!" they say, and take pictures. Al Gore is a pervert, Palin as the nose on your face.

 

Dissertation Abstracts/Physical Science occupies a library shelf or two. Contained within it are the birth pangs of the whole of technological civilization. Dissertation Abstracts/Liberal Arts occupies whole walls. Contained within it is nothing at all.

[Turtle]

The Intertubes is an enema of the people with USB ports so thumbs can drive. "Flush your cache!" they say, and take pictures. Al Gore is a pervert, Palin as the nose on your face.

 

:phones: :phones:

 

Dissertation Abstracts/Physical Science occupies a library shelf or two. Contained within it are the birth pangs of the whole of technological civilization. Dissertation Abstracts/Liberal Arts occupies whole walls. Contained within it is nothing at all.

 

i was hoping to provoke alex to say that, or some such a matter. in short, the sheriff has no business posting anything at all that suggests or promotes how parents aught to protect/raise their kids.

 

as always i defer at this point to a small splotch on the booger wall of liberal arts. :evil:

 

Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do

Everything used in this book is from public sources. The stuff that's available publicly is far more frightening than a lot of people realize.

TOM CLANCY

 

Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[alexander]

the sheriff has no business posting anything at all that suggests or promotes how parents aught to protect/raise their kids.

Question is, who should then? Who would people know to turn to to figure out how to protect their kids from the bad tubes? I mean as wrong as that piece of writing was, it was available to parents, and at a place that they would likely check... Your average parent has no clue how to use the computer perhaps beyond checking corporate email that was setup by someone else, reading news, and looking at their town hall's and school's website for meeting schedules and events. No search engine skills, no knowledge how to research, outside of the public library.

[Turtle]

the sheriff has no business posting anything at all that suggests or promotes how parents aught to protect/raise their kids.

Question is, who should then? Who would people know to turn to to figure out how to protect their kids from the bad tubes? I mean as wrong as that piece of writing was, it was available to parents, and at a place that they would likely check... Your average parent has no clue how to use the computer perhaps beyond checking corporate email that was setup by someone else, reading news, and looking at their town hall's and school's website for meeting schedules and events. No search engine skills, no knowledge how to research, outside of the public library.

 

where's the "head shake" emoticon when ya need it. :lol: not that one you idiot!! the "no; i can't believe you say that" head-shake emoticon. and what exactly is the "average parent" and where is the data that shows it? wrong information better than no information? :doh: really!!!??? law enforcement is just that; law enforcement. not education, not moral template, not coach, not, not, not everything but law enforcement.

 

myob people. :thumbs_up

 

but the watchful care of the parent is endless. the youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.

[lemit]

The ineptitude of people in responsibility means they need to learn how to do their job. It doesn't mean they shouldn't have responsibility. If it did, there'd be a lot of orphans.

 

--lemit