Safe, Sane, and And The End of Time …

OK, this post’s going to be a bit of a mixed post …

First off, I’m going to thank ComBom, again. Bless him, he managed to find and flag up some of the promo shots from the upcoming Dr Who Christmas specials, The End Of Time, parts One and Two: you can find the original’s, here.

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The other thing I’m going to quickly run past you is this …

Has any one heard of — hoping me and Tim have got this right — something called Bit slicing? Or Byte slicing? Byte splicing?

Something like that …

Apparently, it’s something used by some of the kids at Tim and Adele’s eldest two children’s school, to get round the parental controls the school uses to stop them going anywhere they shouldn’t.

Mind you, if you’re with-in the relevant age range, you might just want to kick off, if you’re not allowed to go on Facebook.

I think I can understand that.

But I can also understand schools and parents not wanting the kids going online, without being eyeballed!

I’ve got to admit, after having a float around the ’Net, I’m surprised — but maybe shouldn’t be — at how easy it is to get round any parental controls: booting from the original install discs will do it*.

If you’re a parent reading this, you probably want to keep that in mind! After all, you’ve probably either still got them, or access to an Ubuntu Live disc.

But knowing Tim and Adele, I think that’s something they’ll be able to get ’round!

But here’s what I’m going to ask.

Now I’ve found one or two on-line safety guides. And one or two recommended parental filters for Ubuntu, which doesn’t — out of the box — seem to come with as many as OS X or Windoze.

I already know — and will be telling Tim and Adele, and any other parents I know — that keeping the desktops and laptop downstairs, where you can keep an eye on what your children are doing, seems to be the best way of making sure of knowing what they’re up to.

But here’s my question: if you know of any online safety tips, hints, sites or guides — or you know of something relevant about the subject — would you mind leaving a comment about them?

I think we know what the ‘How To’ looks like, don’t we?

* Funny thing is, if you search for “Bypassing Parental controls in Windows”, you get a lot of guides on how to do it. Feed in “Bypassing Parental controls in OS X” you get a lot of forum responses on the lines of “Ask you parents” …