Do you have gamers in your family who are already hinting around about a video game or two on a holiday wish list they'd started compiling last spring? There's help for gamers' parents. Which is good, because - on the advice of Patricia Vance, president of the Entertainment Software Rating Board - we need to check out the ratings on every video game box - front and back - before buying anything. … [Read more...] about Check out those game ratings!
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Family P2P policymaking
A software company executive emailed me some concrete comments about the family P2P policy ideas I floated in "Legal music" last week. He wrote: "For your 'possible P2P policies,' I'd add a third (albeit, I am most certainly NOT impartial): Use a good P2P blocking application and 'override' the restrictions when your child wants to download [legal music], ensuring that you are around to … [Read more...] about Family P2P policymaking
Teen hacker hired
A bit of irony here: 18-year-old Sven Jaschan, arrested for writing the Sasser worm and reportedly behind 70% of the virus infections that circled the globe the first half year of this year, has been offered a job by German computer security firm Securepoint. According to ZDNet UK, the company says it "would like to hire the reformed script kiddy because he had knowledge in the field and deserved … [Read more...] about Teen hacker hired
Norway to block child porn
Starting next month, Telenor, Norway's government-controlled telecommunications company, will be blocking illegal child porn for its nearly 1 million Internet customers, Agence France-Presse reports. This is a joint project between Telenor and Kripos, a national law-enforcement agency, which is providing the database of child porn sites against which Telenor's filters will check all Web site … [Read more...] about Norway to block child porn
Net search gets better
Jeeves the friendly search butler went on vacation and has come back looking 20 years younger. CNET cleverly called it Jeeves's "extreme makeover," because there's more to Jeeves than the animated character that's gotten spiffed up. Now there's MyJeeves, "a personalized storage locker for Web surfers' search results"; "Smart Search" for more local information (map, movies, weather, plus spell … [Read more...] about Net search gets better