What do you think of web berms?

Crivens said:
Maybe there is a legitimate interest of the law makers to have restrictions, for gambling for example, but on wikipedia?
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Agreed.

Crivens said:
I'd like to see them there, reading and improving themselves.
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I have seen our local library invaded by a Passenger Van that delivers homeless people. I would be fine if they were trying to better themselves but they do not.
Most are lunatics and have loud vocal outbursts. The poor librarian has to deal with these mentally ill people. I saw one break out his lunch while reading the newspaper...

Libraries are meant for everyone. But children also frequent the library and should be shielded from societies ills.
It is an ongoing concern here.
Parks are meant for everybody but should you allow homeless to sleep there? The USA "mental health for profit" system has failed miserably.
We need to bring back state facilities for mental health. Allow involuntary committals.
 
Does anyone remember the adage "When in Rome, do as Romans do" ? or the idea of not coming into somebody else's house with your own rulebook? This is the idea that England would probably use when trying to enforce law within its own borders.

When fighting web berms, same idea applies. Harassment from porn, scams, and ads that originate in another country altogether is a perfectly legitimate reason to pass local laws that prohibit hosting foreign proxy servers with such a purpose.

I know this is getting awfully political, but if we try to connect what we say/type to the topic of web berms, that would be nice.
 
Should we have web 'filters' on public facing computers in libraries? Web berms on porn sites that is.
Lots of homeless need computer access and library is their only option for employment opportunities. A email address is just about required for employment these days.
 
Phishfry said:
Should we have web 'filters' on public facing computers in libraries? Web berms on porn sites that is.
Lots of homeless need computer access and library is their only option for employment opportunities. A email address is just about required for employment these days.
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Who's supposed to be filtering whom? I think that direction of the filtering is an important consideration.
 
astyle said:
Does anyone remember the adage "When in Rome, do as Romans do" ? or the idea of not coming into somebody else's house with your own rulebook? This is the idea that England would probably use when trying to enforce law within its own borders.
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And therein is the rub. Why should a company with no physical presence in the UK be forced to abide by UK laws when someone in the UK accesses the resources of that foreign entity? Sure, when in Rome, but the UK customers are stepping outside of Rome, right? If the UK govt doesn't like it then take China's approach and firewall the internet within their borders...and see how well that works. LOL

It's kind of like the unconstitutional and unethical practice of states here in the US charging USE-TAX for goods and services when their citizens go outside the state to purchase said products to avoid their home state's ridiculous tax structure. Apparently our courts have decided that it is proper for states to collect sales tax for the states where the customer lives, not the state where the company resides. How screwed up is that!?
 
kent_dorfman766 said:
And therein is the rub. Why should a company with no physical presence in the UK be forced to abide by UK laws when someone in the UK accesses the resources of that foreign entity? Sure, when in Rome, but the UK customers are stepping outside of Rome, right? If the UK govt doesn't like it then take China's approach and firewall the internet within their borders...and see how well that works. LOL

It's kind of like the unconstitutional and unethical practice of states here in the US charging USE-TAX for goods and services when their citizens go outside the state to purchase said products to avoid their home state's ridiculous tax structure. Apparently our courts have decided that it is proper for states to collect sales tax for the states where the customer lives, not the state where the company resides. How screwed up is that!?
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No physical presence? You'll be surprised at what London-based datacenters are hosting. The very reason that Wikipedia is so incredibly accessible is that nearly any country with any amount of computing hardware hosts proxies and mirrors. And because those datacenters are physically located in London, it kind of follows that whoever operates the datacenter has to follow England's local laws when deciding what to host, and whose hosting application needs to be denied even if they have the money to rent the onsite servers.

EU has data privacy laws, but thanks to Brexit, those regulations are impossible to enforce in London.

I don't give a rat's ass about paying another state's sales tax if I buy something there. Interstate commerce and sales tax is a morass I'd rather not talk about.

Geolocation-based web berms are not a bad idea... Just think about the the consequences a DDOS attack that originated outside of the country. Yeah, not convenient for individuals with legitimate business, but it's better than opening the floodgates.
 
astyle said:
Who's supposed to be filtering whom? I think that direction of the filtering is an important consideration.
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The correct answer was YES. We need NSFW-filtered web viewing at Public Libraries. Get a job then a place and you can look at NSFW content all day long. Not with public facing monitors.
The library is for all-ages learning . Not for conjugal visits.
 
Cthulhux said:
I will never require enabling JS to visit my websites.
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There is nothing wrong with using javascript for web sites.

JavaScript got a bad rep from all the web sites that misused it for things totally unnecessary and gathering user information along with serving glitzy ads.

If one uses javascript to enhance the user's usage of your site, one should have no problem with that.

fwiw, all my company's sites worked without javascript. That includes purchasing theater tickets and ordering menu items from a restaurant. The we added the enhancements that would benefit the customer's use.
 
Cthulhux said:
There is something very wrong with requiring your users to run your (here: my) arbitrary application code on their computer just to read some text.
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Well, if you made a PDF/A - encoded page advertising prices for your services, you have just now created arbitrary code that I have to run. And if I don't have a proper decoder installed on my system, too bad, I don't get to see your price sheet, nicely organized so that I can understand it and be convinced to pay the fees you're trying to charge.

Just some ASCII-encoded prices.txt file instead? I still have to put in some work reading that text, and asking myself, "Should I pay the fee to someone who didn't even bother to do a decent presentation?".
 
Cthulhux said:
Yes.



One of the advantages of a free society is that you have a choice: do you want pretty presentations, or do you want to avoid being misled?
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If pricing info is missing, or not obvious, I have to ask why. There are plenty of legit reasons to have pretty presentations. Making important info 'not obvious', like with prices.txt instead of an easy-to-understand, nice-looking price list, I have to ask what else are you trying to hide? why?

So yeah, give me a pretty presentation. If you put effort into that, chances are good that you put some effort into a quality product. I'd rather go into a brightly lit shop where everything is visible, rather than a dim hole-in-the-wall where I have a chance of getting bitten by a rat from next door - even if I get my hands on a quality product.
 
Cthulhux said:
There is something very wrong with requiring your users to run your (here: my) arbitrary application code on their computer just to read some text.
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That's not the fault of javascript. It would be something you chose to do. And, as I said, possibly unnecessarily. Don't blame javascript for your bad choices.
 
Phishfry said:
With this hypothesis you are assuming everyone has a fast internet connection. Perhaps eye candy should be opt-in.
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There are ways to organize content to take advantage of what you've got available to you. Blindly focusing on one point, and not realizing what else is in play (or where that point even fits) results in cautionary tales.
 
YouTube is putting up web berms, too!
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This has me thinking:
1. Yep, ISPs did invest in quite a bit of extra capacity to handle the traffic (Cables, storage, land for datacenters, and maintenance for all of that).
2. All that capacity is quite a bit abused by automation. Yeah, scraper bots from OpenAI and other AI training are a problem. But hell, it's Google who invented scraping and scraper bots in the first place. Even CloudFlare now has to do something to manage traffic with more attention than open/close floodgates.
3. Rank-and-file are pissed at paywalls and lack of privacy.
4. I am highly reluctant to sign in - YouTube is not a stinkin' bank!
5. On another hand, think about public parks. Yeah, we prefer to not pay admission fees every time we go. BUT: The better-maintained ones are the ones that do actually charge a fee! Either you go to a place where people have no compunction about littering, talking loudly on the phone, and sitting/smoking with cheap beer wherever they please (but admission is free), or you go to a place that has admission fees, but trash cans get emptied regularly, the place has a police presence, and people who know better than to plop their asses in the middle of a flower bed or throw tantrums when told by authorities not to go to a restricted area.
 
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