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Patents Censorship Software Your Rights Online

WebSense Patents Censorware System 179

Posted by timothy from the ones-and-zeros dept.
Matthew Skala writes "As reported in SiliconValley.internet.com, filtering-software vendor Websense has received US Patent 6,606,659 on a "System and method for controlling access to internet sites". The new features in the patented system seem to revolve around using time limits instead of filtering sites out entirely; offering users a choice of viewing a site and having it logged, or not viewing it; and a scheme for automatically categorizing sites that looks very much like the "Bayesian filters" we've heard so much about in recent weeks. You may be interested in the filtering company's press release about their patent, or my own view."
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WebSense Patents Censorware System More

WebSense Patents Censorware System

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  • Yipee (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:02PM (#6915819) Homepage
    If internet filters are going to cost money, then maybe schools and libraries will stop using them.

    My local library blocks out anything to do with pregnancy (like the council run pregnancy advice service), anything with chat in the domain name (like the casual chat web forum) but doesn't block goatse.cx. Go figure.

    The only news that could be better is that someone had patented spam emailling and was taking every spammer in the world to court.

    • Re:Yipee (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 )
      My local library blocks out anything to do with pregnancy (like the council run pregnancy advice service), anything with chat in the domain name (like the casual chat web forum) but doesn't block goatse.cx. Go figure.

      That'll teach me not to RTFA. It seems that this filter would actually improve this situation and make it slightly more sane - assuming that it was set up correctly.

    • Re:Yipee (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Doom Ihl' Varia ( 315338 )
      Often not having filtering makes schools and libraries inelligible for some federal and state funding. Filtering is in effect profitable.

    • Re:Yipee (Score:5, Funny)

      by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:22PM (#6915982) Homepage
      but doesn't block goatse.cx. Go figure.

      Imagine the look on the librarian's face. Honestly.
      Anybody who goes there volluntarily is nuts, but in a library!!!???

      • Re:Yipee (Score:3, Funny)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )
        Anybody who goes there volluntarily is nuts, but in a library!!!???

        I wonder where the Goatse guy fits in the Dewey Decimal System... (Or, "In Soviet Russia," the Dewey Decimal System fits in the Goatse guy.)

        • ""In Soviet Russia," the Dewey Decimal System fits in the Goatse guy."

          even outside Soviet Russia there are many things that fit in the Goatse guy.
    • The only news that could be better is that someone had patented spam emailling and was taking every spammer in the world to court.
      Hey Darl, you listening? I hear that spammers have misappropriated serious amounts of SCO IP. Go sick 'em boy. Spammers are obviously copying your IP [newsforge.com]!
    • I would check the article but Websense filtering has made the page inaccessible due to inappropriate content.


      ...j/k btw tell your local library about trying some goatse.cx

    • Re:Yipee (Score:2, Redundant)

      by kaltkalt ( 620110 )
      No, the gov't will just use taxpayer money to buy (licenses for) the software. That way not only can we have censorship, but companies with stupid patents can make millions of dollars.

  • Prior art? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StewedSquirrel ( 574170 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:03PM (#6915824)
    Can anyone comment on the existance of prior "software" using these features. I seem to recall a "time limiting" software designed for Windows 3.1 back in around 1994 or 1995. There have been "filtering" software utilities for longer than that.

    Is this another example of the abuse of software patents? I think I might move to the EU (assuming they stay sane and reject the ability to restrict software development through patents).

    Stewey

    • Re:Prior art? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by capt.Hij ( 318203 )
      All you need to do is find one place that changes their filtering software according to the time of day. For example, a coffee house that switches off their filtering after 10:00pm. On the other hand, if the patent is allowed to stand does this mean that my local library would not be allowed to have different filters in place at different times of the day without paying this company?
      • Well aren't you just the little boy scout.

      • Re:Prior art? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Shivaji Maharaj ( 692442 ) <[shivajimaharaj] [at] [gmail.com]> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:18PM (#6915954) Homepage
        I have experienced first hand internet access policies based on time of the day. When i was working at a CMM Level 5 company [satyam.com], we were not allowed to surf during office hours ( 9 AM to 6 PM ) and the proxy itself was open between 7 AM to 7 PM weekdays.

      • Re:Prior art? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by bladernr ( 683269 )
        As far as I understand, the patent was issued for more than "Time of Day Filtering." Patents are usually specific; don't let the generic headline fool you.

        Now, if you could find where someone had software that used Bysien (sp) filters for categorizing web sites, and also used time of day as an input into the access control algorithm, from my quick read over this, that would be prior art.

        I, for one, have never seen this approach used before, so the patent may be valid. Remember, he didn't patent filterin

        • It has nothing to do with making money or not. If you use their patented techniques without licensing the patent from them, you are liable and will (maybe) be prosecuted.
    • I know for a fact that there is. The iPrism Web Filtering Appliance (disclaimer: I am an employee of the company in question and NOT speaking as a representitive of the company or the product.) has had these 'features' for years (I don't know how long exactly so I won't quote numbers, but still, it's years). Day/Time based control of profiles and ACL's, filtering, blocking, logging, monitoring... It's all there, been done before and by many more than just us (8e6 and n2h2 just to name a couple.)

      - Mike

      • Re:Prior art? (Score:2, Informative)

        by tasidar ( 604319 )
        I know for a fact that there is. The iPrism Web Filtering Appliance (disclaimer: I am an employee of the company in question and NOT speaking as a representitive of the company or the product.) has had these 'features' for years (I don't know how long exactly so I won't quote numbers, but still, it's years). Day/Time based control of profiles and ACL's, filtering, blocking, logging, monitoring... It's all there, been done before and by many more than just us (8e6 and n2h2 just to name a couple.)

        For it to

        • For it to be considered prior art, your appliance has to predate January 28, 2000 (date the patent was filed)

          I remember using Watchguard Webblocker [watchguard.com] feature before 1999, and it did pretty much what was described by the grandparent post.
    • On my university network the proxy would only let you use kazaa and similar programs at speed between 00:00 to 06:00 because the "bandwidth was cheaper". Outside these hours the transfer rate would be terrible but still about 700KB/s for web pages etc
    • I don't know what prior art is required so I am basing this off your claim of what is required..

      Squid ACL's have a very wide variety of time and content access controls. I've been using it for at least 2 years. Actually with Squid you can base access control off of tens of things, time, day, url, headers, incoming ip address, a keyword list, auth, and probably even when outside temperature is below 32F and the tide is high, plus any combination of the above.

    • SquidGuard 1999-04-30 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jroysdon ( 201893 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @09:45PM (#6916902)
      What date do we need to find prior art before?

      SquidGuard changelog [teledanmark.no]

      1999-04-30 New time function: (leh)...


      Stupid lameness filter blocks me from posting more, but you can easily see it in the changelog.

  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:04PM (#6915846)
    I don't want to use a censorware application anyway. Hopefully they price things high so that other people won't use them, an in particular, so that the government won't use them (in libraries, etc).
    • OTOH, the government could simply appropriate more money for it and take more of our money to pay for it.

    • Re:Good (Score:3, Informative)

      by lightspawn ( 155347 )
      Hopefully they price things high so that other people won't use them, an in particular, so that the government won't use them (in libraries, etc).

      That's not how it works. The libraries have to install them, or they lose federal funding. Thanks, Sen. McCain.

      • Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tuffy ( 10202 )
        That's not how it works. The libraries have to install them, or they lose federal funding. Thanks, Sen. McCain.

        But a lot of libraries aren't installing filters simply because the cost of installing them is more than the paltry amount of federal funding they receive.

      • If you want to pull an RMS (without all the fanaticism and bad press) and Help Your Neighbor, you could set up a CGI proxy on an unfiltered machine [peacefire.org]. The you could give the URL to anybody that you want to be able to see things on library/school computers. It would really be helpful to quite a few people.

        A while ago, I wrote down some thoughts about Bayesian web filtering [freezope.org]. The main point that I had was this: with web filtering, the people on both sides of the HTTP connection are on the same side, rather than

    • > so that the government won't use them

      Ah ha! Your posting as AC, but I'll put bet money that your our beloved President, G.W.Bush. If the gov doesn't use them, you'll finally be able to surf for pr0n. I mean, look what Clinton had to resort to due to the content filters... Good old healthy pr0n!

  • Dear god (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JVert ( 578547 ) <corganbilly@hotmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:05PM (#6915849) Journal
    What about all those people who burned karma saying they wanted to protect our freedom by patenting censorship? You thought they were crazy didn't you?
    • The scumsuckers who want to control what you see on the Internet are the same scumsuckers who probably like software patents.

      Although it would be nice to see this destroy this particular piece of censorware, and some other ones by association (by making them look like total crap because of a lack of this "intelligent" filtering).

      • Re:Dear god (Score:2, Insightful)

        by bladernr ( 683269 )
        The scumsuckers who want to control what you see on the Internet are the same scumsuckers who probably like software patents.

        So parents trying to keep their young children off porn sites are the same people defending software patents? What does good parenting have to do with software patents?

        So not allowing my young children to see porn makes me evil? I'm sorry, there are substantial, good uses for this type of software. There are also bad uses. It is like any tool: the tool is not good or bad, the use

  • How is this different from the access control? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by another_ganesha ( 242670 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:09PM (#6915880)
    I've been using the same basic web site access control algorithm for years. A description of my code reads very similar to the abstract.

    My system maintains a database of Internet files, (not sites, though I don't know what the difference would be...)
    My system does not limit the number of visits to a category a limited number of times, however, it does limit to download links once per user, which is (probably the same thing).
    My system allows users to request access, and then have access granted.
    I don't log which pages/sites users visit, but I know many apps that do (like nuke).

    I'm not a patent attorney, does this mean that my access control code violates the patent?

    Truly bizarre.
    • I don't think you are in duplicate with this. It appears this invention uses Bysien (sp) filters for statistical analysis for web sites. It isn't keeping a database of web sites or rules per se. Remember, the patent isn't on the abstract, but the full details. People get caught up sometimes reading the headline or abstract; to really know what is patented, you must read the entire thing.

      As such, I don't think you have prior art. If you did, you still wouldn't be in the wrong. If you wrote yours prior to t

      • I'm not criticizing your spelling (because it's a waste of time for all involved). I'm just curious why you spelled Bayesian the way you did twice in this same discussion, marking it with an (sp) both times, while the other spelling is in the article summary?
        • Because my spelling is horrible, and I am dyslexic on top of that. When writing professionaly (rare occasion, but it happens), I am very careful, but it is a slow and arduous process. Informally, I just do the best I can and move on without spending inordinate amounts of time.

          My misspellings are frequently the same. Microsoft Word seems to reinforce this. It seems to notice words that I misspell often the same way and auto-corrects them after a while. Great for typing, bad for learning better spelling.

          B

  • No longer will our children be hindered by censorware to discover the REAL face of mankind (pr0n)

  • Shhh!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by soliaus ( 626912 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:10PM (#6915894) Homepage Journal
    ...dont tell them about a firewall, its a super-secret secret.
  • Does this mean I have to turn off my Windows 2003 Server AD logon hour restrictions?

    Will anyone attempt to actually answer that, or will everyone start immediately making linux jokes and insulting me because I use Windows?
    • Linux won't ever support something like logon hour restrictions because of their political ideology. I'm not trolling here, but just think for a second. Such a thing could enhance security (i.e., people can't break in at night and just start randomly guessing passwords), but Linux will have none of that as it involves "restricting."

      What am I basing this on? Read Linux's man page for GNU su . You'll notice they don't support the 'wheel' (you-must-be-in-this-to-use-su) group like most other standart UNIXes.
      • Based on your theory Linux would never support passwords because that involves "restricting."

        • Naturally, all these GPG signatures we see all over the place are generated by windows users...
        • And if RMS had his way, thats quite true.
        • No, not really. See, you can always give your password to someone else (or rsa key if that may be the case). The major "concern" here, if you want to call it that, is the GNU folks don't like giving the sysadmin "too much control." Something like logon restrictions is against their thinking, but then again, the sysadmin can just change your password or delete the user.

          Of course, since you can do that, it makes the 'wheel' rant a bit silly, now doesn't it? In theory your statement should hold true, but it d
      • It's already supported, see the PAM [kernel.org] page. On the bottom you can see:

        pam_time: authorize users based on when and where they log in (like securetty, but) in a way that is dependent on the service they are requesting; Andrew Morgan

        Hint: RMS, while popular and quite unfluential, doesn't have full control of Linux and never will. Also my su manpage in Gentoo doesn't have that comment.

      • Good thing it's not hard to make su act properly with the wheel group.

        chmod 4710 /bin/su
        chown root.wheel /bin/su
        • Nice try at a "I AM SO SMART!!!1!" comment, but that totally defeats the purpose of su. 'wheel' simply defines who is allowed to su to root, not other users. 'su' by the way stands for "switch user" -- you can su to users other than root, you know. su should be mode 7411, and its program code should be something like:

          "If user is in group wheel, then su to root is allowed."

          But you already knew that.
      • The su thing is why i think RMS is too off the wall. While i think extremists are necessary, i think RMS is actually too extreme. Can someone please prove me wrong?

  • prior art? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travis@uUUUtk.edu minus threevowels> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:12PM (#6915913) Homepage Journal
    AOL can censor sites, and their bundled spyware logs where you go if you circumvent the block. Same thing?
    • and their bundled spyware logs where you go if you circumvent the block.

      The irony, AOL 9 now comes with an ad/spyware detector/remover. This might just be the last version of AOL as everytime it is installed it automaticly uninstalled itself!

      On a side note, everyone knows AOL is an unlimited use service and has been for ages. Are there any marketers who could explain why AOL keeps shwoing off hours of use instead of just comming out and saying unlimited use?
      • Do you buy bandwidth is kilobytes/sec or kilobits/sec? Hard disk space in binary gigabytes or decimal gigabytes?

        Bigger numbers are easier to sell. I buy my bandwidth in bushels per horsepower, and that's how I like it!

  • This story is a troll (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JohnGrahamCumming ( 684871 ) * <slashdotNO@SPAMjgc.org> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:14PM (#6915920) Homepage Journal
    The story seems to have almost no merit at all. it's YASAAP: yet another story about a patent. OK, so the patent office issued a patent that lots of people are going to think was either (a) obvious or (b) invalid because of prior art. Is /. going to start mainlining the output of the patent office to come up with stories?

    We already know that the patent office is issuing what seem like silly patents, and we already know we'd like them to stop.

    Does this particular story add anything to the debate or is it just a troll?

    John.
    • Look, it is important that we get informed about very broad, obvious patents like this. After all we may be affected by them. They also can be used as examples. And if you don't feel like discussing this again, just skip the comments and go to the next story.

    • Does this particular story add anything to the debate...

      Yes, it's FUNNY.

      No matter how many facts I know about the hypocrisy and idiocy of the patent system OR Microsoft OR the Government, I am heartened by anecdotes that do a good job of illustrating and bringing to life those facts.

      BTW, this patent trepasses on one I filed last month covering pepper-shakers generally. I'll be contacting each of you individually to let you know how you can bring your kitchens into licensing compliance.

      Donnac

  • Adopt a Patent (Score:4, Funny)

    by David_Bloom ( 578245 ) <slashdot@3lesson.org> on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:15PM (#6915925) Homepage
    Patenting internet filtering?
    Seems everything's patentable nowadays.

    Can someone do me a favor and patent DRM? and closed-source? and antitrust? and that stupid L-shaped enter key?

  • Prior art: Novell Netware - in 1994. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:17PM (#6915938)
    I helped to sysadmin a Novell Netware installation back when I was at high school in '94.

    I seem to remember that they had a time limiting system. Per user, you could set when that user was allowed to log on and access the network.

    We used it make sure that users couldn't access the network when they weren't supposed to be able to - so kids didn't share their accounts with others or access the network outside of the allowed times (after hours unsupervised, etc).

    I'm not sure how this would relate to the patent (I'm not a patent lawyer), but this was a form of network censorship based on time.

  • Prior Art Again (Score:3)

    by tarnin ( 639523 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:22PM (#6915979)
    Yup, I'm being reduntant as others have probably have and will post about this but its a serious thing here. How many patents have we seen lately that have had mounds of prior art? How many of them have been so blatently obvious that even non-techies are shaking their heads? How many non-techies know that this patent was granted? There is the crux of the issue.

    This patent might actually be good for us as it may jack up pricing on current programs but one has to think, how far reaching will they allow this to go in a court? Hey, I filter out port 135 traffic (gg people patch your machines!!) and some known spam networks at the core end, will they now come after me for filtering? It seems that more and more the patents are being granted on the overly obvious and are being abused to the hilt by the company to which it is granted.

    I see mass law suits in our future over this one and with the state of the clueless judges presideing over the cases this could turn sour.

    • Best thing that can come out of this is:

      This company spends money preventing other would-be "we make filtering software, too!" companies from either making more stuff like this (patent infringement), nor from profiting from it (too expensive to defend in court).

      I say... let 'em all patent the stuffing out of cruft we don't really want; it'll bring the whole system to a screeching halt. ;)

  • U.S.? Not internationally? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by axxackall ( 579006 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:25PM (#6915996) Homepage Journal
    I guess in the rest of the world outside of USA (is Canada included?) we can be live just fine, keeping our development of similar web applications without paying any fee to the company, which has just abused even further unfamous American IP laws.
    • I guess in the rest of the world outside of USA (is Canada included?) we can be live just fine...

      That is where WIPO [wipo.int] comes in. WIPO itself does not issue patents.
      It is the however, a vehicle by which patent laws can be used and abused internationally.
      • So, are you saying that the vehicle already abuses it automatically, or an american company must ask explicitly WIPO to screw everyone else in the world up? If the former one than it will be the first time I would think that the globalization is a bad-bad process.

  • WebSense filtering (Score:3, Informative)

    by TLouden ( 677335 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:27PM (#6916013)
    My school district uses WebSense to block out 'inappropriate' sites which includes porn, and instructions on making bombs as well as gaming and chat sites. It's pretty damned easy to bypass. Just find the google cache OR if pictures/files are needed find the foriegn version of the site. The de extension seems to be really good for downloads. Another idea would be to setup your own web server which had a form so that you could give it the URL of the site you wanted and it would then dl everything and serve it up under http://yourip/website_ext/
    Something like this would require replacing all the hyperlinks but that's not too difficult.
    Can anyone tell me if their filters check port 81? 45? etc?
    • My school's filter is a little smarter - it blocks Google cache and most anonymisers. The simple solution is to set up a web proxy server using CGIProxy [jmarshall.com] on your home machine.
    • Heck no..if its not on port 80..its not blocked...this directly from websense itself, we've had a few computers with proxies installed, and have yet to find a way to block said proxies..port 8080, port 888 port 1024...all not blocked...
      • How about https on tcp/443? I doubt they'd block this as many things these days require it (FAFSA [ed.gov] comes to mind).

        If they don't block it (try a few random banks' homebanking [bankofamerica.com] sign-on page to see if you can connect), then use proxytunnel [sourceforge.net] to pass ssh [openssh.com] via tcp/443 and you can then portforward to a home proxy server.

        Best of all, it's all encrypted and they can see none of it other than the ssh connection to your home server which is encrypted (as would be any https tcp/443 traffic).
  • The management overhead of this system would result in the obvious: 1) anyone who could remotely need access to the internet as a job function would get unlimited access which may or may not already be logged. 2) anyone who doesn't would either be completed blocked, if they are not already, or using this system would simply modify their behavior, either choosing to be logged, or reducing their activity to below-radar levels. Any manager with an I.Q. above fifty would realize that an employee dicking-off
    • It's not a significant increase in managment supervision. I work at a company that uses websense to manage Internet access for ~1000 brokers and IT staff. Works just fine and I seldom find a work related site blocked. Occasionally I hit a site which is blocked which doesn't deserve to be, but then, it's not work related so there is no obligation for the company to allow me access to it anyway. And it requires very little work to manage - a couple of people look after it amongst all their other tasks.

  • Not the first time they've done this! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:30PM (#6916029)
    They have lots of trivial patents. I've personally come across one of their patents when developing CPU-usage limiting software for terminal server environments. (Hence the anonymous post, I'm trying to avoid legal action)

    The patent is GB2366891 [espacenet.com]. The crux of it is that programs that use more than a certain percentage of the CPU (eg: 50%) are incrementally slowed down by quickly pausing/unpausing their threads at short intervals until their CPU usage is reduced below the threshold.

    How does this qualify for a patent? It's self evident! Things like this have been done in real time control systems (software and physical) for decades. It is nothing more than a high-frequency 1-bit DAC controller. Just because instead of controlling chemical reaction rates, the system is used for controlling processor usage, suddenly this method is worthy of a patent? Take a look at one of their diagrams [espacenet.com]. Is that the standard for new and inventive developments in the software industry? A flow chart with four, count them, four steps?

    The patent system needs an overhaul, and fast.

  • Skala misses the point (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In his article, Skala tars Bayesian spam filters with the same brush as website filtering. He touches on the differences but seems to miss the main one - one has to actively seek out material on the web, while spam is pushed onto you by third parties. If my child happens to type in a web address that shows pr0n, I may not like it, but short of typosquatting, the site is not in the wrong. However, if a spam merchant sends email to my child's account that includes images of sex acts, the child has no choic

  • Awareness... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:36PM (#6916061) Journal
    Does this particular story add anything to the debate or is it just a troll?

    It most certainly *does* add something. If you say something once, people will be very unlikely to remember it. If you say it twice, a few will remember it.

    If it's repeated every week or so for a year, most everybody will have gotten the point. It's called "repetition".

    I'll paraphrase Hitler: "Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it to be true".

    Except, in this case, there's no lie, except maybe at the patent office.

  • You're worried about that? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Qwell ( 684661 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:36PM (#6916064)
    Try THIS on for size.

    PN/6618857

    And guess who it was? [uspto.gov]

    Somebody get my tinfoil hat, quick!

    • wow!!
      RHN, Apple Update, any system that installs more than 1 program based on prerequisites/requirements watch out MS has you patented.
    • Yes, Microsoft appears to have patented RPMs... guess anybody installing software on Linux is going to have to check dependencies manually now... the brilliant insight that it's easier to have the computer check for you is obviously one of those "innovations" that Microsoft keeps talkin' about...
  • U.S. Patent has just issued me Patent 6,606,660, which states that I now own exclusive rights to the following keyboard keys..

    Enter, Spacebar, Ctrl, Alt, Esc, all function keys, Tab, Shift (both left & right), Caps Lock, all Page Scrolling fuctions, the Numeric Pad, and directional arrows. You are still free to use alphanumeric keys without my permission.

    Obviously this is sarcasm, but it's heading there... Real fast..

    • Hah! (Score:4, Funny)

      by oogoliegoogolie ( 635356 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @08:11PM (#6916308)
      A day ago I received patent 6,606,659: The act of pressing the three keys Ctrl, Alt, & Delete on a keyboard simultaneously to achieve a desired effect.

      I believe your patent infringes on my patent so you must get permission to use those keys. In fact earlier I was issued patent 6,606,658, a patent that patents patent infringement. I will be expecting two big cheques. :)

  • Ah....patents (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Crowhead ( 577505 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:43PM (#6916111)
    Here [uspto.gov] is a patent application for a pepper shaker shaped like a dog where the pepper comes out of the dog's ass. That's what is being patented: the fact that the pepper comes out of the dog's ass and that it can be called a 'pooper shaker'.

    • Hilarious, for those of you who can't be bothered wading through the application here is the important bit, the actual "what is claimed part":

      What is claimed is: 1. A construction with novelty value in enhancing the known functioning of a pepper shaker in the shaking dispensing of the condiment pepper upon foods, said construction comprising a hollow simulated dog of ceramic construction material sized to be grasped during shaking use in the hand of a user, a body with depending legs of said shape eff

  • Websense Blocks Matthew Skala's own view (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would love to read Matthew Skala's view but Websense at work here blocks it as "Non-Traditional Religions and Occult and Folklore"

    They don't seem to like criticism, do they?
    • Well we have Websense here too, and I could read it OK. I guess where you work you must have a lot of people interested in weird stuff right? And the US patent office would seem to fit nicely into the "Occult and Folklore" category!

      START_RANT
      As a follow on, I have to say I really hate f***ing Websense. I get blocked by it several times a week, always on perfectly legit sites. It seems to have a word lookup feature that just does a string match, it doesn't even look for whole words, so for example, if t
  • ... and I'm serious, how come for the last 15 or so slashdot story headers (and the text below too) I felt like going "fuck you, that dosn't concern me at all".

    There is no way to save this post to go be mod'd into "-1 Flamebait" oblivion anyway, so I'll just post my theory: I don't live in the land of the alleged Land Of The Free.

    BTW, if you're offended by this, don't bother to reply.
    Please.


  • "...offering users a choice of viewing a site and having it logged, or not viewing it"

    This may sound like quite an elegant solution, especially compared to the outright blocking of sites not recognised by their master database but this could well end up creating a far more dangerous climate of self-censorship.

    For instance, if a perfectly legimate but not "mainstream" site, say an anti-war one, hasn't yet made it onto their database, you have to accept that your boss will be notified of your visit
    • Have you looked at Websense? How evil it is depends on how you deploy it. For a while I was using the eval version on my home Squid cache to asist in blocking porn site popups while not preventing intentional porn surfing. Not bad for censorware.

      "...offering users a choice of viewing a site and having it logged, or not viewing it" This may sound like quite an elegant solution, especially compared to the outright blocking of sites not recognised by their master database but this could well end up crea


      • For a while I was using the eval version on my home Squid cache to asist in blocking porn site popups while not preventing intentional porn surfing.

        It's not the choice element I object to but, rather, the fact that choice is skewed by lack of privacy.

        Many an enlightened employer has put in an unrestricted DS3 connection for the office and expected that the employees will do the right thing (call it self-censorship, call it responsibility, whatever), only to start reviewing usage reports and dis
  • NOT because of corporate/government censorship but they provide software to China so they can find out who goes to western news sites and suspicious political sites.

    "Why, Gannoc", you might be claiming, "Wherever did you hear such vicious slander against Websense?"

    Why, right on their goddamn website [websense.com]. They're proud of it, of course, because the type of people who invest in a company like Websense are the type of people who don't mind the idea of a few people going to jail for going to a politically pro

    • I mean, I have to reply to my own freaking comment. That's like Ford putting up an article about a crazy escaped child molester who ran over 6 people before finally being taken down by a SWAT team, because the article mentioned that the man's Ford truck withstood over 142 bullets before bursting into flame.


      "Built Ford Tough!"

  • Now, build a "PNG-Proxy" web-site. Enter a URL, it grabs the page and renders it to a snapshot of the website... so Bayesian (or other text-based) Filtering does nothing... you're looking as a screen shot (maybe even convenience image map as well) of the web page.
    • They could always just ban the png proxy like they did with MegaProxy. I've been trying to find ways round websense since it banned my programming based site for containing "mild humour / games" :(

  • Johnny Slashdot still doesn't get it. This patent covers A censorware system. Not every censorware system. Not the concept of a censorware system. Just the implementation they have come up with.

    Several aspects of this system are obvious and pre-existing, yes. But that doesn't mean the entire system is obvious or pre-existing. Combining existing components in a unique way has always been a form of innovation (and I don't mean in the sarcastic, Microsoft sense of the word).

    "Why, the fax machine is not

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