No-NSFW: The Not-Safe-For-Work Warning System

Remember that time you got rick-rolled? Or that time your buddy linked you a site you thought was lolcats but opened up two-girls-one-cup? Fear no more, for a new plug-in for Firefox will help mitigate the risk of opening such pages. The new No-NSFW plugin is designed to warn you about links that open pages that are NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Unfortunately, it is a common Internet prank for someone to send you to a link that would read something innocent like cnn.com, but upon clicking, it opens up a website that is considered NSFW. This plug-in allows you to hover over the link in question and a small box shows up in the bottom-right hand corner of your screen. The box will show one of three options: NSFW, SFW (Safe For Work), or unrated. The database of known links is determined by user input- the more users there are that rate and vote on a particular website, the bigger and more reliable the database. Currently, the development team reports that the database is relatively small right now, but they believe that once this plug-in catches on it will be successful. Also, they report that in the future, they will work entire domains into their database, instead of just links. This is much more efficient than doing individual sites.

This entire project is a fantastic idea in my opinion. I have heard horror stories of employees being fired for accidentally clicking on inappropriate material while browsing the Internet. This is the perfect, low-impact tool to circumvent this unfortunate situation. Currently, the plug-in only officially supports Mozilla Firefox versions 1.5-2.0. With the upcoming release of Mozilla Firefox 3, I’m sure they will update their plug-in.

Over and out.

Steve

The Daily Scoop

As you might have inferred from the title, this post will be a collection of interesting links I find during the day while browsing the internet.  Since I will not be able to post a whole story everyday, this will help round out my blog.  I hope to make this a daily (or near-daily) staple of Digital Frontier.  Let me know what you think in the comments about this idea or just about the stories.

Here are today’s links:

• A post on Treehugger that discusses using old, retired subway cars as artificial reefs in the ocean.
• I’m all for new inventions and privacy, but this seems to stretch both to the limit.
• Hit up the review of the new Eee PC 900.  I hopefully will be able to get one of these to review.  This category of sub-laptops its very exciting.  I’m currently working on a story.
• The new website istbuilding.com is a great place for students in the IST college at Penn State to put issues and concerns out there.  The best part is that it is free of any affiliation with the college, so thoughts can be voiced without concern.
• What?!? A company selling hackintoshes (wikipedia link)?  Hit this link to an Ars article for more info.  I have heard of private citizens using Apple’s OS X on thier own hardware, but never of a company offering to do the work.  The best part is that these computers are significatly less expensive than thier official counterparts.
• Lastly, this internal microsoft video has been released on YouTube.  It is almost as hilarious as it is sad.  I really don’t know how to feel about it, thanks Microsoft.  The fake Bruce Springsteen is a nice touch…

Low Tech Food Defeats High Tech Sensors

Biometric security has been around for a while, but just recently has the technology become popular in the world of securing many kinds of systems.  Essentially, biometric security technology collects information concerning a part of your body- most commonly fingerprints, but also retinal scans, voice recognition and measurements of the face between certain parts.  You have all seen the super spies easily dupe these such systems in movies.  This fiction has recently turned into reality by a Japanese cryptographer named Matsumoto.