and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

To porn or not to porn, that is the question.

Substitute teacher faces jail time over spyware

On October, 19, 2004, Amero was a substitute teacher for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School [in Connecticutt]. A few students were crowded around a PC; some were giggling. She investigated and saw the kids looking at a barrage of graphic, hard-core pornographic pop-ups.

The prosecution contended that she had used the computer to visit porn sites.

The defense said that wasn't true and argued that the machine was infested with spyware and malware, and that opening the browser caused the computer to go into an endless loop of pop-ups leading to porn sites.

Amero maintains her innocence. She refused offers of a plea bargain and now faces an astounding 40 years in prison.

A full Washington Post article is here.

The reason I bring this up in the first place is to discuss a little about what is appropriate and inappropriate for people to see at different points in their life and, more specifically, what I saw. The bottom line is that many underage kids have access to porn and have had access well before the internet. I've heard many a story about dad's collection in his closet or VHS tapes under the bed that weren't exactly "well hidden". I myself remember nude playing cards being hidden in the park when I was around 7 or 8, porn mags in the gym class locker room at age 13, and plenty of smut from 14 on once the internet became accessible to me. Am I a morally questionable character? Is it the end of the road for me because I saw a couple of naked people and maybe the rare baseball bat as prop?

Even more important, are ten seventh-graders doomed because they saw a few porn popups? Puh-lease. This country often seems as though it has it's head shoved so far up its ass that it wouldn't recognize porn if it saw it, unless it involved the transverse colon.

The worst points of all of this is that a substitute teacher risks 40 years in prison for a computer she was not responsible for, which had ad/spyware on it that the original teacher probably didn't know about, was running the out-dated windows 98 operating system, and the school system had failed to pay their subscription fees for their filtering software.. and the public just doesn't understand. If my stoic mother, whom I'm sure has no interests on the internet other than crossword puzzles and quilting, can managed to find herself with porn popups than anyone can. The common person is just not savvy when it comes to the ever-changing face of the online world. It is akin to putting all the drivers in the country into vehicles with manual transmissions at the same time. It is a wonder that the internet continues to operate as (semi-)smoothly as it does.

Apparently, even the investigating detective isn't too keen on technology either, that or the local newspaper is horribly misquoting:

In examining the computer's hard drive, [Detective] Lounsbury said he found numerous instances in which graphic images would have appeared on the computer screen. He said he can differentiate between what is and what is not a pop-up based on the source codes.

While I understand what they are intending to say in this paragraph through my superior powers of inference, it almost makes no sense whatsoever.