Censor Program?

[Monica]

Does anyone know of any downloadable programs that will automatically censor swear words from web sites? I ask, because I like looking at funny anti-Windows sites, like ihatewindowsxp.com, and Internet Explorer is Evil. Not that I actually hate them, but it's just FUNNY! :lol: Also I dislike reading swear words in general, and AGN has its share too, so I was just wondering if something exists to help. :)

[AtmaWeapon]

If you can find a good proxy, like the proximitron or whatever it is called, you can configure them to filter words in pages, block ads, and many other useful things.

I'm sure there is a solution that is Easier to find Easier to configure Smaller and does just swear filteringI say this because the last time I tried to use Proximitron the main website was having problems, but the explanation of the problems were 3 Japanese/Chinese characters. So I tried to find a download with information, but the best I could find were only hosting the download.

You could also give privoxy a look. I read about half the FAQ and it seems like it does what Proximitron does, but I'm not sure if it does swear filtering or not. Actually, I just looked at a different doc (http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/config.html#FILTERFILE) and it seems that if you are willing to learn regular expressions (I can provide a short tutorial if needed) you can filter all you want.

I might download it and filter theplustwo to *edit* oh wait I forgot you don't like swear words that was really thoughtless sorry.

[Ich]

Well, if you're looking for an easy solution, you can copy the whole body of text to notepad, hit Ctrl+H, and then type in "fuck" in the first field, and "freak" in the second field, and click "Replace All" and then all of the instances of "fuck" will disappear and be replaced by "freak." Repeat as necessary. The extra effort really isn't worth it.

[Monica]

Thanks for the suggestion Atma, but I don't know the first thing about Proxy. What is it exactly?

Ich, that's a cool piece of info to know but I'm not that fanatical. :) But that "replace All" may come in handy someday, and maybe I will use it as a filter sometime, thanks. :)



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[AtmaWeapon]

OK ICH I know you are trying hard but that is not a real solution. Number one it is really inconvenient to change the source of every web page, save it to your hard drive and then view the local copy. Number two for many pages using ASP and PHP the page won't run properly off of your hard drive anyway. Number three she doesn't want to see swear words, but this method requires her to keep a growing list of swear words and their replacements.

Monica, a proxy is kind of like a firewall, but it filters HTTP traffic. It is a server that sits between you and the internet. Your computer sends all HTTP requests through the proxy, and the proxy sends all HTTP traffic back to your computer. Here's a couple examples:

Suppose you have a vulnerable little cousin over to visit and he is surfing the net unsupervised. He accidentally types "www.whitehouse.com" instead of "www.whitehouse.gov". If you configured your proxy to block whitehouse.com (a porn site), the proxy would note the URL requested is on the blocklist and send a "Request denied by proxy" back to your computer. Even better, I'm pretty sure you could configure the proxy to redirect, so when the proxy sees a request for whitehouse.com, it returns pages from whitehouse.gov instead. (This could cause your cousin to try whitehouse.com on another computer, though, so maybe isn't a good idea).

Another example is a swear filter. Apparently privoxy keeps a list of filter statements to replace patterns of words. When you access a web page privoxy monitors all incoming text, and when something matches your filter statements it makes the replacement for you. So privoxy has to read the swear words, but you don't. You could even use this to prevent goatse links by filtering URLs to the page to something like "WARNING! GOATSE!" In fact, if I ever get around to setting privoxy up I think one of my first filters will filter "hello.jpg" to something else.

The cost, of course, is another program running on your computer and one more step in retrieving a web page. Depending on your computer, this can cause a noticeable delay in loading web pages. It's one of those things where you have to try it and then decide if it's worth it for filtered swear words, because there is no way to determine whether the delay will be brief or long on any given computer other than running the program.

[Ich]

I'm running Firefox so I have it configured to block images from most of the well known shock sites. I just am not offended by swearing, so I don't have to block it. If you were looking for some kind of a solution, you could probably rig up a bookmarklet that does the replacement for you. I have one that can rot13 a selection of text. Lbh unir whfg ivbyngrq gur QZPN. You'd just need to know how to make that in Javascript, which I think is the language used to create the bookmarklets. I'm not exactly sure where I got them from, but you could google for them.

[Monica]

Atma: Wow, that sounds pretty cool, seems worth a try, how do I get it? :)

Ich: Thanks but my XP for some reson is completely rejecting Java. :( I've tried installing from java.com and the file is always corrupted.

[AtmaWeapon]

http://www.privoxy.org is the download and a wealth of information about how to use it. I've never used it so I'm afraid I can't help anymore than to point at the documentation.

I personally feel the proxy is more convenient than a bookmarklet because it is "set it and forget it, surf as usual" as opposed to "Oh this page has swear words, let me run the bookmarklet, oh no this page has them too, I'll run the bookmarklet again. Oh no another page..."

[Monica]

I just took a look and it seems kind of complicated. Is it really hard? I also only saw HTML and banner filtering, but not words...

[Toolie]

You're kidding me, right? Is it really going to make it that much better to have symbols or a euphanism replace a word with the exact same meaning and implication? I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish here. If swearing bothers you so much, then stay offline and watch PBS or something.

[AtmaWeapon]

HTML filtering is swear filtering, you just make the pattern for swear words. This document (http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html#FILTER) verifies, and the FAQ even explains if you turn on filter{fun} lots of "subversive browsing" filters get turned on. This means you get to view clever and original text replacements, like "Microsoft" to "MicroSuck" and many other things bound to make a 12-year-old chuckle.

And yes, it is all rather complicated. There are two ways you can make a program: flexible and complicated or static and easy. If there is an easier solution, I can almost gurantee it has less power than privoxy.