i'm 18, honest!

i've just been reading a report on the BBC news website about how culture secretary Andy Burnham is wanting to have all websites rated for content. As is usually the way for these things, Mr. Burnham hasn't actually presented any sensible or logical way to actually achieve this, just said it should be considered. Well okay, i'll give it some consideration... it's a stupid idea. i wasn't really rebellious during my teenage years but even i drank before i was legally allowed, looked at pornography on a few occasions behind the bike sheds and frequently i saw movies rated over my age. i wasn't meant to be able to achieve any of that and there were and indeed still are legal safeguards in place; the point is that, as a teenager, i and my friends felt the need and found ways to circumvent those safeguards.

Around the same sort of time, computing was just starting to become prevalent in both homes and schools; in both cases there were protections in place to prevent users in general doing certain things, either it was the copy protection to prevent the illegal distribution of computer games or password protected user accounts on the school network. And again those safeguards weren't impervious to attack, as with the physical safeguards such as age restrictions, they were actively seen as challenges, to a certain degree rites of passage that would win favour with peers.

And any measure Andy Burnham or the people he's brainstorming with regarding this issue come up with has to survive that; it's going up against children aged from nine upwards and, since i have some experience providing computing services to kids in that age range, he might as well be putting bullseyes on the firewalls because that's how they're going to be seen. There are probably few things more scary to a network administrator than a teenager on a mission, just about everything bar the kitchen sink will be thrown at whatever security measures are put in place on school networks and any little chink in the armour will be leveraged and widened as far as it can go; i've heard stories of supposedly secure systems where kids have found vulnerabilities in the way Windows Explorer displays printers to get access to drives and shares they weren't meant to and from there install software - and i've seen first hand that spyware can, regardless of user level, install itself past managed desktops and firewalls so there are ways and means for a creative child to see what their parents don't want them to, just as there have always been and, regardless of what campaigners think, will always be.

Don't get me wrong, i'm all for protecting children from seeing things that are meant for a mature audience and, although i may be a more liberal parent than most as to what i allow our kids to see, i do take measures to at least monitor what our kids are up to such as checking the caches from time to time and watching what is going through our gateway machine. What i have absolutely no time for is the concept of slapping age ratings on sites or the people who believe that this is going to keep kids away from that content if they really want to see it; the only thing that can police children on the internet is their parents, trying to do that kind of policing at an ISP level is just passing the parenting buck. That isn't the job of the state or legislation, it's not the job of internet service providers either - if parents are worried about what their children might see online then they should be watching where those children are going. And if they haven't the technical knowledge to do so, it's time to start learning rather than expecting someone else to do it for them.

Comedy sax scenes

One common trick for editors on a certain kind of television clip show is to produce a montage of accidents with the inimitable Yakety Sax dubbed over the top... although it's better known by another name, the Benny Hill theme tune. And now you, i and indeed everybody else can play at being a clip show editor with the aid of the fantastic BennyHillifier - simply feed it a YouTube video address or ID code, sit back and enjoy as the audio is stripped and replaced with that tune... i find that it works particularly well with skateboard accidents and a couple of scenes from Doctor Who and Matrix Reloaded!

Santa's laughter

Y'know... i don't like Christmas much (i may have mentioned it once in passing...?) and i suspect that most of the problem i have is that it feels somewhat hypocritical getting excited about something i can't put any actual faith behind. That does rather affect other things so here i present, in a twisted and bitter way, an alternative Christmas top five:

5. Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me by The Goodies
i think this has to be the most dubious song ever... i'd be surprised if a cover could be released now, the idea of Santa getting it on (even if only by insinuation) when dropping off gifts isn't exactly kid friendly! For those who haven't heard it, the gist is that the title is repeated a few times and then the last word removed for the next iteration, so it begins as "Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me" and on to "Father Christmas Do Not Touch" and so forth. The gist changes when it reaches "Father Christmas Do" and the finale is the singers shouting "Father"!

4. The Night Santa Went Crazy by Weird Al
To a degree this sums up Christmas in a way; the idea of the sheer pressure the "season to be jolly" places on people making them snap and wig out. Fortunately, some of us just play violent video games instead... Carmageddon on the Playstation was a great one for a long time, pretending the pedestrians were Christmas shoppers as you drove through large crowds.

3. I Wanna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek by the Go Gos
This has to be the ultimate representation of the fake bon homie, starting as it does with a Dalek presenting the listener with seasonal greetings. This one is really a product of its time musically and is hilarious for all the wrong reasons with the line about feeding a Dalek sugar spice being a personal "favourite" that i'd describe as toe curling if listening to the entire song didn't make it impossible to walk for at least five minutes.

2. Make A Daft Noise For Christmas by The Goodies
Despite originally being released during the 1970s, this is a startlingly appropriate song considering the current financial climate since the premise is that, since nobody can actually afford a "proper" Christmas, it would be better to simply make silly noises since they're free. i doubt our kids would go for it...

1. Santa's Laughter Mocks The Poor by The Attery Squash
The song that stoked the boiler for this train of thought and probably the most cynical Christmas song ever that doesn't involve death and destruction somewhere along the line. As with t he Goodies' "Make A Daft Noise", it focuses on the stifling commercialism and mentions that nagging doubt that just about any adult has (or at least should have in some cases) in the back of their mind that going into debt for bigger, shinier presents may well be a hideous mistake.

And just to "balance" things a little, a quick top three of Christmas songs that either aren't or at least shouldn't be on "feel good" compilation albums:

3. Stop The Cavalry by Jona Lewie
For some reason, this anti-war song seems to get everywhere despite the only reference being the line "wish I was at home for Christmas"; it's a fairly tenuous reference in the same way that Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas" only mentions it in passing to reinforce a point about someone else's situation.

2. Let It Snow by Vaughn Monroe
There is no point in this song where the festive season is mentioned, in fact it's a love song and revolves around a couple parting in much the same way "Baby It's Cold Outside" does. For some people, myself included, the first real exposure to this is probably the end credits for the first two Die Hard films...

1. Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl
Now, i adore this song personally but it's only about Christmas in the negative. The opening line says it all; "It was Christmas eve, babe, in the drunk tank", that says it all really!