Re: HTTP Futures

Christian Mogensen (mogens@CS.Stanford.EDU)
Wed, 30 Nov 1994 17:22:17 -0800


<marc> writes:
>It's hard to express how abhorrent I find the rating server idea; and I
>don't think the other schemes are much better. I agree that it could be
>accomplished. However, if a browser either rejected all unrated pages or
>consulted some central morals committee before retrieving any page, the
>effect on the flow of information would likely be quite drastic. I
>don't know that any such solution would be "elegant."

Well, the point is that the ratings server is advisory, and you
could have several points of view (ie: the Libertarians rate pages
on a political scale as would the Republicans on their SOAP server, etc)

Now, if I were letting a school browse around, I would find such a
service useful (some sort of school-board or teacher made rating server)
since I effectivly delegate responsibility to the SOAP server.

If I wanted to ignore the SOAP server I could do that by using an
'unenhanced' browser, or turning off a SOAP preference.

I could even use such a service to search: i.e. show a list of all
the URLs rated XXX by the 'horny-geeks' SOAP server.

Christian "washing my keyboard in SOAP and water"