Friday, May 25, 2007

Flux, where the naughtiness goes to 11

A teacher recently told Carrie Jones about a slight difficulty with Carrie's web site and the teacher's computer. Specifically, the Symantec nannyware on the school system's computers blocks Carrie's site.



The screen capture shows what happens when you try to navigate to http://www.carriejonesbooks.com/.

Note the "DDR Score" (no, not "Dance Dance Revolution", but "Dynamic Document Review"). According to what I've read, the typical threshold for a page block is a DDR score of 50. So, Carrie managed a 794. She always was an overachiever.

No, she doesn't have the complete works of Anaïs Nin hidden in her site. It's most likely because she discusses the working title of Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend. Still, this seems more than a little silly, especially, since, as the teacher points out, the software is completely blind to other languages or to purely visual content, so feel free, kids, to surf over to porno en Español or to Google images, but stay away from YA writer and fudgesicle evangelist Carrie Jones.

(Amusingly enough, it took a while for me to get an email through to this teacher, because the nannyware blocked my emails, due to the MySpace link I used to have in my signature.)

UPDATE: Apparently this blog scores a measly 192 on the DDR. Enough to get it blocked, but not nearly as much as Carrie. Come on! I know (girls, girls, girls!) I can do (porno) better than (Viagra) that!

6 comments:

Brian Farrey said...

It makes one wonder if the score goes down for every reference you throw in to higher powers, kittens, and milk shakes.

Do you score a zero if you follow "leather teddy" with "abstinence rocks?"

Or, if you litter your blog with purity and virtue, can you score a negative DDR, resulting in instant blogrolling on their end?

Anonymous said...

So how does one find one's DDR score?

heidi said...

weird. i'm just in from kepler's bookstore in menlo park. it's a semi-famous indy whose fans forced a re-opening after its doors closed last year. anyhow, they had no copies of gay-ex (how's that for a nickname?) so i ordered it. i was chatting w/ the bookbuyer for quite a while, while my son picked out dozens of books. she said she hadn't heard of FLUX and didn't order the book. she suggested, maybe you don't have a rep yet? anyway, that's the scoop at the biggest indy book store on the bay area peninsula. she did say she'd look you up those based on my recommendation. i told her you had a great list. =)

Lindsey said...

Hey Andrew,
Very interesting indeed. Thanks for the post. It makes us laugh, but it also educates. Double bonus points for you today.

Lindsey said...

How do you find out what your blog scores? Maybe we've found a new quiz! It's like the "What is your daemon?" one or "How nerdy are you?" question. How diry is your blog?

Brian Mandabach said...

At my school, I can read Roger's blog, and Teenreads, but I can't view or leave comments. I asked for that to be opened up, hoping that students would want to leave comments, but no luck becuase that sort of "content" is unregulated. Heaven knows what kids would post and read. Might be worse than when, on bring your parent to school day, one of my students read free-write to the class (and parent guests) with references to making out and the horniness of boyz. Gross! In the future, we'll find a way to disable the mouths of students who are about to say something inappropriate.