On Sat, 2010-08-07 at 17:13 -0500, Mike Pfaiffer wrote:
The teacher at the lab is absolutely sold on the idea of using the hosts file to block out places like porn sites, gambling sites, facebook, and places like the pirate bay. For classroom machines I can see his point. Particularly since they are going through a different subnet than we are.
I don't think I can agree with this strategy. It would take about 2 seconds for the user to delete their hosts file thereby defeating the blocking. The reality is there is always a way around the filters but but blocking at the firewall at least in theory prevents users from disabling it.
Another problem I see with manipulating "hosts" is that you'd have to maintain it on every machine which seems like a lot of work.