What's it like to surf a filtered machine? We WhyFilers could not resist taking Cybersitter 2003 for a test drive. The popular Cybersitter can be set to block such categories as financial, gambling, personals, illegal MP3 downloads or auctions. To help a cautious parent control Internet usage, it can also scan email or control time-of-day net access.

We set the software to the default position, which is mainly intended to block por*, and we found:

If you are looking to meet a woman behind bars, you are in luck. But don't try to find a marriageable Russian lady. At least one inter-racial dating site was available, leaving us to observe that dating must be more acceptable when it's inter-racial than inter-continental.

You can admire a goat nursing a baby, but you cannot search for "female anatomy" or "male anatomy" at Google.

You can access Missouri Trailer Trash.com, and a bevy of biker sites, but don't bother searching for "sex disease" at Google. In fact, searches for "girls," "boys," and "bad boys" all come up blank at various search engines. Curiously, you often get a message that makes it look as if the network is not working.

Even with the gambling filter turned off, we could not get to a basketball betting site.

We did find some extremely salacious material at one male-oriented site. But then, it was stuff you had to read, not the graphic material that so offends members of Congress.

And yes, when you search for "Essex County," you'll be branded a naughty little boy. Because, deep within "Essex County," there's a dirty little secret called "*ex."

Here's where you can go: to our fabulous filter bibliography.

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