The Dept. has updated their page. The page linked to in the summary now gives a 404, and going to /Skills gives you the text in this post's parent. I must say that's an awesome response, and it looks like there might be some real change ahead.

If you're serious, give the folks at the Computer History Museum a ring and see if they have any advice. But, be prepared for disappointment. There are many 40-50 year old pieces in their collection that don't work anymore, and it's kinda hard to get parts with how quickly tech changes.

You mean the CD caddies? Those weren't exclusive to Apple -- pretty much all the first-generation CD-ROM drives used them. The PSP still uses a smaller variant.

Pick up the book iCon, or do what I did and get the audiobook from Audible. It explains all the drama going on in Apple at the time.

A platform for this has existed almost as long as the web itself. PICS is a W3C standard for labeling content. There is a working draft out for an RDF-based version of PICS called POWDER.

PICS ratings are assigned by the IRCA, now part of The Family Online Safety Institute.

The problems with PICS adoption were predictable. First, like with the V-Chip, few parents enabled content filtering on their browsers, or even knew that feature was available. Second, the honest content providers, the ones who got their sites labeled for language, violence, or adult situations, got screwed because of all the sites out there who didn't opt into the system, and which could be viewed by everyone.

This whole discussion reminds me of the talk about teaching Computational Thinking two years ago.