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Ask Slashdot: Keeping Your Media Library Safe From Kids? 307

Serenissima writes "I've spent many hours building my Media Library in XBMC and scraping all the DVD Covers and Fanart. And I love it, I can pull up movies on any computer or device in the house. I played a movie for my son the other day so I could get some cleaning done without him being underfoot. I noticed shortly after that the sound coming from the other room was from a different movie than I played for him. I snuck up and watched for a few minutes and saw him use a trackpad to navigate to the stop and play buttons of different movies in his folder. I know it's only a matter of time before he realizes he can see all of the movies. I don't want him to have nightmares because he saw the T-1000 stab someone in the face. The quickest solution I can think is a screen saver with a password. It's mildly inconvenient to me, but would stop him from accessing anything. However, I remember how much more I knew about computers than my parents when I was a kid, and I have a feeling he's going to surprise me one day. There's a lot of ways out there to stop it, the way we do it now is to not let him watch anything unless we're there (but there are only so many times I can watch the same kid's movie). How do YOU guys find yourself dealing with the convenience of running your own server while keeping your media safe from prying eyes?"
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Ask Slashdot: Keeping Your Media Library Safe From Kids?

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  • Permissions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:49PM (#42482607)

    How about just using Linux file permissions? Keep daddy's movies in his home folder, and have the XBMC under an unprivileged user.

  • by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:50PM (#42482619)
    Don't worry. You knew more about computers than your parents. You'll also know more about computers than your children.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:09PM (#42482941)
      Some will disagree with you but I'm not one of them. So I want to expand on what you're saying. There is a certain age range that had to understand how a computer worked to run anything. Older generations were past the age of quick learning when this happened with only a few exceptions. On the other end, younger generations have no need to know any of that stuff. The file system is more and more hidden. Younger generations know how something works by clicking and touching on different things, but beyond that not much. That middle generation however can figure out any UI and fix problems as they arise because they understand what's going on underneath. There are exceptions to all of these generalities, but in general they're true :)
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I'd agree with you on the premise that today's youth is dumber and less capable period, lack critical thinking, never been in a fight, etc...

        But that's where it ends: assembly programmers probably know more about how a computer works than either one of us, in fact I always raise an eyebrow when I hear older techs talking about motherboard processes in the form of IO & voltage rather than clock speeds & bridges. I know voltages only for the purpose of OC (and fixing buggy asus motherboards), but tha

        • if you started as a computer hobbyist when I did (early 70s), knowing assembly was a requirement. the good news is you can get instruction online for free (dozens of introductory tutorials out there for x86 or x86-64) and the tools are free. no barriers to entry.

        • by readin ( 838620 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @10:32PM (#42484363)
          I disagree on the "dumber and less capable" part. They're capabilities are different. I think the schools do a better job of teaching the kids to be organized and to think abstractly. But when you say "never been in a fight" I think you hit on something that worries me.

          These kids are going to vote. If the schools protect them too much from each other, they'll never understand what people are like. Kids today don't get out and play - they stay inside and play video games. The rules are enforced for them (they don't have to argue the rules with each other). They don't have to figure out who the quarterback is. And they don't have to worry about people who break the rules and try to bully others into accepting their rule breaking.

          In short, they'll suck at foreign policy because they'll assume everyone is basically good and willing to follow the rules. Older voters already seem to include a lot of people who don't understand that foreign leaders typically have more in common with Al Capone than with Martin Luther King.
          • To balance it out they will support the creation of killbots to make wars a very clean thing for them. They will just sent out hordes of killbots and very soon the way will be over....

            They won't be worried if a country does not like their rules or plays by the same rules since they will just send in the bots to kill them.

          • by Gr8Apes ( 679165 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @11:46PM (#42484821)

            I disagree on the "dumber and less capable" part. They're capabilities are different. I think the schools do a better job of teaching the kids to be organized and to think abstractly.

            I disagree with every point you make above. They are dumber. They are less capable (unless playing video games with top notch hardware beating out those unfortunate enough to have slightly less capable hardware counts in your statement) The schools do a horrible job of teaching kids anything at this point. I swear we learned more in half the grades than current spoon-fed "graduates". And colleges? Since when is it the job of a college to graduate students versed in some corporations level 1 training program: just about any comp sci school these days only teaches 1 or 2 language syntaxes. Algorithms? What are those? Data structures? You mean like when I lean the 'A' against a 'D' to create a wall? And I'm 99% sure that what you call "abstract thinking" is nothing more than glazed eye day-dreaming. We won't even talk about pattern recognition, critical thinking, or applying logical solutions.

            I interview a few "senior" folks a week. These have already been screened through 2 layers, which weeds out a bunch before I see the cream of the crop. I pass maybe 1 out of 10, and most are in their 30s and 40s, with several up to their 60s. No age bias here, if they know their material, I'll thumbs up them - last 2 that got thumbs up were most likely 60+, I am not allowed to ask. I had some 20-something that somehow slipped through (someone else answering for him earlier?) and couldn't answer even basic technical questions about what he claimed to have accomplished on his own resume. He's not unusual. These aren't just out of school people. They have worked for generally more than 2 companies over a period of years.

            • by bogjobber ( 880402 ) on Saturday January 05, 2013 @07:59AM (#42486715)
              Senior engineers with 30+ years of experience are more knowledgeable than people in their 20s? The horror! The shame!

              I'm not sure what country you or the GP poster are living in, but the people I grew up with seem a hell of a lot more hard-nosed and street smart than most of the boomer generation. We didn't grow up with peace and prosperity, cheap education, and a straight shot into the middle class. We didn't get to ride the coattails of a 50 year economic boom caused exclusively by the fact that North America was the only part of the developed world that wasn't burnt to the ground in the 1940's.

              Your generation of course calls this concept American exceptionalism, because America was largely excepted from the destruction caused by World War 2. This American exceptionalism naturally does not translate to the younger generation, due to the lack of such an important geopolitical event in our parents' lifetimes.

              Said exceptional generation seems (at least as far as I can tell from the history books I haven't read) to have earned their wealth primarily through plundering our country and running it in the ground, and whose main occupation currently seems to consist of trying their damnedest to pull the ladder up behind them by removing every single social program they used to get to where they are today, all the while yelling at us that we're stupid and lazy.

              This is, of course, completely true. Our generation is demonstrably different from, and in every way inferior to, the one preceding us. This is proven by the obvious fact that our country, right as the younger generation is coming of age (hardly a coincidence wouldn't you say?), is on the edge of economic collapse, with a failing political system and a military that is fighting multiple unnecessary wars around the globe.

              In fact, most of those soldiers are members of the younger generation! The fact that we can no longer pay for college, long considered well within the reach of an average working class youth, is further evidence of our generational failure. If only we worked a little harder, like our daddies did, maybe we'd have something to show for it.

              There are vast reaches of this great land of ours, usually in the suburbs, where Montessori schools are churning out glaze-eyed traveling team soccer players who are destined to be nothing more than mediocre students and passive recipients of whatever the nanny state or corporate bureaucracy tells them to do.

              Places where information is inaccessible, ambition does not exist, minds are not independent, selfs do not actualize, and the older generation is simultaneously the cause and victim of (but entirely devoid of culpability, or indeed self-awareness, in either case) the inter-generational misunderstanding that has been so well-documented over the course of history that to call it trite is a truly magnanimous compliment.

              Or... maybe... you're just getting old.

              Dude.


              I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.
              - Hesiod 8th Century BC

          • by xhrit ( 915936 )
            >...they don't have to worry about people who break the rules and try to bully others into accepting their rule breaking.

            I doubt that - kids that really do stay inside and play video games all day have already seen the worst cheaters, hackers, and trolls the world has to offer. It is hard to maintain faith in humanity when you are constantly exposed to an endless stream of sadistic assholes who enjoy being absolutely the most despicable fuckwads to each other as imaginable.
      • by Andrewkov ( 140579 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:42PM (#42483385)

        So true.. Kids today are very well versed in the Internet (Facebook, Twitter, email, etc), but have no idea of anything technical like setting up a network or troubleshooting hardware. There are exceptions, of course, the nerds who have the interest and might go into IT. But generally, kids are strictly users like most of our parents were.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04, 2013 @09:37PM (#42483945)

        I first got onto the "Internet" (gopher, email, FTP and BBSes) in 1991 when I was 9 years old. I bought my first domain name (wakeup-people.com) when I was 14 in 1996; it cost me about $150, iirc ($220 in 2012 dollars). My sister's boyfriend introduced me to BASIC at age 8 in 1990 and gave me Visual Basic 3.0 16-bit when I was 11 in 1993.

        For my 7th grade science experiment the next year, I created an automatic calculator that would do complex equations a million times (took forever in 1994!) and compiled it in 16bit and 32 bit and then extrapolated how much more efficient integer and float math would be on 64-bit machines, and extrapolated when we were likely to see them (I had said by 2000, iirc, and AMD released the specs for X86_64 in 1999).

        My point is that from the age of about 8 until this very day, every single person in my family relies almost exclusively on either myself or my girlfriend (another techie ^^) for almost all of their above-simple technical needs.

        And this includes my kids, aged 8, 10 and 11!!

        It drives me up the wall that my 11 yro is as thick as rocks when it comes to computers, despite being enmeshed in the technology to a degree unfathomable to me, quite frankly, as he has a combined 40+ year technical experience w/ his parents (she a DBA and myself a sr. software architect). He seems so uninterested and lacks the drive I had/have to be a self-solver. He threw hissy fits every time I just told him to plug in a USB disk and follow the windows install prompt, to set up a new box I built for the family. My partner was like, "JUST INSTALL IT FOR HIM ALREADY!!" but i was like, um, if he can't follow printed directions and install windows, then the family just doesn't deserve a common PC.

        Fortunately, my 2 younger kids were very excited with the opportunity. They even put together the hardware components, and we went to the store, too. Then they started viciously harranging the 11 yro, calling him retarded and stuff, cuz he wouldn't figure it out, but he's tested for a 130+ IQ and is in the GT program, so it isn't that. Afterwards, I paid them both 1/2 of what Best Buy would have charged me, and oh boy, the 11 yro took that *so* hard. He literally went crying to mommy about how he would have worked if he knew there was such a lofty reward.

        "It's too bad you didn't get in on the offer when you were given exclusive rights to it", I told him. "Your payout would have been double." When his tantrum escalated after that little bit, I said, "Look. The payout was a selection pressure designed to promote self-initiative and help you become a little more skilled in a craft. You're already a geek, no denying that, but if you have all of the likes of a geek but few of the positive technical skills, where will that leave you?" ::sigh::

        Before I had children, I honestly looked forward to them teaching me cool stuff and expanding my horizons, like I did so often and so much with my parents. Now, all of my kids are very adept at *tweaking* technology. My 11 yro can modify my android phone in ways I never even thought possible. But is there any technical aptitude in being skilled at finding and punching checkboxes in preference windows? I don't think so. I think he just has more time and less pressing things to do than me and chooses to explore the UI of the phone.

        I'm of the opinion now that people born between 1975 and, from what I can tell, 1991 are a special segment of self-initiatied technically-midned people. At least, a sizable minority of us. I simply do not see the same characteristics in people born after.

        • by rubycodez ( 864176 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @10:28PM (#42484343)

          the percentage of "computer people" is very small and always was. your 11 year old would probably be excited and self-motivated by *something*, but maybe it's outside of what dual computer-geek parents would even consider. could be art or music or mechanical things or sports or debate......

        • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

          "Your payout would have been double." When his tantrum escalated after that little bit, I said, "Look. The payout was a selection pressure designed to promote self-initiative and help you become a little more skilled in a craft. You're already a geek, no denying that, but if you have all of the likes of a geek but few of the positive technical skills, where will that leave you?"

          I'm a dyed in the wool c++ software engineer and even I want to punch myself in the face after reading that. Perhaps he doesn't wan

        • 1974 says you're wrong. :)

          I agree that there's appears to be a change in the motivation and thought processes after that *rough* age bracket. Last year our CTO and I were having the same discussion regarding new hires. Initially we thought it was a different mindset between age brackets that wasn't just related to how old they were. New hires were appearing to have padded their CVs more, less likely to take ownership of issues, less willing to apply basic troubleshooting logic (even when flowcharts, knowled

      • by readin ( 838620 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @10:25PM (#42484319)
        You're right about the generation that grew up while computers were growing up likely understand the internals much better (at least those who were at all interested). However kids today don't need to understand the internals to hack anymore. They just need to find the right hacking software.

        I would say a simple password will work against the 4 yr old for at least the next 5 years. After that it's only partly a technical problem. It is also a question of how well your kids listen to you and what kinds of friends they're making.. Possibly in upper elementary school, probably by middle school, and certainly in high school, there will be kids who know how to get the software to crack their parents computers. Complain about your parents restrictions to the right person and they'll likely offer to get you a flash drive that will let them bypass the protections (and perhaps give you some viruses).

        The kids have physical access to the computer. If they're well behaved kids who don't feel a strong need to bypass the rules you've set, then regular passwords should continue to work. But if they're the kind of kids who regularly go behind your back then I doubt there is much you can do.
    • It's (mostly) true! The current generation of kids are consumers, not tinkerers. Chances are, you're a consumer too, and your skills are a result of a childhood well spent. Unless you keep tinkering and raise your kids to do the same, you're safe.
      • by shakezula ( 842399 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:17PM (#42483047)
        I agree, my kids know a lot about computers because I work on them for a living. They are NOT typical of their friends. Most of their friends know their way about an iDevice or how to check their Gmail or Facebook, but that's the extent of it. My 10 year old could help you mount a heatsink to your Core2Duo and re-install Windows, but that's because he's helped dad do just that on countless computers in his short existence.

        This disposable computing age we're entering has its ups and downs...
        • by Patch86 ( 1465427 ) on Saturday January 05, 2013 @05:30AM (#42486217)

          IT has always been this way. Think back to when you were at school- you and a few of your friends were probably pretty techy, but what percentage of the kids at your school were? Were most of them more interested in sport? Pop music? Heated political debate? Doing drugs behind the bike shed? Things other than computers and technology?

          That's how I remember my childhood, anyway. I loved computers. A few of my friends loved computers. We were a minority.

  • RTFM (Score:5, Informative)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:50PM (#42482621) Journal

    RTFM [xbmc.org]

    XBMC supports multiple user profiles, much the same as setting up individual users on your home computer. These individual profiles allow you to customize the environment for multiple users, allowing for such functionality as:

    • Customized view settings such as skins for each user
    • The ability to lock folders, such as network shares on a per-user basis
    • Separate Media Libraries for each user

    Did you even attempt to find something yourself?

    • Re:RTFM (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WilliamGeorge ( 816305 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:53PM (#42482691)

      I have mod points, but where is the option for 'Informative - but a jerk'? Granted, it can be annoying to help someone when the answer to their question is a short Google search away... but the question there at the end seems unkind (at best). Lets keep things civil :)

      • Re:RTFM (Score:5, Funny)

        by ThatsMyNick ( 2004126 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:57PM (#42482769)

        It could have been worse. He could have linked to this http://lmgtfy.com/?q=XMBC+lock [lmgtfy.com]

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by wer32r ( 2556798 )
          I really hate this one. Few things are as annoying as searching for some difficult-to-search topic, find a forum link on the top search result with a relevant topic, and then find that Imgtfy link to just another Google search. Typically when this happens, the result of the next search is as little informative as the link itself. The really annoying part is that you know that whoever posted the link is likely to know the answer and could have stated it in a few words or have provided a relevant link instead
          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, then come back and bitch about being hungry tomorrow.

            Teach a man to fish, and he'll leave you the fuck alone.

      • Re:RTFM (Score:5, Insightful)

        by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportlandNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:03PM (#42482855) Homepage Journal

        No. people need to know they are being lazy, and being nice hasn't been working.

        • by c0lo ( 1497653 )

          No. people need to know they are being lazy, and being nice hasn't been working.

          Working for what (i.e. what purpose do you target)? 'Cause not all the nerds share the same purposes, moral or ethical values (and it's is still OK... less boring, you see?)

          E.g. if it is the opportunity of jerks to show themselves informative (which I can accept as a passable purpose), it seems it's working quite well.

          • Re:RTFM (Score:4, Insightful)

            by cgimusic ( 2788705 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:42PM (#42483379)
            My ideal target is for Ask Slashdots to be interesting and informative with the pros and cons of various solutions to a complex problem being discussed. With a really basic problem such as this I really would have thought a simple Google would have given the best solution. In fact I had this very problem several months ago and all I did was search the internet and the manual for XBMC came up top.
          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            No. people need to know they are being lazy, and being nice hasn't been working.

            Working for what (i.e. what purpose do you target)? 'Cause not all the nerds share the same purposes, moral or ethical values (and it's is still OK... less boring, you see?)

            E.g. if it is the opportunity of jerks to show themselves informative (which I can accept as a passable purpose), it seems it's working quite well.

            Yes, you're right. Not all nerds share the same purposes or values.

            That being said, do you know what all lazy people have in common? Being fucking lazy.

            Bottom line is when it takes longer to type the question on Slashdot than it does to find the answer in Google, you're not only doing it wrong, but you have no right calling yourself a nerd.

            • by c0lo ( 1497653 )

              That being said, do you know what all lazy people have in common? Being fucking lazy.

              Bottom line is when it takes longer to type the question on Slashdot than it does to find the answer in Google, you're not only doing it wrong, but you have no right calling yourself a nerd.

              Gosh, buddy... you let common sense slipping into /. . This does need to be corrected... so let's build a theory and draw a conclusion that is in no logical relation with it... bonus points if the conclusion is emotionally loaded and involves building a strawman!

              That a look on the nickname of the OP (Serenissima not Serenissimus). Together with the mention of "so I could get some cleaning done" best chances that's a she - and I'm not implying the cleaning is done by women only, but I surmise women are more

    • Re:RTFM (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:40PM (#42483351)

      He should also stop pretending he's trying to hide Terminator movies. We all know who is stabbing who in the face and with what in his collection.

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      I would say permissions are the way to go. Keep it simple, because kids have nothing by time. That is why you knew more than your parents. Hiding, obfuscating, putting it on a different server, is just going to provide a vector of attack.

      What I might do is set up an account that only holds appropriate videos. Log into this account during unattended viewing. Long term this will allow the child to feel more in control and less under your thumb.

      As an aside, many of my friends just left the tv on PBS.

  • by bmo ( 77928 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:51PM (#42482655)

    One set of movies has "kids only" group permissions
    The other set of movies has "Adults and kids" permissions.

    Your son doesn't belong to the "adults and kids" group.

    ????????

    Profit.

    --
    BMO

    • by bmo ( 77928 )

      I kinda didn't express what I set out to express.

      You are an adult.

      You would have access to both sets of movies "kids" and "adults"
      He would have only access to the "Kids" group.

      --
      BMO

    • The only profit here is for your ISP, as the porn will get downloaded twice. What do you think, that a kid today doesn't know how to avoid blocks and get to stuff he wants? Unless you go with a nazi whitelist, there's no way to stop the kid from getting to something as ubiquitous as porn. And a forbidden fruit is all the sweeter.

      • There's a rather big difference between attempting to block porn and attempting to block a portion of a movie collection. Most likely the OP just doesn't want his kid stumbling across something that he wouldn't have seen, if it weren't for the XBMC library. If that's the case, the child is probably too young to be interested in seeking out porn.
        • TFA used violence as an example, this is something that interests boys from the age of, say. 4-5. And nearly as widespread as porn on teh interwebs.

  • Coming of age (Score:5, Insightful)

    by White Flame ( 1074973 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:51PM (#42482657)

    If they're smart enough to figure out how to pry through complex systems and look at daddy's files, exposure to what they see will have a self-determining effect on them. Either they'll be scared of what they saw in the "grown-up movies" and will leave it alone (and you can talk it out with him), or the kid will find something he likes and expand his horizons a bit.

    You don't say how old he is, but I generally believe that you've got to let curiosity run its course for everyday sorts of things like this.

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      XBMC is a complex system now?
      yeesh.

      "but I generally believe that you've got to let curiosity run its course for everyday sorts of things like this."
      and you are wrong.

  • Make a user for yourself and one for your child. A folder specifically for kids movies. Your child's account is limited and cannot access your users movies.

    You can setup a macro to log out/switch user, and quickly log onto the kids account for movies. Keep password on your account.
    Simple enough?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:53PM (#42482681)

    Instead of looking for a technical solution to do your job for you.

    Yeah, i know. mindblowing for sure.

    Kids require 24-7 supervision for about 16 years or they WILL get into something you don't like. 100% guaranteed. The only fix is doing the job you signed up for when you had a child.

  • "...nightmares because he saw the T-1000 stab someone in the face."

    It builds character.

    Alternative parenting phrases: Walk it off, and ask your mother.

  • by boule75 ( 649166 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:54PM (#42482699) Homepage
    Currently running under Zentyal [zentyal.org] over Ubuntu 10.04.

    Each family member has an account, parents have RW access everywhere, kids are generally RO or have no access at all depending on the folder.

  • use that concept. your player should only have visibility into the 'exposed' parts of your filesystem.

    there are FUSE plugins, iirc, that can present partial views of your full/real filesystem.

    the tv system would never see the full FS but your personal system (in a diff room that he should not have access to) would have full r/w view privs.

    in a nutshell, that's what I would do.

    along with that, the view concept can 'mount' the FS read-only.

    • by blueg3 ( 192743 )

      Views for filesystems are called users, groups, and file permissions. (Or, if you want to get fancy, ACLs.)

      • sorry, but that's not strong enough.

        I've tried the FUSE 'wildcard plugin' and its pretty cool. you can hide or allow thru various patterns or whatever you want.

        you could even make it time sensitive; at daytime, the system is locked down and at 11pm and later, its opened up. whatever - the plugin can handle more capable 'policies' than simple unix file perms.

        if the parent does a good job, the kid won't even KNOW that there are extra files around. even if he gets root, unless he knows how to undo this FUSE

  • by maharg ( 182366 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:55PM (#42482725) Homepage Journal

    the boy has the whole internet to peruse unless you have locked that down also... Seriously.. Are you actually running a walled garden ? If not all bets are off...

  • by shakezula ( 842399 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:56PM (#42482759)
    ...from a NAS device. Like you, I've spent HOURS getting all the TV cataloged, named correctly, and with images. Like you, I have kids I don't want watching certain things and I solve it thusly:

    1:Create a share on your NAS which has the items you DON'T want them to watch and make it so that it needs a password or whatever credentials you need to connect to it.

    2:Add the share to XBMC, but put it under a Master Profile.

    3: Create another Profile for your younglings that can't access the shared files. Double bonus, since you password protected the share, if they do go scanning the network, they'll have to have to know the (hopefully) different password to mount the share with your non-kid content.

    4:??? Profit?

    Check this out: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=108232 [xbmc.org] I think it will help you sort your media out with haste.
  • by plaut ( 42347 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @07:59PM (#42482805)

    Set and communicate the rules and the consequences for breaking them, monitor compliance, and enforce the consequences if the rules are broken. If you force compliance with technology, your son won't learn what is and isn't appropriate behavior and you won't have the opportunity to build trust. And, believe me, you'll need that trust when he's older.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This should have been moderated to 5:insightful by now. Parenting is a social feat, not merely a technical or biological one.

      This parent could have simply said "hey, there are a lot of grownup movies on here that WILL give you nightmares. You are not allowed to watch the grown-up movies, ask me first before you change what's playing." You don't even need to threaten with punishment. Just state that this is how it will be, and if they start testing boundaries when they get older, THEN you can step in and sta

      • by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:49PM (#42483461) Homepage

        Some things are adult by nature simply because of unavoidable social convention. Those really should be locked away using some mechanism that is expected to pose some sort of minimal barrier.

        It doesn't have to be unhackable. It just has to create a clear boundary.

        It doesn't matter if it's a "parents" fileshare or a lock on a gun cabinet.

      • by jamesh ( 87723 )

        From TFA I got the impression that the child probably isn't 2 yet. A 2 year old will _love_ doing things themselves - making a movie play by themselves without your help is almost as much fun as watching the movie (which is why you'll find them constantly flipping through movies). Sure you could helicopter over them and tell them no you can't watch that one, or that one, but you've instantly robbed the fun from the experience of learning independence.

        Much better to construct a nice safe sandbox where (as fa

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:10PM (#42482953)

    Here's what I do: To keep it simple, I tag all the "bad" movies as restricted. Then on the server in each room where a movie could possibly be played, I require that the server has an "adult present" token. At first this token was just a USB stick I carried around with just a certain named file on it (no crypto). A few years ago I switched to detecting the presence of a bluetooth device - my cell phone or a few other authorized devices. The server scans for the MAC address every 30 seconds, if it can't find it 3x in a row it disables playback of restricted movies. But you can use any convenient token.

    I don't use this at home but at a non-profit I run (a haunted attraction). It's got a mix of adults and teen volunteers, and we have PG-13 and R stuff in our horror video library. The system has worked rather well, but I admit the security of it is based on obscurity - that the teens don't know what enables the restricted content! If they ever figured it out, I'd switch to a secure token.

  • I've got a samba server with a share containing all of our media that's for my wife & I to watch. I've got a second, read-only share set up for the kids. The kid's directory has a bunch of symlinks to content that's suitable for them. It allows them to freely browse the media on their own, and I know exactly what they're accessing.

  • by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @08:19PM (#42483069) Journal

    Treat your kid like an intelligent human being and implement the security measures the code has but no more. Explain to you child why but in a way that lets them weigh their own value system against their curiosity. We don't need more kids in the world that are mindless accepters of whatever is put in front of them. Allow them to make their own decisions and own the consequences for them, including nightmares.

    If they break through the security, get them to show you how they did it, congratulate them, fix it and challenge them to find the next one. Turn that part into a game and you maybe able to give you child an advantage over 99% of the sheeple out there.

  • Next thing you know it's a gunfight in the kindergarten class.

    • by Nyder ( 754090 )

      Next thing you know it's a gunfight in the kindergarten class.

      And it will get blamed on video games!

    • by jamesh ( 87723 )

      Next thing you know it's a gunfight in the kindergarten class.

      The only hint TFA gave about the content he wanted blocked was seeing T1000 stab someone in the face. It may be that he has a library of extreme fetish porn that would give me nightmares, but the chances are the nudity is all in your head.

  • Mark it read-only!! They won't be able to delete it then.

    Can we be clear on this? Does "adult video" harm children? Have there been any studies on this? Really?

    Let's see: Children who grow up around guns most often learn to respect and handle them properly. Children who learn early on about knives and fire early on are no longer curious about them either. And yes, "sex education courses!" Yeah, that watered-down class of PC speak is going to address all of their natural curiosities and natural instict

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Can we be clear on this? Does "adult video" harm children?

      Yes, it does.

      I grew up with computers, and early on pressed my parents into getting me access to the Internets. I saw plenty of pixelated, low-resolution boobies and at the ripe age of thirteen, was having sexy IRC times with what appeared to be hawt nerdy college chicks.

      I went on to become a systems administrator.

      Parents, don't let this happen to your children. Teach them to be developers; they get paid more and don't have to wake up at 3 AM because some drunk C-level forgot his password.

    • by Nyder ( 754090 )

      ...

      P.S. When I was a kid, I saw porn. It didn't "harm me." I'm a normal guy.

      When I was a kid, I didn't see porn, and it harmed me. I didn't know much about sex, didn't understand how to please women, shit, I didn't even realize how women masturbated till I was much older. Porn at least would of gave me insight on the art of sex and how to help switch it from a self act, to a pleasing act for the other.

      Of course, practice makes perfect, but who wants to have sex with a guy who only knows how to please himself? Besides hookers.

      Well, now you decided if I'm being funny or insight

      • I'm going to go with obvious. Sex is part of who we all are at so many levels. Disney has been making billions exploiting kids and sexuality. And doesn't everyone know that keeping something away from children only makes them want it more?

  • When I was a kid I loved horror movies. Nightmare on Elms Street, monster movies,
    The best horror movie was with a monster that came from the sea and got people with tentacles and eat them. I think I had nightmares for weeks and I'm still looking for a movie that can scary me like I was 6 years.

    I think the "reality" shows on the TV make way more damage to the young generation then any horror, action or porn movie ever could. So what if he gets a few nights nightmares? That is what to be a kid is all about.

    As

  • Come on... (Score:4, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @09:14PM (#42483749) Journal

    Why don't you just admit you don't want your wife seeing your collection of My Little Pony hentai?

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @09:24PM (#42483839)

    ... in a folder named 'Merchant Ivory'.

  • For the videos I really want to keep from prying eyes, I keep them in an encfs encrypted folder that only I know the password to, then I mount it when I want to use it.

    It's all full of educational videos, of course.

  • You're welcome.

  • I have a 6 year old son and a 9 year old daughter.

    My NAS device exposes 4 folders: TV, Movies, Children's TV, Children's Movies.

    In the only room the kids are allowed to watch unsupervised, the XBMC only has the children's 2 folders installed. In the family room and master bedroom everything's available (and the kids are always supervised in these rooms).

    None of the computers hooked up to the TVs have keyboards or mice attached. The kids are allowed to control their XBMC using the iPad or old iPhone that r

  • by musicon ( 724240 ) on Friday January 04, 2013 @11:23PM (#42484663)

    Unfortunately, children will explore and learn things you don't want them to regardless how much we will (or want to) shelter them.

    That said, the solution my wife and I have is we tell them certain things are appropriate, and others are not. When they're older, they can view them, but for now it's not appropriate.

    We have two Popcorn C-300s, and the media I don't want the kids to watch are in a separate directory called "Not Appropriate". That way, you don't have to go nuts with security and lockdowns, and your kids know what's there. Knowing the media is there but shouldn't be viewed also teaches them self-restraint.

  • by zuki ( 845560 ) on Saturday January 05, 2013 @12:33AM (#42485081) Journal
    Buy a humongous hard drive (3Tb is good). Make a giant Truecrypt partition, like at least 1 Tera, ensuring that it's the type that can accommodate files larger than 4 gigs. (NTFS for Windows, HFS+ for OS-X)

    Copy all those movies to this partition while it is mounted. Unmount it... Then just mount it again with password when needed to either watch a movie or copy new ones into the partition.

    If you run out of room, make a second partition on the same disk with the same password.

    All done.
  • Imagine it man, Kids running around nude in Africa have more knowledge about real life than your sheltered children. They know how babies are made because they got the water from the stream and helped out with some other birth, rather than some nurse. They know of the finality and consequence of death and respect danger because they've gutted animals to help their parents cook, or even killed beasts themselves. Hell, these 3rd world kids will be giving back to their community while yours will be throwing tantrums about not getting some worthless toy -- And you're worried about censorship? Damn, seek professional help or chill, the actual fuck, out.

    You didn't turn out all fucked up despite knowing so much more about computers than your parents, and seeing the things you did that your parents wouldn't have approved of. Your parents didn't even inform you about masturbation! Why are you raising your children to be so damn ignorant about the world? Look, I don't really care why. Thing is, you're a parent now, time to man up and delete the damn movies if you don't want your kid to see them, and you can't be troubled to actually learn how to fucking USE *nix file system permissions or set up accounts on a damn multi-user OS. I mean, you come HERE? Asking US?! "What would Slashdot have me do?" Well, first off I'd have you neutered, you ignorant son of a bitch (that's right, I just called your mom a bitch -- it's for not being OK with what you wanted to watch when you were a kid), then secondly I'd ship your kid to a 3rd world country where they may die, but at least they won't be brain damaged by the likes of a lamer like you!

  • I wouldn't worry too hard about keeping your kids from seeing your movies -- they're too long to be interesting, mostly. The real issue is once your kid figures out how to click around on youtube. You'll start them with Sesame Street or something and when you turn back they're watching a kid pretend Elmo is being butt-raped, with graphic commentary.

    YouTube "related video" links are the real problem in this space.

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