Slashdot Mirror
Software V-Chip for PC Games?
63N1U5 writes "CBS news is reporting that SMARTGUARD software is releasing a new application that will allow parents to control their children's PC gaming, a-la the V-Chip for television. The new software, called WallFly, uses the ESRB ratings database to determine if a game can be launched by the current PC user, based on the parents' preferences. Parents can also use this software to set limits on when and for how long their children can play PC games."
...why don't parents just talk to their kids?
The Custom Mary
As long as it is voluntary (sp?) I'm fine with it. Parents should have the right to take charge of what their rotten little bastards are up to. If it's mandated that all computers have this then I'm against it. But, I don't have any knee-biters in my household.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
the problem with these types of measures is they don't take into account idle time (as in maybe going to the bathroom and leaving it on or pausing for some reason) and also I know from experiance playing 2 hours of a game when you are close to the end or completing an important part and then getting booted off would be discouraging at best.
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
...will allow parents to control their children's PC gaming
Damn.
Dashboard Widgets
Parents could pay attention to their children and not let them buy the game in the first place. Being 17 I can see why parents would just shell out some money for some way to control their kids without having to talk to them, but if parents woudl just sit down and talk, or even better, unplug the box alltogether they coudl save some money.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Gives the parents a little control over what their kids are into and keeps the government's ever pervasive fingers out of it. I for one don't want a village overseeing my kids (well, grandkids now), just the family.
If you give a liberal an enema, he'll turn transparent.
It is also a very compelling argument in favor of multi-user systems.
The big catch with this idea, though, is that this is restricted to only commercial titles, and ESRB-rated titles at that. While TFA says that this can also be used to control "computer use," it likely won't be able to distinguish web/Java games from web research for the science fair.
I speculate that the software knows executable names for commercially released games, and it can then cross-reference these against the ESRB database. With this in mind, smaller catches are that this software will require regular updates, and the ESRB rating system itself is quite coarse: look at the dearth of adults-only games.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
If this gets implimented on a wide scale, I think we will see bootable Linux cds with the nvidia kernel and doom3 or halflife2 installed becomming very popular.
I love these kinds of restrictions, they really help kids get creative and find ways around systems of control. It teaches them valuable lessons that they will need later in life as DRM get more and more popular. If we are to live in a free society, we need creative people who can subvert the confinements imposed by parents, churches, governments, and corporations.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Hey same with porn filters...so screw it forget filters all together. It's possible to write software that would be realivitly hard for kids to bypass. The point that worries me most about this is not the fact that kids might get around it...but that parents need it. Where exactly will kids get games that their parents don't want them to play? Even if they get them, shouldn' the parents have taught them better than to play games they disapprove of?
You can install the games to their profile yourself so that they can only play games you allow them to play.
I was gonna post something similar. Until I realized that those parent's who aren't aware which games their children are playing or what those games are rated, probably are the same parents who haven't a clue about profiles.
besides, children are quite clued in, and chances are they'll figure out how to bypass this fairly easily. (i have a friend who's 2 year old figured out how to open the cd drive, put in the disc, and play his favorite game; some Mac educational thing. If he knew that at 2, imagine what he could do at 10...)
Personally, my parents tried to monitor my computer use... they tried to keep me away from porn, violent video games (whooo mortal kombat) but they failed. Why? Because they didn't understand computers at all. I installed the games, I got around any method of protection they set for me... and I know I'm not alone because my friends all did the same, and if they couldn't, they asked me too.
That being said, this program wont change that... kids will find a way around it, like they always have.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
Did it occur to you that this helps parents do their jobs without constantly spying on their children? Or would you have appreciated having your parents monitor your activities 24 hours a day? Is that what you consider good parenting?
If Mom and Dad say no Grand Theft Auto, their word alone will most emphatically not stop a clever kid. This kind of technology is pretty reasonable in helping parents set boundaries. The kids and the parents can then talk about the boundaries that are established.
This isn't government censorship -- it's parental censorship.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
This is a tool to help parents do their jobs. It is not being foisted on anyone. You can't complain about lazy parents, and at the same time chastise parents for not being lazy. This fits in perfectly with the idea of the ESRB rating system: voluntary ratings made to inform the parents and allow them to meaningfully control what their kids play. Without this sort of thing, people are going to listen to idiots like Joe Lieberman.
English is easier said than done.
Oh yes, Doom 3. Linux has Doom 3. 8.5 at GameSpot, damned with faint praise because the game isn't all that and a bag of chips. Who needs any other game when you have Doom 3?
Mac has The Sims and that little slidey Apple logo puzzle game too. Outstanding variety.
When each of these operating systems have more than 10 games, during a single quarter, wake me up and I'll pay attention.
Does anyone think that the kids will not be able to get round this! I mean you tell a kid there is someting they should not do and they will find a way to do it.
On a side note maybe the parents should regulate what game the kid get in the forst place no?
F*ck them it wont work and will just scam some cash out of the parents. My bet is that most kids will get full access privs in matter of hours and then the kids will sbe able to lock the parents out.
Several ways round this spring to mind such as Knoppix, Dual boot, Safemode etc.....
Complaining about "lazy parenting" aside, there are always problems with censorship via software. My first experience with the web was in high school, and in my comptuer class one of our assignments was to make a web page. So I started looking for links for stuff I was interested in at the time, like X-Men comics. All the sites I came up with were blocked by the schools net filter. After thinking "wtf? X-Men comics are PG!", I tried an experiment, and typed in www.playboy.com, and hit enter. Boom! Up comes the site with a nice picture of Miss October. So their filter would block comic books fit for 6 year olds, and yet the homepage for the most famous adult magazine in the country was wide open?
Yeah, this was a few years ago, but I have a more recent example: a swearing filter for the game Counter-Strike. The problem? You couldn't say "I had good competition earlier from Japan", because "tit", "lier", and "jap" were filtered. You could, however, say "I just had orgazmic intercourse with a dead baby's skull" and be just fine with the filter. I wonder which statement the server admin would find more offensive.
So now matter how advanced filtering gets, you'll always have examples of stupid things that get blocked or allowed through.
Being 15, I can tell you that if my parents were to install this, I would simply kill it. I'm Admin on my box, so I don't have to worry about profiles. Even if my parents manage to sneak something like this on, and block me from deleting it: how does it stop me from booting into DOS and deleting it there? All my parents need to do is talk, it does a lot more than a lame peice of software could ever hope to do.
Wow. Your gona have problems when he gets to Jnr. High and higher. He will get bored with the classes or fall into the "this is beneath me" problem that plauged Einstein (he had crappy grades). I myself am just trying to overcome this problem as it is ruining my chances of finishing college.
When I was little, I didn't stick things in light sockets. I plugged things in, made weird kid-constructions (you know what I mean) out of extension cords and lights, ect.
Pay close attention to keeping him motivated, and don't be afraid to kick his ass (metaphorically) to get him to do his work. He'll hate you for it, but he'll thank you later. You will probably need to go Nazi with homework.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This is the "You-Must-Be-At-Least-This-Smart-To-Ride-This-Rid
Don't put advice in your sig.
Next time some mother sobs to the press about how she didn't know Grand Theft Auto was about stealing cars and wasn't for little kids, everyone can slap her and point to this software that would have done the job for idiots like her.
Why can't we slap her now? Any idiot that reads the game box can figure this stuff out.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
to be honest with you, i didn't even know it was still around. So this article was a little surprising to me. I'm all for the software, the same way I'm all for the V chip. The people who came up with this and the ones who impliment it feel better about us heathens, and the general public never use them, and forget about the whole thing. Let the system think it's safe, while the rest of us go on with our lives like normal. Hope I explained that well enough.
Because that's all it will ever be, an illusion.
Kids get around their parents porn-proofing the computers all the time, the number of kids this will stop from playing those games is inconsequential.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Because most people don't run an operating system on their home game computer that actually and effectively implements this level of control
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Everytime I see articles like this, there's a plethora of comments along the lines of "Gee, why don't the parents just, I dunno, do some parenting!"
Guess what? This is a form of parenting. Whether it's an effective, or good method of parenting is debatable, but a parent who uses software like this is making an effort at raising their child to be what they consider to be a good moral person. Your opinion of what a good moral person is may differ; and the methods they choose to try to promote their morals may not be as effective as they think, but they are making an effort.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is it really going to make any kind of difference considering the way that the ESRB rates games i mean things like a 15+ rating for comic mischeif but a rating of 13.5 for medium level animated violence the sysytem makes so little sense why not make it like the ratings are in Australia and New Zealand and base the ratings purley on game content and like violence and gore and what not.
I figured out whats wrong with the world , its other people -Dilbert
On the other hand, you're sitting here saying "god damn", "asshole", and "fuck" casually.
Not saying that it's from the games specifically, but you're not exactly one I would hold up as a good example of what behavior you want to encourage.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's a nice tool which I'd probably set only to stop games rated Adult, I'd rather my kids don't get exposed to some of the darker parts of society before they have to.
As others have pointed out, it's no fix for proper parenting, though it'd help a lot of parents knew how to use computers.
Whatever as long as this means stupid parent groups will get off the backs of the game developers. Personally i think digital TV standards should come with a more accurate censorship system, since most countries are about to switch over to digital now is the perfect time to get this into the set top boxes people are about to buy - basically the system should be similar to the v-chip except its user-configurable to censor anything from an entire channel to just a program to just a scene or second or two of video or even black out a portion of the screen and the same with audio. Not only that it should be configurable to be either 'censor all except material flagged ok' or 'only censor material flagged adult' this way its totally optional whether tv networks actually encode their programs but they have the incentive to do so because they know there will be lots of people setting it to censor all by default. This would totally solve all censorship and free-speech issues on both sides of the political spectrum forever.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.