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Ask Slashdot: Keeping Your Media Library Safe From Kids?

Posted by timothy on from the sound-of-eyes-getting-really-big dept.

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?"

19 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Re:two choices by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In trad slashdot style, I didn't read. Best way to do this is to keep R-rated stuff off the family tv's media playback device. Share them on a different share etc.

  2. Knowing more than parents... by gnasher719 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't worry. You knew more about computers than your parents. You'll also know more about computers than your children.

    1. Re:Knowing more than parents... by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Funny

      You called?

    2. Re:Knowing more than parents... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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 :)

    3. Re:Knowing more than parents... by shakezula · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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...

      --
      I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
    4. Re:Knowing more than parents... by Miamicanes · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yep. To load a game, at the *bare* minimum, you had to hop over at least one trivial speedbump that somehow managed to stump lots of supposedly "normal" kids:

      load "*",8,1

      God knows, it took my brother almost TWO YEARS to finally get the hang of it. He now owns a Mac. Surprise, surprise... ;-)

      Fast forward ~10 years to 1993... and try explaining the concept of an IRQ, a cascaded IRQ, and reconciling conflicts between a piece of shit internal modem that only supported IRQ 2, 3, and 4 & a malfunctioning soundcard camped out on IRQ 9... to that same tech-challenged brother (hint, for anyone who didn't instantly get the punchline... the modem was set to IRQ 2)

      Today's kids are no dumber than the kids we went to school with. The difference is, 25 years ago, today's clueless kids wouldn't have owned a computer at all, and if WE were 13 again, we'd spend summer vacation building Arduino LED cubes (or if we were in college, we'd be building circuits with FPGAs).

      Kids who are like we were still exist, they're just lost amidst the background noise of stupid kids with toys they think work by magic.

    5. Re:Knowing more than parents... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:Knowing more than parents... by rubycodez · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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......

    7. Re:Knowing more than parents... by Gr8Apes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  3. RTFM by OverlordQ · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFM

    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?

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:RTFM by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    2. Re:RTFM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  4. I too XBMC my media... by shakezula · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...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 I think it will help you sort your media out with haste.

    --
    I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
  5. parenting, not technology by plaut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Require "Adult Presence" for Restricted Movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Parental control by mrops · · Score: 5, Informative

    did you try it

    http://www.xbmchub.com/blog/2012/08/13/parental-control-for-xbmc-addons/

    Keep all shares password protected with mounts/drives only available to xbmc PCs.

    1. Re:Parental control by cusco · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is everyone serious? Have you never heard of NTFS? Put all the movies he's allowed to access in a folder with Full Control permissions for Everyone. Put the movies that you don't want him to get in a different folder, remove Everyone from the Access Control List, give Full Control to the Administrators group or just to your user account. When you're logged in you can access everything, when he's logged in he can only access his folder.

      It ain't rocket surgery.

      --
      "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
  8. Re:two choices by telchine · · Score: 5, Funny

    OP is asking how to secure media on a media server...and one of the solutions is to put them on a media server?

    Well, yes, that;s not such a bad idea. Have two media servers - one open and one locked down.
    Perhaps a third one too ;)

    What state would the third one be in? Open and locked down at the same time? Is that the set-up that Schrodinger opted for with his media?

  9. Re:two choices by noh8rz9 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Am I the only one who infers an extensive porno collection, lovingly curated with covers and fan art?

    --
    let's have a conversation! let me know what you think.