Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
I must admit that I wondered why it was so important to keep the children off the internet... my daughter is now 13 (going on 18) and needs the internet for her school homework... the expectation from her teachers is that she will have access and there are websites that she specifically has to access in order to perform certain tasks... there are unfortunate children who don't have web access at home who end up in the school library (on the PCs therein) all through lunchtime etc Sean -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 01:40:13AM +0100, Christopher Chatfield wrote: I have only run various flavours of linux for the past 3 years. I am not a games player but my son is. There is an extra special game about to be released, that will only play on windows. I want to run windows in paranoid mode, but there are other members of my household and I cannot afford a dedicated paranoid machine. How do I permanantly disable networking in windows XP so that my savy teenage children will not be able to enable it. Can I delete an appropriate library, without crippling the system? If so what and where. Look forward to an answer for this off topic question, but I am sure one of you will warm to the idea of crippling a windows system. There are two reasons this won't work. One is that many games require an administrator account to access the 3D hardware. This is a Windows design flaw and will stop a sensible method of giving the kids user accounts that can't change the system. The other is if they are that savvy, they're going to fix anything you fudge. Even if that means downloading a dodgy copy of XP to reinstall the bits you delete. You could just not connect the machine physically to the network, that is don't add a wireless card and position the machine away from any network cables. Also tell the kids that this is a games only machine and don't go online with it. Windows admin and security works on a honour system anyway, you can block attacks from the outside world. But you just have to trust users not to mess with it too much. :) -- Gav Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://revford.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk I think we need to: Kick the geo-thermal condenser signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
Sean Miller wrote: I must admit that I wondered why it was so important to keep the children off the internet... my daughter is now 13 (going on 18) and needs the internet for her school homework... the expectation from her teachers is that she will have access and there are websites that she specifically has to access in order to perform certain tasks... there are unfortunate children who don't have web access at home who end up in the school library (on the PCs therein) all through lunchtime etc Sean Well, being a teenager myself, I have to agree with Sean. There is no way they can get work for school done without the internet. If they dont have it at home, theyll have to go to the Library or stay in school at breaks/lunch/after school. Also, some games may require the internet for registration (I have a feeling NFS Prostreet saves your game online, so other games might as well) so no internet may pose a problem there. Also, you could just use VNC to monitor what theyre doing. O ruse your router to monitor what IPs theyre accessing. (Granted I dont know much about this, as being resident geek of the family, the Router is in my bedroom, with all my PCs wired up, then My parents, and my sister just have laptops with wireless, I controll and administer our netowrk and internet connection, so the only person who can monitor what I go on... is me!! XD) . -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
Christopher Chatfield wrote: How do I permanantly disable networking in windows XP so that my savy teenage children will not be able to enable it. Check that the game can run without being administrator. If the game can only run as administrator, then you're sunk. (Note the difference between install only as administrator - which is fine - and run only as administrator - which is not). As administrator, install the game for all users, then change the gateway and DNS entries under Start - Control Panel - Settings - Network - Local network - Properties - TCP/IP - Properties to point to localhost 127.0.0.1 or a fictional IP address. Do not tell the child the administrator password. Create an unprivileged account for the child. Check that the child's account cannot change the gateway or DNS. Note that the child will still be able to access the local network (in the same building) using IP addresses, but no further. -- Andrew Oakley -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
Couldn't you just uninstall the network drivers? There must surely be network drivers? Sean -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
Sean Miller wrote: Couldn't you just uninstall the network drivers? There must surely be network drivers? Yes, but it'll scream blue murder until someone re-installs them (nag screens up the wazoo). A similar but less nag-prone method would be to mark the network hardware as disabled in Device Manager (again, as administrator, then only provide the child with a vanilla account). It's not like crippling MS-Windows is particularly difficult; it is the Perl of breakable operating systems, there's far more than one way to do it. With my gateway-and-dns method, you would at least still be able to access the local Linux fileserver without too much fuss, if you needed to get the inevitable patches in the months after the game is released. I feel ashamed to know this much, but my excuse is that I learned it on Windows 2000 and switched to Ubuntu, missing out Windows XP entirely. -- Andrew Oakley -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
Christopher Chatfield wrote: How do I permanantly disable networking in windows XP so that my savy teenage children will not be able to enable it. If you have savvy teenagers Christopher then you are probably wasting your time! It was having tech savvy parents in my teenage years that insisted on locking down my machine that made me learn about TCP/IP, command line etc along with all the other things that allowed me to circumnavigate my way around their blocks and get access to play my games online and chat to others. In fact its probably a good way of preparing them for the transition to *buntu! One thing though, and this is the main reason I replied, most games sold these days have a significant emphasis on online play, have you checked with the kids that you won't be spoiling their multiplayer capabilities? All the best, Alex -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
Christopher Chatfield wrote: I have only run various flavours of linux for the past 3 years. I am not a games player but my son is. There is an extra special game about to be released, that will only play on windows. I want to run windows in paranoid mode, but there are other members of my household and I cannot afford a dedicated paranoid machine. How do I permanantly disable networking in windows XP so that my savy teenage children will not be able to enable it. Can I delete an appropriate library, without crippling the system? If so what and where. Look forward to an answer for this off topic question, but I am sure one of you will warm to the idea of crippling a windows system. Create an account for your son to use which is a normal user (i.e. not the first user that Windows creates which is always an administrator). Using the account with admin rights, go into Device Manager (right click on My Computer, select Manage, in the management window go to Device Manager). Find your network card in the list and right click on it. There should be an option to disable it. It will disable the driver and stop the card working. Only an administrator will be able re-enable the card (for things like Windows updates). Hopefully this should do the job. Personally though I find keeping up with the latest hardware for games is a real chore. You may find in the long run it's cheaper to just buy something like an XBOX360 (which chances are the game will be released on). Rob -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 8:59 AM, Rob Beard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Christopher Chatfield wrote: I have only run various flavours of linux for the past 3 years. I am not a games player but my son is. There is an extra special game about to be released, that will only play on windows. I want to run windows in paranoid mode, but there are other members of my household and I cannot afford a dedicated paranoid machine. How do I permanantly disable networking in windows XP so that my savy teenage children will not be able to enable it. Can I delete an appropriate library, without crippling the system? If so what and where. Look forward to an answer for this off topic question, but I am sure one of you will warm to the idea of crippling a windows system. Create an account for your son to use which is a normal user (i.e. not the first user that Windows creates which is always an administrator). Using the account with admin rights, go into Device Manager (right click on My Computer, select Manage, in the management window go to Device Manager). Find your network card in the list and right click on it. There should be an option to disable it. It will disable the driver and stop the card working. Only an administrator will be able re-enable the card (for things like Windows updates). Hopefully this should do the job. Personally though I find keeping up with the latest hardware for games is a real chore. You may find in the long run it's cheaper to just buy something like an XBOX360 (which chances are the game will be released on). What's this game, because some of them are based on multiplayer. But, if you want to stop the networking, there are many things you can do, for example, blocking all ports to that computer and putting a very strong password on the router. But, may I ask why you would not want the windows machine on the network, to be quite honest, as long as all you are doing is playing games, the computer will not come to harm if you have something like Avast antivirus or AVG or ClamAV. I run windows XP on many machines, without hassle. Additionally, anyone can circumvent a windows xp admin account with less than 10 mins of work, I have done it in genuine situations where a password was lost. -- Kris Douglas Softdel Limited Hosting Services Web: www.softdel.net Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
Kris Douglas wrote: Additionally, anyone can circumvent a windows xp admin account with less than 10 mins of work, I have done it in genuine situations where a password was lost. I did this on my other half's laptop when I was trying to print a CD using my Windows only CD printer software. I was half tempted to reset her password to something else but thought the grief I'd get wouldn't be worth it. Another option which may work is something like that Transgaming version of Wine which is tailored to running games, although as far as I'm aware it's not all Windows games. Rob -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
On 4/7/08, Rob Beard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Kris Douglas wrote: Additionally, anyone can circumvent a windows xp admin account with less than 10 mins of work, I have done it in genuine situations where a password was lost. I did this on my other half's laptop when I was trying to print a CD using my Windows only CD printer software. I was half tempted to reset her password to something else but thought the grief I'd get wouldn't be worth it. Another option which may work is something like that Transgaming version of Wine which is tailored to running games, although as far as I'm aware it's not all Windows games. Rob -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/ -- Kris Douglas Softdel Limited Hosting Services Web: www.softdel.net Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Past Life Regression. How to cripple XP. Our dream come true.
Kris Douglas wrote: Additionally, anyone can circumvent a windows xp admin account with less than 10 mins of work, I have done it in genuine situations where a password was lost. Same goes for Linux too - just reboot into recovery mode or boot from a recovery CD. It'd be a very brave person that configured their system so that a forgotten password meant you'd have to reformat reinstall. -- Andrew Oakley -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
