They do realize that linux users could just use a foreign mirror right?
Will it be possible to crack it or use a fake ID or something?
Yes I am a 126 year old using this computer, why do you ask?
My computer will never require an age check. Because it is mine.
With that firmware?
Couldn’t this be avoided by simply not updating the bios?
Huh?
You own and operate thyne hardware’s firmware?
Do you think age verification is being built into the firmware?
Fine, have to suck up the initial crossover period, but Linux it is then.
What’s the point of collecting age verification at the operating system level if the installed programs don’t ask for it? Is it likely that ssh, Microsoft excel, emacs, photoshop are going to ask the operating system for the user’s age?
The real point is matching people to hardware to enforce onerous anti piracy measures, anti ad block measure, and anti-“Sorry citizen you are not allowed to discuss taboo subjects like gay people and Socialism” measures. Also long term probably some "why are you usng your technology during the daily prayer hour citizen, please report to the reeducation camps.
Microsoft Word won’t let you use the word ‘dick’ in your essay if you’re under 18, even if you were writing about the (not so) good old Richard Nixon. And Excel won’t let you add up to 69 either, math can be so naughty!
Think of the children!
If the OS allows you to setup user’s age during the out of box experience and then locks it a parent would only need to partake in that step. Other applications and sites that require to check age could then receive a simple Adult=true or Adult=false and make sure to send those with the Adult=false to the 403 forbidden to jerk off page.
Kids would then learn man in the middle attacks to modify the flag before it is sent to the application.
So the point is to improve computer literacy, I think?
2027, the year of the typewriter once again?
If such non-sense was to ever reach the EU (good luck, USA), which is quite likely seeing the non-sense we have already going on, and If I’m ever required to prove my age/ID in order to be allowed to use ‘my’ computer, said computer will instantly be disconnected from the Internet and turned back into what I always used mine for: a glorified typewriter.
And if for some even more absurd reason that was not doable, I would dust off the Olympia SG1, a typewriter from the 1950s that I inherited from my grandfather in the early 70s… The same typewriter I used up well into the 80s to publish my first texts and fanzines of back then, before I switched to a computer and a printer.
This 70 year-old or so typewriter still works perfectly well today, and the only updates it requires is once in a while a new ink ribbon which one can still purchase. Plus, it looks as cool as it ever looked ;)
And good luck forcing it to check my age or ID before I can type on it.
good luck forcing it to check my age or ID before I can type on it.
How do you think Alcohol & Guns are sold?
If I remember correctly, the typewriter (and, to a lesser extent, the VHS) is precisely how the heroes of the movie Public Enemies get through the political killings panopticon and bring in the fight.
Public Enemies, or do you have another movie in mind?
Hmmm no then it wasn’t that one. It’s well older… I must have gotten the name wrong which means it would be harder for me to find. I do remember Jon Voight as one of the main villains and was basically a prescient film to PRISM, the DMCA and Edward Snowden.
THAT THING! Thanks!
