My computer will never require an age check. Because it is mine.
Fine, have to suck up the initial crossover period, but Linux it is then.
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.
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?
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?
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?
