What Advice For a Single Parent As Server Admin? 618
Dragon_Eater, with "lots of experience setting up PCs and a passable knowledge of Linux but severely lacking in the server/client department,"
writes with a situation that probably faces a lot of parents:
I want to set up three kids, 12, 14, and 15, with newer computers so they will stop fighting for time on the one ten-year-old Dell they share now. I can get the individual computers and a server put together without any problems, but the computer-handicapped single parent needs to be able to do the following via an simple application/web page: View client computer status, On/off, sleeping etc.; Deny Internet access, not LAN, just the web; Schedule time usage of computer, ex. 7 am to 10 pm on school nights etc.; Force log-out and/or shutdown of clients, for grounding purposes; and Apply some kind of firewall filter for blocking undesired web content. And as the administrator for this network I would like the following options: Remote virus scanning of client machines, or scheduled task; Some kind of hardware monitor, high temp / fan speed low etc.; and Email alerts for various log files / alarms.
Given the lists above I am thinking about a Linux-based router/server machine and running Windows on the clients for game compatibility. I also know that a server and network boot client is possible but not sure where to start on that one."
Holy shit (Score:5, Funny)
you got a whole deal of connectivity/administration project there. quit your day job.
Re:Do this, ground your kids, make them Engineers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do this, ground your kids, make them Engineers (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, they may not pass standardised tests requiring them to know the average rainfall of the amazon rainforest (what a useless fact!) but it does give them valuable real-world skills.
Re:Do this, ground your kids, make them Engineers (Score:3, Funny)
heh (Score:1, Funny)
China allready has this
Re:Do this, ground your kids, make them Engineers (Score:5, Funny)
>> but it does give them valuable real-world skills.
Indeed! If we don't give them the nudge, they're never going to take it upon themselves to learn the fine art of refrigerator hacking.
Re:Do this, ground your kids, make them Engineers (Score:5, Funny)
When my kids are grounded, they go in the cage...
The faraday cage...
Re:Ask the intelligence community (Score:3, Funny)
"Children have no right to privacy."
You forgot to prefix that with "In the US"...
better advice (Score:2, Funny)
Have you ever tried just turning off your TV and your computers, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them? - bender
Re:Ask the intelligence community (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Parental controls (Score:3, Funny)
Balloon popping fetish? I'm SO there.
Re:You need to ask "should I?" and not "how can I? (Score:1, Funny)
The simple solution to the parents problem is to tell the kids what not to do, and log the computer's network activity. If they're visiting bad web sites, it'd be easy enough to find out.
When the kids know what they do is being watched, and they can get grounded, that's usually enough.
As for limiting the time they can use the computer. Why? I've spent almost every waking moment of my life in front of a computer, from age 7 to present (27). Kids are less destructive around the house when they have something to do with their time.
I once lit a patio table on fire with gelled gasoline, lit the end of a modeling cement tube on fire (very neat), sled down the steps of the deck in winter, climbed all over the roof, got buried up to my neck in sand by neighbour kids and left for half an hour, poured acid into a harddrive (it boils out as poison gas, yay), sat on a tree branch for hours reading books two feet away from a power line, etc. Guess what? Had nothing better to do at the time. My list would be a lot longer, and more imaginative, if it hadn't been for constant access to a computer.
Yeah, I still live in my parents basement. And I'm a virgin. But, isn't that exactly the protection parents want for their kids?
Re:Ask the intelligence community (Score:4, Funny)
I could make my own Ethernet cable (with a screwdriver as the only tool no less) when i was 12.
...but to make up for that, your parents could sleep comfortably in the knowledge that you were unlikely to become a teenage parent :-)
Solution... (Score:1, Funny)
You're a nub. No wonder she was screwing around behind your back.
Can anyone tell me how to... (Score:1, Funny)
Can anyone help me make my own music video? I am too lazy to do it. Can anyone with common sense plan this out so I do not have to use the gray matter that god gave me? I was thinking about titling it "Boats and Loose women." Does any one have a sailboat I could borrow?
Re:Do this, ground your kids, make them Engineers (Score:3, Funny)
Want to eat tonight? Learn to pick the lock on the refridgerator.
I'd also make them pass a spelling test, and starve them if they couldn't spell refrigerator.
(the shortened bastardization "fridge" only contains a 'd' only because the pronunciation of "frige" doesn't match the root word it comes from)
Re:Holy shit (Score:5, Funny)
I want to set up three kids, 12, 14 and 15
Not only that, but those are seriously crappy names for kids.