Odd Request: slowing down a computer

[Earendil]

Just as poker, blackjack and other forms of gambling are just games, right?

Nobody ever had a serious problem with those games, right?

No, people on average do not. There are things in the human psyche that make them vulnerable to particular things. If one is depressed they are vulnerable to a multitude of things.

Anything in access can be detimental to ones social life or well being. Some athletes drop out of college (or never go) lose family, friends, and in the end, their health. We justify this, why? Because they make millions? Because they are good at it? Because we find it entertaining to watch?
And those people are said to be mentally fit!

This kid isn't mentally fit to take on life right now. He needs help.
Those that get addicted to gambling and such also have their own root problems to tame. If they don't, you can bet they will go right back to it or find something else.

This like saying that we can cure psychopath murder by just keeping him away from knives. Taking away what makes the problem visable to the world doesn't make the problem go away.

~Tyler

 

[yellow]

Nobody ever had a serious problem with those games, right?

I never said people don't have problems with games.
I said people should be able monitor themselves.

 

[yippy]

Wow, thanks for all of the help guys.

But yes, there is a more serious underlying problem that we are all trying to deal with. My parents are much more involved in his life than me and have as good a relationship as they can with him without feeding his addiction. They are vary open with him about his problem and talk to him about it whenever he can. Right now they are being supportive of him for dropping out as long as he gets a job soon, this seems to keep them not on his bad side while still pucing him to improve. There was a point we thought he had Asberger's Syndrom but a better phycologist said he didn't.

Unfortunatly he has money saved from an earlier job he had and when I am at university he uses the only computer at home, so disabling it is not an option. He is also smart and wouldn't give us access to his WOW and he knows enough to get around most basic parental controls. Also, cutting him off completely makes him angry and much less likely to work towards getting a job or life.

Anyway, thanks for the help all. When not on the game he is a great kid although not very social. He is also smart and a good worker when he does work. I think we can get him out of this if we can just find him a job that he would like. We haven't so far.

P.S. We don't really need help finding ways to help him, we have a lot of rescources here that we haven't used up yet.

 

[trainguy77]

I think you best option would be to install folding via either the mc68k(made in house by our very own) script. Or Increase, then use terminal to increase its priority until it slows it down enough that wow will not play well.

the mc68k script is here: http://calnet.sdsu.edu/mc68k/ But I can't seem to get to it right now. This script(as well as increase) lets you having folding start when you start the computer and run %100 in the background. No windows open. Here is increase http://calxalot.homeip.net/InCrease/ And if you are interested we should be able to find out how to increase priority.

 

[FoxyKaye]

You honestly think that if they cut WoW out of his life things will get better and he'll pick school back up, and go on to finish with a 4.0?
Read his post again, especially the PS, along with the replies here on the second page.

No - but in terms of answering the question about how to stop him from using WOW, there seems to be pretty simple answers. The rest is for the family to figure out - I don't think any of us on this MR thread are qualified therapists, social workers or family counselors. The larger context requires a more professional and personal response that frankly I don't think exists on a MR thread.

 

[trainguy77]

No - but in terms of answering the question about how to stop him from using WOW, there seems to be pretty simple answers. The rest is for the family to figure out - I don't think any of us on this MR thread are qualified therapists, social workers or family counselors. The larger context requires a more professional and personal response that frankly I don't think exists on a MR thread.

I agree. We don't know the situation well enough either so even if we were therapists, we still could still should not help.

 

[Earendil]

I agree. We don't know the situation well enough either so even if we were therapists, we still could still should not help.

I don't think my posts were meant to instruct in how to cure him. I saw a bunch of people saying the kid needs to "grow up" and have a "belt taken to him". Others here were getting the perception that he dropped out of school as a result of playing WoW, when that isn't the case.

As someone who can probably identify better than 99% of the forum members here, I decided to try and ask people to rethink their position and not be so harsh. We don't want to paint the wrong picture for the brother who is also probably struggling to understand his brother. No need to make matters worse by labeling him a bad or evil kid due to his condition.

~Earendil

 

[OutThere]

Others here were getting the perception that he dropped out of school as a result of playing WoW, when that isn't the case.

I think it has at least something to do with it...with associated conditions, of course:

My brother is addicted to WOW and because of it has dropped out of high school.

Talk about identifying with the kid...

That's 780 hours. I wish someone would have stopped me...

 

[After G]

Reading this has got me interested in a similar idea.

Do any of you have any idea how to block internet access to an open wireless router to which I can't access or ask the admin? My uncle wants one of his kids to stop using the internet so much and start doing her homework, so it was his idea to cut off Net access at certain times. However, there are a lot of open access points around my uncle's neighborhood and so she's been accessing those instead. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Sorry for the thread-jacking, btw. I didn't think this would be different enough to warrant a separate thread. If it is, mods please feel free to do what is necessary.

This is on a Mac btw, sorry I didn't mention that. Mac OS X 10.4 to be more specific.

 

[Makosuke]

My uncle wants one of his kids to stop using the internet so much and start doing her homework, so it was his idea to cut off Net access at certain times. However, there are a lot of open access points around my uncle's neighborhood and so she's been accessing those instead. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Now that's a much more straightfoward question and issue. For one thing, unless the kid's over 18, that DOES sound rather like a situation where "strict parenting" is the solution. If she can't abide by the no internet from x to x time rule, take away the computer completely for a chunk of time.

Assuming it's not the kid's computer, Tiger offers a number of decent parental controls. I don't think there are any time limiting features built in, but you should be able to lock the wireless to a specific router, and as long as she doesn't have admin privleges on the computer, I don't think you can override that.

 

[After G]

I guess I'll try that and we'll see how it goes.

My suggestion: Maybe you should talk to him when he's doing something boring on WoW and say, "You want to go do something else? Isn't grinding boring?" and then take him out and do something fun. Tell him his character won't level up as fast if he plays too much. After he gets all his epics, ask him what else is left to do.

Basically, talk him into thinking that WoW is boring. I quit when leveling up got too hard (I was in the wrong area and kept getting ganked), but I know that WoW can take up a lot of your time, especially when you have nice people or a set group to play with, and people don't really talk to you at other times.

 

[Unspeaked]

I was thinking of this yesterday and I think I have the perfect solution: go over a friend's house, sign up for WoW and confront him in his own realm.

If he won't listen to you in the real-life, 3-D world, maybe he'll listen to you in the fake, 3-D rendered world he's gotten sucked into.

(Of course, this could backfire and he could find your presence on the site as redeeming the whole WoW thing, but it may be worth a shot...

 

[pincho]

I'm sorry, but I find it hard to have any sympathy. This sounds almost too ridiculous to be true.

Dropping out of school to play a video game? Strict parenting is your friend!

I'd slap my kid if he even suggested dropping out of school to play a video game. I'd ground him from the computer, in fact make it so he couldn't even use the computer by password protecting it. I'd put him on curfew at like 10:00. And personally drive him to school in the morning, or have someone I trust do it. Slowing down his computer isn't going to solve anything I'm sure he'll figure out what is going on.

Try and find him new hobbies.

My kids are going straight to kiddie soccer, football, or baseball when they turn 5. A wholesome *normal* upbringing is the key to a normal child in my opinion.

QFT

sorry but IMO, slowing down his computer and staging a break in theft? what is this world coming to... a good smack on the behind and a months hard work on the farms shpuld stop his WoW addiction in no time

 

[Earendil]

QFT

sorry but IMO, slowing down his computer and staging a break in theft? what is this world coming to... a good smack on the behind and a months hard work on the farms shpuld stop his WoW addiction in no time

I hope you never have kids.
I also hope that in the future you read most or 90% of the posts throughout the thread in order to get a feel for what is being talked about. A few people have already said that the approach you are promoting is not only stupid and harmful, but also ignorant of the few base facts about this kid.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but you may want to go back and make a direct response to my main post on the subject to back up your point here and why it will work. If you can't, you sound (to me) like another ignorant "whip the kid!" sob who doesn't have a clue about depression. It's okay to not have a clue, just don't condone actions or a form of treatment when you don't experience or knowledge of the problem.

~Tyler

 

[atszyman]

Do any of you have any idea how to block internet access to an open wireless router to which I can't access or ask the admin? My uncle wants one of his kids to stop using the internet so much and start doing her homework, so it was his idea to cut off Net access at certain times. However, there are a lot of open access points around my uncle's neighborhood and so she's been accessing those instead. Any ideas would be appreciated.

If the SSIDs are being broadcast, especially if they are "Linksys", "Netgear" or any of the defaults, I'd go try to log into the router and turn on the neighbor's security. I wouldn't change the default log-in for router admin, but I'd shut off SSID and put some sort of encryption on it, after the second or third time this is done maybe the neighbor will finally get the point that they should lock down their router. Or maybe I'd just block the MAC address of the home computer that the girl uses on their router, it wouldn't have any effect on the neighbors but would prevent the girl from hijacking others.

 

[yellow]

I wonder if unnicing (denicing?) the WoWapp would effect it's speed at all?
Or perhaps having a worthless cronjob something spewing crap into /dev/null would eat up enough CPUs to make it unplayable?

 

[michaeldmartin]

I don't think my posts were meant to instruct in how to cure him. I saw a bunch of people saying the kid needs to "grow up" and have a "belt taken to him". Others here were getting the perception that he dropped out of school as a result of playing WoW, when that isn't the case.

As someone who can probably identify better than 99% of the forum members here, I decided to try and ask people to rethink their position and not be so harsh. We don't want to paint the wrong picture for the brother who is also probably struggling to understand his brother. No need to make matters worse by labeling him a bad or evil kid due to his condition.

~Earendil

I just read this thread; and they're treating him like a large percentage of americans treat smokers- like they're bad people. Some Americans call smokers BAD PEOPLE when they were the one to ENCOURAGE it in the first place. Just because you don't like what they're doing makes them a bad person; in fact, smokers don't even have a problem. They are just fine; hell; EINSTEIN smoked. Smoking kills people yet we don't label it bad; why would you label people who have non-lethal habits as bad people? Personally; if someone called a smoker a bad person for smoking around me; i'd beat the crap out of them.

Just my 2¢

 

[trainguy77]

Or perhaps having a worthless cronjob something spewing crap into /dev/null would eat up enough CPUs to make it unplayable?

Or a useful one like folding.

 

[mmmcheese]

Does WoW use any specific ports? Just block those ports on the router (if you want to allow some playing, you can set up a rule to allow up to X number of minutes per day).

Most routers have this ability.

 

[yellow]

Does WoW use any specific ports?

It connects to BattleNet (TCP 3724).
But it uses random high ports on the Mac outgoing, so one can only attempt to block outgoing TCP packets to 3724.

 

[JBot]

My friends roomate at school got in a huge fight with his mom cause she wanted her to pay some guy 500 bucks to play WoW under his account. I didnt actually think this was ever a big deal, but this thread got me interested, so i went to ebay to look if they actually sell characters. Sure enough they have a player trying to sell for 700+ dollars.
http://cgi.ebay.ca/World-of-Warcraf...08QQihZ012QQcategoryZ4596QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I read a while ago an article which was talking about video game widows. Its actually become a known problem, where guys dont do anything but play video games and sleep.
A few years ago this would be looked upon as a joke. haha hell who am i kidding, its still looked upon as a joke, just a little bit more serious now.

 

[yellow]

If I was that kid's mom, I'd tell him to get a goddamn job and blow his own cash however he wanted.

Its actually become a known problem, where guys dont do anything but play video games and sleep.

Oh, it's real.
Real enough so that Chinese Gold Farmers are a legit source of "slavery" and jokery.

But it's all "illegal" since technically Blizzard owns the rights to every aspect of the game and we all simply 'rent' it out. So you cannot legally sell gold/items/characters whatever. Not that it stops anyone.

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

Don't know if this was suggested.. but lower the processor performance.
System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Options -> Processor Performance: Reduced.