The Following is a blog piece copied without permission from 'Say yes to no' which has as a mantra an idea I am 100% behind. As it turns out the site itself mostly just reiterates the obvious that parents should lay down rules, and that video games are kid-harming evilness, despite the fact that it is the parents who are letting them play it. If I give a kid a lump of drugs to take and permission to do so in my house, I am not about to harp on how the drugs did it when the kid is screwed up. It is a shame this is the exact thing people try and do when it comes to the various media the children consume.
So I can say you've been informed on what I am commenting on, here is the blog post originally found here
My comments follow bellow PLEASE read them they are the main reason I posted this!
***BEGIN ENEMY COMMUNICATIONS***
Video Game Addiction, What to Do?
“How do I keep my kids from being addicted to video games?”
This is a frequent question at any talk I give. Video games are a powerful, addictive technology that sits right in the middle of our homes, often right in our kids’ bedrooms. Are video games fun? Sure. Can kids learn anything from them? They are learning every time they push the "on" button.
“What should I do? My kids love video games. They could play for hours.” Video games are as common for kids today as TV was for the previous generation.
As parents we teach and guide our kids. We need to pay attention to and guide our kids to a healthy use of technology and media. Most games are fun, teach positive skills like problem solving, and even get kids moving instead of just staring at a screen. How do we make sure that video games are healthy recreation for kids and don’t turn into the horror story of addiction and violent game playing? Some kids (and unfortunately a growing number) get so involved with gaming that it takes on all the traits of an addiction.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company’s Fifth Estate is Canada’s version of 60 Minutes. Last Friday they ran a forty minute documentary on video game addiction following the tragic story of Brandon Crisp, a young boy whose obsession with video games eventually led to his death. I was interviewed as the expert.
This tragic story reminds us that we need to pay attention, be the parent and set the rules for video game use:
(Edit: if you have to, read the post through the link for these rules, its just translates to be a parent.. Except this one!)
8. Children should be playing in the 3-D world as much as possible. Keep the video game playing in balance. Children’s brains need experiential, 3-D play as much as possible.
(KJ - I think he would have come out better saying REAL SPACE or real world. What happens when video games go 3D? he'll look like he is saying something he didn't intend!)
Check out our resources on video game addiction at the National Institute on Media and the Family.
Many parents have told me, “If I only knew what was in the game, I never would have bought it.” Check out game content before you buy. It’s hard to rewind, once a child is into a game.
Dr. Dave
Monday, March 09, 2009
***END ENEMY COMMUNICATIONS***
He is right. Parents should police their children and its a crying shame people are too mentally challenged to do so these days.
BUT HERE IS WHERE SO MANY PEOPLE GET IT SO VERY WRONG.
As Ghost Tiger and I have discussed many a time, addiction should be made into a blanket illness in the DSM (the standard book of diagnoses).
The current situation requires new studies and investigations into whatever fad is happening that year to see if its 'addictive'. This however, is a waste of resources since a wide and varied list of things that are enjoyable are addictive, signifying that it is insanity to try and catalog everything while the issue is the brain and its handling of pleasure.
One can argue games should be treated the same as drugs because studies have shown brain chemistry goes through a response during game playing. This ignores the fact that EVERY action one goes through over the course of the day, and indeed, over the course of their lives, effects their brain chemistry. It ignores the fundamental structure of the brain and how it works. Even when one narrows the brain chemistry reaction to the pleasure responses, then its addiction to the pleasure responses, NOT to whatever is triggering it in the individual.
If I see and comment on someone showing signs of addiction, I shouldn't have to wait for the DSM to recognize it after studies have been done. The medical profession owes us (not the pharmaceutical industry) a more sane approach to this situation.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
P2P EATS BABIES, LAUNCHES MISSLES TOO!
Ok this isn't politcal in nature but it does need some rational thinking..
Recently a news piece is making the rounds about how data on marine one was leaked to iran, marine one being the american president's helicopter. The data covered the plane's layout its wiring, and its missle defense system.
The article, and the company responsible for the "discovery" of the data leak, refuse to mention what specific p2p network was used. Heres reuters take but there are many more hits for the story.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0242383320090302
the company, called http://www.tiversa.com/ has made a niche market for themselves as the security experts on all matters P2P. This self imposed task, by which they hope to get rich I might add, is accomplished by monitoring peer to peer networks using monitoring software and then notifying people who have had content distributed in an infringing manner that it would have been easy to stop this behaviour if only they had hired them in the first place.
To scare companies into hiring them they like to lump all P2P together in the ability to give access of your entire hard-drive to the whole of the internet.
As it turns out this is false. By using weasel words like "most" and "virtualy" they are able to change the facts into this nightmare scenerio that requires all P2P to be stopped and banned on most if not all people's computer wether home or at work.
they are not the only ones though. Way back in May 07, 2008 Dan Kaplan wrote an article about McAfee announcing how they discovered "infection impacting hundreds of thousands of users whose machines contain poisoned media files" (I only mention the old article because it was featured beside the article on Obama's 'copter as related topic)
I implore you to not get your sole opinion from the article I am about to link to, I am only linking to it so that you have a refrence for the rest of my post.
http://www.scmagazineus.com/Fake-P2P-media-files-lead-to-adware-attack/article/109894/
media files do not harm your computer - its when you are dumb enough to click on a link or executable that the poster of the BROKEN file tells you will make the file work.
the article DOES go on to make that point.. albeit vaguely. But worst of all is when Minaxi Gupta, assistant professor of computer science at the Indiana University in Bloomington states:
“The only thing you can do [to protect yourself] is not join a P2P network and not download anything, or you can scan it to anti-virus when you get something,” she said. “Most people don't do that.”
So here are the facts.
Its when your employers are using OUTDATED P2P software instead of Torrents, that the contents of your hard-drive can be served on platter so to speak to the rest of the world. With torrents, you only serve what you create a torrent file for so since you have to select the contents you are sure to witness what is going into it. It was Kazaa and Napster and their spin-offs that had a "pick a directory" mentality to what data of yours to serve.
so. As a company, inforce a scan everything for viri policy, a policy against any codecs, dlls, or un-scanned executables being installed by anyone other than your company's I.T. guy and you will be fine.
Its when you freak out over the three letters P2P that you might miss out on some usefull collabrative software that just so happens to fall under that header. Also if you follow the above ideas you can save yourself the trouble of hiring a firm whose sole job is to spook you into hiring them.
Recently a news piece is making the rounds about how data on marine one was leaked to iran, marine one being the american president's helicopter. The data covered the plane's layout its wiring, and its missle defense system.
The article, and the company responsible for the "discovery" of the data leak, refuse to mention what specific p2p network was used. Heres reuters take but there are many more hits for the story.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0242383320090302
the company, called http://www.tiversa.com/ has made a niche market for themselves as the security experts on all matters P2P. This self imposed task, by which they hope to get rich I might add, is accomplished by monitoring peer to peer networks using monitoring software and then notifying people who have had content distributed in an infringing manner that it would have been easy to stop this behaviour if only they had hired them in the first place.
To scare companies into hiring them they like to lump all P2P together in the ability to give access of your entire hard-drive to the whole of the internet.
As it turns out this is false. By using weasel words like "most" and "virtualy" they are able to change the facts into this nightmare scenerio that requires all P2P to be stopped and banned on most if not all people's computer wether home or at work.
they are not the only ones though. Way back in May 07, 2008 Dan Kaplan wrote an article about McAfee announcing how they discovered "infection impacting hundreds of thousands of users whose machines contain poisoned media files" (I only mention the old article because it was featured beside the article on Obama's 'copter as related topic)
I implore you to not get your sole opinion from the article I am about to link to, I am only linking to it so that you have a refrence for the rest of my post.
http://www.scmagazineus.com/Fake-P2P-media-files-lead-to-adware-attack/article/109894/
media files do not harm your computer - its when you are dumb enough to click on a link or executable that the poster of the BROKEN file tells you will make the file work.
the article DOES go on to make that point.. albeit vaguely. But worst of all is when Minaxi Gupta, assistant professor of computer science at the Indiana University in Bloomington states:
“The only thing you can do [to protect yourself] is not join a P2P network and not download anything, or you can scan it to anti-virus when you get something,” she said. “Most people don't do that.”
So here are the facts.
Its when your employers are using OUTDATED P2P software instead of Torrents, that the contents of your hard-drive can be served on platter so to speak to the rest of the world. With torrents, you only serve what you create a torrent file for so since you have to select the contents you are sure to witness what is going into it. It was Kazaa and Napster and their spin-offs that had a "pick a directory" mentality to what data of yours to serve.
so. As a company, inforce a scan everything for viri policy, a policy against any codecs, dlls, or un-scanned executables being installed by anyone other than your company's I.T. guy and you will be fine.
Its when you freak out over the three letters P2P that you might miss out on some usefull collabrative software that just so happens to fall under that header. Also if you follow the above ideas you can save yourself the trouble of hiring a firm whose sole job is to spook you into hiring them.
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