On Feb 16, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Russell Martin wrote:
I have three kids and want to be able to allow them to log on to
the computer only between certain times of the day and only be
able to be on the computer for a certain amount of time each day. ...
I'm not in front of a mac at the moment, so I can't look at them
and see what they are and if they satisfy all of the items you
mentioned below, but definitely worth taking a look at before you
dive into trying to create something with AppleScript Studio.
Tiger's parental controls concern themselves solely with *what* you
can do with an application -- people you can iChat with, for example
-- not *when*. However, Leopard will add time limits such as Mr.
Martin describes. Quoting from <http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/
aug/07leopard.html>:
"Additional features in Leopard include ... new parental controls
including curfews, time limits and remote administration ..."
So...can an AppleScript Studio application do the following:
1. Open automatically when a user logs on, run in the background,
and be untouchable by the user (except for the administrator).
2. Upon starting, check to see if the user is allowed to be on at
that time (by referencing parameters set by the administrator). If
the user isn't allowed to be on, automatically log the user out.
3. If the user is allowed to be on, start a timer. When the timer
reaches a set time, display a window telling the user he has X
minutes left. At the end of the allotted time, automatically log
the user off.
4. Keep track of the time the user is logged on each day, so that
the administrator can say, "X user can have 75 minutes a day in
two or more sessions with no session lasting longer than 45 minutes."
Yes, except for the bit about being untouchable, which is, er, kind
of important. It's not possible to write a truly untouchable
application in AppleScript, though you could get it to the point
where they'd need to know a Terminal command to kill it. Depending
on your needs, that might be sufficient. On the other hand, you
could just wait for Leopard and have the system do it for you.
--Chris Nebel
AppleScript Engineering
P.S.: If the main problem application happens to be World of
Warcraft, WoW has its own parental controls -- look under the Account
section on <https://www.worldofwarcraft.com> -- but they seem to only
allow time-of-day scheduling, not time quotas.
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