New Parental Controls Limit Xbox Time 327
An anonymous reader writes "As part of a new marketing blitz to promote the Xbox 360 as a "family friendly" video game console, Microsoft on Wednesday rolled out a new feature called Family Timer, which will show up in the Family Settings Screen.
The Timer will let parents limit the number of hours their kids can play the Xbox on a daily or weekly basis. When the time limit is reached, the console will automatically shut off, ostensibly after saving the game."
Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cunning Plan (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Because they don't work (Score:2, Informative)
So making use of technology to limit the amount of gameplay makes YOU as a parent a failure???
I suspect you live in a fairly rosy-colored world or have some helpful medications, because the majority of your comments I think are so ridiculous it doesn't bear consideration.
Yes in a perfect world our children would only push the envelope a little bit.
Yes in a perfect world our children would always be thankful for vigilant guidance.
Yes in a perfect world our children would always respect our authority and value the parents accumulated wisdom.
What the hell planet do you live in? "your only hope of success is to stop the kid from finding out. It usually works." CRAP! If you have kids in school, especially high school, THEY ARE discussing, behaving, and doing things that would horrify you as a parent.
The kids now have SO MANY friends who KNOW everything, and they are convinced we as parents know nothing, even though we get to routinely say "we did try to tell but you just don't want to listen!"
Couple with the tremendous peer pressure now in schools, the falling standards of education, and the minority groups educating us adults that we must "reason" with the teenagers! Reason??? Sometimes the kids make it clear they can barely tolerate parents, and this is fairly universal I've found. and YES, we HAVE had homeless kids living with us, and numerous kdis staying over, and vast amounts of volunteer work at school and kinder, etc, etc.
I think your attitude is so narrow minded I can't believe based on your remarks you have a well adjusted relationship with your kids, especially if they are teens. They really do turn to animals when they hit the teens!
Things are considerable different now than when we grew up, when we were kids we had the sense to at least pretend to respect our elders as we soon got a backhander if we didn't!
If the kids now want to do something, they feel it is their God given right, no matter what it is, and there's been plenty of adult groups whispering in their ears over the years, "mum or dad smacked you just because you swore at nanna?, you should report them to child welfare, they'll fix them up and you'll never have to do anything again cause mum and dad will be too scared!"
Again, WOW!
Re:How about for PCs? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So... (Score:2, Informative)
Not a lot (for saving games/profiles, for example) but plenty enough to save configuration information. Wireless network setup and so on (and so, thus, I would imagine would be parental controls info) are kept just fine when swapping hard drives, while there's no memory card in any of the slots.
I've seen/done this myself (swapping hard drives, etc). I have no idea of the precise quantity and nature of the storage that's used, but it's certainly some form of flash or flash-like storage.
Re:So... (Score:2, Informative)