Screening 'Windows'

For years, Microsoft asked consumers, "Where do you want to go today?"

With the launch of the company's new Windows Vista operating system next year, the software company will turn that old slogan on its head, essentially asking parents, "Where do you not want your kids to go today?"

In Vista, the world's largest software company will, for the first time, emphasise parental controls.

Parents will be able to restrict online activities, limit computer use, control the types of games played and block the use of specific programmes. In addition, Vista will monitor where children go online and track some activities.

"For the very first time, we are including in the operating system family settings, which allow parents to control everything from the amount of time a child spends on the computer to the games they play and the content they have access to," said David George, Microsoft's director of family safe computing business development.

Including the controls in the operating system accomplishes two things not easily done with add-on parental control software programmes available today, George and others say.

Because the controls are built in, they can be easily activated by parents, he said. In addition, because they are part of the operating system, they can be tough enough to be effective restrictions for children who often know more about technology than their parents.

"These controls are very hard to circumvent," George said. "If your child is a world-class hacker, you might have a problem. But in 99.9 per cent of the cases, the children are going to have to have access to their parents' passwords to circumvent the controls."

Vista will allow parents to restrict a child's Web activities by age or by selecting from among 14 categories, such as pornography, tobacco and alcohol. Vista will check the content of Web pages as well as checking with a Microsoft database that has categorised millions of Web pages. The Web restrictions also control what children are allowed to download.

Parents can use the system to control what days, times and for how long a child can use the computer, which could put an end to teens hiding a laptop under the covers to send instant messages until the wee hours of the morning. Computer games can be controlled by Entertainment Software Rating Board ratings, or by regulating specific content such as language, violence or sexuality. Games can also be blocked or approved by title.

The new operating system will also allow parents to block specific programmes, such as peer-to-peer file-sharing programmes that raise ethical questions along with security risks and in some cases lawsuits against parents.

Vista will log activity reports of how much time children spend online and what they do while there, including information about who they e-mail.

While the company's marketing divisions tout the effectiveness of the parental controls, articles on the Microsoft website acknowledge that older children are already skilled in avoiding filters and restrictions at school and public libraries. Some students have already begun tossing around strategies for getting around the new controls. The new parental controls are a supplement to, not a substitute for, parental involvement, the Microsoft site says.