Bill Gates keeps his kids off the computer

[Alpine]

Daily rations for Pheebs and Raz


SOFTWARE KING of the beknighted Billy Gates III has revealed that he stops his 10 year-old daughter from using her computer for more than 45 minutes each day.


Bill told Reuters that he had a devil of a job getting Phoebe interested in the Web until this year, when she started at a school where the students use tablet computers for almost everything.

Then she started getting addicted to a gardening game on the Xbox 360 called Viva Pinata and was starting to spend three hours on it.

In the end Bill decided that longer 45 minutes on an Xbox 360 was too long, after all it might overheat.

As far as Phoebe's computer was concerned, Bill set the Vista controls to max so that it controlled the websites she visited, with an audit log to record sites she visited and whom she had been Instant Messaging. Some of our moles in Redmond may have been have rumbled.

Bill also set some limits on his son, Rory, who asked if that meant he was going to have dad controlling his computing experience for the rest of his life.

Apparently, Bill told Rory when he left home he could set his own screen limits. Although with Vole's Windows Genuine Advantage, both kids will probably have Dad controlling their use of their computer until they drop. Unless they switch to Linux, but that might require a word with Uncle Vista and that is enough to scare any child.

The INQuirer