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Topic: Media Control 2 (Read 2254 times)
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Zanthius
Enlightened
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Posts: 941
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I have started a new open source project. Anybody want to help me?
Not all games are necessarily equally advantageous for kids to play. Some games are highly educational, while other games are only about entertainment. This is a program for parents to control how much time their kids are spending on different games. Parents can choose a weekly budget for each steam game, according to how advantageous or disadvantageous they think the game is for their kids.
https://github.com/ZanthiusOfArchania/media-control-2
I have been experimenting a little:
ps -x | grep steamapps/common | grep Sl+
gives me:
11630 tty2 Sl+ 0:16 /home/zanthius/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/The Talos Principle/Bin/Talos
From this line, the name of the game can easily be identified. I can just use regex to find what is between steamapps/common/ and /Bin
I can use crontab to do this every minute, and register the name of the game with a timestamp in a database.
If the game has been active for longer than the weekly budget allows, I just need to get the PID of the game:
ps -x | grep steamapps/common | grep Sl+ | awk '{print $1}'
which gives me:
11630
and to terminate the game, I just write:
kill 11630
with a message to the kid:
echo "Sorry, you have exceeded your weekly budget for this game. Wait until next Monday for more hours, or ask your parents for chores you can do to get bonus hours."
I am thinking that maybe this program also could incorporate video streaming services, such as Netflix and Kurzgesagt. Since Kurzgesagt contains much more educational media than Netflix, it would be reasonable to give a higher budget to Kurzgesagt than to Netflix. Or if you think certain programs at Netflix are educational, you could increase the budget just for them.
Since that program would be controlling both games and streaming services, maybe it could be called "Media Control 2", inspired by the name "Star Control 2".
Maybe they kids could even register chores in the program themselves, and when the parents approved that they had done the chores, they would get bonus hours they could use to play/watch whatever they want.
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« Last Edit: January 02, 2018, 03:07:36 pm by Zanthius »
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Julie.chan
*Many bubbles*
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Posts: 130
Sharing is good.
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The name suggests that there is a "Media Control 1", plus it's really generic and sounds like the name of a sound mixer.
I don't think any parents would have the patience for this sort of thing, anyway. And besides, what's there to stop little Johnny from just downloading new games? There's literally thousands to choose from and many of them can be "run in place". Some even run in a Web browser, so how are you going to stop that?
Besides, I think the big vice today isn't too much video games, it's spending too much time on Internet forums, social media, YouTube, etc.
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Zanthius
Enlightened
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Posts: 941
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I don't think any parents would have the patience for this sort of thing, anyway. And besides, what's there to stop little Johnny from just downloading new games? There's literally thousands to choose from and many of them can be "run in place". Some even run in a Web browser, so how are you going to stop that?
For steam games it wouldn't be a problem with new games, since they would be detected in the same way. And if the game doesn't have a budget in the database, it could just send a message to the parents saying that their children are playing a new game which hasn't been evaluated. Other games would be somewhat more difficult to deal with.
Besides, I think the big vice today isn't too much video games, it's spending too much time on Internet forums, social media, YouTube, etc.
This just makes me think that maybe we need a new operational system for kids that blocks most of Internet. But I think adults are just as bad as children with these things. I am probably also spending too much time in Internet forums (mostly this one). Smartphones are more addictive than most drugs.
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« Last Edit: January 02, 2018, 07:49:45 pm by Zanthius »
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Zanthius
Enlightened
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Posts: 941
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So... anybody want to help me with this? I am a chemist, not a software engineer....
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« Last Edit: January 17, 2018, 05:39:39 pm by Zanthius »
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