manipulating checkboxes

I want to put something on a website where a user can click a check box and that box will stay checked and won't be able to be unchecked unless that specific computer or person unchecks it. For example, there are ten check boxes that are different items. Anyone can claim any number of those items, but once they're claimed no one else can claim them and only the user who claimed it can un-claim it. I really don't have much knowledge of PHP, but I figure i'll have to use cookies or something to know which user can un-check certain boxes.
Thanks for any help. :)

where do you save your list of users?

1. anywayz, assuming you got your username saved in a cookie, you could assign hidden fields to each checkbox (its all up to you how to implement that) and then whenever a user clicks on a checkbox, check the corresponding hidden input field against the current user saved in the cookie using javascript.

2. you could do a submit everytime a user clicks the checkbox, and have php in the server side do the checking for you. :) this way you don't need to show which user has access to which checkbox. :)

3. some other better ideas are floating about, for now i only have the above two. :)

But I want to do it without having actual users. Sorry if I didn't make that clear enough. When I said user, I meant the person on a computer

Use their IP instead then, to get it with php it would be $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]

Disabling the checkbox is possible. But you also need a server side flag to assertain wherther or not a partiular userr has ticked the box. Presumably it will be disabled for all other uses except the one who checked it.

How are you planning on storing this information? Database, files?