in reply to How should a timed session be implemented?

I've got no technical advice for you, but just about every phone company or whatever, if they charge for things on a time basis, have some notation of what the "to-the-nearest" unit is.

For example, one phone company here in Australia advertised that its phone plan calculated calls to the nearest second, not to the nearest minute, as with a competitor.

So if you're going to do what you outline above, I think you owe it to your customers to spell out that the service is "calculated in increments of ten minutes" or "to the nearest ten minutes" or whatever.

For instance if I log on six times today, for one minute each, you're going to charge me for an hour. I might be unhappy about that...



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  • Comment on Re: How should a timed session be implemented?

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Re: Re: How should a timed session be implemented?
by BUU (Prior) on May 06, 2004 at 07:05 UTC
    I don't think "to the nearest 10 minutes" is what he's getting at all. I assume, from what he says, if you properly "log out" then it'll track exactly how much time you've spent. What he's talking about is guessing when people have actually left, but haven't logged out. His idea was a 10 minute penalty.
      Well it's ambiguous if you put it like that. He never said "there's a logout procedure people are expected to follow" and even if there is, then it's *that* that he needs to spell out to users.


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