On Tue, 2005-03-01 at 20:19 -0600, Brian Fahrlander wrote: > On Tue, 2005-03-01 at 20:02 -0600, Thomas Cameron wrote: > > > I am really not sure that PAM is the way to do this. I would think it > > would be a lot easier to just use any of the shopping cart packages out > > there and a pretty simple session timer. > > No? I'd planned a lookup from the card to an LDAP database to work > out which user it is. I've seen the other system; they seem kinda > thrown together. And most of them have schemes to take dollars and > cents, but they seem to be pay-ahead, and shutting off the user at some > point is intrusive and requires an infrastructure that's not built in. > > Wait...'shopping cart'? Are we both talking about Internet Cafe's? > That's what this is. I will preface this by saying that the eCommerce stuff I've been involved in has been pretty much the traditional "buy a stuffed animal for my neice" kind of stuff, so I might not be the best person for this, but here goes: It strikes me that you are selling things, just like any other eCommerce shop out there. It just so happens that the things you are selling are units of time. So it seems to me that all you need is a counter to tell you how many units of time the user has used, and then you calculate how much to charge their card. There are about a bazillion eCommerce shopping cart programs out there, some F/OSS, some commercial. IIRC Verisign has a really good shopping cart program that is fairly cheap. So when your victim, er, customer comes in, you put them at a terminal and let them surf to their little heart's content. Then when they are done, you have some sort of simple web interface that tells you how long they were logged in. You charge for the number of units (hours, quarter hours, minutes, whatever you choose). Swipe or enter the card, your shopping cart transmits it all, and you're done. I get the feeling that bringing PAM into it is going to add layers of complexity that don't need to be there. Am I on the same page as you? TC
