Why does it have to be accurate? the mileage is a great example on inaccuracy, in 1.6 now if I move my mouse 12cm “IRL”, whatpulse tells me I’ve moved it almost 3 meters. The old version counted the cursor on the screen, thus not actually count mileage of my mouse.
So why does “time spent on keyboard” be so accurate, me personally would gladly see an estimate of my time spent using my keyboard and mouse. Or else with your way of thinking the mileage should be removed too, because of inaccuracy 
Also may i point out, i don’t think they are going to dismiss the idea just because you disagree countless times Shawn. 
I think Quarzi wins 
It’s more accurate than counting how long you’ve been at your computer would be, and it still requires some sort of physical interaction from you in order to count.
You could simply tape down a key and let it repeat over and over in notepad while you’re sleeping so whatpulse still ‘thinks’ you’re at the computer holding down that key, or referring to previous posts, you could leave a fullscreen movie up and just have it paused, or have it repeat over again when the movie finishes.
You are really finding a away to stop this idea from being developed aren’t you, you don’t even realize if it does get implemented you don’t have to use it so stop complaining.
I’m just pointing out how inaccurate it’s going to be for the people that do use it, and how easy it’s going to be to cheat on it. Is there really a point in developing something that everyone can easily cheat on? I think not. I’d rather see more development go into the Linux client than this.
The problem (I think) is that Windows, Linux and Mac OSX have to be developed by different persons, if not one person knows his way around all of them, so when the Windows coder is finished, he has nothing to do because he don’t know the programming that needs to be done in any other OS?
But as I also said before, ofc the main resources should go into making all the current things work.
And btw Beardie27. It’s probably better if we discuss every possibility with this now rather than later, both negative and positive feedback about the idea.
In the end it’s all up to bobL, Wasted and the other admins to implant the idea or not.
Edit: Oh, and if someone really want’s to cheat and have some imagination, it’s easy to build a machine out of Lego, lolipops, metal or whatever that taps one key for you all day long. Or you can just bang on your keyboard (yes, interaction needed ofc), but it’s not “really” counting anything you write, it’s just jibberish.
Sorry i was just getting annoyed by you too going back and forth about the same argument.
OK then we could have it so that if a single key has been down held down there is way to stop recording, to stop people holding keys down. And whilst watching a movie it wouldn’t be recording because it only stops and starts when you click keys and move the mouse.
What if you’re playing a game that requires holding down a key? Most racing games you’re required to hold a key down to gain speed.
And when do you turn? do you plan to go straight ahead all the time?
True you would not have to hold down one key forever, pressing other keys would show you are using the computer. And holding down multiple keys would be stop the recording, so it could be programmed that if a key is being held down for longer than 3-4 minutes with out any other keys being pressed the recording stops. Until another key is pressed.
Or even shorter, if you press a key it starts counting 5 sec (or whatever seems good), if no new key have been pressed or the mouse have been used it stops recording after those 5 sec.
Finding out who puts the book down on the keyboard and who is actually typing is pretty straightforward. Remember that you can’t accumulate keystrokes this way, either. One simple possibility is to track the time of the last keystroke or mouse click, but this gets to be resource-intensive. Now, instead of having a mere counter, you’ve got to keep track of times and such.
Also, I’m actually pretty glad that this back & forth is here - this is how great ideas are made. Just make sure you’re not re-stating the same thing over and over again, and make sure you’re actually listening to each other 
Well i just thought of a more unusual thing time measuring variable. computer idle time. Maybe we could have Whatpulse measure the amount of time you screensaver is on? Now i was thinking thought some people people might think its pretty pointless, some might not.
Now you may be thinking that people are just going to put there screensaver on, on purpose, but they can’t thats the beauty of it, because if they do they can’t us the Computer.
Hence the computer is idle.
Just a thought (maybe pointless)
What about those of us who dont use screensavers?
[quote=Quarzi]Then we take an other example.
The windows screensaver, how does it know when I’m watching a movie either in fullscreen or a window and don’t turn my screensaver on?
[/quote]
Thats easy There is a registry setting being set or process that is notified by your media player or another program that suppresses the launch of the screen saver. Some programs even allow this to be adjusted.
But it’s not very accurate. It’s not always right. On my machines sometimes the screensaver won’t go on for an hour even when set to 5 minutes and no movie playing.
The whole uptime thing… I think there was/is a project called “project uptime” for exactly that thing.
if you have linux or mac osx just type “uptime” on the shell and see the current uptime of your system. But be aware, it just shows the realtime passed since the last boot. On my macbook it shows 33 days, but thats because I only put it to standby when I’m not using it.
On windows there is an uptime.exe somewhere. I think it had to be copied from the CD because it’s not installed by default, does about the same (didn’t test that standby thing though) and a bit more: you can see a bit like a backlog of all (re)boots and the cause of them (crashes or manually triggered) for some time.
Windows works the same as Mac and Linux then it comes to uptime. Put it into standby, it’ll keep on counting when it resumes etcetc.
There WAS a Project Uptime, but it ended two years ago. If there’s going to be anything added into WP, it’ll be pure uptime.
I think I was registred on Project uptime once, but about 6 month later everything went down :-(, haven’t bothered to get something new like it.
If I want to check my uptime I just double click on my local network icon in tray and woila, there it is :-P.
On my server however I have a php script that checks how long my c:\pagefile.sys have been up and running, then I can just go to my homepage and check for that computer
So is adding an uptime option into Whatpulse possible? or just inpractical. The idea of having it just record roughly around the amount of time ou type for and move your mouse sounds, good.
I think everyone is agreed on the idea of having it recording whilst whatpulse is open all the time, to be a bad one, people would just leave the pcs/macs on forever just to record time.
Are there any other ways of recording this? or is this to be scrapped and other crazy idea taken up.
Like having Whatpulse record what number keys you click, and adding each number to a bigger number to see, like if i click 1 them 2 i would be on 3, then if i click 1 again i go to 4 etc.
The programs you would be competing against with this is Wakoopa especially, and anything gaming based, Xfire.
[quote=Beardie27]So is adding an uptime option into Whatpulse possible? or just inpractical. The idea of having it just record roughly around the amount of time ou type for and move your mouse sounds, good.
I think everyone is agreed on the idea of having it recording whilst whatpulse is open all the time, to be a bad one, people would just leave the pcs/macs on forever just to record time.
Are there any other ways of recording this? or is this to be scrapped and other crazy idea taken up.
Like having Whatpulse record what number keys you click, and adding each number to a bigger number to see, like if i click 1 them 2 i would be on 3, then if i click 1 again i go to 4 etc.[/quote]
Oh, I’m sure it’s possible - I think the questions are: