[LEAPSECS] Synchronization requirement

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Wed Nov 12 12:36:41 EST 2008


In message <19DFB33ADA1F4F8482FE40479067637F at grendel>, "Gerard Ashton" writes:


>There have been requests on this list to gather requirements

>for civil time keeping. I would like to suggest one. Anyone

>who has ever participated in an EBay auction will have noticed

>that all the savvy bidders wait to the very end to submit bids.


Savy auction houses deal with such behaviour by not closing the
auction "while bidding is ongoing", typically implementing a
30 second wait after the most recent bid before closing.

Why eBay doesn't have always been a mystery to me, people would
statistically get better prices if they did.

Poul-Henning

--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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