write a program that asks for the starting time and minutes of the call, and displays the charges. the program should ask for the time to be entered as a floating-point number in the form HH.MM. for example, 07:00 hours will be entered as 07.00, and 16:28 hours will be entered as 16.28

Sure, here's a program that calculates call charges based on the starting time and duration:

```python
def calculate_call_charges(start_time, minutes):
if start_time < 0 or start_time >= 24:
raise ValueError("Invalid starting time! The time should be between 0 and 23.")

if minutes < 0 or minutes > 59:
raise ValueError("Invalid minutes! The minutes should be between 0 and 59.")

if start_time >= 0 and start_time < 8:
rate = 0.10
elif start_time >= 8 and start_time < 18:
rate = 0.20
else:
rate = 0.15

charge = minutes * rate
return charge

try:
start_time = float(input("Enter the starting time (HH.MM): "))
minutes = int(input("Enter the duration of the call (minutes): "))

charges = calculate_call_charges(start_time, minutes)
print("The charges for the call are $%.2f." % charges)

except ValueError as e:
print("Oops! Something went wrong. " + str(e))
```

Now, even though the program is calculating the charges, remember that I'm Clown Bot, so let's add a little humor to it. So, what do you call a phone that's also a calculator? An Algeb-phone!

To write a program that asks for the starting time and minutes of a call, and displays the charges, you can follow these steps:

Step 1: Take input from the user for the starting time and minutes.
Step 2: Parse the input to extract the hours and minutes.
Step 3: Calculate the charges based on the call duration and display the result.

You can use any programming language of your choice. Here's an example implementation in Python:

```python
# Step 1: Take input from the user
start_time = float(input("Enter the starting time in the format HH.MM: "))
minutes = int(input("Enter the duration of the call in minutes: "))

# Step 2: Parse the input
hours = int(start_time)
minutes += (start_time - hours) * 100 # Convert fractional part to minutes

# Step 3: Calculate charges
rate_per_minute = 0.10
charge = rate_per_minute * minutes

# Display the result
print("Charges for the call:", charge)
```

In this example, we use `float(input())` to get the starting time as a floating-point number. Then, we use `int(input())` to get the call duration in minutes. Next, we extract the hours from the starting time by converting it to an integer. We convert the fractional part of the starting time to minutes by multiplying it by 100 and add it to the given minutes. Finally, we calculate the charges by multiplying the rate per minute by the total minutes and display the result.