Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Preventing Idle in telnet
Message-ID: <26747@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 27 Sep 90 23:33:38 GMT
References: <24593@adm.BRL.MIL> <2239@charon.cwi.nl>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 15

In article <2239@charon.cwi.nl> dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:
>This is all based on a few assumptions that are all wrong ....

I agree.  I have been forced to implement `idle timeouts' occasionally,
and I have always made them easy to defeat, because they are too often
wrong.  Even if you make them difficult to defeat, people will eventually
defeat them---and then those `legitimately idle' will be doing extra
work and those `illegitimately idle' will not be caught anyway.

(What we have now on the CS department machines is an `idle warning'
mail-generator that scans dialups and sends mail only.  If someone is
perpetually idle we use administrative action to fix it.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 405 2750)
Domain:	chris@cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris