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From: tif@doorstop.austin.ibm.com (Paul Chamberlain)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: Login vs. typeahead
Message-ID: <4235@awdprime.UUCP>
Date: 14 Nov 90 17:14:33 GMT
References: <1990Nov13.182623.18967@smsc.sony.com> <1990Nov13.233329.8736@athena.mit.edu>
Sender: news@awdprime.UUCP
Reply-To: tif@doorstop.austin.ibm.com (Paul Chamberlain)
Organization: IBM AWD, Austin, TX
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jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
>  The flushing of typeahead is meant to prevent people from doing exactly what
>you describe.  Allowing the first characters of your password to be displayed
>on the screen as you type them is a Bad Idea (tm) ...

What do you think of turning off echo at the "login:" prompt and not
flushing characters at the passwd prompt.  It would be a very slight
inconvenience to those who depend on seeing echo when they type their
user name but it can't make much difference since they already type
their password without looking.

You might adopt the habit (as I do anyway) of pressing enter
before you type your login name if there is a possibility of
unseen keystrokes preceding your arrival.

Paul Chamberlain | I do NOT represent IBM.     tif@doorstop, sc30661 at ausvm6
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