Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!oz.cis.ohio-state.edu!jgreely From: jgreely@oz.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: time zones Keywords: time zone setting next bugs features Message-ID: <51362@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 7 Jun 89 17:06:41 GMT References: <11408@megaron.arizona.edu> <5139@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1178@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: J Greely Distribution: usa Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 52 In article <1178@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu> dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) writes: >In article <5139@pt.cs.cmu.edu> avie@wb1.cs.cmu.edu (Avadis Tevanian) writes: >>In 1.0, Preferences will allow you to set the timezone in a MUCH more >>user-friendly way. >Does anybody besides me think that all the system-wide stuff that >preferences lets you set ought to be accessible only to super-users? YES! This is a ridiculous misfeature, and it's downright dangerous in our environment. Gratuitously changing date and time can break cron scripts, accounting information, mail delivery, and backups (go ahead, try running daily backups on a machine that's spent the week in no less than three timezones), just for a start. Allowing any user to change the boot device is simply irresponsible (how long would it take *you* to take over any NeXT you can login to? Is your answer in minutes? Did you need to do anything outside of the window system?). >I for one am tired of changing the time on my system back to what it >ought to be... The worst part is that you have no way of finding out who caused the damage. If this behavior exists in 1.0 with no way for the administrator to disable it, no NeXTs will sit on our network. One will turn into a standalone demo machine, the other will be a printer, and no more will come into the department. Personally, I think the NeXT makes a nice high-end PC, but a lousy workstation. The fact that the company persists in giving away more privileges to *every* user reinforces that impression. If they want to make a personal computer, they should quit screwing up Unix to make it fit into their model. If they want to make a workstation, they need to supplement some of the design philosophy with reality checks. Enough idle torching. How *should* it work? I don't know. How would I *like* it to work? Simple. Believe it or not, you don't set date, time, and timezone very often, certainly not on a daily basis. These should be set in NetManager, in the local configuration window, because they're not "user preferences", they're system configuration. Sure, I might prefer to work on GMT (makes it easier to sleep in 'til noon), but the rest of the network that I'm part of is much more comfortable if I'm on EDT. Being five minutes off of the other machines is bad enough. As for setting boot device, I'd love to hear an argument as to why all users need to be able to set this. My response will most likely be hysterical laughter, but I *am* interested. Extra credit if your explanation holds up in a heterogenous network where the NeXT is to be trusted for NFS, mail, YP, and rlogin. -=- J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)