Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!haven!ncifcrf!nlm-mcs!adm!smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Autologout of unused terminals Message-ID: <9043@smoke.BRL.MIL> Date: 2 Dec 88 15:26:06 GMT References: <201.nlunix6@orcenl.uucp> <8978@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2682@sultra.UUCP> <9012@smoke.BRL.MIL> <213.nlunix6@orcenl.uucp> <9032@smoke.BRL.MIL><1086@entropy.ms.washington.edu> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 19 In article <1086@entropy.ms.washington.edu> charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer) writes: >UNIX doesn't just talk to dumb terminals anymore. Maybe "Autologout >of unused terminals" is a bad idea. If implemented, it should come >with an easy way that any user can defeat it, and then what's the >point? Yes, all of that is relevant. The point of a user-defeatable autologout is that sophisticated users can avoid being bothered by this misfeature, while naive users would have this system-administrator-determined policy automatically enforced "for their own protection". Someone else commented about the "user hostile" responses. It is not the user that I'm hostile to; it's the system administrator who thinks he knows how I ought to be using the system and tried to force me to conform to his mistaken usage model. By all means protect naive users if you and they both agree that they need to be protected, but don't try to protect the knowledgeable user against using the resources in perfectly reasonable, although unusual, ways. Learn what UNIX was all about!