Adopey.150 net.followup utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!dopey.smb Thu Mar 11 22:17:16 1982 Re: On telling people ont to crack security I agree with Mark that 600 is a good default mode for a tty; I tend to keep mesg turned off simply because I don't like rude, impatient folk writing to me instead of using mail. (We have a version of biff that uses the group execute bit to indicate bell-only notification; much nicer when you're busy beating on a wraith at 300 baud.) If this is adopted, there is the problem of tracking down and fixing those programs that turn off 'write' themselves; 'pr' and 'nroff' come to mind. I don't think that trying to fix up mail will work, though; there are too many other ways to get funny characters to a terminal. Some examples that come to mind immediately are titles of news items, file names in /tmp, .plan or .project files, etc. (That first one is intriguing; for all you know, you won't be able to read the item after this one if you're on an HP or ADM-3A terminal....) And we'll discount beneficial uses of funny characters in letters; for example, since the C.S. dept. here has standardized on HP terminals, I sometimes turn on display enhancements in a letter to *really* emphasize something (I resisted doing it there....). ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.