[12067] in Hotline Meeting
abuse of athena
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (happyjak@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Tue Dec 1 22:17:07 1992
From: happyjak@Athena.MIT.EDU
To: hotline@Athena.MIT.EDU, ops@Athena.MIT.EDU
Cc: marc@Athena.MIT.EDU, happyjak@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 01 Dec 92 22:16:49 EST
Hi. I'm sending this letter because while I've been working in this
cluster this evening, I've witnessed what I believe is an abuse of
athena.
About 9:30, I was busy on my paper, when a girl came up to the machine
next to me (m4-035-11) and logged in. When her login was finished,
she screensaved. She then went over to another machine (m4-035-18),
where she was already logged in, and continued work on that machine.
After she had not returned to the machine next to me for over five
minutes, I fingered at the machine, and then used zlocate to find out
where she was logged on.
She (username: gloro) was logged on to three machines, m4-035-11, 15,
and 18, and had been idle for at least ten minutes on both machines.
During these ten minutes, by the way, at least three people came into
the cluster looking for a machine to log into, and one person was
standing, talking to a friend, waiting for a machine to free up for
use. This aroused my curiosity, but I didn't feel that I had the
authority to ask her what she was doing. A few minutes later, two
individuals entered the cluster and approached her (they were clearly
friends of hers). First, she came over to the machine next to me, and
said to her friends. "I'm logged in here... o.k. the machine is free
now." and logged out. Then she went to the other machine where she
was screensaved and logged out of it as well. Needless to say, her
friends promptly logged into those machines, despite the fact that one
person was standing in the cluster waiting for a machine still.
This person deliberately occupied two machines in order to "save" them
for friends (or at least, that's how it appears to me), and in so
doing kept several other people, who i'm sure at least some of had
work to do on athena, from using the machines. I believe this is an
abuse of athena, and in all honesty, it really pisses me off.
Thanks.
Stephen Rinehart
happyjak@athena
