Subject: Next Version Wish....

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1993 11:08:51 -0800

One thing I'd really like to see in the next version of the server is some
 way to determine the actual account name a player is logging in from.
 Currently, it seems we can only get the site but it would be nice if we
 could find out the account too.

--- Dov Sherman
    [email-masked]

---

From: Greg Hudson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1993 12:43:38 -0800

> One thing I'd really like to see in the next version of the server
> is some way to determine the actual account name a player is logging
> in from.  Currently, it seems we can only get the site but it would
> be nice if we could find out the account too.

This would be nice, but there isn't any way for Pavel to unilaterally
create such a system.  When I make a connection to your mud, about the
only information you can get about that connection is the local port,
and from there, you can't get anything.  (There is an RFC for asking
my machine what account is using that local port, but there's nothing
to prevent my machine from telling you that it's "Dan Bernstein",
which is what a lot of machines do regardless of the local port.)

Now, there is the option of allowing, say, Kerberos authentication to
the mud.  This lets you authenticate as a particular Kerberos
principal in some realm (which is a completely distinct concept from a
given machine--machines aren't all that useful a concept for
authentication anyway).  Unfortunately, most users of most muds aren't
running Kerberos and don't have Kerberos principals, so this is a
dream unless your users are all in a controlled environment.

I should point out that you phrased your problem in a deceptively
simple way.  I'm currently sitting in next to a room with 124
machines, and I have an "account" on all of them--the same account, in
fact.  All told, I have access to 356 machines on a dozen different
subnets simply by virtue of being an MIT student.  About the only
thing you can say (without trusting me or requiring me to
authenticate) about a connection I make to your mud is that it's from
MIT.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are PCs and Macintoshes on the
net that don't even have the concept of an account.  How do you
propose to deal with these machines?

--GBH

---

From: Chris Hand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1993 14:11:04 -0800

>  way to determine the actual account name a player is logging in from.

If we're talking wish-lists, what about modifications to the MOO language?  

Personally I don't understand why it doesn't support multiple inheritance.
Is there a good reason for this?  From my experiences so far I'm finding
it a bit of a bind to have to choose what the single parent of my object
is going to be...

Chris

ps: Sorry if there's been a flame-war on this one already... I haven't
    checked every single message in the archive... :)

-- 
Chris Hand, Lecturer                      | Dept of Computing Science,
Internet e-mail: [email-masked]            | De Montfort University, The Gateway 
 Reality is 80 Million polygons/second    | LEICESTER, UK   LE1 9BH            
WWW: <A HREF="http://qadir.cms.dmu.ac.uk:9999/People/cph/cphroot.html">cph</A>

---

From: Pavel Curtis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1993 17:03:58 -0800

> Date:	Sun, 14 Nov 1993 14:11:04 -0800
> From:	Chris Hand <[email-masked]>
> 

It doesn't support MI because it's never gotten to the top of my queue.  Adding
MI to MOO constitutes a major change to the language semantics and there are a
lot of niggling little details that have to be decided before you can proceed.
At this point, though, it seems unlikely that I will get around to MI before
stopping work on the LambdaMOO server.  After that, of course, some other
person could consider taking it on, but I'm not sure that I'd recommend it.

	Pavel