# $EPIC: mesg.txt,v 1.1.1.1 2006/07/11 04:57:43 jnelson Exp $
======Synopsis:======
__mesg__    [display the current terminal writability state] \\
__mesg__ yes    [make your terminal world-writeable] \\
__mesg__ no   [make your terminal not world-writeable]

======Description:======
This command simulates the effect of the unix __mesg__(1) command.
When you specify the 'yes' flag, other users on your system may write
messages directly to your terminal, which will mess up your ircII screen.
If you specify the 'no' flag, other users will be prohibited from writing
to your terminal.  If you do not specify an argument, the current value 
is used.

This operation is permanent and transcends EPIC; when you exit EPIC the
value you set here will persist until you log out.

Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and everybody on the
internet was using a unix shell account, the 'talk' program was very
popular and was used to talk to other users on other machines who were
not using irc.  Eventually some yutz on irc figured out that you could
corrupt a victim's terminal emulator making it impossible to see anything
by forging talk requests and inserting specially crafted data into it.

If your unix host runs the talk daemon, you should __/MESG no__ to avoid
being the victim of a "talk bomb".  You really should turn off the talk
daemon since "talk bombs" are about the only thing they're used for these
days.  If your unix host is not running 'talk' then it really doesn't
matter what your __MESG__ setting is.

Because write-access control to your terminal is controlled entirely 
through ordinary unix file permissions, users that are not subject to
ordinary unix file permissions (ie, root) can never be prohibited from 
writing to your terminal.  This is not a bug in epic, this is how unix 
works.