Talk:Finger (protocol)

message: Could someone add something about the user of "finger" in hacker slang as a profane reference to a sexual act? Similar to the use of fsck as a profanity. There are numerous quotes of people humorously promising to "finger and fsck".
Yes, here's a classic.
"unzip && strip && touch && finger && mount && fsck && more && yes && umount && eject && sleep"
All are real commands that would be available on most recent *nix environments.
--128.119.16.236 (talk) 16:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use as a profanity 

message: Anyone know the history behind .plan and .project?  It would be interesting to put here as the .plan article redirects here. —Cliffb 06:03, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what you mean by the "history" behind these.  The names begin with a dot because they are hidden dot-files.  And they're called "plan" and "project" because they are supposed to contain your plans and/or projects, shown when you finger another user. Richard W.M. Jones 08:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why .plan .project? 

message: I know that elinks has integrated the protocol. but is there any real use for that?
mabdul 0=* 10:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real Use 

message: This section currently mostly blames the demise of the finger protocol on the ability to run Finger without a parameter (and thus get a list of users). But this feature could have been disabled without disabling the whole protocol. After all, wasn't its original use to finger a specific user anyway? -79.180.25.233 (talk) 17:22, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Security concerns 

message: finger started as a program to allow sharing a small amount of information between users of timeshared computers; that's a single computer not on a network, barely rising to the level of a "protocol". It's extension to networked computers was natural and obvious, but it's telling the story wrong to start with networks and just drop hints at what it actually was. And "to finger" someone is old and current slang for making an accusation, despite what this article currently says. 98.7.201.234 (talk) 20:30, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  multiuser multitasking timeshare systems 

message: `The finger protocol is also incompatible with Network Address Translation (NAT) from the private network address ranges (e.g. 192.168.0.0/16) that are used by the majority of home and office workstations that connect to the Internet through routers or firewalls nowadays.` Can someone provide more information or a link to this? I almost feel like a "citation needed" is needed - 2602:30A:C07E:99B0:6973:7F81:B929:CB3B (talk) 16:27, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFC1918 Incompatibility? 

message: FINGER was not originally a protocol.  FINGER did not come from UNIX, it was re-implemented on UNIX.  This WP article is based on misconceptions.
The 3BSD UNIX finger.c source code says it is reminiscent of finger on ITS.
 *  There are three output formats, all of which give login name, teletype
 *  line number, and login time.  The short output format is reminiscent
 *  of finger on ITS
Jamplevia (talk) 14:42, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incompatible Timesharing System -- ITS finger 

message: Is it really helpful (or confusing) for the box on the right to include
All that information about
Internet protocol suite.
I'd like to remove it next time I'm around. DGerman (talk) 18:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  unnecessary "Internet protocol suite"