More strangeness with talk

[Alexis Rosen]

Well, I've figured this one out. Sort of, anyway. But the solution is bad.

The problem was that talk wouldn't work. Another missing feature (which I
didn't notice until I 'fixed' the problem) was that there was no notification
when mail was received (shells would tell you, but that's different).

The fix was to edit the /etc/hosts file, and put my system's name ("panix")
on the first line, before the loopback names, as follows:
0x7F.0x00.0x00.0x01 panix loop localhost

Now this looks very suspect to me. Why can't I just add another line after
the loopback line, like this?
223.1.1.1 panix

... or something like that? When I do that instead, nothing works. The name
_must_ be in the loopback line, or so it seems.

Is it in fact correct for this name to be there? If not, how can I make things
work?

Thanks,
---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis