A suggestion for a change to biff

[utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!npois!harpo!esquire!psl]

This doesn't really deal with biff, but with a related function.

We are working towards a setup with ~700 terminals on five "identical"
11/70s.  Needless to say, we're not intending to have 140 users logged on
to each machine all the time; our users connect through a Micom port
selector and get off (or else!) when they have no particular work to do.
Unfortunately this interferes badly with electronic mail delivery.  In order
to rescue this important feature we've come up with a mail backend which
finds out if you're logged in (in which case the normal mail message will
get to you); if not it connects your terminal, sends a message indicating
that you have new mail, and disconnects it again.  I'd be glad to share
what we've done and/or to hear of similar approaches...
						Peter Langston
						esquire!psl