Why is finger so stupid?

[Robert Duff]

I have noticed that almost every UNIX machine in the world has a problem
with the amount of time a user has been logged in.  Very regularly,
finger reports that someone has been logged in for 147 days!  I know that
can't be true because the machine was only booted 25 minutes ago!
At first I thought that this was a quirk of our SPARC station, but then
I noticed it on our NeXT as well.  After fingering several people I know
at various other sites, the problem seems fairly wide spread.

Any idea what's wrong?

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