> I'd prefer a noisy compile error ..

That would be fine if you could verify that none of the currently 
supported platforms will be affected. I would still feel uneasy about 
refusing to build python simply because os.times is not ported to a 
platform.

> HAVE_TIMES shouldn't have been #defined in the
> first place. (That is, I'd see that as a bug in
> the configure script.)

No, defined HAVE_TIMES only tell you that the system has 'times' 
function in the C library.  It is not intended to mean that os.times is 
implementable.

Personally, I would still prefer a one-line change that I proposed 
above.  It is obviously better than the current smiley code and if it 
happens to fix the platforms where errant behavior was observed, it is 
worth applying even if theoretically it may be wrong.

In any case, there is plenty of material here for a developer to step in 
and close the issue.