Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 23:48:54 -0500 (EST)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFAList at KeithLynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] Re: New virus for PC users to watch out for--W32.Yaha.K at mm
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Meridel Newton <meridel at ashcomp.com> wrote:

> There are viruses out there for every operating system.  There are
> even viruses for cell phones and palm tops.  Microsoft may be the
> most vulnerable due to prevalence, but it's by no means only an MS
> issue.

There are no viruses for a DEC VT420 terminal, which is what I'm
using.  There can't be.  It's not programmable.  All it does is
display text on the screen, and forward whatever I type to the
attached modem.

I suppose there could be, and probably are, viruses for the operating
system my ISP uses.  But that's not an issue unless I deliberately
choose to run them.

Microsoft uses anti-concepts.  An anti-concept is something which
has the look and feel of a concept, but has the opposite effect,
disorganizing thoughts, and throwing things into confusion.

Anti-concepts include words which either distinguish between several
things which are the same, or lump together several things that are
different as if they were the same.

For instance the word "open".  What does it mean to "open" an email
message?  It means something to display it on the screen to it can
be read by a person.  It means something very different to execute
code contained in it.  Microsoft's anti-concept "open" is largely
responsible for the plague of viruses which has caused billions of
dollars of damages.

Before I started blocking all email that contained attachments, I
often chose to display the contents of the attachments on my screen.
This was completely harmless (other than being an enormous waste of
time, since 99.9% of them were spam or viruses, rather than anything
informative or entertaining).

This list benefits from my discarding all attachments and HTML email,
since that guarantees that nothing received via this list can ever
contain a virus.

So far, I've also succeeded in keeping the list completely free of
spam, but there's no absolute guarantee there.
--
Keith F. Lynch - kfl at keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) is not acceptable.  Please do not send me
HTML, "rich text," or attachments, as all such email is discarded unread.