Info-Mac-Request@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (The Moderators) (03/18/89)
Info-Mac Digest Fri, 17 Mar 89 Volume 7 : Issue 53
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Need AppleShare Administrators book
New electronic music list
nVIR A and B
request for info
Weird MS-Word problem
Your Info-Mac Moderators are Lance Nakata, Jon Pugh, and Bill Lipa.
The Info-Mac archives are available (by using FTP, account anonymous, any
password) in the info-mac directory on sumex-aim.stanford.edu [36.44.0.6].
Please send articles and binaries to info-mac@sumex-aim.stanford.edu.
Send administrative mail to info-mac-request@sumex-aim.stanford.edu.
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Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1989 16:58:27 PST
From: The Moderators <Info-Mac-Request@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>
Subject: Administrivia
Recently we have received a number of false alarms about viruses in the
archives. In order to reduce the number of such alarms, please observe the
following procedure before reporting a virus:
1. Download Virus-RX (the latest version) from the virus directory. Put it on
a floppy disk and write-protect the floppy. You can be sure that Virus-RX
is free of know viruses because it checks itself for infections and
changes its name to "Please throw me in the Trash" if it finds anything.
2. Download a fresh copy of the file you suspect from sumex. Without running
it, put it on another floppy and write-protect the second floppy.
3. Use Virus-RX to scan the second floppy. If you find an infection, be sure
to let us know about it. If you don't, look elsewhere for sources of
infection before telling us about it.
The only problem with this procedure is that Virus-RX does not detect the
ANTI virus, so if you suspect an ANTI infection you must check the file by
hand with ResEdit or use Virus-Detective.
Bill Lipa
Info-Mac
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Date: Fri, 17 Mar 89 11:44:52 MST
From: Jim Howard <KGJHH%ASUACAD.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Need AppleShare Administrators book
There really is nothing like that available. Also there is no good way of
entering large numbers of accounts yet. What's more Apple considers the
formats of the Appleshare accounts file proprietary so we cant write an
application to add and delete large numbers of accounts at a time. We also
understand that there is a upper limit to the number of accounts you can
have on an AppleShare server that no one can really determine, but which may
be as low as 2000. I recommend you do what we are doing, look at MacJanet
>From Waterloo Microsystems. It was developed by and at a university which
has to deal with these kind of administrative problems. Apple Computer does
not really care much anymore about educational sites and their problems at
least as far as I am able to determine from their support and responses.
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Date: Fri, 17 Mar 89 12:32 EST
From: "Kevin Cole at Gallaudet U. Washington DC" <CADS_COLE%GALLUA.BITNET@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu>
Subject: New electronic music list
There's a new list for those of you who like to play with synthesizers and
micros. It's been up for about a month now, and I'm helping the moderator get
the word out about it. Here's the info:
EMUSIC-L@AUVM.BITNET (and EMUSIC-D@AUVM.BITNET)
EMUSIC is a complementary pair of lists (EMUSIC-L for undigested mail,
EMUSIC-D for the moderately edited digest) devoted to the discussion of
Electronic Music.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): synthesis methods,
algorithmic composition, psychoacoustics, timbral research, instrument
design, MIDI troubleshooting, new tricks for old machines, musique
concrete, pedagogic methods, performance techniques, reviews of current and
historical musical and technical trends, announcements of events, papers,
homegrown sounds and software.
The EMUSIC-D FILELIST contains the archive of the discussions to date as
well as data files, programs and other materials of interest to the Elec-
tronic Music community.
To add yourself to the list, send the command
SUBSCRIBE EMUSIC-L Your_Full_Name (for undigested mail)
or
SUBSCRIBE EMUSIC-D Your_Full_Name (for digested mail)
via mail to LISTSERV@AUVM.BITNET or LISTSERV%AUVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
(Internet) where Your_Full_Name is your real name (not your userid). To
remove yourself from the list send the command
SIGNOFF EMUSIC-L (or SIGNOFF EMUSIC-D)
Moderator: Eric Harnden <EHARNDEN@AUVM.BITNET>
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 89 18:28:00 PST
From: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu
Subject: nVIR A and B
There has been some confusion over exactly what the nVIR A and nVIR B
viruses actually do. In fact, I don't believe the details have ever
been published. I just finished spending a few days researching
the two nVIR viruses. This report presents my findings.
As with all viruses, nVIR A and B replicate. When you run an infected
application on a clean system the infection spreads from the application
to the system file. After rebooting the infection in turn spreads from
the system to other applications, as they are run.
At first nVIR A and B only replicate. When the system file is first
infected a counter is initialized to 1000. The counter is decremented
by 1 each time the system is booted, and it is decremented by 2 each
time an infected application is run.
When the counter reaches 0 nVIR A will sometimes either say "Don't
Panic" (if MacinTalk is installed in the system folder) or beep (if
MacinTalk is not installed in the system folder). This will happen
on a system boot with a probablity of 1/16. It will also happen when
an infected application is launched with a probability of 31/256. In
addition, when an infected application is launched nVIR A may say
"Don't Panic" twice or beep twice, with a probability of 1/256.
When the counter reaches 0 nVIR B will sometimes beep. nVIR B does not
call MacinTalk. The beep will happen on a system boot with a
probability of 1/8. A single beep will happen when an infected
application is launched with a probability of 15/64. A double beep will
happen when an infected application is launched with a probability of
1/64.
I've discovered that it is possible for nVIR A and nVIR B to mate and
sexually reproduce, resulting in new viruses combining parts of their
parents.
For example, if a system is infected with nVIR A, and if an application
infected with nVIR B is run on that system, part of the nVIR B
infection in the application is replaced by part of the nVIR A
infection from the system. The resulting offspring contains parts from
each of its parents, and behaves like nVIR A.
Similarly, if a system is infected with nVIR B, and if an application
infected with nVIR A is run on that system, part of the nVIR A
infection in the application is replaced by part of the nVIR B
infection from the system. The resulting offspring is very similar
to its sibling described in the previous paragraph, except that it has
the opposite "sex" - each part is from the opposite parent. It behaves
like nVIR B.
These offspring are new viruses. If they are taken to a clean system
they will infect that system, which will in turn infect other
applications. The descendents are identical to the original offspring.
I've also investigated some of the possible incestual matings of these
two kinds of children with each other and with their parents. Again,
the result is infections that contain various combinations of parts
>From their parents.
John Norstad
Academic Computing and Network Services
Northwestern University
Bitnet: jln@nuacc
Internet: jln@acns.nwu.edu
Applelink: a0173
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 89 09:27 EST
From: Louie@bco-multics.hbi.honeywell.com
Subject: request for info
Are there any users of SuperGlue (from Solutions, Int) &/or OpenIt!
(from TENpoint0) out here?? If so, I would like to hear any comments
you have on these programs (ease of use, usefulness, comparison, etc).
Also, if anybody is familiar with MultiClip (from Olduvai) &/or SmartScrap
(from Solutions, Int) ... I would also appreciate receiving comments from
you, too.
Please send responses directly to me at:
Louie@BCO-MULTICS.HBI.HONEYWELL.COM
I will send a summary if others are interested. Thanks.
Dan Louie
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Date: Fri, 17 Mar 89 00:02:28 EST
From: Greg Brail <ST601396%BROWNVM.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Weird MS-Word problem
I've experienced a really strange problem when running Microsoft Word
3.02 on an AppleShare network. Sometimes, Word files that once contained
several thousand characters of text are turned into empty files. In
other words, someone creates a Word file on the server (both Word and
the file are on the server) and saves it, and everything is fine. If
that person quits and someone else opens the file from a different
machine on the network, the file is empty -- there's nothing there.
This doesn't happen very often: maybe twice a week, and it just started
recently.
The weird thing is that if I change the file type to "TEXT" and then
open it again in Word, everything is there. All the weird Word
formatting stuff is there too, but the original text can be reconstructed
if necessary.
It seems that Word is somehow corrupting the file when it is saved. I've
never seen anything like this. It could be some strange interaction between
Word and AppleShare. I don't want to use the V-word, but I'll say that
I checked the server with Virus RX v1.4a2, and we have virus protection
software on all the machines on the network.
If anyone has ever seen anything like this, let me know. I haven't
ever seen anything like it.
Incidentally, all the machines on the network run system software
version 6.0.2, and we have Word 3.0.2 and AppleShare 2.0.1.
-Greg
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Greg Brail ST601396@brownvm.brown.edu
(401)521-9599 ST601396@brownvm.BITNET
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End of Info-Mac Digest
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