I8QY@CORNELLA.BITNET (John Norvell) (10/23/90)
Dear Virus-L readers, I am an anthropologist currently looking at social and cultural issues possibly illuminated by the computer virus. I am very interested in personal experiences, stories, overheard conversations, dreams, etc. that may show the social effects of the virus among computer users of all types and levels of sophistication. I am particularly interested in any and all stories about loss of data by any means, feelings about waiting on the computer, and most especially for feelings regarding the virus and its relatives. Have you ever heard of people who thought they had a virus but didn't or who panicked and did silly things because they thought they were infected? How did you react the first time you were infected? Does anyone else share hostile feelings toward virus creators such as those expressed by Ross Greenberg in the Flushot documentation? Or, was that just hype to sell software? Why do people create virues anyway? Questions like that. Since this request is likely too weird and definitely irrelevant for this list, please e-mail responses to me at I8QY@cornella.cit.cornell.edu I8QY@cornella.bitnet or snail-mail at Dept. of Anthropology McGraw Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 Thanks for your help. John Norvell
$CAROL@OCVAXC.BITNET (Carol Conti-Entin, ext. 8778) (10/30/90)
>Not hype, John. There are a limited number of hours in the day and in >a life. I'm pretty sure that the virus writers of the world think >they're having a wonderful time. But, as I hate anyone who wastes my >time, I've also taken a strong dislike to anyone who wastes another's >time. The computing field is no longer as open as it once was. A >field that I love working in no longer is a "trustworthy" one. Ross has "hit the nail on the head" as far as I'm concerned. I work in User Services at a college. We have only 3.5 FTE employees in our Academic Computing Services group. Although I personally have not been hit, some of our Mac users were before we had the necessary information to make protection widely available. In addition to Macs, we support MS-DOS machines and a VAXcluster. The proliferation of viruses means that we must spend valuable time upgrading our preparedness, which deprives our users of consulting support time. Presumably, every college and university is having staff time go down the drain in the same way. The one "silver lining" to this is "the VIRUS-L community." Thank you, Ken, for all the time you spend so that the rest of us can obtain the necessary resources quickly. Thank you, all of you who have written detection and removal programs and made them available at little or no cost, so that colleges can afford them! |-------------------------------------------------------------------| | Carol Conti-Entin Academic Computing Consultant 216-775-8778 | | Houck Computing Center Oberlin College Oberlin, OH 44074 | | Bitnet: pconti@oberlin Internet: pconti@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu | |-------------------------------------------------------------------|