TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL (06/24/91)
I do apologize if anyone, especially Mr. Curtis, was offended or insulted by my comments questioning the wisdom of accepting software of unknown provenance. (At the risk of offending a whole nationality some scholarly reference to Greeks bearing gifts would be a propos.) But I meant them seriously and none of the few comments I've received change the situation much. Jeff claims he is well-known to this list -- that has to be somewhat of an exaggeration in that in the last month there have been 1,396 messages posted to it, of which only 8 came from him; needless to say I would assume most poeple do not read all the traffic and I certainly didn't associate the Heatseeker announcement with anything I'd read before. (I have a GS and don't have Copy II+ so I wasn't at all interested in any the messages on that subject.) I have no reason to doubt that he is an upstanding person with no malicious intent, but on the other hand I have little solid evidence that he is who he says he is. (I'm sure you all remember the kremvax hoax of several years ago -- one cannot necessarily believe the headers on an e-mail message.) In this one case I will grant that I am probably over-reacting -- I'm pretty sure that if I called Argonne Labs they'd verify they did indeed have a Jeffrey Curtis working for them, at the phone numbers he gave, and if I called him I'd find a somewhat justifiably upset person on the other end who was writing a whizbang Apple II utility he calls Heatseeker. But that doesn't really remove all doubts. The real question is how cottage-industry software can be developed and distributed safely so we don't have to continually have this kind of discussion and so people can use the talents of such people without any nagging doubts. (I'm sure you all are aware that most large companies and government agencies have regulations prohibiting the use of freeware, shareware, or the like: if it doesn't come from IBM, Microsoft, Apple or some similar large publisher, forget it.) Ted Lee
jb10320@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jawaid Bazyar) (06/24/91)
TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL writes: >I do apologize if anyone, especially Mr. Curtis, was offended or >insulted by my comments questioning the wisdom of accepting software of >unknown provenance. (At the risk of offending a whole nationality some >scholarly reference to Greeks bearing gifts would be a propos.) But I >meant them seriously and none of the few comments I've received change >the situation much. Jeff claims he is well-known to this list -- that >has to be somewhat of an exaggeration in that in the last month there >have been 1,396 messages posted to it, of which only 8 came from him; >needless to say I would assume most poeple do not read all the traffic >and I certainly didn't associate the Heatseeker announcement with >anything I'd read before. (I have a GS and don't have Copy II+ so I >wasn't at all interested in any the messages on that subject.) I have >no reason to doubt that he is an upstanding person with no malicious >intent, but on the other hand I have little solid evidence that he is >who he says he is. (I'm sure you all remember the kremvax hoax of >several years ago -- one cannot necessarily believe the headers on an >e-mail message.) >In this one case I will grant that I am probably over-reacting -- I'm >pretty sure that if I called Argonne Labs they'd verify they did indeed >have a Jeffrey Curtis working for them, at the phone numbers he gave, >and if I called him I'd find a somewhat justifiably upset person on the >other end who was writing a whizbang Apple II utility he calls >Heatseeker. But that doesn't really remove all doubts. The real >question is how cottage-industry software can be developed and >distributed safely so we don't have to continually have this kind of >discussion and so people can use the talents of such people without any >nagging doubts. (I'm sure you all are aware that most large companies >and government agencies have regulations prohibiting the use of >freeware, shareware, or the like: if it doesn't come from IBM, >Microsoft, Apple or some similar large publisher, forget it.) ^^^^^^^ Microsoft (perhaps not, but it was a MAJOR software corp) unwittingly distributed commercial software with a virus. Even the big names are not immune to the virus 'epidemic' that has swept the mainstream PC world. But the real issue here is this: who the hell cares enough to write a virus for the Apple II world? The people who care about the machine enough to still program it sure aren't going to waste their time writing a virus. Your paranoia is not only an insult to Mr. Curtis, it's an affront to Apple II programmers everywhere. There is no place for attitudes like yours, considering the situation the Apple II is in- most useful software written for IIs these days is written by a core of hobbyists, most of whom expect nothing in return for their work. Put another way, anyone with the technical knowledge necessary to write a GS/OS virus will also know that there is much more important work to be done. As an aside, there are (in my knowledge) two documented viruses for the Apple II. Yeah, that's *2*. One was years ago, and worked only on stock DOS 3.3 (evidently this was the first virus in the micro world, if not the first virus anywhere). The newer one was Lode Runner, which judging by it's name, was also in the time frame of DOS 3.3. The Apple II world in general has escaped the rash of teenagers with their IBMs. Also, the computer virus paranoia has spread beyond the computer world- the Weekly World News (yes, I know it's a pulp 'zine, just bear with me) recently published an article entitled "Man catches computer virus". What's frightening is that people will believe this crap! In a world where computers are misrepresented constantly in the media and entertainment industries, (just watch TV and you'll see impossible things done daily), there is no room for anything but FACTS. And the facts are as I have stated above. -- Jawaid Bazyar | "Twenty seven faces- with their eyes turned to Graduated!/Comp Engineering | the sky. I have got a camera, and an airtight bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu | alibi.." Apple II Forever! | I need a job... Be privileged to pay me! :-)
marekp@pnet91.cts.com (Marek Pawlowski) (06/24/91)
Jawaid, You fail to remind us all of CyberAids and the Festering Hate virus, each of them were quite malicious on ProDOS. /* Marek Pawlowski, President, Intelligent Twist Software, 250 Harding */ /* Blvd., PO BOX 32017, Richmond Hill, Ontario, L4C 9M7, CANADA. */ /* marekp@gnu.ai.mit.edu, marekp@cerf.net, marekp@pnet91.cts.com, */ /* marekp@generic.uucp, Voice: (416) 884-4501 4-8pm Toronto time */ /* "F U cn rd dis U mst Uz Unix" - ericmcg@pnet91.cts.com */
curtis@achilles.ctd.anl.gov (Jeffrey Curtis ) (06/24/91)
In article <910624033812.116808@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL> TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL writes: >I do apologize if anyone, especially Mr. Curtis, was offended or >insulted by my comments questioning the wisdom of accepting software of >unknown provenance. (At the risk of offending a whole nationality some >scholarly reference to Greeks bearing gifts would be a propos.) But I >meant them seriously and none of the few comments I've received change Apology accepted, and I understand your cautious attitude. I think everyone's a little edgy, myself included. >the situation much. Jeff claims he is well-known to this list -- that >has to be somewhat of an exaggeration in that in the last month there >have been 1,396 messages posted to it, of which only 8 came from him; I never remember saying I was well-known - in fact, I only got the Usenet software operational here about a week ago, and I doubt could have gotten that popular out of eight posts.. B^) >who he says he is. (I'm sure you all remember the kremvax hoax of >several years ago -- one cannot necessarily believe the headers on an >e-mail message.) Actually, I don't (see above..).. what was it? *+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+* + Jeffrey S. Curtis (708)972-8585 B41801 AT ANLVM curtis@achilles.ctd.anl.gov + * Computing and Telecommunications, Argonne National Laboratory * + "The opinions expressed above are mine only. Who else would want them?!" + *+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) (06/25/91)
In article <1991Jun24.070520.23908@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> jb10320@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jawaid Bazyar) writes: > But the real issue here is this: who the hell cares enough to write a >virus for the Apple II world? And the real answer is: There are people who, for whatever reason, do so. >As an aside, there are (in my knowledge) two documented viruses for the >Apple II. There are at least five that Bredon's Apple.Rx detects and disables, at least one of them being rather new.
ericmcg@pnet91.cts.com (Eric Mcgillicuddy) (06/25/91)
At my company, no disk is inserted in a drive without being scanned for a virus first, regardless of the source. Do the same thing at home, or disconnect your HD if you are concerned. UUCP: bkj386!pnet91!ericmcg INET: ericmcg@pnet91.cts.com