-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A bit off-topic, but: Authorities in Fayetteville, North Carolina arrested two juveniles yesterday, in the death of James Jordan, father of basketball superstar Michael Jordan. Charles Kuralt, on CBS's "Sunday Morning," reported that authorities believe that Jordan was a victim of random violence. Authorities were able to locate the suspects because they allegedly used the cellular phone in Jordan's car before they dumped it. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBLG5MEpRLcZSdHMBNAQGCWwP/SZOkRSDjmFopxngHzcREsqY68PTQHC4N Y5oxmbK7V+MK88MjRdzTizq2298qndu50a170J8NT/KFrNbVUkiOTNhxtu6V3+SU mH2nyTUWs4oapQyYjPGGYyRqQbkbR/Z+aDGc0zWwZ5cfHztbesEpgoUot19pLsxu /TzNJL/PWVI= =1etK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Paul Ferguson | "Government, even in its best state, Network Integrator | is but a necessary evil; in its worst Centreville, Virginia USA | state, an intolerable one." fergp@sytex.com | - Thomas Paine, Common Sense Type bits/keyID Date User ID pub 1024/1CC04D 1993/03/15 Paul Ferguson <fergp@sytex.com> Key fingerprint = EE D2 93 7D 04 6D C6 05 AC 36 AD 9D 8E 4F 41 58 ser's knowledge. In doing this, it violates the integrity of the system and furthermore, it does it surreptitiously. Personally, I like to be intamately aware of every byte on each of my systems (I am) and know _exactly_ what every executable which resides on my system does (again, I do). For users who cannot know this, then a virus is a breech of their privacy, in a matter of speaking. Finally, distributed computing need not be accomplished by something as brain-damaged as a virus. Anything a virus could beneficially do, a legitimate, non-replicating program can do better. In fact, there have been viruses designed and coded which were supposed to perform beneficial activities (see historical notes about the Denzuko, Ohio, etc. viruses). Also, every virus harbors the potential for damage. No programmer (read: virus author) can possibly know each and every environment where the code will be introduced. An example which I frequently use to illustrate this point is the Stoned virus; it is mostly an innocuous virus, however with several spoofing disk partitioning schemes (such as Disk Mangler), it can devastating. And with the advent of the Microsoft Doublspace shit, alot of other potholes in the road are introduced into the possible scenarios. A final note: There is a virus called "Cruncher" which compresses executables in much the same way as PKLite or LZEXE. Is this a "good" virus? This ia an exercise left to the reader... Cheers from Washington, DC -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBLG57NZRLcZSdHMBNAQEHygQAhER6mpzGIctOx6sHpndNsv9EdoO++DBq x32h5Q4b5ylGDJWEcbC3RMqpkbDrzzYJOaBtRiqW+XTfpTagAKI0CbBWknxJcF3T W8hdDxu0kN2K0TVPbinkUUM+bvXLAdhYdv9GqixoWJx+Y/mkW2XtQLKbxRSFt/Uv ZC/YC+YVb18= =Mq8P -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Paul Ferguson | "Government, even in its best state, Network Integrator | is but a necessary evil; in its worst Centreville, Virginia USA | state, an intolerable one." fergp@sytex.com | - Thomas Paine, Common Sense Type bits/keyID Date User ID pub 1024/1CC04D 1993/03/15 Paul Ferguson <fergp@sytex.com> Key fingerprint = EE D2 93 7D 04 6D C6 05 AC 36 AD 9D 8E 4F 41 58