Karl Barrus writes:

I don't see any difference between Stacker 3.0 and its stacked disk option that compresses files on a floppy and inserts a small decompression routine there as well, and the encrypting "program" I posted information on. Well, besides the fact the Stacker compresses and potassium hydroxide encrypts.

I did not save the original potassium hydroxide posting, so I am not sure whether it truly constitutes a "virus", but I can't let any defense of "benign" infection mechanisms go unchallenged. If someone gives me a floppy, and, by running a program contained on it or booting off of it, some algorithm contained therein is permanently incorporated into my system *without my explicit desire and command*, to me that constitutes a viral ATTACK on my system, by compromising the sanctity of my data, whether or not the author's intent was benign. Even if a question like "Compress [Encrypt] drive C: ?" were presented, I'd be rather perturbed (especially since I use a Mac :-), since the question would probably be completely outside of the context of what I was trying to do (eg. run a GIF viewer, checkbook balancer, compiler, whatever), and would not provide sufficient notification of potential ramifications from answering in either the negative or the affirmative. Should that happen to *me*, I'd immediately go for the reboot switch and never use that floppy again; but most non-hacker computer users I know would be pretty lost, and feel rather violated if they chose the wrong option and something bad happened. Now, if a smart compressor/encryptor wrote itself along with the files it was treating, and then wrote a nice README file which explained that files on the floppy were compressed/encrypted, would be automatically decompressed/decrypted, and that the treatment could, if you wished, be performed on your hard drives and/or other floppies by making a backup and then executing the following command, that would be perfectly fine. Low-pressure sales techniques are far more humane than high-pressure: one gets time to scratch one's head, think about alternative strategies, reconsider one's intent. And a decision to reformat possibly years of data from a universally-accessible native format to a proprietary format certainly should not be made in an ad hoc manner. If a compressor/encryptor has a mode whereby it can automatically compress/ encrypt native-mode floppies when they are first mounted, that's quite a useful feature. But in this case I would have first had to have made a pro-active decision to install the software on my system, and thus been apprised of the ramifications. I would certainly still want and expect at least a minimal query like the above before anything is changed, otherwise it would be too easy to forget the mechanism is in place, get a floppy from a friend, and without knowing it return to them an altered and possibly unuseable disk. Not good. I thought Cypherpunks were all for self-determination? If there's anything in the computer world which strips us of that it's a virus or trojan horse, no? - JJ