On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne wrote:

I just heard from a friend today that there is a VERY nasty virus that has
been unleashed and it shows up in the form of an email entitled "GOOD TIMES"
or something to that effect. If you see this post show up in your In Box,
delete it IMMEDIATELY! Do not read it! My friend told me that it will create
some kind of endless loop in your hard drive and wipe EVERYTHING out! If
your hard drive starts acting up, I was told that you should Reset the
computer pronto. That's the scoop. Keep yer eyes open!

Hoax. Next?

(No, really. Because there are n different mail programs out there and
none of them to the best of my knowledge do anything to mail other
than store it, it's impossible to trash a system by reading mail.
Now, if you get a program in the mail, decode and run it, THEN you
could be in for it.  But if you're the kinda person who decodes progs
mailed to you out of the blue and runs them you're inviting
disaster. :)

I've seen the reports of this virus many times since it first was rumored 
to exist about 3 years ago.  As Stefan said, you cannot get infected 
merely by reading mail...and besides which, if I write a virus for a PC, 
it wouldn't kill a Mac system and vice versa...

Good Times is, however, a virus in at least one effect...it decreases 
productivity.  The whole trick is that the warning itself IS the virus.  
Upon reception of the warning, a worried or frightened computer user will 
send warning to their friends, who send to their friends, until someone 
who knows that it isn't a virus posts some irate response, starting a 
flame war, or general arguments...and thus decreasing productivity.

Can we please forget now that we saw this, and end this discussion right 
here. :)

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Jeremy Blackman			       	       Starwave Corp., CDROM division
ranma@eskimo.com                                   (http://www.starwave.com/)
Opinions herein are mine, not Starwave's       XIRC Programmer - v2.3 current
-------------------[MailQuote - Quote for this session]----------------------
The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water.  Eager to show
off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his
next hunting trip.  Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the
duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the
duck and returned it to his master.
	"Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
	"Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't
swim."
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