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                occasional occurrence of the string "welcome datacomp"
                appearing amidst their typed text, knowing that they hadn't
                typed it. This has been traced to a particular make and model
                of a third-party Macintosh-compatible keyboard. This string 
s
                apparently programmed into the keyboard's ROM.
                From the alt.comp.virus FAQ:
                      "It appears to be a practical joke, coded into the
                      keyboard's ROM, that causes the keyboard to output that
                      text (as if it was typed) after a period of keyboard
                      inactivity. The only practical fix is to replace the
                      keyboard."
        7.2 August 27, 1956
                If your Mac has this date, it's time to replace the battery.
                This is the default, time-0 for the Mac.
8.0 Hoaxes
        8.1 Good Times
                "If you see Good Times in the subject header of your message,
                delete it!"
                Actually, this is good advice, because the rest of the 
essage
                is bound to be worthless.
                A message warning of the Good Times virus first appeared in
                November of 1994. The warning for the virus reports that if
                you read a message with "Good Times" in the title, your hard
                disk will be damaged beyond repair as well as a number of
                other wondrous things. When the reports first surfaced, the
                report was easily and quickly dismissed. Nothing can have
                such effects across the spectrum of operating systems and
                processors as claimed by this omnipotent email virus.
                However, fall of 1995 saw a resurgence of messages warning
                again of the Good Times virus. It is believed that news
                stories regarding macro viruses lent more credence to the
                email aspects of the report. But, the story remains a hoax.
                The things it claims to be possible across the spectrum of
                email programs remain an impossibility.
                The reports continue to spread. And in effect, the message
                itself has become the virus.
                8.1.1 GT-Spoof
                        To try to give credibility to the Good Times story,
                        some virus writers immediately created a virus using
                        one of the virus creation programs with the name
                        "Good Times" inside the virus. The antivirus 
community,
                        seeking to insure that no confusion came about from
                        this, named this virus GT-Spoof.
                8.1.2 FormatC
                        FormatC is a trojan horse written as a Word document.
                        It is a Word document which contains one macro which
                        does a call to execute the DOS command FORMAT. It was
                        written and posted to an Internet newsgroup. Because
                        it was written during the initial hoopla over Word
                        macro viruses, many people have also included FormatC
                        in their list of Word macro viruses. Also, many 
eople
                        freely associate trojan horses as viruses. Thus
                        FormatC is often referred to as a virus. It is not. 
t
                        is a trojan horse. It is being discussed here because
                        it may have had a bearing on lending credibility to
                        the Good Times scare.
        8.2 Viruses Destroying Hardware
                Because every unknown computer malady has been associated 
ith
                viruses, many pieces of damaged hardware have been attributed
                to viruses as well. In order to explain the issue of viruses
                destroying hardware, we must step back and explain the
                concept of software destroying hardware.
                The truth behind the ability of software to destroy hardware
                is that generic software cannot destroy generic hardware.
                However, every piece of hardware has recommended parameters 
f
                use. Thus, in order to damage hardware, one either uses the
                hardware outside its recommended parameters or wears it out
                through repetitive overuse.
                No virus has yet to do this. Chances of any virus 
uccessfully
                accomplishing this (and spreading) are not high. In real 
terms,
                this issue is myth, not fact.
                Remember, the only possible ways to destroy hardware through
                software is through a directed attack or through repetitive
                overuse.
        8.3 Internet Cleanup Day
                All I can say is that it was wonderful to use my Internet
                connections on Feb 29th. To those who complied with Internet
                Cleanup Day, thank you.
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