From: John Tserkezis 
Reply-To: Fidonet AVtech Echo 

Rod Gasson wrote:

> As I said, this is going to be an endless discussion.  Text on a computer is
> just as binary as any other data. ie, they are both nothing more than a
> series of 0's & 1's.
> It *could* be argued that the difference between text and data/binary is
> that text only uses 7bits, where as data/binary uses 8bits, and in fact this
> was quite a valid arguement 30 years ago.  These days, many 'text' documents
> contain 8bit data so that distinction no longer holds water.

  If you want to get pedantic about it (and this being AVTech, I'm sure you do)
your statement of "text only uses 7bits" is not strictly true.

  "Text, in the traditional sense, uses only a limited subset of the full ASCII 
character set.  All of it is contained within the lower 7 bits, but there are 
indeed some control characters in that lower 7bits that are definately NOT 
classed as "text".

  Even so, it is still possible to transport a trojan (notably absent in this 
virus discussion) via plain text.

  Good 'ole DOS batch files.

  Used to be popular to do a format c: | yes.txt back in those days.
  Even some of the more modern "viruses" are no more ingeinous
than that too.
  And people are STILL stupid enough to run them.

  Whoops, that's it, I've just made Bob even more paranoid.

> OK, so now all we have to do is convince Bob of this fact.

  Last time I spoke to him about it, he spoke of going to extraordinary lengths 
to isolate himself if he ever was connected to the 'net.  All you need is a 
firewall and half a brain.  And even then, you only really need the firewall if 
you're going to stay connected 24/7.

  Heck, even my win2000 machine doesn't have a firewall (and it's online 
whenever it's turned on).  Just patch up and turn off everything except TCP/IP.

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