-=> Quoting John Kismul to Rick Collins <=-
-=> FidoMail to 1:163/215, please.-=<
rc> That's simply because there's more BS in the world than truth. 
rc> Still BS, though. 
JK> What is BS?
BullShit.  My polite way of saying there are more people who _don't_
know what they are talking about than there are that _do_, in any
given field of discourse.  That's why it's not unusual that you may
have heard of viruses that will infect your machine just by doing a
directory on an infected disk.  The people making these claims don't
know what they're talking about, and are wrong.
Now, given my statement about there being more BS than truth in the
world, you will find _far_ more people who will tell you that you can
get infected by doing a directory on an infected disk than you will
find who will tell you that's not possible.  So, if you go by weight
of numbers, it's easy to conclude that you _can_ get infected in this
manner.  However, when you accept that most of those people don't
know what they're talking about, you will quickly conclude that the
number of people who maintain this fiction is immaterial, what
matters, and all that matters, is what the people who _do_ know what
they're talking about say:  and those people, like myself, and Kurt,
and Chris, and Rod, and others, have told you you can't get infected
in that manner.
To get an infection from an infected floppy you have to _execute_ the
infected software on the floppy - either by running an infected
program or booting from an infected boot sector.  DIR, which executes
a program that _reads_ a portion of that infected disk, _does not_
"execute" any software that's on that infected disk - and therefore,
you can't infect your system in that manner.
TTFN. Rick.
Ottawa, ON 4 Jan 19:07 
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