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cardiac condition.
     Then there are text files spreading about how to make certain
controlled substances.  It is bad enough if the recipes are correct
and the instructions are easy to follow and are easy to understand.
Then you have someone using homemade illegal drugs with all the
possible problems that may arise from that.  But, as inaccurate as
the G.T.V. Hoax is, it would be easy to rig such a drug recipe to
make some poison that is quite lethal.
     I am not necessarily advocating censorship since the control
should come from within instead of from without.  But I am saying
that everyone should treat the privilege of using a computer and of
being able to use e-mail with some responsibility.  You may not mean
for your virus to leak out of the computer lab, or for your prank to
get edited by someone else, but that should be avoided.  In a sense,
if you write something like that for your own use and someone else
gets it and modifies it or releases it, it makes you an accessory to
whatever they do with it.  For those that are tempted to create or
release viruses as a form of revenge or control, rumors of viruses,
hardware hoaxes, etc., maybe try venting your anger elsewhere or try
to find another way to make a name for yourself.  But for the rest of
us, our best line of defense is our brains.  We can't trust everything
we read or hear from our friends.  We should check out the facts and
even analyze the information if need be.  If the people who did the
unsucessful modification to their modem would have checked the part
numbers, the number of pins on the parts, and the part descripions,
as well as have researched modem operation and patent laws, they
wouldn't have destroyed a perfectly working modem.  The same thing
applies to the G.T.V. Hoax.  If they would have seen the part about
destroying the CPU chip by loops and would have really thought about
it, they would have realized you can't destroy a normal "healthy" CPU
by putting it into a loop if so, then the line:
10 GOTO 10
in BASIC would damage the computer, so would the assembly variety of
that:
Start:
   JMP Short Start
as well as "Burn-In" programs which do non-stop testing of the
machine.  If any of the above examples mess up a PC compatible,
then the machine needs to be replaced anyway since it was about
to go on its own pretty soon.  That is the whole idea behind the
burn-in programs.  You run the burn-in for a week straight while
it is still under warranty.  If it crashes, then you send it back
for another one and repeat the procedure, of if it continues to
work, then you know it is going to hold up to ordinary usage.
     When I saw that part about the "virus" (as they called it)
putting the machine into a loop, and after I saw that alleged scope
of the "damage" it was to do, I realized right off that it was fake.
Then when I saw the FCC part, I was even more certain that it was
just a hoax.  There was one thing that was good about the hoax, and
that was the advice telling you not to read any messages with that
in the header.  That is good advice.  Not because reading the
message will do anything to the machine, but because there are much
better things you can read! :)
                                                Betty
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