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 program that was caused by employee sabotage, and there wasn't
 enough time to release a new version and notify everyone before
 the bug was going to activiate.  That is a special case which
 should be avoided if possible.  Even silly "harmless" viruses
 can have adverse effects.  I mean, there is no way of know what
 environment the program is going to be running under or what
 compatibility issues may be involved.  The virus may do no more
 than display a message, but it could be run on a machine that
 has the INT 10h trash BP bug, or on a 286 that allows interrupts 
 to occur even when they are masked out.  Or it could be running
 on a large server and could cause it to crash because of the
 large quantity of file accesses and it may annoy everyone if
 they have to sit through a message.  I think a virus that did
 no more than display a peace sign proved to be a waste of time
 for many people.
     Anyway, I hope this helps clear things up more than it
 confuses you. :)
                                            Betty
--- GEcho 1.11+
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