-=> Quoting Kurt Wismer to Betty Holder <=-
 -=> Mocking Betty to Edward <=-
 KW> (Mock, mOck, moCk, mocK)
 
 BH> as mentioned here repeats itself on another machine.  That is
 BH> just the delivery mechanism.  Usually viruses do more than just
 BH> spread themselves around.
 KW> statistically speaking, most viruses do nothing more than replicate...
 KW> sounds strange but it's true...
 
 BH> taken as be promoting or encouraging viruses.  The discussion
 BH> above does not refer to special-case productive viruses.  An
 BH> example of that would be on the biological level.  There is a
 BH> genetically engineered variation of the common cold which can
 BH> be used to heal certain lung diseases.  Likewise, there was a
 BH> computer virus that one software company wrote to fix a serious
 BH> bug in their program.  It looked for the affected program,
 BH> patched it to remove the bug, maybe made a copy of itself to
 BH> spread to one other machine or disk, and then deleted itself.
 KW> what a horrible idea... tell me, what was the name of this company so
 KW> that i can avoid ever doing business with them...
 KW> seriously... viruses, no matter how safe the programmer tries to make
 KW> them, cannot remain safe under all circumstances... on some computer
 KW> systems the scenario you described above will undoubtedly cause some
 KW> degree of data corruption... the company would have been better off
 KW> just sending out a patch for their software to everyone in the customer
 KW> registry so that people who don't need it don't get it (thereby saving
 KW> them the time that a virus would otherwise waste perpetually looking
 KW> for some peice of software or replicating), and if anyone has problems
 KW> with the patch installation they can call up the tech support...
 You are right.  That was what I was trying to explain as well.
 Like describing the trouble that the Peace virus inavertantly
 caused.  That also holds true with the biological viruses.
 One genetically engineered virus that may be used to cure disease 
 in one person could make another person terribly ill.
 KW> ... ever notice how ours is the only planet named after dirt?...
Cute tagline! :)  As long as there isn't a planet named "Virus..."
                                                 Betty :)
--- GEcho 1.11+
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