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To Prevent Infection (9/29/98)
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Hoo boy... Looks like the party's over. After enjoying a Golden Age of the Virus-Free Macintosh, viral activity has picked up in a big way. The first real outbreak consisted of those darn cross-platform Microsoft Word macro viruses, which are annoying but not particularly destructive. We still run across those all the time, though not on our systems, as we don't use Word anymore. Plus, they weren't actual Mac viruses, though they certainly irritated the bejeezus out of plenty of Mac users. Anyway, the next big problem was the Autostart Worm, which continues to infect systems on a wide scale since its surfacing last May. This thing is a real problem, and too many years of easy living seems to have given Mac users a false sense of security, because the Autostart Worm seems to pop up everywhere we look.
But that's not all! Now there's a new virus screwing with the natural order of things, posing as a Graphics Accelerator. MacInTouch has lots of important details on this nasty new bug, which at first seemed "only" to destroy applications by messing with their menu resources, but now appears also to include a fun little time bomb that can delete all of your files if your infected system is on at certain dates and times. Get educated and get protected-- this is not one to mess with.
Incidentally, if you see an extension called "Graphics Accelerator" in your Extensions folder, don't panic-- there's a perfectly legit extension by that name installed as part of the Mac OS on some systems (perhaps just the 9500 with ATI XClaim GA card?). The virus extension has a special hex 01 character at the beginning of the filename. Apparently, you can be infected simply by running an infected application, so please don't just go blithely downloading and running random applications willy-nilly. Take care of yourself-- and your Mac.
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SceneLink (1045)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 9/29/98 episode: September 29, 1998: Apparently some people forgot the cardinal rule about not taking AtAT too seriously, thus producing some rather upset rumormongers out there. Meanwhile, the supercool iMac SCSI card may be in jeopardy, and a new and nasty virus pokes its infectious little head onto the scene...
Other scenes from that episode: 1043: Grain of Salt (9/29/98) Okay, time out. We know that most of you know the drill, and there's a disclaimer right at the end of each day's episode, but we've got to remind you all: AtAT is an entertainment site, not a news site. As such, we frequently engage in bizarre conspiracy threories that have no shred of substance to them. Heck, that's pretty much our whole charm right there. If you're actually looking for real news, there are literally dozens of fine Mac news sites out there in Netland. If you're looking for a slightly twisted and melodramatic reaction... 1044: Karma, Dogma, Whatever (9/29/98) Several of you are no doubt aware of the theory that there's a sort of karmic balance in the universe-- that for every bad thing that happens, a good thing pops up somewhere else. While this concept is usually applied to individual action and behavior (as in, "someday you'll pay for that extra newspaper you took from the machine when an anvil falls on your head and makes you go all accordion-like"), we like to think it holds up just as well on a macrocosmic scale...
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