E-MAIL VIRUS HOAX MAKES USERS DO THE DIRTY WORK
May 30, 2001 02:39 PM
IN THE LATEST perverse trickery pulled off by someone taking pleasure in computer users' pain, a fake virus warning is circulating by e-mail asking people to delete an innocuous and uninfected executable Microsoft Windows file and then to pass the warning on to others.
For Full Story: http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/05/30/010530hnhoax.xml?0530alert
Looks like somebody taking another advantage of the utter idiocy of the PC design - an operating system that needs to be booted each time the computer is started. It is like having to installing the transmission each time you start your car. Sheer idiocy from the user's point of view, and very vulnerable to viruses, but an ideal planned obsolescene scheme that allows Microsfot to render your hardware obsolete by changing a few codes in the software that runs it.
PC is what US cars were in 1960s - pile of heavy hardware run by a gas-guzzling ineffcient engine, unsafe but full of bells and whistles, and worshiped by industry's propaganda as a new civilizational advance. I just got rid of one from home - I am now using a handheld pro with the operating system stored on a chip. Except for heavy duty number crunching, it is as functional as a PC, less bells and whistles, gigabytes, kilowatts of energy(the battery lasts for 12 hours of continuous operations), and of course video games.
wojtek