8/20    why the hell is it so hard for people to understand the concept of
        not opening random attatchments to emails?  if some gangs of kids
        ran around and spraypainted the word "go" on all the stopsigns
        would worldwide car traffic be brought to a standstill by these
        same fucking idiots?
        \_ "WET PAINT, DO NOT TOUCH".  -John
        \_ yes, if they did a great graphic artists job and you can't
           see red at all (ie: all green with white GO letters)
        \_ picking out an attachment w/ a virus is like picking an Iraqi who
           is a terrorist
        \_ that's not a good analogy. try this one: if you got a mysterious
           but not too threatening looking envelope in the mail, would you
           open it?
           \_ a better analogy: if someone sent you a mysterious looking box
              that had some wires poking out, an odd scent, oily spots
              leaking through the paper, no return address and a small plume
              of smoke was rising from one corner, would you open it?
              \_ haha, right. if i sent you a letter that said I'M GOING
                 TO KILL YOU written in something that looks like blood,
                 would you open it? i bet you would.
                 \_ No, I'd bring it to the cops for forensic analysis.
           \_ It's not a matter of "opening the letter". It's like, if someone
              sent you a letter containing a hypodermic needle, would you
              go ahead and inject it into your bloodstream? Now what I don't
              understand is, why call it a virus? These things are just
              programs people run. Trojans.
              \_ Because the press has to make it easy on the public.  Having
                 viruses, worms, and trojans just confuses people.  Any
                 Trojans sounds like condoms anyway.  They don't want to
                 tell the public to not use Trojans.  And also the Press is
                 stupid as well and mostly doesn't know better either.
        \_ Funny story: I'm not stupid.  I know the attachment thing, and
           I'm good about it with pine on soda-- not that it matters, but
           still.  But at work, where Outlook is forced on me, I open
           attachments with wild abandon.  I just don't care, it's easy,
           and as a stooge I assume that other people take care of my
           security.  My code is backed up on a server regularly, so I don't
           worry much about losing work.  Hell, I wouldn't mind having my
           machine hosed, just so I could upgrade it a bit.
           \_ i open attachments on mutt with wild abandon. the difference
              is mutt doesn't treat the attachment as an executable.
              \_ "Gay Abandon."
           \_ That's a funny story?  Stay off stage.
           \_ I used to fire people like you.
              \_ And then the boom became the dotbomb and you're no longer a
                 Vice President of Geek Things and now flip burgers and change
                 tapes.  Thanks for sharing.
        \_ Don't you miss the days of the "Good Times" hoax, when you couldn't
           get a virus by reading email?  Leave it to Microsoft to make the
           hoax a reality.
           \_ NO CARRI{{|{{{~
        \_ Why do they keep sending spam? because someone responds to it.