Archived viruses, was Re: Reasonable price for a complete SOL-20 system?

[william degnan]

>
> John McAfee predicted that 5 million computers would be wiped out.
> The press were called in.
>
> On March 6, there were apparently DOZENS of drives wiped.  Few, if any
records kept to verify numbers.
> McAfee, as expected, took full credit, and declared that the REASON why
it was dozens, instead of millions, was because his warnings were heeded.
>
> Six months later, when he took his company public, he raised 42 million
dollars.
>
> He is currently a fugitive as the "prime suspect" in the murder of his
neighbor in Belize  (apparently NOT virus related)
>
>

Side note...maybe 6 or 12 months before the big virus scare I called McAfee
on the phone and spoke with him about a virus I found on a GRID laptop that
I found was copied to 4000 similar  machines out in the field where I
wokred. He emailed me his latest test iteration of his software, a copy on
a scratch disk.  It was a very early version.  I had no idea of course of
his future, but I was impressed with his software because it was light, no
install disks and he knew his stuff.   We were talking about how to inject
his antivirus prpgram into a program I wrote to update laptops remotely by
modem, and how we could send virus updates via this process.   It was
getting impractical to keep sending me disks and we needed a better way.
You could not buy his software
Viruses were starting to get more numerous.  I don't know if he had just
started his company, it was not public or anything yet.  In fact I got his
number inmformally from a manager at a company called Sales Tchnologies out
of Atlanta, I w as working with their sales tracking program they were
already using my "mass update" system to manage their software and data
updates.  That's where the virus came from.   Fun times all MS DOS based,
btrieve database, Sprint Internet exchange for free phine calls inbound
from anywhehre in the USA... I also remember building and compiling Sales
Tech software version updates on a xerox workstation.  When I left they
offered me the Xerox but I remember thinking what would I ever do with
*that* old piece of junk?  "Well Bill you're the only one who knows how to
use it so we will just throw it away then, are you sure".."yah, my
apartment is too small...."

At least that's how I remember it.

Bill