Maybe it had a virus, or maybe not. Were the people who sent it back
qualified enough to tell?
Imagine the phone call to the UK:
Theatre staff:
"Our console has got a virus"
Strand (or whoever):
"Describe the symptoms"
Theatre staff describes random symptoms.
Strand (sensing an opportunity for some revenue):
"OK, perhaps it has a virus"
And now the killer from Strand:
"send it to us and we will look at it"
The point is that by agreeing with the Theatre's possibly unqualified
diagnosis, Strand (or whoever) is able to get some business!
Many people assume that they have a virus when the problem may be simply a
mis-configuration, or some other problem. Just look at the JDBMGR/good times
(or whatever) emails that describe fictional viruses. Many people believed
them. I sure much money has been made "cleaning off" these non-existent
viruses.
All of the above is not intended to claim that viruses are not a menace to
computer users (they are), just that much of the "damage" done by viruses is
actually done by owners/users who mistakenly think their machine is
infected.
>Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 02:40:23 -0500
>From: Glenn Schnittke <schnittke@mindspring.com>
>Subject: RE: Virus from list member?
>
>
>
>A few years ago I was with a show at the 1894 Opera House in Galveston (my
>all-time favorite theater in the world) and we were having trouble
>programming the lighting console. It was a Strand Mini-Light Pallett and
>reputed to be the only one still working in America. Maybe the only one
>that ever worked in America (BTW, it's British. There's your LBC content).
>But it had always been reliable. We had always been able to walk in, load
>our disk, re-patch and go to O'Malley's for Frito pie and a Bass Ale or two
>before showtime. That night was different. The design on these things is
>about as proprietary as it gets, with main chips from god-only-knows what
>ee's nightmare thrown together into a generally good solid working package.
>There is no way in hell anyone could have, with malice aforethought,
>written code to disrupt this machine, but after we left, we got word back
>that they had sent the console back to Strand and, yes there was a virus.
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