HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: alby@access.digex.com (Albatross)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Virus Programs 4 Sale  (Virus, Trojans, etc)
Date: 26 Jan 1993 01:03:05 -0500
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.com



                            VIRUS'es    FOR    SALE
                        ----------------------------------


        Have you every wanted to test out your virus Software to see if
Norton Anti-Virus or Mcafee's Virus scanners really work and see if your
blowing yor money or are you really protecting your vital computer data?

        Well now you can play with some of the most ruthless & destructive
virus'es known to man. See if the Dark Avenger virus really can be detected
by these money hungry  anti-virus software companies, or if you dollars are
paying off.

Cost:            $20.00 per disk
Contents:        10 Viri  per disk

Disk 1:                             Disk 2:
---------                          ---------
1704 Virus                         Jerusalem Virus
AIDS Virus                         Jerusalem-B Virus
Cascade Virus                      Inject Jerusalem  (UNDECTECTABLE)
Dark Avenger Virus                 Joshi Virus
Elephant Virus                     Killer Virus
Friday The 13th Virus              MobyZ Virus
Grither Virus                      Leprosy Virus
Iraqi Virus                        Kamasya Virus
Israeli Virus                      DSZ (Zmodem) Virus
Hawaii Virus                       CIA Virus

Disk 3:                             Disk 3:
----------                         ----------
Pakistan Virus                     Panic Virus
Phoenix Virus                      Psycho Virus
Rabid Virus                        Red Cross Virus
Schizo Trojan                      Stoned Virus
Sunday Virus                       Tequila Virus
Thor Virus                         Thrash Virus
Tiger Virus                        Tiny Virus (Strains A-F)
Tron Virus                         S-Cadet Virus
Razor Virus                        Spider Trojan
Sub-Zero Virus                     Stoned II Virus (Source Code)


Send  Checks or Money Orders Too:
--------------------------------------------------

Anthony Williams            <- Make Checks Payable To
1200 Twig Terrace
Suite 101
Silver Spring,  Maryland
20904

Include a letter or index card  with the Check Noteing which Disk Of virus
Software you would like to receive.
Please Allow 1-2 weeks for shipping


NOTE:   Use of These Virus with intent to Destroy Data is a Violation of
        The Law.

        I will hold NO responsiblity for such actions,
        if incidents are incurred.
From: pat@rwing.UUCP (Pat Myrto)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Virus Programs 4 Sale  (Virus, Trojans, etc)
Date: 29 Jan 93 03:10:02 GMT
Organization: Totally Unorganized

In article <1993Jan26.214320.7083@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) writes:
>In article <1k2k6pINNdng@digex.digex.com>, alby@access (Albatross) writes:
>>        Well now you can play with some of the most ruthless & destructive
>>virus'es known to man. See if the Dark Avenger virus really can be detected
>>by these money hungry  anti-virus software companies, or if you dollars are
>>paying off.
>
>Is it just me, or is this not a smart thing to do?
>
>IMHO, the best thing to do with a virus is destroy every copy you come across.
>Claiming you "want to see if the virus protection program works" is foolish.
>What happens if it doesn't?  Suddenly, you've contaiminated your system with
>a virus you have no protection against!
>
>If you want a good virus protection program, I think you would be far better
>off simply asking for recommendations from the appropriate machine-specific
>group.

It seems to me that anybody even entertaining the idea of experimenting
with virus samples would have the common sense of using a DEDICATED,
and ISOLATED machine for the purpose.  A machine that is not used for
anything else.  It would also have to be totally cleaned (including full
reformat of the HD and reload from clean, write protected floppies and
tapes) between the tests of each sample, to prevent a very possible
corruption by other viruses not under test at the moment.   Anything
less than that would render any testing questionable, IMHO (not to
mention risk of losing control of the samples being tested).  This might
be a bit much for some, but I have seen too many test results end up
being useless because an unknown variable was in there mucking things
up.

That said, the active marketing of virus programs is not a great idea,
at least from my point of view...

I think information on how they work and attack systems should be more
available, since that can give users a better handle on how to protect
against virus attack.  It seems those that create these virus programs
have no problem getting the necessary information, but users gaining
info to detect them is a different story.  Having to be totally dependent
on a software 'black box' that one can only blindly trust is not a very
comforting position to be in.  Have these ever failed?  And if so, how
come the failures are not widely published - is such information just
kept quiet for the sake of the protection software vendors?  From what
I see, the art of virus detection is a VERY carefully guarded secret.
That is a great disservice, IMO.  It means users must be dependent on
updates that are probably nearly obselete by the time they are distributed.
Detection by noticing one's machine has gone GA-GA is not very helpful...

-- 
pat@rwing.uucp                                  (Pat Myrto),  Seattle, WA
                      If all else fails, try:
         ...!uunet!{pilchuck, polari}!rwing!pat
WISDOM:    "Travelling unarmed is like boating without a life jacket"
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: A PEACHY-KEEN PROGRAM
From: tarheit@jupiter.cse.utoledo.edu (Tim Arheit AKA Fool Boy)
Date: 28 Jan 93 13:01:59 EST
Distribution: world


Write a scrabble program with an almost unbeatable computer
opponent.
From: english@alicudi.usc.edu (Joe English)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Telling if the SHIFT key is down.
Date: 22 Jan 1993 10:45:59 -0800
Organization: Nerds of Action
Distribution: world
Reply-To: joe@trystero.art.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: alicudi.usc.edu


In article <1993Jan21.132348.19617@druid.uucp>, darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) writes:
|> ooprb@Msu.oscs.montana.edu writes:

|> >WHAT FOR:
|> >I'm writting a program that updates numbers by the press
|> >of a mouse button.  I would like to change the value by
|> >a different amount if the shift key is being pressed when 
|> >a mouse button is pressed.
|> 
|> Don't do this.  If you must change the meaning of a mouse button use
|> another button to do this.  Your method requires your users to have
|> their hands on two different devices in order to do input.

Using keyboard modifiers in conjunction with mouse buttons
seems perfectly reasonable.  Both the Motif and Open Look
style guides use keyboard modifiers to change mouse button 
behavior all the time, and many Macintosh programs do too.

Speaking from personal experience, I have no difficulty 
using Ctrl, Shift, and Alt in conjuction with the mouse;
the mouse only takes one hand to use and on most keyboards
the modifiers are all available on the left side.  Pressing
Control-meta-shift-button three might pose some problems 
for left-handed users, though.

|>  In fact
|> why not just make use of the different buttons on the mouse?  You could
|> for example increment by 1 on the left, 5 on the right and 3 on the
|> middle.  If your user has a two button mouse it still works but with
|> less intermediate control.

This severely restricts the number of functions you can 
perform with the mouse, especially if it only has one or
two buttons.  The latest Motif Style guide defines at 
least 14 standard mouse-based operations (probably more),
most of them involving different selection and transfer
methods.  You could get by without all but one or two
of them, but intermediate and advanced users probably
wouldn't want to.


Just my two cents worth,

--Joe English

  joe@trystero.art.com
From: guglielmetti@elia.epfl.ch (Philippe Guglielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: how about PRIME numbers ?
Date: 26 Jan 93 17:09:18 GMT
Organization: IA-DME-EPFL
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d11
X-XXMessage-ID: <A78B307C03017B20@iamace9.epfl.ch>
X-XXDate: Tue, 26 Jan 93 18:16:28 GMT

Hi!
about primes, I've read somewhere that it is possible to check if a
really large "candidate" number like 2^245-1 is prime or not in a
reasonable time using "congruence", without generating all the primes and
without looking for divisors (which is roughly equivalent) but I didn't
really understood how it worked in practice. Does anyone have code for
this ?

I remember that this what makes modern "revealed key encryption" feasible
since the public key is the the product of 2 large prime numbers (which
form the private key used in decryption).  If I understood correctly, it
was formally prooved that no polynomial time algorithm exists to
decompose a number in its prim e factor...


Ph. Guglielmetti
From: elw@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM (Eddie Williamson)
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1993 15:59:05 GMT
Subject: Re: C specific editor (was Re: C/C++ Speed)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Loveland, CO
Newsgroups: comp.programming

----------
>>  In article <1993Jan15.160435.19703@acuson.com>,
>>  miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman ) writes:

>> The whole discussion of speed is limited to inexperienced people.  In
>> real world applications, the hardware will double your speed in the
>> time it takes to write the application.

----------
> hplvec:comp.programming 
> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) 
> 9:54 am  Jan 18, 1993 /
>
> The net result is that in the *real* real world, efficiency is *always*
> important.  In the synthetic real world imagined by acedemics, you can wave
> your magic wand and say "just buy enough hardware to make it fast", but when
> you are spending your own money, or money that comes out of your profit
> sharing bonus, or from somebody other than nameless taxpayers, you have to
> buy what you can afford, and live with what you buy.  
----------
I agree! (with the second paragraph)
Most real world customers can't affort to go out and buy the latest
hardware every time they buy new application software. They live with
what they already have. Don't make excuses for being lazy. Design your
software from the beginning with efficiency in mind. You'll end up
From: dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Virus Programs 4 Sale  (Virus, Trojans, etc)
Date: 27 Jan 93 06:42:41 GMT
Reply-To: dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann)
Organization: University of Arizona

In article <C1H46E.G2I@moscow.uidaho.edu>, kramer893@snake (KRAMER BRIAN M) writes:
>In article <1993Jan26.070707.28320@emr1.emr.ca> jagrant@emr1.emr.ca (John Grant) writes:
>>
>>	There are probably many bleeding heart civil libertarians
>>	out there who will disagree with me, but I think it's
>>	about time we got some new laws that would make it a crime
>>	to distribute virus-related material, regardless of any
>>	disclaimers or denials of responsibility.
>
>Since when does code become illegal?

'Scuse me?  If you read John's post carefully, you'll see that he doesn't
want to make the code illegal, but its distribution.

Personally, I would amend that to more specifically mean the mass distribution
of such materials.  Just like it should be illegal to sell large vials of
typhoid or the bubonic plague on street corners.  Such things just aren't safe.

>There is no difference between one
>piece of software and another if they are made of the same binary bits.

Could you explain what you mean by this?  I don't see how it pertains
to the discussion.

-- 
What I've learned from reading net news #2:
  Surely the most ignored phrase to be posted to the net is "'nuff said".
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: icfaragh@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Chad Faragher)
Subject: Re: Virus Programs 4 Sale  (Virus, Trojans, etc)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 17:02:22 GMT

In article <1993Jan27.064241.11819@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) writes:
>In article <C1H46E.G2I@moscow.uidaho.edu>, kramer893@snake (KRAMER BRIAN M) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan26.070707.28320@emr1.emr.ca> jagrant@emr1.emr.ca (John Grant) writes:
>>>
>>>	There are probably many bleeding heart civil libertarians
>>>	out there who will disagree with me, but I think it's
>>>	about time we got some new laws that would make it a crime
>>>	to distribute virus-related material, regardless of any
>>>	disclaimers or denials of responsibility.
>>
>>Since when does code become illegal?
>
>'Scuse me?  If you read John's post carefully, you'll see that he doesn't
>want to make the code illegal, but its distribution.
>
>Personally, I would amend that to more specifically mean the mass distribution
>of such materials.  Just like it should be illegal to sell large vials of
>typhoid or the bubonic plague on street corners.  Such things just aren't safe.

I think that the solicitation is the crime.  It should be the same to say
"Viruses for sale,"
as it is to say
"Sex for sale."

You can't stop distribution of viruses.  But you can control adds like the one
that got us all fired up.  If we don't know about it, we won't be upset.
Besides, whether we know about it or not, it's still going to happen.

It's just like smoking, and drinking and drugs.  
                  You can't stop 'em.  
                               You can only hide 'em.
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: VAAGA@gribb.hsr.no (Vaaga, Hans Egil       7-93)
Subject: Sound effect program
Organization: Rogaland University Centre
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 13:20:48 GMT

Hi!

I don't know if this is the right group to send this letter, but 
I hope you can give me some help anyway.

I'm going to make a program in The Microsoft Windows enviroment. It's a 
tool that operates the synthesizer in a sound card (e.g. Pro Audio
Spectrum 16). It will make the card play sounds like an explosion, type-
writer click etc.

Does it exists programs like this? I'm also interested in books, magazines,
etc. that have conections to this program I'm going to make.

I hope somebody will answer me.

Hans Egil Vaaga
vaaga@gribb.hsr.no
Hans Egil Vaaga
Rogaland University Centre
vaaga@gribb.hsr.no
From: bv548@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (David S Weitermann)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: HELP WANTED:  Starting Mac programming in Think Pascal
Date: 21 Jan 1993 21:04:18 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: bv548@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (David S Weitermann)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


I'm not sure this is the appropriate place to post this, but I thought it's
worth a shot.  I'm trying to get into programming on the Macintosh in Think
Pascal (I have an older version of Think C that doesn't seem to like System
7 too much, and I know Pascal better).  Can anyone give suggestions as to
some good reference/tutorial books out there?  Right now I'm mainly looking
to learn general-purpose Mac programming (using the Toolbox), though
eventually I want to get into some of the more advanced areas (networking
particularly).  Thanks in advance.

Dave Weitermann
bv548@cleveland.freenet.edu
weitermannd@acad.ripon.edu
weitermann@admin.ripon.edu
--
From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: how about PRIME numbers ?
Date: 28 Jan 93 02:21:48 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

In article <4671@sicsun.epfl.ch> guglielmetti@elia.epfl.ch (Philippe Guglielmetti) writes:
 > about primes, I've read somewhere that it is possible to check if a
 > really large "candidate" number like 2^245-1 is prime or not in a
 > reasonable time
Yup.  A few minutes for a number in that range.  The actual technique takes
a bit more space to explain.
 > 
 > I remember that this what makes modern "revealed key encryption" feasible
 > since the public key is the the product of 2 large prime numbers (which
 > form the private key used in decryption).
Actually it is in general not really necessary that both components are
primes.  Being strong pseudo-primes will also help.  But you are less
secure, and communication might fail.

 >                                            If I understood correctly, it
 > was formally prooved that no polynomial time algorithm exists to
 > decompose a number in its prim e factor...
There is no formal proof.  But it is widely believed.
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj  amsterdam, nederland
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn  amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: dik@cwi.nl
From: spackman@disco-sol.dfki.uni-sb.de (Stephen Spackman)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Virus Programs 4 Sale  (Virus, Trojans, etc)
Date: 28 Jan 1993 09:54:16 GMT
Organization: DFKI Saarbruecken GmbH, D-W 6600 Saarbruecken
	<1993Jan27.064241.11819@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
	<C1IvBz.8yu@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: stephen@acm.org
NNTP-Posting-Host: disco-sol.dfki.uni-sb.de
In-reply-to: icfaragh@napier.uwaterloo.ca's message of Wed, 27 Jan 1993 17:02:22 GMT

In article <C1IvBz.8yu@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> icfaragh@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Chad Faragher) writes:
|I think that the solicitation is the crime.  It should be the same to say
|"Viruses for sale,"
|as it is to say
|"Sex for sale."

It's very interesting that you should say this. Perhaps it hasn't
occurred to you that you are arguing against yourself, that many of us
here are quite likely to feel that legalising prostitution is the only
moral and coherent thing to do?

Personally I rather *like* the idea of having a public archive of
viruses (a business I like less well, but I could cope), because the
things need more study, more understanding, and less blind panic. And
they are, in fact, basically fairly safe - they'd be more so if current
operating systems were of higher quality, and that again might argue in
its favour.

But I'm also in favour of gun control ("if you own a gun, you hang"), so
I'm not sure I trust this opinion of mine. Maybe it's because I can
understand and defend myself against a known virus, something that isn't
feasible with a gun.

But it's surely not like drug sale or prostitution, things that are
crying out to be legalised and regulated - because they're unavoidable
and harm no one, when conducted wisely.

If you want something to compare to prostitution, what about operating
systems sales? You *can* use a computer without an operating system, you
know. It's not even as depressing as going through life without sex.

|You can't stop distribution of viruses.  But you can control adds like the one
|that got us all fired up.  If we don't know about it, we won't be upset.
|Besides, whether we know about it or not, it's still going to happen.

Right. Exactly. With knowledge you can defend yourself. Bring on the
knowledge.

|It's just like smoking, and drinking and drugs.  
|		     You can't stop 'em.  
|				  You can only hide 'em.

You see the pattern? What you can't stop should be public.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
stephen p spackman    +49 681 302 5288(o) 5282(sec)    stephen@acm.org
      dfki / stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 / d-w-6600 saarbruecken 11 / germany
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: gowen@jade.tufts.edu (G. Lee Owen)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: A PEACHY-KEEN PROGRAM
Date: 28 Jan 93 02:49:02 GMT
Organization: Tufts University - Medford, MA

> Now that I've written this wonderful, peachy-keen program,
> my question is what do I do with it??  Other than a "How
	
	Well, a recent Nu-Mega ad page (they market Soft-ice and
Bounds Checker, some debugging tools, and they have some sort of
puzzle every time) had a contest to see who could come up with the 
best phrase containing the letters in "DOS IS NOT DEAD".  You could
1) apply it to that contest and 2) email me a copy, if you feel
like, because I worked making a computer program to do it and failed
miserably :).
	
--
--Greg Owen
	gowen@forte.cs.tufts.edu, gowen@jade.tufts.edu
"C Spot. C Spot run. C Spot run without a core dump! Run, Spot, Run!"
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: lowry@watson.ibm.com (Andy Lowry)
Subject: Re: how to calculate PI
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 17:45:21 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
	<c8h3xpm@rpi.edu> <bosullvn.727615765@unix1.tcd.ie>
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

In article <bosullvn.727615765@unix1.tcd.ie> bosullvn@unix1.tcd.ie (Bryan O'Sullivan) writes:
 > I've not looked at any analyses, but it seems that Gregory's
 > algorithm gets roughly exponentially slower with the number of
 > digits of precision required.  Or perhaps it's just the variant I
 > have.

A straightforward implementation does the following to compute
atan(1/x):

 1. Allocate two vectors of integers big enough to hold as many digits
    of pi as you need (multiple digits per integer), plus sufficient
    "slop" (it's possible to work out how much slop is sufficient).
    One is the "current term" vector and the other is the "sum"
    vector. 
 2. Zero all elements of the current term vector except the first,
    which you set to the value x (the decimal point is assumed to lie
    between the first and second vector elements; thus this
    initialization sets the vector to represent the value x).  Zero
    all elements of the sum vector, thus initializing it to the value
    0. 
 3. Set i=1
 4. Divide the current term vector by x^2, and then by 2i-1.  As long
    as i doesn't get too big, you can use a very simple algorithm to
    divide an extended-precision value by a scalar, in time linear in
    the size of your vector.
 5. If i is odd, add the current term vector into the sum; otherwise
    subtract the current term vector from the sum.  Both operations
    can be done in time linear in the size of the vectors.
 6. If the current term vector is not zero, increment i by 1 and loop
    back to step 4.  Otherwise terminate.

The number of iterations required is linear in the size of the
vectors, since each iteration will shrink the current term vector by
at least an order of magnitude as long as x^2 >= 10 (and in general, k
iterations will reduce the current term by at least an order of
magnitude as long as k >= 1/log_10(x^2)).  Thus the total running time
is O(n^2), where n is the number of digits you require.

The above works so long as the division by 2i-1 in step 4 never
requires larger integers than your machine can represent.  For
sufficiently small i, this will be the case, and on typical machines
you can go far enough to get a good nubmer of digits.  A more general
implementation would require that the division be carried out between
two extended-precision numbers, and that can be done in O(n^2) time so
the overall running time turns into O(n^3).

In any case, you should not be seeing exponential performance
degradation.
--
Andy Lowry, lowry@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7925
IBM Research, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: boutell@isis.cshl.org (Tom Boutell)
Subject: Re: Virus Programs 4 Sale  (Virus, Trojans, etc)
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Labs
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 18:27:19 GMT

In article <1k8d46INNnq4@digex.digex.com> alby@access.digex.com (Albatross) writes:
>  Tom, Looks like your out ta burn me since there's nothing else
>you can do to stop me..   Well best wishes....

Sigh.

Just in case you thought he was engaging in some sort of philosophical,
profound, libertarian stunt, out come the personal attacks.

>							Albatross

Someone get this thing off my neck.

-T

-- 
Tom Boutell, boutell@cshl.org

Clausthaler is the best non - alcoholic beer in the known universe.