A boot sector does not show up on a list of files on a disk. And so it goes. Being the first on your block to upgrade to new versions of programs can have drastic security risks itself. Mailing lists and newsgroups are recommended without any analysis. Most recent email viruses and worms harvest addresses for regular correspondents, so the direction to avoid email attachments from someone you don't know is almost worthless.
Firewalls have nothing to do with viruses.
If a virus infects a system file, knowing what programs are running on your computer is useless. Backups will help you recover if hit, but provide no inherent virus protection. Knowing how to break into systems will not protect you from viruses, nor will seven pages of C source code for a variant of the Crack program. Phone phreaking isn't that easy, trying the stuff in the book can get you arrested, and it has nothing to do with viruses. Chernobyl is a variant of CIH, and not the other way around.