On-Line #27 10 марта 1996

Дисководы

Mosaic - On the forced inclusion of the write-protect the drive.

                 MOSAIC


(C) OLDMAN


   I've been waiting for this to happen ... Nerds a lot, but 
when one of them accidentally falls into the hands of a 
computer expect trouble. After playing plenty of Galaxion, a 
boy trying to learn programming. Fairly quickly, he understands 
that is too stupid to do anything that causes concern not only 
him but also for anyone else. Cursing parents who do not think 
that their establishment will show sometime penchant for 
creativity and forgot about the ban on alcohol during 
pregnancy, the establishment has decided to poison the lives of 
not only them but also to the greatest number of people with 
normal intelligence. With great difficulty mastered several 
commands, and writing them down on paper, creates an 
unfortunate moron did procedure, transferring control 
formatting program in ROM TR-DOS. Calls it the proud name of 
"SUPER DISK DOKTOR v 3.02" (By the way, judging by the version 
number, there is a suspicion that the result was obtained by 
randomly trying all possible combinations codes ...) and, as 
now, thanks to the dial-up network at SPECTRUM, there are no 
problems with the spread of any crap zaparyvaet drives several 
sysop and users. In this case, for some reason he decided to 
substitute me, signing his burp my name, because he's still not 
a complete psycho and understands that such dealings may face 
stuff ... 


   I'm not too concerned about this fact, hardly anyone 
seriously thought that OLDMAN in his old age decided to take up 
illegal activities. Although, now for me the favor: when will 
be revealed real name of the boy, I did not linger to inform 
our readers with his phone number and address, and we nickname 
him the whole of Moscow We invent ... Sooner or later all 
revealed! 


   And now calmly talk about this issue and discuss how
protect yourself from mentally retarded adolescents. Firstly, I 
would like to warn that the production and dissemination of 
informed these programs are punishable offense, as they may 
cause substantial damage to property. And if someone spoiled 
the disc with the results of his many days of labor, will be 
discussed and compensation for moral damage - then such action 
possible to roll ... I do not mean that the author of such 
tricks very difficult to come back at least to the normal ratio

his personality.


   As you noticed, I have studiously avoided using the term
"Computer virus". The fact that the word "virus" suggests 
infection itself and the possibility of cure. Procedures just 
completely erase the information, the virus can not be named, 
Yes, and what I saw on SPECTRUMe is too weak coding, something 
that would could be given at least some title. If we talk 
specifically, but we are talking about "DZU vX.XX", "PARTIZAN" 
and "SDD v3.02", it can be a stretch, to name a virus only 
DZUshki as a floppy disk infected by them, is easy to restore, 
because the information is not destroyed, and encrypted. As for 
the other two procedures, except as a perversion of their can 
not be named. 


   And finally, advice on how to avoid problems associated with
what idiot allowed to see the keyboard ... Here one is able to: 
not Take your time to run unknown programs. First copy of their

on a separate disk or floppy disk, cover with a suspicious 
purchase - if the healthy drive to erase or change the 
information from the disk can not be sealed. If you are too 
lazy messing around with stickers, I offer two proven ways to

force the write protection. The first: stick in the slot
floppy drive on top of something delicate and opaque, such as 
calendar. But this method is dangerous and is not reliable, 
because if the calendar poke too far, can damage the drive, and 
if too shallow, it just does not cut optocoupler and did not 
get the desired effect. Personally, I use the second way: on 
many computers drives have a special button, which includes the 
write protection. You can easily do this and on SPECTRUMe.


                        Dmitry (OLDMAN)
                    MDM 496-8508; 12:00 / 21:00
                    ZX Net: 095:1641684 .. 4968508