Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!ucbvax!DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL!TMPLee
From: TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Heatseeker & Viruses
Message-ID: <910624033812.116808@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL>
Date: 24 Jun 91 03:38:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 33

I do apologize if anyone, especially Mr.  Curtis, was offended or
insulted by my comments questioning the wisdom of accepting software of
unknown provenance.  (At the risk of offending a whole nationality some
scholarly reference to Greeks bearing gifts would be a propos.)  But I
meant them seriously and none of the few comments I've received change
the situation much.  Jeff claims he is well-known to this list -- that
has to be somewhat of an exaggeration in that in the last month there
have been 1,396 messages posted to it, of which only 8 came from him;
needless to say I would assume most poeple do not read all the traffic
and I certainly didn't associate the Heatseeker announcement with
anything I'd read before.  (I have a GS and don't have Copy II+ so I
wasn't at all interested in any the messages on that subject.)  I have
no reason to doubt that he is an upstanding person with no malicious
intent, but on the other hand I have little solid evidence that he is
who he says he is.  (I'm sure you all remember the kremvax hoax of
several years ago -- one cannot necessarily believe the headers on an
e-mail message.)

In this one case I will grant that I am probably over-reacting -- I'm
pretty sure that if I called Argonne Labs they'd verify they did indeed
have a Jeffrey Curtis working for them, at the phone numbers he gave,
and if I called him I'd find a somewhat justifiably upset person on the
other end who was writing a whizbang Apple II utility he calls
Heatseeker.  But that doesn't really remove all doubts.  The real
question is how cottage-industry software can be developed and
distributed safely so we don't have to continually have this kind of
discussion and so people can use the talents of such people without any
nagging doubts.  (I'm sure you all are aware that most large companies
and government agencies have regulations prohibiting the use of
freeware, shareware, or the like:  if it doesn't come from IBM,
Microsoft, Apple or some similar large publisher, forget it.)

Ted Lee