Craig Vespe writes:

> These are people whose posts I normally read, even if they
>  send them in attachments - that in this perilous of attachment times.  The
>  topic - FTP from IBM to the 3000 - I've not a clue as to the development of
>  the thread.  And in my current assignment, I'm particularly curious.  I'm
> not
>  here to lay blame on any of the posters, their mail clients or whatever...
>  all I want to know is how do I read them?  WordPad isn't working.

Craig,

These attachments don't say anything other than "Ross has read his mail" --
or something similar -- regarding the particular posting to HP3000-L from
whomever it was that initially asked for return receipts from the entire list.

These attachments are a "feature" of Microsoft's mail-handling programs such
as Outlook, Word, and other Microsoft e-mail-capable products. Microsoft
"extended" the mail standards and these extended standards are known as MAPI.
These are the same advanced e-mail features that allow people to write such
code as Melissa and Worm.Explorer.Zip programs. Ordinarly e-mailers aren't
affected by these worms and viruses because they don't support Microsoft's
"extended" feature set.

All of the current crop of particularly rapidly spreading viruses only exist
because Microsoft allowed them to exist. At the time of Microsoft's product
creation, the idea of "intelligent agents" was all the rage. Microsoft only
saw these intelligent agents as doing good, bouncing from machine to machine,
patching and repairing and installing necessary software. Other people,
however, were quick to see the "dark side of the force."

I've always figured that the people that write these particularly destructive
viruses that erase most of your disc are simply trying to alert everyone who
uses Microsoft products not to use Microsoft "extended" standards -- and to
particularly not request return receipts.

Wirt Atmar