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-
- ******* Urgent warning to all Sysops and VanTerm users!!!! *******
-
- Somewhere, running loose in society, is a demented juvenile delinquent
- with a dairy cow and a jackass for parents. This person logged onto my
- BBS on 9/25/87, gave no personal information, and used the name of
- "Billy Mathers". He uploaded what he said was an enhanced version of my
- program, VANTERM, and asked me to check out his enhancements. Well, this
- idiot apparently didn't know I am a 17 year veteran of computers and that
- I am smart enough to protect myself. I used PROTECT.ACC before I ran his
- version, as I do with ANY new or uploaded file, and sure enough, his
- version (PSAVED which executes automatically upon loading into GFA Basic so
- I couldn't see the source code) tried to write to all partitions on my
- hard drive (but couldn't because of PROTECT.ACC). I used RAID from MichTron
- and looked at his code. It looked like VanTerm, in fact, it was 100% of
- VanTerm with additional code to overwrite the disk partitions as soon as
- you tried to exit the program.
-
- So, Mr. Billy Mathers, you gutless idiot, you failed. HA HA HA HAR HAR!
-
- In conclusion, I warn you to be wary of any version of VanTerm that you get
- unless it's from a trusted friend or BBS, or from my BBS directly. There's
- nothing I can do to stop this immature excuse for a human being, except
- try to spread the word. I doubt you'll find this warning in HIS or HER
- copy, but it's possible. My ARC file always contains complete, loadable,
- readable, editable source code (VANTRMxx.GFA where xx is the version),
- a compiled version (VANTRMxx.PRG), either the desk accessory TRANSFER.ACC
- and TRANSFER.RSC plus TRANSFER.DOC, and a sample configuration file. In
- later versions you'll find WXYTR.TTP and .DOC instead of TRANSFER. If you
- want to be sure to get the latest version with no dangerous code, you are
- welcome to download it from my BBS at 301-577-3659 at 300, 1200, or 2400
- baud. You won't have automatic registration, but you will be able to
- download the latest version of VanTerm in any case. But I'm sorry to say
- I won't be giving out source code for future versions so this idiot can't
- do it again.
-
- Please be careful and don't let an idiot like "Billy Mathers" hurt you. My
- program is not dangerous, and a valid version won't do any harm to any
- disk or partition. It's just too bad there are people like Billy Mathers
- in the world to make life difficult for human beings.
-
- Thanks for reading this and please spread it around!!
-
- Wm. A. Van Nest, Sr., ("Van") author of VanTerm.
-
-