h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are a few things that could be added.

1. The outlook security flaw that can allow viruses in the subject line to be executed. There have ben a few, none malicious yet.

2. possibly direct people to a site such as mcafee [link removed by moderator], keeps a good source of viruses and virus hoaxes, so people can see if a warning is for real. I've gotten fakes and real warnings, its useful to know the difference

3. I usually use the reply all function, tell people its a hoax. Embarrasses the person who sent it, and they're less likely to send hoaxes again, also can stop others from sending it.

The Knight of Cups - Don Juan,

I disagree with your third point.

Using reply all simply generates more trash email. Most of these people have fallen victim to web hoaxes through ignorance. They need to be educated not embarassed.

Yes, there is a certain quality of "the boy who cried wolf" and we do grow tired of hearing thes shouts of panic from people who don't know how to evaluate. But, to embarass them is to possible getting a proper announcement.

I would suggest that you reply only to the sender with a message explaining why the message is unbelieveable with the URL of a good anti-hoax site. If the sender is really concerned, your explanation will probably end up being sent to all who received the orginal posting. If not, you have probably shamed that individual without the extra traffic. In any case, you have defeated the hoax from the viewpoint of you're computer, you did not act as the author of the hoax wanted by generating an expanding tree of scare-spam.

(My opinion. Do you want to buy a flower?)

Incidentally, if you examine your second point you will see why certain web addresses don't end up in articles.

Barton

Thirdly notice the name of the article is E-Hoaxes and webrumors, not A comprehensive article about viruses. Try and remember what the topic is when commenting please. There IS a link to a comprehensive article about viruses IN this article if you read it all the way through. I'd suggest posting this on his page instead.
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[From time to time, every man is tempted to hoist the skull and crossbones and slit a few throats just to get the job done.]

Well, the rewrite using a new example rather than the admittedly too long Jane Fonda one is done and has been added. Lemme know what you all think.
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[From time to time, every man is tempted to hoist the skull and crossbones and slit a few throats just to get the job done.]

I like it. But I liked it before

I have received at least one E-Hoax that was obviously contructed to get around exactly these kinds of informative articles.

Nearly all the objections have been met and superficially appear to be trustable. This particular document cited a lawyer at a very important Washington DC law firm.

The firm was legitimate, the lawyer was a fiction. If any email asks you do do something you would not normally do. Or contradicts what You believe to be the facts. Check its sources and even if that checks out, check a web hoax site.

Barton

You claim that an e-mail without an attachment can't contain a virus. This is not true. There is one sort of rare virus which can be carried in an e-mail. Plain text e-mails are not a problem, but e-mails can also include HTML and other codes. Unfortunately, I am a little unclear on the exact details, so you are not going to believe me. As far as I can remember, it is one of the features of Microsoft's e-mail program, Outlook, which allows it to execute macros in an e-mail itself, rather than in an attachment. But this feature can be turned of on your computer, making it immune to virus attacks of this sort.

Gnomon,
YOU'RE not going to believe this, but I believe you. However, as I couldn't find any hard evidence on it, I didn't include it in the original draft. That's not to say that I've stopped looking, I've got a query in to Microsoft and once I get a reply from them one way or the other, I'll make sure the info gets added even if it's already an Edited Guide Entry.
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[From time to time, every man is tempted to hoist the skull and crossbones and slit a few throats just to get the job done.]

I had this forwarded to me from a very reliable friend, pass it on!
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[From time to time, every man is tempted to hoist the skull and crossbones and slit a few throats just to get the job done.]

This is from D. Clyde Williamson:

Douglas Adams will be missed by his fans worldwide. So that all his fans everywhere can pay tribute to this genius, I propose that two weeks after his passing (May 25, 2001) be marked as "Towel Day".

All Douglas Adams fans are encouraged to carry a towel with them for the day. Make sure that the towel is conspicous- use it as a talking point to encourage those who have never read the Hitchhiker's Guide to go pick up a copy.

Wrap it around your head, use it as a weapon, soak it in nutrients-
whatever you want!

Most minds in the universe are constrained to the laws of Physics, let us remember those that broke the laws, and got away with it.

So long Douglas, and thanks for all the fish!

I rather thought I'd just sit down and read his books again.



Barton

Good idea, I'm starting with Long dark tea time of the Soul. Wonder if there are any Scouts out there?
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[From time to time, every man is tempted to hoist the skull and crossbones and slit a few throats just to get the job done.]

Wow, it's gotten quiet around here. Halloooooooo? ::Listens to the hollow echoes:: Hmmm...guess I'm all that's left. Well, it's ready for review, everything that's been reasonably suggested has been changed/fixed/added. I guess all I have left to do is...wait for some adventurous, intrepid Scout to wander past. ::sigh:: I hate waiting.
§hadow

When you've finished Long Dark Teatime, can you explain it to me? I didn't quite follow the ending.

Sometimes you have to wait weeks for a scout to pick your entry. If its a good one, it should get picked eventually.

Fills a niche OK. I'd agree it could be more concise and maybe focussed, maybe this combines with the GuideML thing - utterly your choice, but if you don't use it, there is a trade-off in having to use more concise style and layout to improve readability.

I find the classic giveaway wording for Virus Hoax messages is "Share this info with all_your_friends /everyone_you_know /everyone_on_your_adress_list [etc etc]". You then get this dilemma of whether to Reply to everyone on the cc list, and hopefully educate THEM all not to forward virus hoaxes, BUT at the cost of using as much bandwidth as the original did...

LOL! It WAS more concise, then I got all the demands to expand it, so it was rewritten and rewritten and rewritten and got larger and larger and larger. It STAYS the way it is. If it isn't picked up fairly soon, then it dies and I'm taking a nice extended break from this place.

It used to be fun around here, now it's all about moderation and corporate image BS. I went around trying to spread the idea about Towel Day in memorium of DNA and got CENSORED and emailed telling me to quit spamming!!! Trying to get people to do something in memorium to the man who's ideal we were trying to bring to fruition is now spamming! F'ing great place this has become. DNA is probably rolling in his grave at the way they've sold out. At this point I really don't care anymore if this gets accepted or not.
~S

Oh, I hear what you're saying. Those lazy, two-bit, no account Scouts are probably running around naked, flicking towels at each other's bums, and otherwise horsing around when they should be out there scooping up fine articles like this one and cramming them into the Guide. Why, just last week, I saw one of them Scouts running through the halls of the University of Life, naked as a jaybird, soaking wet, lightly covered with what may have been flour, or perhaps plaster of Paris.

Oh, wait, that was me.

Maybe I should do some work, then.

Congratulations! This article has been recommended for inclusion in the Edited Guide... umm... if you still care... no?

Small point about outlook viruses in html email. (I nkow you don't want virus stuff, but the question was asked and I know the answer).
Initially, they were scripts in html email were run unconditionally, later, they gave corporate users the ability to turn it of, while we peasants who are the main users had to stay as before because to quote microsoft "the scripting feature is too usefull". This generated a lot of complaints, so what do you think they have done? in the version of outlook that comes with XP, they have done nothing different to the corporate version, but changed the default for ordinary users to be to not run scripts in html email. (what happened to them being so useful?) Yet another U-turn by microsoft ignoring the main problem.

Also, disabling this feature makes Exchange Forms ineffective - i.e. it disables all groupware functionality of Exchange. Moral: Buy Lotus Notes if you want groupware - it has execution control lists.

Novell Groupwise is what they use at my work. I've seen no reasons to complain... it's a solid product.

Let me just check. Made by Microsoft? No? Probably reliable, then.

Editorial Note: This thread has been moved out of the Peer Review forum because this entry has now been recommended for the Edited Guide.

If they have not been along already, the Scout who recommended your entry will post here soon, to let you know what happens next. Meanwhile you can find out what will happen to your entry here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/SubEditors-Process

Congratulations!