On Bended Knee

by Justin Gardiner

I should start with an apology.

My excuses for the delayed publication of this edition of the AJ center around Golden Week and Klez.

Unfortunately, with so many cheap and regularly updated anti-virus packages available these days, getting stung by Klez, and a host of other virii it turned out, is pretty inexcusable. See Mike's article (overleaf) to learn why I'll be joining the legions of TPC Users who are happily using the pay version of Zone Alarm to further safeguard their machines, just as soon as I can figure out how to connect my home machine to the Internet for long enough to download it, along with the latest (and long overdue...) update from Sophos. Until then, my trusty Aptiva is doomed to Roppongi Girl status - thanks to the poster in the News Groups for this most accurate and memorable nickname.

The knowledge that Becky 2 my favourite mail client http://www.rimarts.co.jp/becky is immune to most Outlook Express targeted virii had made me complacent about my security. Unhappily, I chose to use OE to access the Tokyo PC Newsgroups, and had failed to notice that the program was still set to check my mail automatically on start up, a relic from the dark days before John de Hoog http://www.dehoog.org/html/j-email.html enlightened me about the joys of Becky.

The first I knew of the infection was when OE started telling me about delivery failures of mails I had not sent.

No doubt Zone Alarm would have informed me that OE was trying to access the Internet without my knowledge. Oops.

So what am I doing down on one knee when bowing and maybe even groveling are more traditional postures for apologies?

Because I'm reckoning our Editor, Mike Lloret, has had enough of pleading for articles, which makes it my turn.

Someone recently asked me if the increasingly large

F
onts
used in
the AJ are
a reflection of my
background in optometry

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