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The old days of viruses

Dave Farquhar security, Viruses March 8, 2012March 26, 2025antivirus, CIO, CISM, cissp, computer security, firewall, intel, John Dominik, journalism, Love Letter, malware, Missouri, public internet, spam, symantec, university of missouri, VBS

Blogging pioneer John Dominik, inspired by my Michelangelo memories, wrote about his memories of viruses later in the decade. So now I’ll take inspiration of him and share my memories of some of those viruses. I searched my archives, and at the time it was going on, I didn’t write a lot. I was tired and angry, as you can tell from the terse posts I did write.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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My first really bad day in IT

Dave Farquhar security, War Stories August 29, 2011January 23, 2022command prompt, IBM, journalism, macintosh, Missouri, passwords, university of missouri, windows nt

Next weekend is Labor Day weekend. I can’t remember if it was one Thursday or two Thursdays before Labor Day weekend in 1997, but one of those two days happened to be the beginning of the first crisis of my career.

Whichever Thursday it was, it was getting close to midnight when my phone rang. It was Max. The print server wasn’t working. That happened a lot. That server had IBM’s Services for Macintosh on it, which never worked all that well, and, worse, tended to make the rest of the server act up a lot. That in and of itself shouldn’t have been a crisis. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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Dave Farquhar

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Should journalists hack?

Dave Farquhar Journalism July 6, 20111990s, journalism, Missouri, piracy, university of missouri

I experienced an interesting collection of contrasts going to journalism school in the mid 1990s. Inside the same building, we had investigative journalists who specialized in advanced use of databases and stodgy editors who missed the days of manual typewriters and wore technological ignorance as a badge of honor.

And yet, there were textbooks that said journalists ought to be learning computer programming, because there was going to be a need for journalists who had the ability to do both. It took a while, but it seems that day has come. Maybe not to sit down and write applications software, but to hack.

But is it ethical for a journalist to hack?
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Dave Farquhar

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In defense of college and 4-year degrees

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized June 4, 2011job description, journalism, Missouri, university of missouri

College is a waste of time?

I disagree with Mr. Stephens’ statement that college is a waste of time. I don’t know what college he went to, or what he studied there, but I certainly didn’t spend four years at the University of Missouri copying my professors’ thoughts.

Dave Farquhar

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Do tablets cut into PC sales?

Dave Farquhar Hardware May 18, 2011journalism, Missouri, university of missouri

I see multiple reports that PC makers are seeing tablets cut into the sales of traditional PCs.

The two items don’t compete directly, but when consumers have limited disposable income, I can see them either buying a less-expensive PC so they can also buy a tablet, or hanging on to an aging PC another year or two in order to afford a tablet. If you already have a PC, and it works well enough, the second strategy certainly can work. Tablets are a new big thing, and we’re still coming out of a recession, so everyone isn’t flush with cash right now.
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Dave Farquhar

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Why publish in Classic Toy Trains?

Dave Farquhar Personal, Toy trains February 13, 2011Barnes Noble, Classic Toy Trains, CTT, journalism, lionel, Missouri, o gauge, toy train, university of missouri

On one of the few remaining train forums where I do anything but lurk, the magazine Classic Toy Trains came up in discussion. Someone said, “It ought to call itself Classic Lionel Toys and be done with it,” and the discussion progressed from there.

Being that my next published work will be in that particular magazine, I thought I’d address some of the concerns/comments that came up.

Dave Farquhar

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Blasko: Daring to dream in D.C.

Dave Farquhar Politics January 5, 2011classmate, Missouri, university of missouri

Andrew Blasko and I were columnists for the same student newspaper at the University of Missouri. He was a couple of years ahead of me, so I can’t exactly call him a classmate, seeing as he was taking 300-level classes when I was taking 100-level classes. But as the senior ranking columnist when I was the new guy, he was a mentor and an influence.

He had an editorial today in the Washington Times. And while there are perhaps two sentences I don’t completely agree with (and he probably wouldn’t want every reader to agree with every single word), it’s very good. I hope some people in Washington read it and take note.

I’ll be back later with something completely different. But since I just found out about this, I wanted to say hey, read this! I know that guy! (And I do think I’ve used up my yearly quota for exclamation points.)

Dave Farquhar

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Why working fast food and retail was good for me

Dave Farquhar Careers June 2, 2010March 27, 2024christmas, college education, compaq, IBM, IEEE, journalism, Missouri, Packard Bell, university of missouri

One of my former high school classmates is concerned. Her seven-year-old’s life ambition is to work at McDonald’s.

I told her not to worry. I didn’t work at McDonald’s, but I spent 2 1/2 years working another, nearly defunct fast-food chain, and that motivated me more than anything to go to college. And then, working two years off and on in retail motivated me to finish college.

Dave Farquhar

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Tribute to the Asus SP97-V

Dave Farquhar Hardware May 12, 2010November 11, 20241990s, amd, asus, Missouri, recycling, symantec, university of missouri, windows nt

In need of an obsolete but reliable PC for a project, I searched a dark corner of my basement, a last stop for castoff PCs before being sent off for recycling. I found one. Predictably, it had an Asus motherboard in it. Specifically, it had an Asus SP97-V in it, a budget Socket 7 board from the late 1990s sporting a SiS chipset with integrated video that worked well with Cyrix and AMD CPUs.

Dave Farquhar

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Barfy.

Dave Farquhar Personal, Servers and Networking, War Stories September 23, 2009September 27, 20241980s, 3com, cart, hp, IBM, journalism, macintosh, micron, Missouri, network cables, os 2, ps 2, Token Ring, university of missouri, windows nt

I started my professional career doing network administration at the University of Missouri. (I generally don’t count my stint selling low-quality PCs at the last surviving national consumer electronics chain towards my professional experience anymore.)

Dave Farquhar

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