It doesn’t matter how many viruses (yes that is the correct plural for virus) do the rounds on the internet: people are largely ignorant to how they work and constantly bombard me with messages telling me that I sent them a virus, or worse, that I somehow infected their computer.
I know most of my readers will understand this, but the more it’s written, the more pervasive it will be and therefore the more effect it will have (hopefully)
- Keep you virus scan up to date; do it daily. This will help stop you getting infected.
- Get a firewall. If you do get a virus, don’t let it talk to the rest of the world.
- If you do get something that looks like a virus, don’t open it. If it looks like dog shit, smells like dog shit…you get the picture.
- It wasn’t me that sent it; chances are that the virus spoofs the email address that it was sent from. It came from someone else who had both our email addresses. If you were planning to do damage would you tell the truth about where you were from? Blame someone else; don’t blacklist me.
<vent>The one thing I hate most at work is the whispering that goes on across cubical walls. It’s just rude. Fuck off and get a room if you don’t want others to hear.</vent>
(I work in an almost open-plan type office. I’m the only male in my group, one of two on the whole floor.)
I think it was Dale Carnegie that said the most important words to a person is their name. Here’s the proof: think about the first thing you look up when you new phone book is delivered each year.
I was thinking about the labels we put on forms on the web. As an anglophone I often assume that people’s names are in the format FirstName Surname. However, this is not always the case. In some languages and cultures surname (or family name) is the first name and given names are secondary. This can be further confused by different titles or honorifics which may be prepended or appended.
It is generally a bad idea to use the term ‘christian name’ when refering to someone’s given name. I recall a discussion about names and their origin a collegue and I were having with a visitor from Indonesia. My collegue continually referred to his given names as christian names. The visitor was quite offended and protested that his name was Hindi, not Christian.
From now on I will use where possible the labels ‘Given Name’ where I would have previously used first name and ‘Family Name’ where I would have used surname.