Giving Net Viruses A Dose Of Medicine

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday June 10, 1996

Edited by JULIE ROBOTHAM

ANTI-virus software makers should be grateful to local area networks. While most computer viruses are still boot sector viruses that are usually only spread via floppy disks, there are a number of viruses that survive intact and spread from machine to machine via network operating systems such as Novell's NetWare.

Biting the hand that feeds him, then, is Peter Watkins, international sales and marketing honcho at anti-virus vendor McAfee. In Sydney last week, Watkins announced: "The Internet is the fourth major operating system. NetWare's a legacy system."

Expanding on the theme he added: "I've not met a corporate user yet who's not evaluating Windows NT."

FLOWING DOWN

THE steady stream of CEOs anxious to check out the Australian market despite its meagre contribution of 2 per cent or so of worldwide revenues continues unabated this week with the arrival in Sydney of Gordon Eubanks, president and CEO of utilities and communications software vendor Symantec.

The company, which seems to have weathered the Windows 95 crisis pretty well (if Microsoft puts that much stuff in the OS, who needs to buy utilities?), is now keen to put its case for ... the Internet.

REGIONAL BOSS

THE career of Steve Vamos (that's Mr Steven Vamos to you) has hit yet another new height - possibly the 10th in a year or so. Last year he was made a vice-president of Apple in recognition of the outstanding sales job he had made of Apple Australia since he took over as managing director from former incumbent David Strong two years ago.

But that was pretty much a non-executive title and on a day-to-day level, Vamos got on with running the Australian business. Now he has scored Apple's entire Asian region as part of the reorganisation under another newcomer, CEO Gil Amelio.

Interestingly, Vamos is being described only as "head" of the region - with no formal region-specific president or vice president title attached.

Perhaps its just to save the ink on the business cards, because he remains managing director in Australia and a generic VP. Or perhaps the reorganisation has some distance still to travel, and we'll hear more when the dust settles.

FLYING HIGH

IBM knows how to talk itself up. It claims to be equipping the Space Shuttle Endeavour's crew with a supercomputer's worth of compute power (at late 1980s levels, that is). The six member crew will carry 11 ThinkPads into space.

When they're not playing network Doom, they'll be using the machines to get back the Spartan demo satellite and controlling Endeavour's positioning - using the Global Positioning System satellites courteously provided by the United States military.

In between times, they'll be displaying simultaneous data feeds and video images from the Spacehab module.

All fine upstanding experiments in the name of science, we're sure, but the real question is how the twiddly red joystick in the centre of the keyboard works in weightless conditions.