COMPUTING CAN NOT be as free and easy as it once was no more indiscriminate warm booting, no more cold booting with strange disks, no more non- write-pro tec ted Workbench disks. With the appearance of the dreaded Amiga virus in the AmigaWorld offices, the staff devised “safe computing” procedures to eradicate the virus from our current disks and immunize ourselves against future infection. Try them yourself to keep your disks virus free. Developed by a member of the self-styled Swiss Cracking Association, the virus is a program found in the boot blocks of “infected” disks. When you boot with such a disk, the virus transfers into memory and protects itself against a warm boot. If you subsequently warm boot your Amiga (Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga) with an uninfected disk, the virus replicates itself to the boot disk. For standard AmigaDOS disks, the virus isn’t malevolent; it merely writes an annoying message on your screen (to the effect that your Amiga is alive) after a number of wrarm boots. DR. TIMOTHY LEARY (infamous psychedelic researcher of the ’60s) Is providing the organization, private promotion and psychic backing. Amiga artist Brummbflr (just one name and you'll be hearing it often in the future) is creating the art and animation. Devo (Mark Mothersbaugh and his brother Bob of the band Devo both use Amigas) is composing the music, and Interplay Is doing the programming. The star-studded project is a game, more accurately The virus is a danger, howT- ever, to copy protected disks. Because the virus writes to a disk’s boot block, it can destroy copy protected disks, which have nonstandard boot blocks. The virus also could be mutated to do something more destructive than writing a message. Controlling the virus should be a top priority of all Amiga owners. Here at AmigaWorld, we’ve taken the following steps to combat infection. When approached with understanding and good humor, these measures need not interfere with your relationship with your com puter. Boot the computer with a standard Workbench disk.