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Vol. 7, No. 7
2-15-07
1 Deadly hoax
2 I need a WHAT?!?
3 Hi-Def DVD crack, Vista Vienna, RIAA member on DRM, more patches
4 Review site
5 AVG auto-scan
The time has come once again to pummel a deceased equine and talk about email hoaxes. You’ve seen them, the breathless warnings of AIDS tainted needles taped under gas pump handles, Bill Gates begging to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars if you’ll forward an email, Pepsi removing God from the Pledge of Allegiance and those killer teddy bears, which will reduce your computer to so much molten slag.
While such nonsense is a common occurrence I’m prompted to write this week about an oldie that’s making the rounds again that can lead to more than some real world damage. This one can actually kill you.
The email, forwarded on by countless thousands of innocent Internet users who think they’re passing on life saving information, gives instructions on how to perform CPR. Not on someone else, but on yourself.
Below are some sections of the message, quoted directly from the last version I received:
“What are you to do if you have a heart attack while you are alone. If you've already received this, it means people care about you ...The Johnson City Medical Center staff actually discovered this and did an in-depth study on it in our ICU The two individuals that discovered this then did an article on it.. had it published and have even had it incorporated into ACLS and CPR classes.”
“It is called cough CPR. A cardiologist says it's the truth”
“Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack , this article seemed to be in order. Without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about very two seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.”
“From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240s newsletter "AND THE BEAT GOES ON " (reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response)”
“BE A FRIEND AND PLEASE SEND THIS ARTICLE TO AS MANY FRIENDS AS POSSIBLE”
There are so many things wrong with this email I don’t know where to begin.
From the top:
Johnson City where? Tennessee? New York? Texas? And if these Johnson City medical personnel who discovered this life saving technique had written articles and the procedure was actually written into ACLS and CPR courses shouldn’t they me named?
This is completely ignoring the fact that ACLS and CPR courses are designed to teach people to save other people who’ve had a heart attack, not to teach them how to save themselves.
“A cardiologist says it’s the truth”? What Cardiologist? Does he or she have a name?
Deep breathing and vigorous coughing every two seconds if you feel chest pain? Please. Try this (obviously only if you’re healthy and able to walk a block or two without fainting, have no heart condition, kidney or liver problems, are not pregnant or likely will not become pregnant, etc…). If you do that for ten or fifteen seconds, were you light headed and out of breath? Did you feel like you’d just run a mile, or carried a sofa down a flight of stairs?
If so, if you felt chest pain would you immediately grab a sofa and head for the nearest staircase while waiting for an ambulance, or would you try to breathe normally and remain calm?
Rochester General Hospital and Mended Hearts, Inc. both deny ever printing an article dealing with this and point out the dangers of taking these steps if you feel you’re having a heart attack:
http://www.viahealth.org/body_rochester.cfm?id=329
http://www.mendedhearts.org/education-cough-cpr.htm
And the killer, as it were, “FORWARD TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW”.
Common clues that an email is a hoax are a lack of detail (which I pointed out above), the presence of hundreds of email addresses in the header, the need to open multiple “nested” attached email messages to reach the actual message and the plea to email to everyone in your address book.
www.snopes.com is an excellent resource to use for researching emails like this before you forward them on. Barb and Dave Mikkelson spend vast amounts of time keeping this site updated with the latest information on hoaxes and urban legends and deserve many thanks for providing such a great free service.
Things like this spread through the goodwill of Internet users who think they’re doing the right thing and usually result in nothing more than a bill for computer repair, but this one can be fatal.
If you’ve received this CPR mail and ignored it or forwarded it I would urge you to forward this newsletter on to anyone who may have been affected. Don’t send it to everyone you know, unless you just feel inclined, but if you’ve seen the erroneous information odds are so have your friends and, in this case, you might actually save their life with an email.
Until next week, be well…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
A hacker claims to have
discovered a cryptographic key that can be
used to circumvent copy restrictions on HD DVD and Blu-ray movies:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/8E0706CE2A42271BCC257282001D4B28
Microsoft is already working on the next version of Windows, dubbed
Vienna. Or not. Or maybe. Either way, it's supposed to roll
out in
2009, which is 2012 for those of you who live outside of Redmond,
Washington:
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9521/1023/
The head of Warner Music Group defended the use of digital rights
management (DRM) with digital music on Wednesday in an apparent
response to recent criticism from Apple CEO Steve Jobs:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129022-c,copyright/article.html
Microsoft delivered its monthly batch of security updates on Feb. 13,
delivering fixes for 20 individual problems in its products included
in a dozen bulletins, six of which were dubbed as critical, the firm's
most severe vulnerability rating:
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,2094844,00.asp
Copy us on the good stuff---preferably before the end of the Mayan calendar ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
Over the years, I’ve responded to a few email
requests about digital camera recommendations with suggestions that the writers
look at the product reviews at PCWorld’s website.
With March Madness rapidly approaching, there
will be a sharp increase in the sales of High Definition televisions. You’ll find comprehensive reviews of the most
popular HD TVs at PCWorld’s site by clicking on this link:
http://www.pcworld.com/product/reviewfinder.html?id=41
In addition to the hi-def television reviews,
you’ll find reviews for nearly every type of computer hardware and high-end
electronic devices. The reviews and
testing at PCWorld are comprehensive and the reviewers offer their opinions
with fairness. They don’t hesitate to
report negative findings on advertisers’ products, something the other leading
computer magazines never do. There’s a
lot to learn and a lot to read, so get busy.
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: I have AVG, the free anti-virus software.
Every time I turn on the PC
the virus scan wants to run, I haven't been able to find anywhere to
stop this; do you know anything about this? I can stop it right then,
but trying to find were in program to change this setting is
difficult.
A: If you shut the PC down at night odds are AVG
is scheduled to scan
in the early AM and is starting automatically since its launch point
was missed.
Open the AVG Test Center and click on the Scheduler button on the
left side of the window. Click once on anything with a Test listed in
the Type column and delete it. Click Close, exit the Test Center and
restart the PC. That should solve the scanning problem.
Hope that helps and keep us
posted...
Kevin Mefford
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