It happened in (much too) real time.

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It almost seems as though it was made to order: There I was writing about how our exaggerated fear of being attacked by computer viruses was causing us to retreat from the promise of what I conceptualize as "community computing", when all of a sudden I see that my virus protection is telling me that "kernel32.exe is trying to access the internet", and is asking me whether I want to permit the connection. I wasn't fully sure that "kernel32.exe" was a virus (or something of that sort) but it seemed a good guess. So I ran a Google search on the term, and sure enough found that I'd been infected with a Trojan. Updating my anti-virus software, running a full check on my system, and removing the invading enemy took about an hour, and I was able to return to writing.

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Go to: The Return of the PC.