re: AV's AIDS disk/chat

[BRIAN.HAMMACK@rook.wa.com (brian hammack)]

 S.Behrens made this announcement:

 SDC| I feel I should warn the Apple // community of Mr. Adrian Vance,
    | CEO of AV Systems: He tries to spread the virus HIV through the
    | population. He does this in all innocence, by selling educational
    | disks that state that "only homosexuals and intravenous drug users
    | are at risk". It is precisely this kind of misinformation that
    | helps to spread HIV through the teenage heterosexual population in
    | rural areas (as seen up here in Scotland).

Hi, Soenke!  I too have had an email chat with Adrian Vance about the
disk and his beliefs on AIDS/HIV, though I didn't keep a transcription.
The conclusion IMHO:  we don't agree about the matter.  Which is okay.
But as you assert, if one takes what his beliefs on AIDS are as gospel,
one could very well have a problem (since I don't accept his stats and
statements as being accurate either; meanwhile I do not claim to KNOW
what IS correct, and have a hard time getting accurate statistics from
any source that I would consider reputable -- the medical community, the
government or the CDC, I don't have full faith in).

 SDC| The disks that AV Systems sell seem to be of high quality overall,
    | there were quite a few in there that I was interested in. However,
    | I for one have decided _not_ to buy anything from Mr. Vance, since
    | I do not wish to finance his views on AIDS and HIV.

This is your choice.  I agree with your statement, "AV sells good
software" and do not have anything negative to say to you about "...but
I don't support the views of the author or this one piece of software."
This reply I'm writing is not to be taken as support for anyone's views
(yours or Vance's); it is merely a statement that I too have found AV
Systems' catalog very good [I do praise those who continue to support
the Apple // line in writing new software] and that I too have swapped
messages with A.Vance with the result being that I don't agree with the
way he views AIDS or the virus' spread.

Out of the discussion A.Vance and I had on things, he asserted one thing
about the program in question (trying now to bring this back to the
computer and away from the man):  this program is a _simulation_ of what
will happen within a group _if_ certain things are granted as true.  I
think MECC or some other eduware publishers have used the same method
for science classes:  given that x is the rule, we put this many
creatures into the atmosphere and after y time this is what we get.  The
difference being, with other software the x in question is something
that we can prove in the real world (like what happens to fruitflies in
a Petri dish if there's only so much food, in regard to reproduction).
In this piece of software's case, we don't have undisputable rules in
real life so some had to be set (the computer being a binary object) to
make the simulation go.  I make no representation of whether the data
produced by the program would "go" in real life -- and I don't think
A.Vance means for it to be taken as this-WILL-happen-on-Earth-fact,
though he does lean toward "given these items, this probably would
happen" in his own opinions.  Taking a limited theoretical study like
this as fact, yes, is not a very responsible thing, and if the program
is used in education the instructor should delineate to the class what
the givens/assumeds are to the program and that it is not hard fact.

    This has been a test demonstration of 2qwk! 2.0b6, by the way.

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 * 2qwk! 2.0b6 * I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.