Rob Slade is a data communications and security specialist from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His first love is teaching, and he got into computers because of an interest in what they could do in improving the education process in the public school system. He still has links with the education system in BC with both grade school and the college system, and writes and speaks for the computer educators in the province. He has a B.Sc. from the University of BC, an M.S. (in Computer and Information Science Education, which no one can ever remember) from the University of Oregon, and a Diploma of Christian Studies from Regent College. He is the founder of the DECUS Canada Education and Training SIG. He has both formal training in data communications and exploration with the BBS and network community, and has done communications training for a number of the international commercial seminar firms. His technical jobs have involved everything from support of terminal emulation programs to satellite communications. He considers communications technology to be the most interesting of the various computer fields, probably because it allows him to hog attention worldwide rather than being restricted to boring those in a single room. He is the founder of the DECUS Canada Communications SIG. His research into computer viral programs started when they first appeared as a major problem "in the wild". Acting initially as the unofficial archivist for the budding research community, he has since become known for "Mr. Slade's lists" of antiviral software vendors, antiviral reviews, antiviral BBSes and virus books. One of the working group for the VIRUS-L FAQ, he is best known for a series of review and tutorial articles which have recently been published as "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (and that was *not* his idea for a title--blame Springer-Verlag). He is the founder of the, you guessed it, DECUS Canada Security SIG, which was actually the first, and got him into all this SIG founding business. He still considers data security to be a minor sideline, and was astounded to hear himself referred to recently as a "leader" in the security community. He is more widely known for his series of daily technical book reviews which appear on appropriate newsgroups and mailing lists, including alt.books.reviews, rec.arts.books.reviews, the *.books.technical groups and topics related to the individual titles. He is well regarded by the local library and his office at home is *definitely* over the floor load limit for a residence. He has been a coastal paper boy, ranch hand, circulation manager for a local weekly, rail gang worker, hosptial nursing orderly, industrial first aid attendant, cook, resident camp worker, and a few other odds and ends. His mother-in-law is convinced that he is not old enough to have done everything that he has done, but he was born old. He fondly remembers a distant age when he had time for sailing, photography, folk music, camping and involvement with non-computer related volunteer groups. At present, he makes every available effort to spend time teaching operating systems to his new grandson. He is married to the world's best executive secretary, which is probably the only reason he actually got the book finished. It is next to impossible to get him to take "bio" writing seriously. ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor/reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses, 2nd ed", ISBN 0-387-94663-2 (contact +1-800-SPRINGER in the US and Canada, ertel@springer.de in Europe)