Ah, btw, this was the first George Bush right?
I don't see the purpose though, why would keeping you off the Internet make a difference with the protest? Or rather, how would the protest make a difference? Seems like the better way to go about it would be not to raise suspicion, let protests play out and ignore them, just like they do today. Who knows though, hard to dig back into the past now and see where the file came from; what it did; who really made it. The government hasn't always been the smartest...
S3C
It's interesting to think about, and could be true, but at the end of the day rigged elections and 9-11 being an inside job are all conspiracy theories, but it's up to the individual to find their own answers, and let their mind decide what evidence is most relevant to their opinion on the matter, and let coincidental occurrences fuel their fire. My conspiracy theory on rigged elections is less Tom Clancy-esque. There is no need for taking violent measures and computer hacking to adjust vote counts...anything run electronically is to easy to fusker non-abrasively. Regardless, American voters buy into the illusion that their vote matters, portraying a minimally positive idea of the government at the least, when in reality the people that already have power (and more importantly, $$$) make the decisions regarding the company...in fact, I would attest it wouldn't make much a difference if Bush or Gore were elected, it mainly ends at having differing mantras and social beliefs, but in the end its not like politicians actually keep their promises, and too often are they too vague in their plans for America and leave changes open to interpretation. Republicans and Democrats play ball for the same team, large billion dollar corporations who inject dollars into the campaigns. But back to windows 95...
No other explanation? Sounds like you downloaded a virus. It's very easy for software and files to claim they are accredited to certain organizations. Especially in the 90s when file systems where very raw and easily modifiable, comparatively speaking. Look at the wiki page on SSL, and how initially precarious it was.
VicariousE
Yeah, America's a stacked deck nowadays. Washington was right though, to keep things working, you need more than just a few political parties in play, otherwise, we're due for a massive scrapping of what we've got now.
I still doubt it was some IRC nut-case trying to depopulate the chat rooms, but there's always the possibility you're right... wasn't a virus though; that SSL dll wasn't there before the intractable problem. Could've been any number of ways it got on my PC... over a pitiable dial-up connection. Maybe a bad server - back then, we used FTP apps to swap files, using a terrible ratio system. Had to upload 4-15 Megs, just to get 1 back :p