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Home > Archive > Linux/Unix > April 2001 > Funny
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| FOOT-AND-MOUTH BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS UNABLE TO SPREAD THROUGH MICROSOFT OUTLOOK
Researchers Shocked to Finally Find Virus That Email App Doesn't Like
Atlanta, Ga. (SatireWire.com) -- Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center today confirmed that foot-and-mouth disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook email application, believed to be the first time the program has ever failed to propagate a major virus.
"Frankly, we've never heard of a virus that couldn't spread through Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to say the least, unexpected," said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's infectious disease unit.
The study was immediately hailed by British officials, who said it will save millions of pounds and thousands of man hours. "Up until now we have, quite naturally, assumed that both foot-and-mouth and mad cow were spread by Microsoft Outlook," said Nick Brown, Britain's Agriculture Minister. "By eliminating it, we can focus our resources elsewhere."
However, researchers in the Netherlands, where foot-and-mouth has recently appeared, said they are not yet prepared to disqualify Outlook, which has been the progenitor of viruses such as "I Love You," "Bubbleboy,"
"Anna Kournikova," and "Naked Wife," to name but a few.
Said Nils Overmars, director of the Molecular Virology Lab at Leiden University: "It's not that we don't trust the research, it's just that as scientists, we are trained to be skeptical of any finding that flies in the face of established truth. And this one flies in the face like a
blind drunk sparrow."
Executives at Microsoft, meanwhile, were equally skeptical, insisting that Outlook's patented Virus Transfer Protocol (VTP) has proven virtually pervious to any virus. The company, however, will issue a free VTP patch if it turns out the application is not vulnerable to foot-and-mouth.
Such an admission would be embarrassing for the software giant, but Symantec virologist Ariel Kologne insisted that no one is more humiliated by the study than she is. "Only last week, I had a reporter ask if the foot-and-mouth virus spreads through Microsoft Outlook, and I told him, 'Doesn't everything?'" she recalled. "Who would've thought?" | |
| Yeti-GBR1 2001-04-12, 12:05 pm |
| LOL Randy...Good one!!! | |
| Randy 2001-04-12, 12:08 pm |
| VTP, heh heh. Truth may be stranger than fiction. | |
| jayjay22 2001-04-17, 1:47 am |
| That was funny.... 
This forum seems to have died again. Thats not funny  | |
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| Yeah, I know, but it seems there were never more than five or six people who posted here frequently anyway . . . usually mainly me and ccie2be. I think it will pick up again though, when CompTIA releases the Linux+, so I wouldn't worry. | |
| ccieToBe 2001-04-19, 9:03 am |
| I haven't been posting as much as usual because of the Northpoint buyout. My DSL line's been dead for the last two weeks because of it, and it looks like it will take Verizon another month to come in and replace them.  Oh well, I guess I'll keep rationing out those 40 NetZero hours till then. | |
| Randy 2001-04-20, 11:51 am |
| That's a bummer. I have constant access here at work, so it's not a problem for me. | |
| jayjay22 2001-04-21, 1:24 am |
| DSL in canada rules, especially where I live. It never goes down and it cheap. Only $39.95/month canadian dollars a month for 1.5 down and 512 up. I've had it for a year now, and it hasn't gone down once. | |
| ccieToBe 2001-04-21, 9:34 am |
| You're lucky jayjay22. The funny thing is that I replaced my cable modem with DSL for the reliability.
Hey Randy, I work for a small company that has a T1 line (kinda overkill), so when I'm there it's screaming. Only work part time though, so Netzero's it most of the time.
It's depressing to lose my static IP. I guess it's back to dynamic DNS. | |
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| I know what you mean, at home I am stuck using dynamic addressing and am limited to 56K. After using the net mostly at work and college previously, I find it irritating to make do with an old dialup modem! |
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