Found this little gem. Just thought someone might be interested.
FOOT-AND-MOUTH BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS UNABLE TO SPREAD
THROUGH
MICROSOFT OUTLOOK
Researchers Shocked to Finally Find Virus That E-mail 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 knowledge. 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?"
Stay well and happy
Heracles
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