Golly gee, I'm glad I don't use OTLOOK !! <G> ************ >Foot-And-Mouth Believed To Be First Virus Unable To Spread Through >Microsoft Outlook > >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?" > >Copyright 2001, SatireWire > >Received from PackyHumor mailing list. > >-=+=- > > > Camilla Flintermann, CG for Peter 82/70/55 Oxford, Ohio <[log in to unmask]> on the web at http://www.geocities.com/camillahf/index.html and also at http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/genugten/flinterm.htm "Ask me about the CARE list for Caregivers of Parkinsonians ! " And visit the CARE webring at http://www.crosswinds.net/~caregivers/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn