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Posted

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. — 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?"

Posted

You know better than to copy-and-paste news articles - please provide a link to the source and credit the owner.

 

You might also consider that everyone who reads this (and has a brain) will want to corroborate it with the appropriate services.

Posted

Just because it's essentially a joke doesn't mean you can reproduce it word-for-word without the owner's permission. Now you don't seem to care about that, but you've seen other people being beasted here for breaking the same rules.

Posted

I thought he was making stuff up, kind of play on words thing. As foot-and-mouth can mean either he was serious or he has came up with this whole elaborate scheme of getting someone's attention here.

 

And no, while I do not consider myself lazy, I did not search for the source(unknown at the time), nor was I willing to ask any questions on what that really means. ;)

Posted

What do you mean?

 

Like I said, when I first read this thread, I thought that either that was a very intricate way of getting someone's attention and certainly a more polite way of saying "Don't say stuff you know nothing about" or that was a legitimate news story.

 

Certainly you can see why I was a bit confused by this article which had no source. ;)

Posted
Ah ha ha, I had already deleted my post and now you look crazy.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." --Lord Acton
Posted

You missed off the bit where he went on to say "...but at least they aren't like those annoying guys who have to quote people to borrow authority - they really piss me off, especially when I am busy getting corrupted".

 

:P

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