Virus: FOOT-AND-MOUTH

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Virus: FOOT-AND-MOUTH

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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. - 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? "