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It's funny. Laugh.

Foot and Mouth Virus and Outlook 163

Posted by Hemos from the hehe dept.
Alright, maybe it's the media saturation of "foot and mouth" disease/virus which seems quite similar to the LOVEBUG frenzy, or maybe it's just the bio major in me - but "the report" from the CDC concerning Outlook Express and foot-and-mouth made me spew coffee out of my nose.
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Re:Be a man and call it what it is, for Christ's s More

Re:Be a man and call it what it is, for Christ's s

Comments Filter:

  • HOLY SHIT! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...made me spew coffee out of my nose.

    That must've been pretty funny to make your coffee enema come out your nose!

  • I thought... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Microsoft Outlook Express already WAS a known virus. It isn't?

  • Re:Time to change? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Read the FAQ you dipshit.
  • No actually, the foot and mouth bacterium is actually very weak and can be easily killed with simple disinfectant, burning will most definitely eradicate the disease. Also, animals do actually recover from this disease, but it usually leaves them scared or possibly maimed, it rarely kills the animal, however the meat is unfit for consumption. The disease doesn't affect humans however (unless you have hoofs, that is).

    It is actually possible to vaccinate against this disease, however this merely makes the animal immune to a certain strain and does not stop a herd from carrying the disease, so if an animal comes into contact with an unvaccinated herd, it will infect the herd. Obviously vaccines also wear off, and there are numerous strains to account for. It is not practicable.

    Previous polices of vaccination in Europe have failed because it doesn't prevent animals from spreading the disease, and therefore gives possibilities for different strains to emerge. Anyway, as with the 1967 outbreak, current policy is to purely eradicate the disease through slaughter and pyres, however ghastly they may seem. European policy has followed British policy of eradication.

    As for that 1600 deg F bit, I think you're getting mixed up with prions from BSE infected animals, these proteins can sustain high temperatures. BSE or "mad cow" is different from foot and mouth.

    I know what's going on may seen daft to you, however you have to understand these people know what they're doing and the actions have logical explanations. If the disease could sustain fire then there wouldn't be burning, please give people a little credit before denouncing based conjecture and assumptions.
  • The morons you mention decided this because otherwise EU meat could be exported to several non-EU countries (including the US). Morons indeed. Everywhere.

    --

  • Correction (Score:1)

    by mce ( 509 )
    I can't believe it! Skipping the most important word. Where was my mind??? Anyway, here's what I actually wanted to say:

    The morons you mention decided this because otherwise EU meat could not be exported to several non-EU countries (including the US). Morons indeed. Everywhere.

    --

  • ...that we can look forward to victims of Outlook virii being culled and their bodies burned as a grim reminder to others?

    Shame. That's what's happening a few miles from my house to Foot and Mouth victims.
  • Governmental consolidation, like economic consolidation in the private sector, has its pros and cons. It can lead to greater economic stability as weaker players (like Netscape or Moldova) are weeded out of the market, but it can also lead to greater communication of pathogens like this.

    How many of the EU's policies are to blame for this epidemic? It used to be that livestock diseases were a local phenomenon affecting only local expendable populations. But now, with the advent first of railroads and then trucks and planes, we're seeing diseases carried far beyond these bucolic borders and into the urban centers we ourselves inhabit.

    So far, the EU hasn't taken any bold new steps to stem the tide, so what are we tolerating them for? They were supposed to stand for an image of a united Europe, but all they've managed to do is breed dissention and economic uncertainty with the collapse of the euro. How can we take a government seriously when its presidency exists on a rotating basis (to Sweden, of all places)? And what sort of united face have they put on the great animal and human suffering caused by this virus?

    The foot-and-mouth epidemic is the great test the EU must face in order to have some sort of legitimacy on the world scene. If other countries see that the EU and Europe are vulnerable to biological warfare like this, then there's no telling what sort of military or terrorist actions they might decide to engage themselves in.

    The future of Europe as an economic and political superpower is hinging on the cloven hooves of our ovine and bovine brethren.
  • And how is that a Linux problem? That's a BIND problem. It's a BIND problem with a fix, too. I updated my DNS server to the 8.2.3 debs awhile back, so I was already covered.

    Don't go blaming Linux (an OS kernel) for a userspace package's vulnerability. Besides, shouldn't you be having BIND switch to non-root UID and GID, and probably in a chroot()ed jail?
    _____
  • Dear cluebie:

    Go read the security advisory on bugtraq or CERT.org that talks about the weakness in BIND that the Lion worm is exploiting. It's an error in the way BIND handles TSIGs. Hey - I'll make it easy for you [cert.org].

    How about next time you read the security advisories. Just because the worm's for Linux, doesn't mean the vulnerability it uses to get where it's going is only on one platform.
    _____

  • Foot-and-Mouth (Score:3)

    by mholve ( 1101 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @10:36AM (#344492)
    See also: Slashdot editorials

    Oh, sorry - I thought it said "foot IN mouth."

  • Well the EU may help spread it a bit, but the truth is that Food-and-mouth will spread very quickly on its own. The problem is that much of Europe has populations both of animals and people that are much deanser than in The USA and Canada, which means that one farmer's sheep are much closer to another's than they would be here. The bad part of this is that when a pathogen like Foot and mouth shows up it can spread much faster.

    I'm not sure whey they aren't doing massive vacinations, but I'm not sure that there is an effective vacine for this.
  • It seems a stupid policy, because this has got to be worse than the vacinations.

    Why has the world decided that Vacinations are a bad thing anyhow. I mean thanks the people like Jonas Salk we no longer have to worry about polio and a lot of other things that used to kill and maim millions of people.

    BTW I found out the other day that Salk never patented the vacine for polio because he wanted it to be used as widly as posible. Real Meanch.
  • And of course, the US government is taking all the correct preventative steps to ensure BSE doesn't decimate the American cattle industry. They're not being arrogant, small-minded and ignorant and thinking that American herds are safe. They have in place preventative policies that Britain started implementing a decade ago. A flock of sheep in the North East wasn't investigated by federal agents this week with the suspicion that it might have mad cow disease (did the media mean scapie?). No: elk and deer in the wild in the west aren't exhibiting any of the signs of the disease.

    Your points about the EU are just as valid in other parts of the world too.
  • No, the US doesn't have any issues with their cattle. Ever wonder why N. American cattle is banned in Europe? Yep, the dangers of excessive use of growth hormone are unknown. But of course, you knew that as there isn't any covering-up of the information, and you chose that the potential unknown risk wouldn't effect you.
  • You said:
    Meat is also cruel to people. If people stopped eating meat and feeding grain to animals, there would be enough food to feed the world.

    Huh? There's obviously enough food available to feed the world already. Witness the ever-increasing population. The simple truth is that people are made of food. Just enough food means no population increase. Likewise, too much food means it's possible for the population to increase, which it's done since time immemorial. If you want everybody fed, perhaps you should try showing the hungry how to be self-sufficient, or making food distribution a little easier.

    Try again.

    --- Chris

  • Foot and mouth affects several different species (sheep, cows, goats, basically anything with cloven hooves). So if it spreads from a sheep to a cow, you can hardly say that is due to lack of genetic diversity.
  • here? [satirewire.com]

    I removed the "

  • "Wake up dead."

    It's a joke people, I didn't think anyone would interpret that literally.

  • OK, I was wrong, Anthrax is not especially contagious... but it is quick!

    Thanks for the insightful mod though :)

  • Re:I'll bite. (Score:4)

    by GypC ( 7592 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @10:48AM (#344502) Homepage Journal

    It's quick and highly contagious. Some bacterial infections can be very dangerous because of those characteristics... bacteria are much more robust and eager destroyers of body tissue than viruses, if less insidious. Victims of bacterial meningitis sometimes go to sleep with what they think is just a headache and wake up dead. Victims of flesh-eating bacteria sometimes have limbs amputated to save them from an uncurable spreading necrosis.

    Underestimate the mighty bacteria at your peril.

  • But what scares me most is prions. It's the bug in mad cow disease. It is the hardest to destroy.

    Except that prions are not bugs, they are proteins. Thus, they cannot be "killed", only rendered non-infectious via combustion or with certain solvents.
  • Goodness, hopefully they got all the Outlook CD's, manuals, boxes, EULA's, and everything else that Outlook has come into contact with, burned as well.
  • >>Victims of bacterial meningitis sometimes go to sleep with what they think is just a headache and wake up dead.
    While I'm not speaking from experience waking up dead isn't that bad. I mean granted you might feel hungry for brains and there is that whole moaning thing, but you can still do pretty much everything. Granted people will keep trying to bury you, but let them have their fun. You can always dig your way out later.
  • Actually, the last time I heard about foot and mouth disease in the US was yesterday, while listening to the radio.
  • The last outbreak of F&M (back in the Sixties) taught some hard lessons. One of these was that F&M afflicted beasts should be destroyed immediately then buried. There was no alternative to this "solution". Burning the dead animals was specifically rejected.

    Britain is a member of the EU. There are rules and regulations that GB *must* follow under these sort of circumstances. One of those is that the number of infected animals must be available for inspection up to 1 week later by "officials". Another is that the destruction should take place by burning if possible. GB unfortunately has been following these rules to the letter. It will almost certainly be the downfall of the livestock industry in this country.

    It seems that "Foolish Youngster" is living up to his (her?) name. The Brits are not being stupid, they're just (for once) adhering to the law. Perhaps we have too high a respect for an (obviously stupid) law, but that's not to say we agree with it, it's just that we adhere to it. There is a common saying in GB: "The law is an ass". What it means is that there is always a circumstance where the law is obviously stupid.

    Show me the farmer brave enough to step out of line during this crisis though and tell the law where to go. Lose your insurance. Lose your farm. Destroy your livelihood. Would you ? If you would, it's not just the law that's an ass. The press would have a field day...

    Simon.

  • While monoculture may be a problem, one of the bigger problems is that the bovine populations in Europe were, until very recently (European Union), almost totaly isolated from each other. Now that trade barriers have been killed, there is much more trade of bovine stuff between the countries and so these isolated populations are now in relatively close contact. Each population has evolved its own set of diseases (at least local variants) and immunities. The net result is like what happened to the natives all over the world when Europeans brought smallpox through. Epidemic. Massive Death.
    -Matt
  • Wow. A good argument from a reasonable-sounding person. Is that allowed on slashdot?

    rocketscientist.
  • The reason for not vaccinating is because then you can't tell if the animal has the disease (and is contagious) or merely has anti-bodies from the vaccine (and is not contagious)

    Incidently, hoof/foot and mouth is often not fatal by itself, but causes animals to lose weight and generally become unsalable/unproductive. Also, in animals that have recovered, you have the same antibodies/contagion problem you have with vaccines. The virus is very very contagious -- a human can pass it on simply by walking through a field where an infected animal has been, and then walking through another field where a non-infected animal will be soon.

    Some useful links:

    The Gaurdian's Information on Foot and Mouth Disease [guardian.co.uk]

    An Editorial, with information about when humans catch foot and mouth Foot and mouth disease: the human consequences [bmj.com](yes, it can happen, it's very rare and not really dangerous)

    BTW, Foot and mouth is not yet found in the U.S.

    Yet may be the key word here, however. If it gets here, it could not only affect domestic animals, but also deer and other hooved wild life.

  • When it became apparent that the Brits and Danes needed a few hand outs to make them join Europe the abandonment of the existing vaccination policy was one of them. Especially the Danes were making money by exporting to Japan and that country did not allow import of meat with anti bodies to Foot and Mouth. Problem is that a lab can not see a distinction between the vaccinated and the infected animal. Among others the Brits and the Dutch were willing to try to get onto the Japanese marked and supported the new non vaccination policy.

    And that's how it happened that Margareth Thatcher was first responsible for BSE and now at least partially for the outbreak of Foot and Mouth....

    Remarkable is that the present British government does not entertain the option to return to the safe policy of vaccination eventhough it looks like the disease has already wiped out any profit that's made in the last ten years. The Dutch have made a profit in the Japanese marked but wish to return to vaccination for the benefit of animal health.

  • I'm fairly certain that Foot & Mouth is a virus.

    F&M Has *nothing* to do with BSE.

    Also, BSE *IS* Mad Cow Disease, called Scrapie in sheep, and Cru(can't spell)-Jacob disease in humans (CJD)

    I also don't think this is kuru... though kuru is also a prion disease.

    Prions spread chiefly through cannibalism, yes. Foot&Mouth is highly contagious, also airborne. Hence the mad quarantining. The mad cow outbreak was due to the forced cannibalism of the cows.... they cattle feed contained rendered cattle.

  • Right. Though you generally only catch prions from ingestion, so they aren't highly contagious.

  • I'll bite. (Score:4)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @10:04AM (#344514)
    Foot & Mouth (Hoof & Mouth n N. America I believe) is not Anthrax.

    F&M is viral, Anthrax is bacterial.

    F&M is not dangerous to humans. Anthrax is.

  • I have friends in large Windows shops who do the wildest things with Outlook, using forms and OLE stuff. You have to put the time in, but the results can be phenomenally useful. Until the next service pack breaks your carefully crafted work, of course....
  • Saturday, 10 Mar 2001 at 1:47pm; Category: Overseas News; High priority;
    Story No. 4645. By Claire Swires

    TOKYO, JAPAN March 10 AFP - Japanese authorities hve banned all animal movements in and out of the country after several sofa beds were found nibbled in Tokyo today.

    Experts believe this may be an outbreak of the dreaded Futon Mouse Disease.



    --Gfunk
  • The problem with vaccination is that, once you vaccinate an animal for foot and mouth disease, you can't tell the difference between it and a sick animal. Which means you have to vaccinate the whole animal population for quite a while. And other countries would then refuse to import those animals, because they can't tell the difference either.

    Which is why they're trying to avoid vaccinations. It would decimate the livelyhood of farmers even more.
  • I've been a vegetarian of varying degrees for nineteen years, and a vegan for eleven. I keep encountering people who tell me that my diet must lacking vital nutrients and I'm going to keel over any day now, but in reality my health is pretty good.


    How true. After being a Ovo-lacto vegetarian my whole life (28 years and counting) I've never had meat (I did give up fish when I was 4). I am amazed at how many people who tell me that its an unhealthy way of life and you can't last long at it. My favorite story was an ex-girlfriend who was also Vegetarian. Her mother took who to the doctor and asked him to try to explain how bad it is. The doctor looked at the mother and said "Its done fine for me for the part 35 years." :)

    Heck, even my fiance is convinced I'm going to just curl up in the corner and die (despite the fact that when she dragged me to the gym I was able to run her into the ground).
  • On a slightly off topic follow-up, I was equally impressed that the last thing Salk was working on was an AIDS vaccine, and aparently he was making some progress.
  • Umm, no. Foot and Mouth disease IS a virus. A quick look on google will tell you that. Also the method of transmission should tell you that. Prions are very difficult to transmit, they usually are passed via bloodborne methods or digestion of heavily infected tissue. Viruses (can be) very infectious - which foot & mouth is.

    Kuru was originally thought to be spread by ritual cannibalism, most (not all) people do not believe that now. Rather in the particular tribes your talking about, the woman do the burial preparations, which also involve doing something (?) to the brain. If you get a cut on your hand when you're doing this (very likely) it can be transmitted.
  • I don't think so. It's viral. See this [britannica.com] link.
  • All nutritionists are into food faddism. It's a defining charateristic of the job.
  • Only predators have binocular vision.

    That's not true at all. We have evolved from tree climbers. If you are going to go from branch to branch, you want binocular vision so that you can accuratly judge the distance. You'll find binocular vision in lemurs, squirrels, and other similar creatures.

  • I believe that the American Budweiser licensed the use of the name in America a long time ago. Which means that you won't ever get the original in the U.S. The Czech original is Budvar, after a town, I think. Budweiser is the German equivalent. Pilz is a Czech town where the Pilsner style began (it actually means "from Pilsen", again the German equivalent). "Urquell" is German for "Original source".

    So nobody sued anyone.

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • I've always wondred this myself. In the western states it's just about impossible to buy lamb that does not come from New Zealand yet sheep are all over the place. How much extra is it costing us to get lamb shipped from New Zealand and where is all that lamb from the west going?
  • I guess the fact that Microsoft wrote all of above is taken into account. I don't think people are blaming windows they are blaming Microsoft for being so irresponsible in the face of serious security flaws in it's software.
  • Well, its both. Animals that are prey'd on usually have farther apart set eyes so they can watch their backs easier. Predators usually have closer set eyes for a large area of high quality vision. So we can see detail and judge distances/speeds.
    FunOne
  • The human species evolved to be omnivorous...

    Well, "omnivorous" is a broad term; it can be mostly a flesh based diet with occasional plants, or a plant based diet with occasional mean. Our digestive system is certainly not suited to a meat-centered diet, and we can do quite well without any meat at all.

    Of our closest primate relatives, gorillas are pretty much herbivorous, though I think they'll sometimes eat bugs; chimps will occasionally hunt small mammals, but IIRC they focus more on plants and bugs. So if we want to talk about "natural" diets for humans, we should probably be eating more bugs.

    Why do you think a balanced vegetarian diet is so tricky?

    It's not. No more tricky than a balanced diet of any other sort. Sure, you can eat bad as a vegetarian; a diet of french fries and potato chips may be veggie, but it ain't healthy.

    I've been a vegetarian of varying degrees for nineteen years, and a vegan for eleven. I keep encountering people who tell me that my diet must lacking vital nutrients and I'm going to keel over any day now, but in reality my health is pretty good.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • There's too many legalities for that
    to be able to happen nowadays.

    Copy our content and we'll sue!

    etc, etc...
  • How about "Boot and Mouse" virus then ? I've noticed some blisters on the HDD's boot sector and on my mouse recently. Is it transmissible to/from humans ?
  • Victims of bacterial meningitis sometimes go to sleep with what they think is just a headache and wake up dead.

    Well, at least they wake up. How dead can they be?

    ;)



  • Sorry for the REDUNDANT link.
    Hemos had make us all look like some FP kiddies,... But he is one too :)))
    Anyway you could recommend the story to everybody with this link http://www.satirewire.com/cgibin/birdcast.cgi [satirewire.com]
  • Try this http://www.satirewire.com/news/0103/outlook.shtml [satirewire.com]
    The page is slashdoted anyway...

  • I can't believe nobody (at least no media types) has ever asked MS what the scripting features in Outlook are for.

    I used to get a bit of a chuckle from all of the MS Office macro viri running around. I always found it funny that no questions were ever raised (outside of /. et al) about whether or not its' really a good idea having a word processor able to execute random code contained in the document. On the other hand, I've also seen people do pretty cool stuff with VBA, so I think its' a pretty good feature to have.

    Outlook scripting on the other hand I have never actually seen. I have never heard of anyone using it and I don't fully understand exactly what its' for. A rather handy feature that unfortunately exposes you to potential security risks I understand but an utterly useless feature that nobody uses? WTF?

    Has anybody ever seen anything at all that actually uses scripting in Outlook?
  • Yes, laziness ruined my attempt at wit here.
  • The parent to this post contains the text of the Satire Wire piece referred to by the article. Apparently many Slashdotters are having trouble seeing it at all; how it is "offtopic" is a mystery.
    --
  • That the "Foot and Mouth" E-mail Virus is not actually dangerous to humans but it does destroy the value of your e-mail.
  • If all of the other alternatives are so wonderful, please take this opportunity to leave. We'll miss you friend, but I suppose this is how it has to be. Go off into the night and blaze for us a new path.

  • It is my understanding from reading the previous posts that "omnivorous" was meant to be a broad term. I took it as a suggestion that this is one of the many highly adaptable traits that we have as humans. We can eat whatever we feel like and thrive.

    So eat your vegetables and enjoy. I'm going to tuck into a nice steak, thanks.

  • Aye, your evolutionary theory needs a tweaking. Why would humans have canine teeth (which are designed for ripping and severing meet) if they had evolved to eat plants and nuts and such? Those types of food would exert a selective pressure on man to develope wider, bigger teeth, with bigger muscular attachments than we have now. The person who stated that we have evolved to be omnivorous is completely correct.

    I will, however, agree with you that man's digestive track is not used to eating large amounts of meat at a time, but the quantity that qualifies as large is somewhere in the order of 2 to 3 pounds. I don't know many people who can eat 2 to 3 pounds of meat in one sitting without vomiting. Man *IS* evolved to eat meat, as evident by the meat specific enzymes used to break it down in our digestive tracks.

    -Sean

  • Actually there is a serious side (Score:5)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @10:09AM (#344541) Journal
    One of the main causes so of Foot and Mouth diseases is the monoculture that is agriculture in industrialized countries. In other words, there is hardly any variety in the crop or animals raised. Viruses don't often infect more than one species (I know Foot and Mouth does) so the more species you have the safer you are.

    The same with Operating Systems. The dominance of Microsoft and in particular their insecure mail client causes more trouble that it would otherwise if there was a variety out the.

    Reducing the number of species/platforms, which is which what markets forces do is actually not good economic sense.

  • Medic! (Score:1)

    by Spunk ( 83964 )
    ..."the report" from the CDC concerning Outlook Express and foot-and-mouth made me spew coffee out of my nose.

    Oh no! It appears that Hemos has already been infected!

    --

  • Do you think you could get one more set of quotes in that URL??
  • I-am-a-weener-alert: No milk today, Holland is infected with M&P and we're turning massively into vegetarians here. The problem now starts to become big... and people are making fun of it, ofcourse, but alas sense of humor, any supportive comments are very welcome, even on Slashdot
  • Massive vacinations are prohibited by the EU, because the US and Japan won't buy meat that has been vacinated.
    There are discussions going on to do it anyway.
  • Notice the topic it is under... "Its funny laugh" hmm I wonder if I should laugh? I did. If you don't want to see it then turn that topic off don't be a troll.

    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • What, does no one get the joke?
  • Go to your Preferences page here [slashdot.org], then scroll down until you see "It's funny. Laugh." in the center column (Topics). There should be a checkbox next to it. Toggle that box to on/checked. You will no longer see Foot and Mouth articles.

    -- fencepost
  • Exactly... this is why there are many more species that reproduce asexually (or primarily asexually) than sexually - all that recombination gives you a lot of crap with all the "good" mutations. Asexual reproduction is even more common in harsh environments like deserts. So variety good...to a point.
    However, even in asexually reproducing populations of vertebrates you'd probably find more genetic diversity than in some areas of the current monoculture livestock practices, so the above guy is right - we have too little diversity, which is why this non-fatal disease is so scary - if it really does get totally "loose", then you'd see almost every livestock animal get it quickly, instead of just some getting it and some fighting it off. As the argument goes, anyway.

    ooky
    "My namesake medallion
    Sez never trust a HAL 9000...." -bboys
  • Not trying to flame here, but industrialized agriculture is not to blame for this. There have been periodic outbreaks of foot and mouth in England every thirty or fourty years, and small localized outbreaks in the US (although vaccination programs here have worked quite well against it). The places in the world where foot and mouth disease is always present are certain regions of Africa and South America that practice "traditional" agriculture.

    That being said, I agree with the fear of a monoculture, but I'm more concerned about entire states filled with a single species of corn or wheat and an airborne (or insect) plague wiping them out.

  • Think of it. The shere idea of it rings in money! I bet 98% of the virus writers out there work for a anti-virus company. Think of the market share

    No doubt Microsoft would cash in on the deal and build a mass email system with a built-in virus transfer protocal.

    No doubt they made AxtiveX insecure. Where does everyone go? That's right Windows Update a web based ActiveX control. Now when ever you update Microsoft get privlaged access to your machine.

    It's all part of the big picture. The appocalypse

    "Oh my, what is that?"
    "Is it a bird?"
    "Is it a plane?"
    "No, It's a flamming gerbal!?"
    "Oh My Gods! It's Amageddon!"


    "Remember, who is the boss of you!" ... "Me! I am the boss of you!"

  • Besides, American Budweiser is quite popular in England. I've seen people riding the train with a case of the familiar red-and-white cans alongside them, guzzling away. My theory was that the beer enjoys "import" status over there.

  • After all, what is there to discuss if we cannot even follow the link in the story?

    What makes you think people here actually read the stories before they start discussing?

  • Alas, a post that needs it, and me without any points.
  • the site has been slashdotted...be patient
  • Ivo from Distributed.net had a .plan update about their cows and Foot-and-Mouth:

    :: 23-Mar-2001 15:24 (Friday) ::
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    Several distributed.net participants have expressed their concern with regard to the distributed.net client and the recent outbreaks of Foot-and-Mouth disease.

    Some members asked if they could moove their computer with the cow client on it, others were afraid to flush the cow, and thus spreading the disease around the world, even to the master servers of distributed.net in the United States.

    distributed.net's CCO (Chief Cow Officer) Jeff Lawson acted swiftly and called his high school buddy EU Food Safety Commissioner Mr David Byrne. Mr Byrne went great ways to grant distributed.net an exception to the very strict transportation ban currently in place in large parts of Western Europe.

    distributed.net assures its members they can go on and flush as ever before. There is no need to slaughter (kill -9) their cattle or let the flushed blocks go to /dev/cesspool, as recommended by various national governments in Western Europe. Also, piling up blocks and transport them only after the crisis is over is strongly deprecated.

    distributed.net wants to make very clear that the recent disease in some cows, dubbed the "8012-flaw", has nothing to do with the initial outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth disease in England earlier this month, despite of rumors circulating the internet.

    If you suspect your cow is infected with the virus and want to be on the safe side, go to http://www.distributed.net/trojans.html and download our 'wormfree' program. Be advised, though, that in most parts of the world, virus vaccination of cows is forbidden! distributed.net will in no case accept liability when participants get fined because of illegal vaccination.

  • Maybe he's talking about this story, Euro Fighting for Survival [thesun.co.uk]. According to the article, last night (22 March 2001) the Euro closed at 1.127 Euros per USD (88.7 cents), which is the weakest since mid-December. I will admit that this story is published by a UK paper, and that there is currently a debate in the UK about joining in on the Euro, so this whole article might just be FUD thrown in to advance a particular point of view on that debate.
  • I would have expected Humorix to get to it first. Oh well, maybe after it gets done being slashdotted, I'll be able to read it.

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
  • Foot and mouth is not viral. It is a prion. It is actually a misfolded protein that propagates other misfolded proteins. The normal protien is called PrP, and the misfolded protein is called PrPsc. Prp + PrPsc -> 2PrPsc. It is not a very fast process, and that is why it takes a pretty long time from infection to manifestation of symptoms. Foot and mouth, Bovine spongiform encephelopathy, and mad cow diesease are all Transmissible Spongiform Encephelopathies. They were originally studied (i think) in a tribe by a man named Gadjusek, and the disease was called Kuru, spread by ritual cannibalism. How fun!
  • How much can you sue for is coffee burns your nose?

    That lady got 10,000,000 for spilling coffe on her ankle.

    hmmm, hot coffee, I'd finally be able to afford that G4...
    ---
  • Stupid fucking moderator!

    Man, if I had my mod points....
    ---
  • Reposting a story should not be done, it prevents the site from getting pageviews and banner revenue.

    Also one should repost always as a AC, unless he really want to prove he's a (stupid) karma whore.

    guillaume

  • Does it really bother you that much that Buchanan has no chance in hell of ever becoming president?

    And, you know, this whole thing is incredibly funny anyway. The media is trumping it up like it's the second-freakin-coming of Mad Cow Disease and it isn't even particularly dangerous to us. It's a royal pain in the ass to farmers, of course, but it's not a problem for people...

    (In your case, it would be more appropriate to call it foot-*IN*-mouth disease... damn right wing isolationist pseudopatriotic nutjobs give all us Merkins a bad name...)

    /Brian
  • Talk to a nutritionist who isn't into food faddism. The human species evolved to be omnivorous; any competent nutritionist will tell you that. Why do you think a balanced vegetarian diet is so tricky?

    /Brian
  • It's not that you would be lacking -- it's just that you have to put a lot more planning into your diet, is my point.

    /Brian
  • Hmm.. I seem to have managed to misstate a couple of posts yesterday, not just this one. I think I left out the word *other*, sorry...

    /Brian
  • Ooh. You had better get that looked at.

    You had better throw out that mouse, reformat the drive and make sure you degaus your monitor too. You can never be too sure.

  • And if that doesn't work he should....

    Go to your back, then scroll down until you find your ass. Once there place your hands firmly on your ass cheecks and push. You should hear a loud popping sound as your head becomes dislodged. You are now free to experience humor and laugh.

    ...Ya know I don't think he'll find this funny either, but oh well.

  • 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?"

  • Why not just automatically get Google to cache the site, then link to the Google cache? I smell a business opportunity here.

  • They're slaughtering my e-mail! (Score:5)

    by tenzig_112 ( 213387 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @10:59AM (#344587) Homepage
    British inspectors came out, inspected my messages and said that "although you don't have the virus- you may very soon have it."

    So, they piled up all my mail in an enormous pile, waited several weeks to allow a horrible stentch to issue forth, and then burned it.

    What has the world come to? [ridiculopathy.com]

  • I received this virus in the mail from a friend. The email said:

    Dudez!! Check out this l337 \/iru5, it r0x0rz. k thx.

    This email didn't seem unusual because my friend calls himself a "h4x0r", and apparently they type like that. I wish I could be a "h4x0r" but my friend just sez I'm a "AOLamer". Anyway, I opened up the "CertainDeath.txt.vbs" file and my screen went nuts!!
    There were all these flashing pictures and bad music and all of a sudden some large letters flashed on the screen:

    All your beef are belong to us

  • ..but for some reason I'm having" problems with the" URL... can anyone" help me??

    By the way, I think foot in mouth is a good look for Microsoft a lot of the time...

  • I can't seem to think of any religion that condemns eating meat

    From the Principia Discordia, Commandment 3 of the Pentabarf:
    A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns).

  • This is a warning about a new email virus that's going around. It's called "FootAndMouth". You might get an email called "FootAndMouth" or an attachment called "moo.jpg" - DO NOT OPEN THEM!! This is a very dangerous virus which can delete files and make your computer unusable! Pass this warning on to EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Thank you.

    This message has 1 attachment(s):

    *moo.jpg

    Opening attachment...

    =P

    -Kasreyn

  • Outlook to carry Foot-in-Mouth virus (Score:5)

    by corvi42 ( 235814 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @10:49AM (#344607) Homepage Journal
    Although it is true that the bovine Foot-and-Mouth disease is not spread via Microsoft Outlook, a close relative to this same virus, the Foot-in-Mouth virus is spread quite rapidly via Outlook.

    The Foot-in-Mouth virus is a particularly embarrassing one, which scans all the email you have sent and received with a particular contact, getting a good sense of your relationship with that person. It then sends a series of emails in your name to that contact saying many things you would be very embarrassed about later.

    The effects of this virus are very similar to those produced by the psychological condition "Typing while drunk", and researchers are working very hard to examine whether any causal link exists between the this virus, its bovin cousin and alcohol-induced computer use.
  • Lord knows whenever I'm using or programming an ActiveX control, I tell it it's a good control, that it has nothing to be ashamed of. After all, who needs insecure ActiveX?!
  • Reducing the number of species/platforms, which is which what markets forces do is actually not good economic sense.

    It does make good sense up to a certain point, though. While diversity is a good thing, compatability is also an equally good thing. (Get out your first year History text book and look up "interchangable parts.") Imagine trying to buy software if there were 40 different equally popular OSs on the market. Too much variety will bite you on the ass just as surely as no variety will.

  • This has been the case with Slashdot from almost day one. It's very simple. When a story is posted, everyone who reads Slashdot -- which might not seem like a lot based on posts but actually is because there are so many lurkers -- clicks on the link and that overwhelms the linked web server. This is even mentioned in the FAQ, including their answer on mirroring: "No."

    Hey, you were the same person complaining about the religious overtone in Katz article yesterday.

    If you don't like Slashdot, leave, you religious-fanatic-prude, computer illiterate troll who has nothing insightful to contribute other then voicings of his own dissatisfaction with whatever is offerred on what is becomming a peice of shit website due to needlessly present fucks like you (along with other factors that will not be discussed herein.)

  • Ironic (Score:4)

    by TrollFeeder ( 396384 ) on Friday March 23, 2001 @11:33AM (#344643) Homepage
    Ironic that you would post a story making fun of Outlook when there is now a major internet worm, dubbed the Lion worm, spreading through Linux machines by exploiting a security hole in BIND. The Lion worm is similar to the Ramen worm. However, this worm is significantly more dangerous and should be taken very seriously. It infects Linux machines running the BIND DNS server. It is known to infect bind version(s) 8.2, 8.2-P1, 8.2.1, 8.2.2-Px, and all 8.2.3-betas. The specific vulnerability used by the worm to exploit machines is the TSIG vulnerability that was reported on January 29, 2001. The Lion worm spreads via an application called "randb". Randb scans random class B networks probing TCP port 53. Once it hits a system, it checks to see if it is vulnerable. If so, Lion exploits the system using an exploit called "name". It then installs the t0rn rootkit. Once Lion has compromised a system, it: - - Sends the contents of /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, as well as some network settings to an address in the china.com domain. - - Deletes /etc/hosts.deny, eliminating the host-based perimeter protection afforded by tcp wrappers. - - Installs backdoor root shells on ports 60008/tcp and 33567/tcp (via inetd, see /etc/inetd.conf) - - Installs a trojaned version of ssh that listens on 33568/tcp - - Kills Syslogd , so the logging on the system can't be trusted - - Installs a trojaned version of login - - Looks for a hashed password in /etc/ttyhash - - /usr/sbin/nscd (the optional Name Service Caching daemon) is overwritten with a trojaned version of ssh. The t0rn rootkit replaces several binaries on the system in order to stealth itself. Here are the binaries that it replaces: du, find, ifconfig, in.telnetd, in.fingerd, login, ls, mjy, netstat, ps, pstree, top - - "Mjy" is a utility for cleaning out log entries, and is placed in /bin and /usr/man/man1/man1/lib/.lib/. - - in.telnetd is also placed in these directories; its use is not known at this time. - - A setuid shell is placed in /usr/man/man1/man1/lib/.lib/.x

    --
    "May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"

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