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Foot and Mouth Virus and Outlook
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.
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.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
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.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
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.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
here?
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 :)
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.
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
-Cheetah
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
An Editorial, with information about when humans catch foot and mouth Foot and mouth disease: the human consequences (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.
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.
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'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).
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
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.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
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.
So nobody sued anyone.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
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?
War is necrophilia.
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.
War is necrophilia.
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.
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/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Try this http://www.satirewire.com/news/0103/outlook.shtml
The page is slashdoted anyway...
Just another coder...
I can't believe nobody (at least no media types) has ever asked MS what the scripting features in Outlook are for.
/. 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.
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
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.
Someone you trust is one of us.
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.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
That the "Foot and Mouth" E-mail Virus is not actually dangerous to humans but it does destroy the value of your e-mail.
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.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
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.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
Go to your Preferences page here, 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
fencepost
just a little off
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!"
> SELECT * FROM brain_cells WHERE synaptic_rate > 0
0 row returned
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.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Maybe he's talking about this story, Euro Fighting for Survival. 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.
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
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
No.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
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.
sulli
RTFJ.
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?
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
By the way, I think foot in mouth is a good look for Microsoft a lot of the time...
--The space between my ears was intentionally left blank--
From the Principia Discordia, Commandment 3 of the Pentabarf:
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
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
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
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.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
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.)
mwtr / THIS SIG HAS BEEN PRAYED OVER AND MAY BE USED AS A POINT OF CONTACT (ACTS 19:12)
--
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"
--
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"
-George Carlin