Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Infected by Virus
Vicissidude writes "It appears that a Microsoft worker returning from overseas brought back a case of Measles with them. In fact, they had been back, working, and spreading the disease at Microsoft and other places in Redmond for at least four days prior to being discovered. Somehow I do not think that Microsoft included in their cost-benefit analysis of offshoring the potential wide-spread infection of their company. Perhaps they should include that risk in the future."
I hate microsoft with a passion. They suck. I irrationally loathe the company, their products, and everything they stand for.
and even *I* can see that this is a bullshit article, a beatup of ridiculous proportions. Stupidest. Slashdot. Article. Ever.
. . . but are we to believe that, if it weren't for offshoring, none of the tens of thousands of microsoft employees working in this country would ever go outside of the country - even overseas - and possibly bring back a flue or a cold or the mumps or something?
Also, how do you bring back the measles? Aren't we inocculated against measles when you're maybe six years old?
CowboyNeal: fuck you for posting this shit.
I'm sure you've got dozens of more newsworthy articles to post - hell, even dupes have more journalistic integrity than this POS.
What on earth has off-shoring got to do with this? People travel. People go on holiday. People work overseas. People exchange exotic diseases. It's hardly a feature of modern business practices.
My blog
I got a flu from some guy at work yesterday and Slashdot ignored my story submission about it. Not much difference really, is it?
Way to go poster, this is a new low. You're actually gloating because an employee at Microsoft is ill and maybe spread it around. I think you've lost your sense of proportion. When you're laughing at a company because the day-in day-out engineers and accountants and other working folks are ill because you have a grudge against the company, that's fucked up.
Vicissidude, You're a nut. And so is CowboyNeal for posting this crap.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
that ./ has been putting up too much of stuffs that don't matter at all?
Come on editors, there are too many cool technologies, articles, hacks, etc, submitted but rejected, and then what we see is this kind of junk.
Gee, jesus died for us and all we got is this lousy FA.
The issue is not whether it's factually true; the issue is whether it's newsworthy, and what the motivations are behind posting it. By definition, anything specifically designed to inflame controversy and disparage a certain group without having any other merit is a troll, whether it's factually correct or not.
So yes, TFA -- or rather, the act of posting it to Slashdot -- is really a troll.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...and HAHAHAHAH remember when that Enron janitor died of AIDS? oh my god and back in the 80s two engineers at IBM had the whooping cough! they DIED!! HAHAHAH god it's so great and just!! Can't wait to find out another chinese guy died of bird flu! And if we wait a few more seconds we can laugh about some more children starving to death in North Korea! MY GOD THE HILARITY NEVER ENDS!!!??!1111 lol dudez. Okay back to being serious: can we do a mini-poll on whether the poster and editor are high, drunk, or just natural assholes?
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Yes, I'm so glad a potentially lethal disease is unleashed upon thousands of possible infection vectors, because they happen to work for a company which you have an ideological difference of opinion with.
Nice priorities.
I'm no fan of Microsoft or outshoring myself, but this is quite possibly the worst and most insulting article I've ever seen posted to Slashdot.
Editor and the OP need to have their heads examined, and possibly find something new to do with their time.
Can someone mod down the idiots who thought this was funny and posted "funny" stuff about Windows service packs and Outlook so that they can get some karma. Kids, please grow up. Mod me troll or whatever but this article is very much in bad taste. As for the morons, who thought this funny or saw this as a chance for karma-whoring, i feel sorry for your pathetic lives.
Well everyone seems to either think the post sucks because it's attacking Microsoft or offshoring.
So when did all the geeks leave? The ones who actually might have thought the aspect of sending more technical workers overseas leading to increased risks of more interesting diseases was sort of an interesting exercise in risk analysis? I guess they are all dead or off playing Halo.
I didn't think the article was particularly against either Microsoft or offshoring. Just making an observation about a slightly unexpected repercussion for us technical folk (and by us of course I mean me since there are no others left).
If you're all dead, can I have your gadgets?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Anyway, how is this a significant risk? Surely the staff have already been immunised against measles. In the UK, the NHS has been providing a measles vaccine since 1960. The uptake rate for the current vaccine (MMR) is between 75% and 95% (it varies across the UK). The remainder includes children who have the vaccination separately as well as those who go unvaccinated. So unless the US employees of Microsoft just didn't get vaccinated against measles as kids, what is the problem?
i have to admit that the biggest reason i visit /. is to read the MS bashing. i personally don't have anything against MS, but it's fun to read MS bashing comments.
that said, i'm really disappointed that this article was posted.
Come on, this story is simply begging for some funny comments. I don't see any other reason for the story.
Yet all the comments so far are modded as Informative and Interesting.
Slashdot, lift your game.
> Way to go poster, this is a new low.
l es/en/
Actually I find it a very important article.
Not as it seems to "bash Microsoft" (and then I could not care less) but because it might wake my North American friends up to the fact that there are these things called "diseases" out there in the real world and that "yes, unbelievable or not" Americans can contract them and die from them.
You think I am joking?
I remember talking to my family doctor in his 60s, a few years back before he died. We were talking about infectious diseases. He mentioned that he had met young doctors in their 20s who would probably never see a case of measles in their lives.
"Why?" I asked. "Because immunisation is so effective." he answered.
That was in Ireland.
An outbreak of measles is incredibly rare in the "west". Can someone please explain to me how one of the U.S.A.s most important companies just suffered an outbreak?
Do you Americans not immunise your children?
http://www.who.int/vaccine_research/diseases/meas
cheers
front
...and this was the first time I actively looked for a way to mod submitter and posting editor down.
Worst. Story. Ever.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
So, to get something good out of this article: Go check if you defenses -- your body's defenses, not your computers -- are up to date. How about tetanus? Polio? At least consider Hepatitis B, even if you are a nerd and don't have sex and faint if you even hear the word blood. These things don't have to happen.
Grow up.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
This is one of the shortest articles in /. history and no one seems to be able to read it.
You are right that the article is important, but what you've posted has nothing to do with the article. The article is important because it lets people - who may or may not be immunized - know that they may have been exposed to the virus. That's it.
An outbreak of measles is incredibly rare in the "west". Can someone please explain to me how one of the U.S.A.s most important companies just suffered an outbreak?
What "outbreak"? According to the article, there is one confirmed case of measles in "an adult", who may or may not work for the company.
Do you Americans not immunise your children?
Even if 100% of American children are immunized, not all Americans are born and grow up in America, and not everyone in America is an American.
Besides, the vaccine is not 100% effective.
According to the Seattle Times, the adult picked up the measles in France, another western country.
What is this tight-assed crap, Cowboy Neal? Wake up! I agree with the poster who wrote that this must be the worst story ever.
Bashing:
...all in one totally irrational article!
Wow. I stand in awe of the article's author, story submitter and the editor that was so quick to accept it. Amazing work, guys!
Condoms are better to protect against hiv.
So imo circumsising because it'll help a bit more against hiv isn't an arguement. If it's not 100% effective, it's almost criminal to give people a false sense of safety (don't need a condom for protection, I'm circumsised).
And yes, some people probably are that stupid.
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
It makes sure you don't come back with something that you can spread to your community. Measles kills and blinds and damages brains.
This is what I can say about measles after I contracted it at Siggraph 2001 (Los Angeles).
(1) It sucks! The body ache that comes with it really hurts. It also comes with symptoms of a very bad cold.
(2) Your vaccine can expire. Mine was 15 years old. You're supposed to get a booster vaccine every 10 years. Get your boosters.
(3) U.S. doctors are not very good at diagnosing measles correctly because they've seen so few real cases. Mine told me I had a "virus from hell", and did not think it was measles even after I suggested it as a possibility.
(4) Measles hurts more than chicken-pox as an adult (yes, I got that three years later, for the second time in my life), but chicken-pox also sucks a great deal.
(5) Your resistance to chicken-pox (probably measles too) can fail if you contracted them as a small infant (as in my case with chicken-pox) so get your boosters.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288