Looking Back At the Other Kind of Virus

Slatterz writes "All this panic over a strain of flu got these people thinking about some of the more virulent computer pandemics that have hit in recent years. While a computer virus pales in seriousness to a human outbreak, malware attacks can still take a huge toll on businesses throughout the world. This list of the top ten worst viruses includes some interesting trivia, including ARPANET's Creeper virus in 1971, how early attempts at copy protection resulted in Brain, and MyDoom's denial of service attack on SCO."

Comments

Slashdotted

[TorKlingberg]

Slashdotted, get the Coral cached version: http://www.pcauthority.com.au.nyud.net/News/143993,top-ten-worst-viruses.aspx

Re:the manual virus

[x2A]

For the zillionth time, in Latin times, no one had the kind of technology to be able to see viruses, so no one knew they were individual things. The word 'virus' thus refered to a liquid, like an infected substance, and therefore was measured in unitS of quanitY (eg, 2 gallons of petrol, or 4 glasses of apple juice), not unit quantities (eg 4 individual apples). Notice where pluralisation occurs. To suggest Latin rules for pluralisation is absurd because the latin word wasn't to be pluralised; the units of measurement were to be. Learned folk should not repeat this mistake.

(I'm sure those with greater knowledge of Latin could weigh in on other reasons why 'virii' is incorrect, this is just the one I've been made aware of)