Okay, let's do some math here. The guy used 10,000 computers and he won $10,000. It took 549 days to crack it. Okay, well, that's $1.00 per computer, so that works out to a little under 0.2 cents per day per computer. Now subtract the cost of electricity, and how much did he make? Hmmm, that was worthwhile.
I mean, it's one thing if you don't know if it can be done, then you get the thrill of proving it can be done, but if you're just brute-forcing the damn thing, which it sounds like what happened here, then all I can say is, what a waste.
is, did you research your laptop before you bought it? I mean, I buy desktop clones all the time without thinking about it. I mean, a desktop is a desktop is a desktop, for the most part. When it comes to laptops though, I'm paying quite a bit extra and I'm pretty damn careful about what I get.
Despite Timothy's discouraging words, I personally love my Toshiba Satellite. It's the best laptop I've ever used. Actually, until I got the Satellite, I had always hated laptops. These things rock.
don't get a regular phone. I just have a cell phone. I need a cell phone, I get decent coverage in my apartment, so why would I need a regular phone? So, I didn't get one. Best thing I could ever do. Haven't gotten a single telemarketing call in two years. I highly recommend this path if you don't need a regular phone. Saves money and it's easy to turn it off:-)
It's absolutely responsible. Why wait for it to happen when you can warn about the possibility and actually give people a chance to build a defense before someone builds the weapon?
Besides, he's not the first person to think along these lines. Though he has a number of ideas I had never considered, I had come up with an idea for a worm that would build a peer to peer network to coordinate its activities and prevent it from spreading too quickly.
His idea for having it update itself against anti-virus software is something I hadn't considered and is quite ingenius, I think.
I wouldn't have ever written such a program as I have too much useful software ot write to waste my time, but I've certainly thought of ideas on how one might go about it. If I have, and he has, then chances are, so have others, and eventually someone who has the time and motivation will actually do it, so best to protect against it now.
Microsoft is currently working on a new campaign against open source, particularly how to convince the government (and probably other governments as well) not to require GPL'ed software, similar to the measure that Peru recently passed.
While most of their arguments are a load of shit, I will say this: I don't think the federal government ought to restrict all of the federal government, agencies, contractors, etc to GPL'ed software. I think it does tie the hands of some development.
Microsoft is using their typical "it stifles innovation" argument as if the GPL somehow stifles innovation. I get the feeling that their tactic is to misguide people (i.e. Congress) into believing that if someone writes code using GPL'ed tools (such as gcc), they're automatically restricted by the GPL license.
It's their typical misinformation tack that they use all the time with people who don't understand technology.
Most of their arguments are typical Microsoft and try to mislead what the point really is, though.
This applies particularly to power supplies. Sure, CPUs and memory, but the prices aren't nearly as fixed as they are for power supplies. Really, with power supplies, the price range doesn't vary much and the good ones tend to cost (though there are some decent ones for decent prices).
Before I came to my company, they bought a bunch of no-name PCs. There must have been a motherboard flaw that caused them to burn out power supplies and they kept replacing them with cheap supplies which couldn't handle whatever the motherboard was doing, and they would burn out too. Out of about 8 machines, I think we went through 14 power supplies in two years.
You'd always hear, "What's that burning smell?" "Did you check the back of your machine? I think that's smoke from your power supply."
I ALWAYS get a decent supply and have NEVER had problems, even when I lived in Mexico and had pretty questionable electricity.
I can't wait to live in North Dakota or some other barren state that even eskimos don't want to live. Sorry, but I'm heading off to Costa Rica instead. Fun and sun baby.
Wish you guys the best. Can't wait to see how the an economy maintained by geeks goes. I can just see 'em building their own roads, handling their own refuse collection, etc... Oh well, crazy people have to do something with all their spare time.
This isn't office wireless. This is a very line-of-sight system that would be used, probably, between buildings, if they get it go that far, I would imagine.
You'd never see anything like this in a home or office, as it couldn't penetrate a sheet of paper, let alone a wall of any type. I suppose it could penetrate if you put enough power into it, but then it would need enough power to melt through the wall before the communication could begin.
Come on, the movie industry is going to go out of business? Right. How about this one: The government is really controlled by martians? That's more believable.
Forget about salaries, these guys are raking in money hand over fist. Frankly, with all the crap they make, it's amazing they make any money.
The ones that can't figure out how to make a living in the current market environment may die off. That's fine. Smart people will figure out how to make money in the current technological environment without screwing the consumers left and right. If the big movie companies can't figure that out, fine. I could really care less. Here, let me show you guys the door.
As for relativity being "only a theory", again assuming you mean "just a hypothesis". In a word, no!
In the past few years, there have been a number of discoveries that question both general relativity and special relativity. I agree, it has predicted a lot of things. A lot of very counter-intuitive things, which gives it a lot of status.
Besides the discoveries that question the validity of relativity (and I don't mean it's entirely wrong, just that it may be, for lack of a better word, a good approximation of the truth), it also can't be quantized. Not that quantum mechanics is necessarily the ultimate truth either.
It is simply as it is stated, a theory. Nothing more and nothing less. There have been many theories in the past that have predicted a number of things and yet in the end, those theories didn't pan out. The Higgs Boson, for example, still has not been found and at this point, likely won't be found. This causes some issues in quantum mechanics, as it is predicted, yet not found.
My point is simply, in speaking of these things, it's best not to speak in terms of absolutes, as there are no absolutes in this area.
...once you cross this, there's no coming back, and our physics stops at the edge.
I'm not picking on you, others have been saying things like this too. They talk about "there's no coming back", "can't communicate to the outside", and "physics stops at the edge" and such. These are all theories, not facts. I wish people would just be a little more careful in their phrasing, as indeed, black holes themselves are still theories.
Even relativity is only a theory. But I digress.
No, physics doesn't stop at the edge, our understanding of physics breaks down at the edge. We don't know what happens because our physics deals in infinities that make no sense once you cross the event horizon. Physics still exists, it's just undefined to us.
In the same vain, communication from within a blackhole to the outside is impossible, assuming our basic theories of black holes are correct, and assuming that there's no way to communicate faster than the speed of light. Again, relativity is a theory, not a law. It's a theory that has come into question recently as well.
I'm not putting down Einstein or relativity. Amazing stuff, to be sure, but it may not be entirely correct.
I recognize your name from the project. Sorry if this is giving you guys headaches, but I would think it would be giving you guys money and reducing the headaches. After reading the story, I went in and donated $50. That's a nice chunk of change given finances these days.
Don't worry, I'm not upset I did it. I'm glad I did. You guys deserve every dollar of it and every cycle I've given (almost 3000 units, in case you were curious).
I'm sure it's causing some explaining to do, but I would imagine some additional money will squirm in there, so I'd imagine that will ighten your load somewhat.
Thanks for sharing, though. Glad to hear it's not a real crisis.
They also provide a chart of their donations over the last year here.
Wow, the got a whole $5,000 one month. That could have paid for almost two days' operating expenses.
Really, it's a friggin' shame if they lose funding. I think SETI@Home has been an amazing success, regardless. They certainly have shown the power of willing participants and they've received incredible donations from SUN and others.
I've been happy to contribute my CPU time. In fact, I broke into the 99th percentile this past weekend and was quite happy about it.
I'll toss a few bucks their way, but I can't send much. Times is tough for everyone.
Honestly, I don't believe they'll find any ETIs because I don't think there are any in our galaxy (using my own guesses against the Drake equation, I came up with a bit less than 1 civilization per galaxy, and for other reasons think 1 would generally be the maximum). Still, I think it's a worthwhile project and hey, I'd love to be proven wrong on this one.
Hey mister, can you spare a dime? If you can, head over to SETI@Home and drop 'em off a few bucks. They deserve it.
My argument was never towards the stability or security of Windows. In fact, I used Linux because it is more stable and secure, as a gateway to the internet. My argument was for ease of use.
In a similar vain to your Windows experience, I wanted to enable my kernel to act as a gateway. What did I have to do? Recompile the kernel, of course. Granted, this is not something Mom or Pop would do. In Windows XP, I would simply check a checkbox under networking. After 10 or so reconfigs and recompiles, I finally got a bootable kernel. That ain't ease of use. I had an unbootable machine until I got it right.
I won't argue whether a virus is dead or alive simply because there's no really acceptable definition for life, in my thinking.
How do you define it? A virus can certainly reproduce, with a host. Just like a human can reproduce, with a human of another sex. (Well, okay, they do it in different positions).
I think if the only real argument against a virus being life is that it needs a host to have to have what we recognize as life, then it's not a good definition. My personal opinion, though.
Gotta disagree. You could consider a virus to be "active" or "inactive," not alive or dead. It's the same as with any chemical catalyst or protein. Just because something can or can't do a chemical reaction, doesn't mean it's alive or dead.
Well, by this argument, you can argue that humans are "active" or "inactive" as well. At a certain point, perhaps through defects, in a very complex chemical process, certain chemical reactions cease and the human being becomes "inactive." The more popular term however, is "dead."
Look, plenty of you have chastised me with your excellent experience in how to do something that I'm sure, for someone who uses Linux all the time, it's simple. The fact is, I don't use Linux every day. I set it up as my gateway not because it was easy but because I trust it more than I trust Windows as a gateway.
To the person that commented that I shouldn't be a system admin, you're right, I shouldn't be and I don't want to be. I'm a programmer.
I managed to get the machine set up, get it configured to run Squid, SSH, and wu-ftpd. I even got IPTABLES up and running (somehow, God, I can barely figure out how to do anything with IPTABLES).
You're absolutely right, I don't want to be a system admin. I don't want to be an FTP server admin. But to be able to update a piece of software should be simple and straight forward. I can upgrade almost any piece of Windows software easier than I can in Linux. That's just a fact. You run the setup or install program, and poof, it's there.
My point is, until Linux can do that, Mom and Pop aren't going to be using it. I don't care how secure it is.
I don't have time to learn how to be a Linux system admin, and frankly, I shouldn't have to to upgrade a single software package. I have a full-time+ job as a Windows developer that pays my bills.
Just last night, a buddy of mine did a security scan of the Linux box I use at home as a gateway for my other 4 computers. The only security problem found was with the version of wu-ftpd that I'm running.
No problem, I thought, I'll just upgrade it. So, my first step was to download it from wu-ftp's ftp site, only to realize I was going to have to figure out how to build it (that was simple, except I kept getting two or three errors in the compilation. I'm assuming my gcc is out of date) and then how to install and replace all the existing stuff (I have no idea how, and I don't have time to learn it).
So, I figure I'll go to RedHat, download the RPM and just install that. Which I do. Ran RPM to install it, no messages, try to FTP in, still running the old version. Shut-down and re-start, same thing.
Folks, I know most of you are Linux fanatics, but if a programmer with 23 years of programming experience can't manage to upgrade a simple application in under 30 minutes, Linux will never make it to the masses.
There's nothing I'd like more than to see Linux replace Windows on every desktop. When Linux is ready. Frankly, I don't think it is, and I think it's still got a long way to go. Sorry.
Actually, yes, a virus is considered alive if for no other reason, to distinguish it from a DEAD virus. Example: I have HIV. A drop of my blood drops on the kitchen counter. For a short period of time, the virus is alive. It will die shortly thereafter and no longer EVER be able to infect anyone because it's DEAD and it doesn't come back to life. Many virii do not survive long outside of a host.
Personally, I think it's good that the "standard of living" is declining, at least in the sense of material possessions. I think Gen Xers got too caught up in material possessions and have lost focus on what's really important. Just my personal opinion.
That said, I have a good job and make a good living. But I've been relatively poor in the not so distant past (living in a run-down studio apartment and barely able to make enough to put food in my mouth).
That was a good experience. I learned to be frugal. Despite an income that could afford me a $30,000 car, instead I drive a 1991 Honda Accord that I bought in cash for $3000 a few years back. I live in a modest apartment. My bills are paid and I'm saving money.
Go back 10 years, and I was $30,000 in debt, had collectors after me, and car within hours of being repossessed. I've been on the other side, and I'll tell you what, a little frugality goes a long way.
I think it's a lesson a good portion of the country could stand to learn. Besides all of this other stuff, I've gained an incredible amount of personal and spiritual (not meaning religious) growth. Anyay, just my humble opinion.
Yeah, they're still trying to decided if Pluto is a planet. Really, though, it's a matter of semantics. Either way, it's a big rock that circles the sun. That can be said about a few of the other planets.
I just noticed the "Windows/Outlook Only" part of the post. Maybe Windows, but not Outlook only. My mother uses Netscape mail (at least a 3 year old version), and it's obviously quite compatible with the virus.
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Okay, let's do some math here. The guy used 10,000 computers and he won $10,000. It took 549 days to crack it. Okay, well, that's $1.00 per computer, so that works out to a little under 0.2 cents per day per computer. Now subtract the cost of electricity, and how much did he make? Hmmm, that was worthwhile.
I mean, it's one thing if you don't know if it can be done, then you get the thrill of proving it can be done, but if you're just brute-forcing the damn thing, which it sounds like what happened here, then all I can say is, what a waste.
is, did you research your laptop before you bought it? I mean, I buy desktop clones all the time without thinking about it. I mean, a desktop is a desktop is a desktop, for the most part. When it comes to laptops though, I'm paying quite a bit extra and I'm pretty damn careful about what I get.
Despite Timothy's discouraging words, I personally love my Toshiba Satellite. It's the best laptop I've ever used. Actually, until I got the Satellite, I had always hated laptops. These things rock.
don't get a regular phone. I just have a cell phone. I need a cell phone, I get decent coverage in my apartment, so why would I need a regular phone? So, I didn't get one. Best thing I could ever do. Haven't gotten a single telemarketing call in two years. I highly recommend this path if you don't need a regular phone. Saves money and it's easy to turn it off :-)
It's absolutely responsible. Why wait for it to happen when you can warn about the possibility and actually give people a chance to build a defense before someone builds the weapon?
Besides, he's not the first person to think along these lines. Though he has a number of ideas I had never considered, I had come up with an idea for a worm that would build a peer to peer network to coordinate its activities and prevent it from spreading too quickly.
His idea for having it update itself against anti-virus software is something I hadn't considered and is quite ingenius, I think.
I wouldn't have ever written such a program as I have too much useful software ot write to waste my time, but I've certainly thought of ideas on how one might go about it. If I have, and he has, then chances are, so have others, and eventually someone who has the time and motivation will actually do it, so best to protect against it now.
Microsoft is currently working on a new campaign against open source, particularly how to convince the government (and probably other governments as well) not to require GPL'ed software, similar to the measure that Peru recently passed.
While most of their arguments are a load of shit, I will say this: I don't think the federal government ought to restrict all of the federal government, agencies, contractors, etc to GPL'ed software. I think it does tie the hands of some development.
Microsoft is using their typical "it stifles innovation" argument as if the GPL somehow stifles innovation. I get the feeling that their tactic is to misguide people (i.e. Congress) into believing that if someone writes code using GPL'ed tools (such as gcc), they're automatically restricted by the GPL license.
It's their typical misinformation tack that they use all the time with people who don't understand technology.
Most of their arguments are typical Microsoft and try to mislead what the point really is, though.
This applies particularly to power supplies. Sure, CPUs and memory, but the prices aren't nearly as fixed as they are for power supplies. Really, with power supplies, the price range doesn't vary much and the good ones tend to cost (though there are some decent ones for decent prices).
Before I came to my company, they bought a bunch of no-name PCs. There must have been a motherboard flaw that caused them to burn out power supplies and they kept replacing them with cheap supplies which couldn't handle whatever the motherboard was doing, and they would burn out too. Out of about 8 machines, I think we went through 14 power supplies in two years.
You'd always hear, "What's that burning smell?" "Did you check the back of your machine? I think that's smoke from your power supply."
I ALWAYS get a decent supply and have NEVER had problems, even when I lived in Mexico and had pretty questionable electricity.
I can't wait to live in North Dakota or some other barren state that even eskimos don't want to live. Sorry, but I'm heading off to Costa Rica instead. Fun and sun baby.
Wish you guys the best. Can't wait to see how the an economy maintained by geeks goes. I can just see 'em building their own roads, handling their own refuse collection, etc... Oh well, crazy people have to do something with all their spare time.
Is it me, or is that guy pouring liquid nitrogen with his bare hands? Is he aware of the danger of getting that stuff on his hands?
This isn't office wireless. This is a very line-of-sight system that would be used, probably, between buildings, if they get it go that far, I would imagine.
You'd never see anything like this in a home or office, as it couldn't penetrate a sheet of paper, let alone a wall of any type. I suppose it could penetrate if you put enough power into it, but then it would need enough power to melt through the wall before the communication could begin.
Come on, the movie industry is going to go out of business? Right. How about this one: The government is really controlled by martians? That's more believable.
Forget about salaries, these guys are raking in money hand over fist. Frankly, with all the crap they make, it's amazing they make any money.
The ones that can't figure out how to make a living in the current market environment may die off. That's fine. Smart people will figure out how to make money in the current technological environment without screwing the consumers left and right. If the big movie companies can't figure that out, fine. I could really care less. Here, let me show you guys the door.
As for relativity being "only a theory", again assuming you mean "just a hypothesis". In a word, no!
In the past few years, there have been a number of discoveries that question both general relativity and special relativity. I agree, it has predicted a lot of things. A lot of very counter-intuitive things, which gives it a lot of status.
Besides the discoveries that question the validity of relativity (and I don't mean it's entirely wrong, just that it may be, for lack of a better word, a good approximation of the truth), it also can't be quantized. Not that quantum mechanics is necessarily the ultimate truth either.
It is simply as it is stated, a theory. Nothing more and nothing less. There have been many theories in the past that have predicted a number of things and yet in the end, those theories didn't pan out. The Higgs Boson, for example, still has not been found and at this point, likely won't be found. This causes some issues in quantum mechanics, as it is predicted, yet not found.
My point is simply, in speaking of these things, it's best not to speak in terms of absolutes, as there are no absolutes in this area.
...once you cross this, there's no coming back, and our physics stops at the edge.
I'm not picking on you, others have been saying things like this too. They talk about "there's no coming back", "can't communicate to the outside", and "physics stops at the edge" and such. These are all theories, not facts. I wish people would just be a little more careful in their phrasing, as indeed, black holes themselves are still theories.
Even relativity is only a theory. But I digress.
No, physics doesn't stop at the edge, our understanding of physics breaks down at the edge. We don't know what happens because our physics deals in infinities that make no sense once you cross the event horizon. Physics still exists, it's just undefined to us.
In the same vain, communication from within a blackhole to the outside is impossible, assuming our basic theories of black holes are correct, and assuming that there's no way to communicate faster than the speed of light. Again, relativity is a theory, not a law. It's a theory that has come into question recently as well.
I'm not putting down Einstein or relativity. Amazing stuff, to be sure, but it may not be entirely correct.
Matt,
I recognize your name from the project. Sorry if this is giving you guys headaches, but I would think it would be giving you guys money and reducing the headaches. After reading the story, I went in and donated $50. That's a nice chunk of change given finances these days.
Don't worry, I'm not upset I did it. I'm glad I did. You guys deserve every dollar of it and every cycle I've given (almost 3000 units, in case you were curious).
I'm sure it's causing some explaining to do, but I would imagine some additional money will squirm in there, so I'd imagine that will ighten your load somewhat.
Thanks for sharing, though. Glad to hear it's not a real crisis.
They also provide a chart of their donations over the last year here.
Wow, the got a whole $5,000 one month. That could have paid for almost two days' operating expenses.
Really, it's a friggin' shame if they lose funding. I think SETI@Home has been an amazing success, regardless. They certainly have shown the power of willing participants and they've received incredible donations from SUN and others.
I've been happy to contribute my CPU time. In fact, I broke into the 99th percentile this past weekend and was quite happy about it.
I'll toss a few bucks their way, but I can't send much. Times is tough for everyone.
Honestly, I don't believe they'll find any ETIs because I don't think there are any in our galaxy (using my own guesses against the Drake equation, I came up with a bit less than 1 civilization per galaxy, and for other reasons think 1 would generally be the maximum). Still, I think it's a worthwhile project and hey, I'd love to be proven wrong on this one.
Hey mister, can you spare a dime? If you can, head over to SETI@Home and drop 'em off a few bucks. They deserve it.
My argument was never towards the stability or security of Windows. In fact, I used Linux because it is more stable and secure, as a gateway to the internet. My argument was for ease of use.
In a similar vain to your Windows experience, I wanted to enable my kernel to act as a gateway. What did I have to do? Recompile the kernel, of course. Granted, this is not something Mom or Pop would do. In Windows XP, I would simply check a checkbox under networking. After 10 or so reconfigs and recompiles, I finally got a bootable kernel. That ain't ease of use. I had an unbootable machine until I got it right.
I won't argue whether a virus is dead or alive simply because there's no really acceptable definition for life, in my thinking.
How do you define it? A virus can certainly reproduce, with a host. Just like a human can reproduce, with a human of another sex. (Well, okay, they do it in different positions).
I think if the only real argument against a virus being life is that it needs a host to have to have what we recognize as life, then it's not a good definition. My personal opinion, though.
Gotta disagree. You could consider a virus to be "active" or "inactive," not alive or dead. It's the same as with any chemical catalyst or protein. Just because something can or can't do a chemical reaction, doesn't mean it's alive or dead.
Well, by this argument, you can argue that humans are "active" or "inactive" as well. At a certain point, perhaps through defects, in a very complex chemical process, certain chemical reactions cease and the human being becomes "inactive." The more popular term however, is "dead."
Look, plenty of you have chastised me with your excellent experience in how to do something that I'm sure, for someone who uses Linux all the time, it's simple. The fact is, I don't use Linux every day. I set it up as my gateway not because it was easy but because I trust it more than I trust Windows as a gateway.
To the person that commented that I shouldn't be a system admin, you're right, I shouldn't be and I don't want to be. I'm a programmer.
I managed to get the machine set up, get it configured to run Squid, SSH, and wu-ftpd. I even got IPTABLES up and running (somehow, God, I can barely figure out how to do anything with IPTABLES).
You're absolutely right, I don't want to be a system admin. I don't want to be an FTP server admin. But to be able to update a piece of software should be simple and straight forward. I can upgrade almost any piece of Windows software easier than I can in Linux. That's just a fact. You run the setup or install program, and poof, it's there.
My point is, until Linux can do that, Mom and Pop aren't going to be using it. I don't care how secure it is.
I don't have time to learn how to be a Linux system admin, and frankly, I shouldn't have to to upgrade a single software package. I have a full-time+ job as a Windows developer that pays my bills.
Just last night, a buddy of mine did a security scan of the Linux box I use at home as a gateway for my other 4 computers. The only security problem found was with the version of wu-ftpd that I'm running.
No problem, I thought, I'll just upgrade it. So, my first step was to download it from wu-ftp's ftp site, only to realize I was going to have to figure out how to build it (that was simple, except I kept getting two or three errors in the compilation. I'm assuming my gcc is out of date) and then how to install and replace all the existing stuff (I have no idea how, and I don't have time to learn it).
So, I figure I'll go to RedHat, download the RPM and just install that. Which I do. Ran RPM to install it, no messages, try to FTP in, still running the old version. Shut-down and re-start, same thing.
Folks, I know most of you are Linux fanatics, but if a programmer with 23 years of programming experience can't manage to upgrade a simple application in under 30 minutes, Linux will never make it to the masses.
There's nothing I'd like more than to see Linux replace Windows on every desktop. When Linux is ready. Frankly, I don't think it is, and I think it's still got a long way to go. Sorry.
Actually, yes, a virus is considered alive if for no other reason, to distinguish it from a DEAD virus. Example: I have HIV. A drop of my blood drops on the kitchen counter. For a short period of time, the virus is alive. It will die shortly thereafter and no longer EVER be able to infect anyone because it's DEAD and it doesn't come back to life. Many virii do not survive long outside of a host.
Personally, I think it's good that the "standard of living" is declining, at least in the sense of material possessions. I think Gen Xers got too caught up in material possessions and have lost focus on what's really important. Just my personal opinion.
That said, I have a good job and make a good living. But I've been relatively poor in the not so distant past (living in a run-down studio apartment and barely able to make enough to put food in my mouth).
That was a good experience. I learned to be frugal. Despite an income that could afford me a $30,000 car, instead I drive a 1991 Honda Accord that I bought in cash for $3000 a few years back. I live in a modest apartment. My bills are paid and I'm saving money.
Go back 10 years, and I was $30,000 in debt, had collectors after me, and car within hours of being repossessed. I've been on the other side, and I'll tell you what, a little frugality goes a long way.
I think it's a lesson a good portion of the country could stand to learn. Besides all of this other stuff, I've gained an incredible amount of personal and spiritual (not meaning religious) growth. Anyay, just my humble opinion.
There's the oxymoron of the day: "Save as you spend". Wow.
Wives have been using this one for decades. "Sure honey, I spent $500 on shoes, but they were on sale. I saved us tons of money."
Yeah, they're still trying to decided if Pluto is a planet. Really, though, it's a matter of semantics. Either way, it's a big rock that circles the sun. That can be said about a few of the other planets.
It's still a cool discovery.
If you BOTHER TO READ the report of the navigation failure of the Mars climate orbiter...
If you'd BOTHER TO GET A SENSE OF HUMOR...
I just noticed the "Windows/Outlook Only" part of the post. Maybe Windows, but not Outlook only. My mother uses Netscape mail (at least a 3 year old version), and it's obviously quite compatible with the virus.