Word: viruses
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...worst attack of worms, a kind of computer virus that replicates itself automatically. Though they sound like science fiction, worms spring from the minds of virus writers, who could be sitting at any computer in the world. Most spread because we do careless things like open e-mail attachments from strangers, but some have evolved to spread through computer networks on their own--like plague bacilli that have become airborne...
...Virus writers in search of street cred are nothing new. Nor is the billion-dollar antivirus industry that has sprung up since the mid-1980s. Their cat-and-mouse game evolves every time a flaw is found in Microsoft Windows, which runs on 95% of personal computers worldwide. And flaws in Windows are as plentiful as mosquitoes in August. The other problem is the infrastructure of the Internet itself, which is almost as rickety as Northeastern power lines. Up to 70 security holes are noted every week...
...making all those dazzling sentences add up to a novel that he sometimes goes astray. Some of the sharpest words concern Clint Smoker's odious tabloid, the Lark. What was in a terrorist group's "dirty bomb?"an editor asks. "Radioactive medical waste, Chief, plus ringworm, West Nile virus, liquid gangrene and a cladding of mad cow." The bombing story is squeezed out by news of a man injured outside a kiddies' swimming pool when he is caught watching too closely and flees with his pants round his ankles. Headline: Pervs Him Right. Yellow Dog isn't just about language...
...virus's primary hot zone has also changed. Last year the most dangerous part of the country was the lower Mississippi River basin, including Mississippi and Louisiana. This year the action has shifted to Colorado, which had only 14 cases and no deaths in all of 2002 but already has nearly 250 cases and six deaths so far this year. Part of that shift is due to the nature of mosquito populations, which tend to go through boom-and-bust cycles. Colorado's happens to be booming this summer...
...stay tuned" situation." MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, on an outbreak of illness near Vancouver that appears closely related to the SARS virus?and may have been spread by undetectable, asymptomatic carriers