“Oh No, It's THE WORST VIRUS EVER!!!!”

I just received an email from a friend. He forwarded it to all of his friends. That's a bad sign. The subject was, "The worst virus ever!" That's an even worse sign.

The message claimed that the virus is spread by email, and when you open the attachment it immediately locks up your machine. Then it changes the ctrl-alt-delete sequence to mean, "Delete all of the DLL's on my computer", so that the computer can't reboot.

That sure would be one nasty "virus", wouldn't it?

Of course, only one computer could ever get this virus, since the infected computer could never hope to pass it on to anyone else.

Actually, though, the subject of the message was accurate. That message itself was an example of the worst virus ever. It's the only "cybernetic virus" - a virus that infects both people and machines. It requires the person reading the message to actually forward it to "everyone" in order to replicate.

Brian Andresen and I have joked for years that sending technical questions via email automatically upgrades your intelligence, so that you know the answer to your question as soon as you hit the "send" button. Apparently the effect is reversed when you forward faux virus warnings.