“A new worm that tries to take advantage of Windows users anxious to get their hands on security updates began making the rounds on Thursday, several antivirus firms confirmed,” Gregg Keizer reports for TechWeb News. “The worm, which goes by a variety of names, including Swen, W32/Swen@MM, Gibe, and W32/Gibe-F, can pose as an E-mail from Microsoft bearing a bogus security update as a file attachment.”
“It spreads in several ways, including the traditional mass-mailing method of stealing addresses from Outlook address books on compromised machines, but also propagates over Internet Relay Chat and peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa. Successful infections attempt to steal account information, including usernames and passwords,” Keizer reports. “The worm also exploits a 2-year-old vulnerability in Windows–for which a fix is available from Microsoft–that allows it to auto-execute on unpatched PCs. In those situations, the receiving system is infected even if its user doesn’t open the attached file.” Full article here.
Macintosh computers are unaffected. Windows-only users interested in adding a Mac OS X machine to their computing arsenal can get more information here. Apple Retail Store locations can be found here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
New York Times: Mac OS X ‘much more secure than Windows XP’ – September 18, 2003
Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg on making the switch from Windows to Mac – September 18, 2003
ZDNet’s Coursey: Microsoft should start new OS from scratch to be more like Mac OS X – July 29, 2003
ZDNet asks: will Windows ever be as stable as the Mac? – April 21, 2003
oops, sorry, should be “is”, not “are” as the third word after the colon
Psst pc clean, read your own words:
“I read on another site that a mac user was infected. Explain this, please.
“Still, even non-Windows users were affected by the worm’s spread, as one TechNewsWorld reader — a Mac user — reported receiving more than 250 Swen e-mails in the last day”
Since you have a degree in English how comes you don’t know the difference between “infected” and “affected” ?
AND PLEEEAAASSEEE:
“Don’t go spouting off like you did to someone who asked an innocent question for a friend who is too computer illiterate to find out himself.”
That must sound fake even to your ears. You did NOT sound to be coming here in order to ask an innocent question.
You sounded like:
“Take this!! Mac users are infected as well”
You got replied accordingly.
Thomas Blom: now you are talking difficult. Computer science, biological sciences, molecular genomics, virology.
She has a degree in English. How could you possibly think she is following you if Latin is already obscure to her?
Sorry, guys, this is just annoying the grit out of me, & I have to butt in–
There is no such Latin word as ‘virii’. If there were, it would be the plural of a word ‘virius’, which does not exist. The Latin word ‘virus’ means roughly ‘the quality of being a poison’, & has no plural. Since there is no Latin plural, the only sensible thing to do is make an English plural: VIRUSES.
I’ve yet to encounter a virologist who uses the bastardized form ‘virii’, but I concede that such a person may exist. Virologists aren’t required to study Latin, & the odd one could get away without even a decent command of English.
Now, Seahawk, if you hadn’t made that little error about the plural of virus, you’d be batting 1.000. ‘PC Clean’ is dead wrong on every other point.
Reference:
http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html
I hate to reply to this:
virus, virii n, 3rd. cochlearum, Plinius: “destillat ab inguine virii”
distinguished from
vir, viri == man
Calonghi Latim dictionary, circa 1940
Unless Latin had changed and ‘viri’ suddenly means “of a virus”
Might be a rare desinence but it is one.
Also not to be confounded with vires, virium which pertains to strengh and power.
Also “virus” meant a poisonous drink (and old chemistry and alchemy texts describe them as “virii”).
I must agree with you that – maybe – the purist patritium would have refrained to use it in the rare plural form but Latin and especially vulgar Latin do use it with the above meaning. If used by an alchemist in Medieval Italy I believe we are entitled to use it legally today. It is not a recent invention of computer scientists.
Jay, vulgar Latin – agreed – had corrupted Latin of the Emperors but it has been ytalked for centuries. I do not believe it can be dismissed as “non existent”
Again, not to say you are wrong Jay. But one thing is Classical LAtin and another vulgar Latin.
There are many examples of vulgar Latin (which has bastardized classical latin) which would make scholars scream and give you a C,
but, millions of people expressed themselves in vulgar latin for centuries before those scholars decided their expressions where not existent because they were not ‘classical’.
Cheers
sorry, I think i repeated myself too many times. Must be a case of logorrhea. Is any virus causing that?
This is why I like this place. It abounds of good well informed people.
Jay, just read from your link. And you are perfectly right.
virii is definitely vulgar Latin and bastardized. But then again, “microchip” was not there in English circa 1800 and “quark” had a totally different meaning then.
Latin evolved so much in the centuries after the collapse of Roman Empire. If I was a scholar teaching Classical Latin I would HAVE to say “virii” is wrong and agree with you but I am afraid I cannot agree much with “non existent” acception. Vulgar Latin (with influences from barbars as well) presents nouns and verbs unknown to Ciceronis, Oratius, Caesar et al.
To come back to old alchemy: virus distinguished from venenum in that the former was for a toxic drink that was not yet proven to be fatal, while venenis were sperimentally proven poisons.
Just to prove I am not talking in the vacuum:
“De secretis mulierum” (Venecia 1501), – in there it uses ‘virii’
“Theologorum principis, et incomparabilis virii�” (Colonia 1503)
where “virii” is even in the title.
Hence I stand my point and sign my card of batting 1.000
ISV borrows from Classic Greek & Latin, & AFAIK from the classic languages only. If you can show me another instance where a modern scientific term has been borrowed specifically from Vulgar Latin, I’ll concede the point.
The books you cite are . . . well, interesting. The only place I can locate on the Web where I might find copies is at the Biblioteca Colombina. I suppose it’s possible that the scientists who gave the name ‘virus’ its modern meaning might have borrowed it from some of the most obscure works of a 13th-century Catholic theologian — but I don’t find it especially plausible. I think you need to draw the connexions better than that.
That said, every authority on the English language insists on ‘viruses’ as the sole acceptable English plural.
Jay, I also found some finnish scholar insisting on ‘vira’
browsing around it looks virus has been attributed to 2nd, 3rd, and some other claim 4th. In those cases there will be many “plausible” cases which will be considered wornd or right depending on the person.
I agree though that it is all but clear and for classical Latin there is no example of use in plural form (so like people).
Othe examples I could find are:
Pathogens — bacteria or other things (virii, et. al) that cause disease in a host.
Paper Review: Kelly Eagen
Gene Cherng
Math 196S Dr. Harold Layton
“The main focus of the paper was bacterial and not viral infections; since virii cannot survive outside the human body for extended periods of time and are not responsive to antibiotics, the model did not include virii.”�
“Pathogen mediated:
This is the other leading scientific theory of the mechanism for how multiple sclerosis operates. “Pathogen” is a generic word for the nasty little bacteria, virii, fungi and other microbes that cause so many other diseases.”
�A Safe and Simple Treatment for Aids:
“Extensive evidence points to the fact that colloidal silver destroys all types of virii including the AIDS virus and greatly enhances the immune system in general.”
Etc, etc. So vulgar latin ‘virii’ seem to have breached into scientific parlance and ‘virii’ is not seen as a mistake in these sciences since years and years.
So I believe it IS a questionable issue for sure but I would not claim “the word does not exist”. A word comes into existence because of its use (languages do evolve). I agree ‘virii’ would be as wrong in classical latin as ‘peoples’ would be in English but while ‘peoples’ does not exit my claim is that ‘virii’ does and modern scientific acception has it as plural of a virus. There might have been bastardization in alchemy et alias in the course of centuries but I would not see as a blatant mistake the way ‘peoples’ would be.
Your sugestions to find other vulgar latin influences into moder scientific language is interesting. I would not be surprised to find as classical latin was only spoken in the clergy while vulgar was the strayman. I’d say some pseudo-scientist in year 1000′ must have not been using classical latin 100%.
Written documentation of Vulgar Latin is uncommon and very rare. Vernaculum was indeed the spoken language and the literate – also to show his knowledge – wrote in classical latin. But with the centuries this also was lost and even erudites started to diverge from classical latin in their opera.
And I’d push it forward: romance languages do come more from vulgar latin than from classical. So our debt is greater to vernaculum then to classical latin.
One example of vulgar latin into spoken language: horse (in italian: ‘cavallo’). Classical latin is ‘equus’, Vulgar is ‘caballus’. Italians use ‘equino’ though as well as ‘cavallino’ but the latter measn small horse as well as ‘of horses’.
One thing for sure: Vulgar Latin is not to be confounded with Pig Latin.
I believe this misunderstanding leads many to cry “Mistake!, Wrong!, Non existent!)
Found some vulgar and medieval rather then classical derivations:
Sovereign [Middle English soverain, from Vulgar Latin *supernus]
ro�mance �[Middle English, from Old French romans, romance, work written in French, from Vulgar Latin *romanic]
cathedral [Short for cathedral church, from Middle English cathedral, of a diocese, from Medieval Latin cathedralis]
mercy [Middle English, from Old French merci, from Medieval Latin merces]
siege [Middle English sege, from Old French, seat, from Vulgar Latin *sedicum]
beauty [Middle English beaute, from Old French biaute, from Vulgar Latin *bellitas]
Same for other languages, ex Italian posto, from from Vulgar Latin *postum, while Latin would be positum.
I wonder how many of terms are believed to be classical latin while a closer look would rather show vulgar.
What about:
ven�om (vnm)
[Middle English venim, from Old French from Vulgar Latin *venmen] while classical latin would be ‘venenum’
Briar: (Erica arborea) from Vulgar Latin ‘brucaria’
PS
sorry Mac readers et al. me and Jay – I believe – are just having fun.
Jay, this is interesting:
700 BC – Vulgar Latin replaces inflections with particles
1500 – Classical Latin becomes Scientific Latin with simplifications.
1662 – Royal Society seeks a common language for science, as national languages supplant Latin.
1708 – Carl Linnaeus introduces a simplified, technically accurate Botanical Latin to standardise the description of new plant species.
1905 – Professor Peano demonstrates the possibility of using Latin roots without inflections in “Latin Sine Flexione”.
“Latin Sine Flexione” for scientific usage then paying tribute more to Vulgar rather then Classical?
Seems easier to find scientific roots in Medieval Latin rather then Vulgar but that would suggest the fact that classical latin is not the only root of scientific words (hence not known to Ciceronis, Catullus, et al.)
Anyway, I close it here as I believe this forum might be getting annoyed by this chat.
Cheers
Seapunk don’t you ever shut up?
“That said, every authority on the English language insists on ‘viruses’ as the sole acceptable English plural.”
I wonder if the same authority insists on ‘mouses’.
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Having said the joke, I think nowadays ‘viruses’ is acceptable as much as ‘cactuses’ is. However, the only proper plural forms used to be ‘virii’ and ‘cacti’. Language is fluid and changes all the time, but unless everybody agrees that virii should be phased out it is as valid as viruses, IMHO.
Personally, I still use virii and cacti (and mice)
What was this article about again?
“What was this article about again?”
Wormses, nassty wormses. And tricksy, false viruses that attacks our preciousss