Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Viruses are learning to search and grab

Welcome to the Tucson Citizen
The latest version of the MyDoom e-mail virus, MyDoom.M, fooled tens of thousands of computer-savvy workers into triggering a disruption that knocked Internet search sites Google, Yahoo, Lycos and AltaVista off line for several hours yesterday.


Well, I wouldn't call them computer-savvy if they're opening unknown folders or attachments. This is certainly an interesting method of exploitation, but also find it interesting that although this article lists the other three search engines hit (Yahoo!, AltaVista, and Lycos), most only mention Google. Sure, it's getting ready to go public, but still...it says a lot about Google that it got all the attention, as well as the fact it's actually entered our language (we google something). I have to admit, I am somewhat in awe of the phenomenon that is Google.

That said, it's reassuring that librarians, who do use Google, of course, also have a plethora of other resources for finding information, some of it online, some of it in databases, but some of it in collections of (gasp!) books. I sometimes amaze people when I reach for a particularly useful reference text because I retrieved the same information in a couple of seconds that they spent 2 hours looking online for. And although viruses hit both computers and people, no one's developed one for books yet. Well, unless you count budget cuts. :)

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