To: mr.mark who wrote (16561 ) 2/19/2001 11:58:04 PM From: Ed Forrest Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 110652 Mark Just noticed this On Yahoo.comComputer Viruses Often Just Annoy By LARRY BLASKO, Associated Press Writer Never mind cold fusion or windmill generators, there's a virtually endless source of untapped energy in the jerking knees of journalists. A modest investment in pedal generators and the smallest mention of ``computer virus'' would solve California's energy problem in a flash. It happened again the week of Valentine's Day (news - web sites), with the Anna Kournikova (news - web sites) computer virus, an e-mail with an attachment that claimed to be a picture of the teen tennis star. An attempt to view the attachment caused the program to send copies of itself to all the names it found in a user's Microsoft Outlook Express address book. This perhaps will clog some company e-mail servers, especially where employees are not savvy enough and open unsolicited e-mail attachments. But it's not the end of the world, although stories and broadcasts tossed words like ``infection'' and ``dangerous'' about as though this were an Ebola (news - web sites) outbreak in Manhattan instead of an annoyance. Which is pretty much the pattern for what is, in most cases, the e-mail equivalent of the junior high school prank telephone call. Computer virus programs existed before the Internet explosion, but transmission was confined to floppy disks and bulletin board systems and in any event wasn't talked about on evening news shows. Should you get anti-virus software? Can't hurt, might help - but it's not foolproof. You have to keep updating the software and the alarm du jour is always something that the software didn't know about. A consistent application of common sense also works: Don't open unsolicited e-mail any more than you would spend your time opening junk snail-mail or listening to telemarketing pitches.