Virus

A local veterinarian confirmed on Friday that West Nile Virus Encephalitis has been found in a horse in Lincoln County. It is the first such case for Lincoln County in 2005, and it was diagnosed and treated by Dr. Devin Carlton of Stanford Veterinary Hospital. The horse is an 18-month-old Tennessee Walking Horse that lives on a farm between Crab Orchard and Ottenheim. It is recovering. The horse had not been vaccinated for West Nile prior to contracting the virus. According to Carlton, the horse presented on Sept.

Each time a new trojan horse, virus or worm arrives on the scene, computer users whose systems become infected are faced with memorable personal experiences. Most people have virus attack stories much like folks who tell old war stories. Neither are experiences you'd soon forget. Writers of these pesky trojans, viruses and worms seem to be getting even more clever as years go by. They seem to stop at nothing to top the last big attack. For instance, Amus, a new computer worm suspected to be of Turkish origin, plans to give computer users yet another unique experience to share.

Last week we explored the Display, Internet Options and the System sections of the Control Panel. Today we continue on our adventures in the Windows Control Panel. One of the applets in the Control Panel that all computer users should become familiar with is Add/Remove Programs. This is where you go to properly remove programs from your system. Add/Remove Programs allows you to add, remove and change software. It also allows you to change components installed for your operating system such as games or other utilities.

ICQ, an instant messaging service, has launched a new service called ICQ Universe. The new service features an invitation-only membership. The key feature of the service is the networking of friends and colleagues. Essentially, the service hopes to provide a safer way for people to meet. ICQ Universe is like viewing your friends' and colleagues' buddy lists. It enables someone a chance to view a broader list of contacts that includes friends of people you know personally. It's all about who you know on ICQ Universe.

Dear Editor: David Hall's letter to the editor Tuesday criticizing Jeff Hamlin's letter and stating AIDS infects all genders and ages of people opens up a real can of worms. Perhaps he should read about how the AIDS virus was brought from Europe to America by a gay, infected male airline steward, sharing the virus with gay males in New York and then on to San Francisco, where it spread rapidly in gay bath houses. Public health statistics show that the rate of HIV-AIDS infection in gay males far exceeds any other group of people per capita.

Boyle County Director of Pupil Personnel Mike Pittman may have to order the maintenance department at Boyle County High School to change the front doors to the school into revolving doors. "On Monday, students at the high school were checking out right and left," Pittman said Tuesday. "We are definitely feeling the effects of the illnesses that are going around. " Other area schools also have been feeling effects of a recent outbreak of viruses, including a small number of confirmed cases of influenza.

Every week it seems like the Internet gets cluttered with some new trojan, worm or computer virus. It seems to be an endless cycle that most of us would be more than happy to live without. Luckily, there are companies now feeling compelled to help consumers protect themselves by offering free help. Computer Associates (http://ca.com/), a leading software company, in association with Microsoft, is offering consumers the chance to download free antivirus and firewall software. The software is an 18MB file download called eTrust EZ Armor and it has a $49.95 value.

Computer owners and businesses were barely given a chance to recover from the previous MSBlast worm before being attacked with yet another worm. The new worm gave last week the title of "the worst virus week ever" by being the fourth worm to wreak havoc for computer users within a single week's span. The new mass e-mail worm, dubbed Sobig.F@mm, which attempts to download files from the Internet and leave computers vulnerable to future attack, quickly was spreading around the world at the end of last week.