Email from BARMAN@microsoft.com:

Dear Valued User.
At 0 : 12 Eastern Time on Thursday-January 29, 2004,
Microsoft started investigating reports of a variant of a new virus “Mydoom”, known as Mydoom.A.
This worm reportedly stops access to some websites, including our Microsoft.com websites. The worm is noticed to entice electronic mail recipients into opening a message with a file attached. If the file attached is opened, virus installs malicious code on the computer user’s system and sends itself to any contacts in the user’s address book.
Please download the latest security patch available from Microsoft.com website or download this digitally signed attachment.

[Attachment:Windows-KB823989-x86-ENU.exe]
(The attachment was the MyDoom.B virus, which had little effect on my Linux system.)
In a related story, I really hate getting email notification reporting a comment to my blog — which turns out to be spam.

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…Your deity wills mass death during the grand finale:

Nearly 250 Muslim worshipers died in a hajj stampede Sunday during the annual stoning of Satan ritual in one of the deadliest tragedies at the notoriously perilous ceremony.
The stampede, during a peak event of the annual Muslim pilgrimage, or hajj, lasted about a half-hour, Saudi officials said. There were 244 dead and hundreds of other worshippers injured, some critically, Hajj Minister Iyad Madani said.
“All precautions were taken to prevent such an incident, but this is God’s will. Caution isn’t stronger than fate,” Madani said.

…Last year, 14 pilgrims were trampled to death during the ritual and 35 died in a 2001 stampede. In 1998, 180 pilgrims died.

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I made the dubiously wise decision of selling my current computer to my dad, after not being able to fix his old one. My intention was to fallback to my Linux box, but I discovered to my horror that my hard drive is not supported by my backup pc, so I won’t have access to my data until I get a new computer put together. I tried to check my email via the web, and discovered that I had 120 emails from the last day, 99% of which were spam – and the mail interface didn’t make it easy to sort it out. So, I won’t be checking or replying to much mail until I build a new pc. I’m thinking of following the guide at SharkyExtreme as a model, though the Athlon 64 looks pretty temping. Any suggestions?
This will be my fourth computer, and the third I’ve built myself, though I’ve done so many upgrades to all of them, (it’ll be my 6th motherboard) that like Theseus’s ship, it’s hard to say where one computer ends and another begins.
Update: I ordered all the components today, and should be online on the new pc by next weekend

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