On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 13:50:13 GMT, "Darrien"
<Darrien_Lambert@NA.COM@hotmail.com> belched the alphabet and kept on
going with:

>>>I recieved a forwarded email  from someone with the UPDATE Microsoft
>>>patch virus.
>>>The reason Im asking here is because as far as I know this place is
>>>the only place Ive posted anything, and its a fairly new account.
>>>There was a long list of email addresses enclosed in the forwarded
>>>mail, many of these had the address  @neis.cr.usgs.gov   which seems
>>>to belong to the Earthquake Hazards Program.
>>>
>>>can anyone add anymore info or figure out if its just I who is
>>>recieving this mail?
>> 
>> I get that shit all the time. Using a "dumb" reader (Agent) is more
>> than sufficient to take care of any worries about accidentally
>> executing the thing. But using Norton Systemworks to scan my incoming
>> mail provides a very nice additional level of protection. It also
>> scans my outbound mail to help make sure I'm not passing any virii
>> ("viruses" for those of you in Rio Linda) along to others. Again,
>> Agent pretty much prevents that from happening anyway, but the scan is
>> a nice addition.
>> 
>
>Actually, "Virus" has no plural.

It does if I say it does, Mr. Smarty Pants.
>
>Therefore, it is up to the rules of the language in which it's being used
>to determine how to pluralise it.

I wrote it in my language. So I get to make the rules. "Virii" it is.
You may wish to make a note of it, as it may appear on the final exam.
>
>Hence, the plural of "Virus" (in English) is "Viruses"
>
>http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html

I'll see your perl.com and raise you a Harvard Divinity School.

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/its/docs/virus.html

And in the course of my googling, my pedantic friend, I discover that
if you want to object to "virii" then you really also ought to object
to "virus" being used to refer to a single object as well. Apparently,
it was a mass noun, having neither singular nor plural form.





--

Michael Cash



"There was a time, Mr. Cash, when I believed you must be the most useless
thing in the world. But that was before I read a Microsoft help file."

                                Prof. Ernest T. Bass
                                Mount Pilot College


http://www.sunfield.ne.jp/~mike/