VIRUS

Beware of new virus outbreaks on computers everywhere, such as...

Oprah Winfrey virus: Your 200MB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 80MB and then slowly expands back to 200MB.

AT&T virus: Every three minutes it tells you what great service you are getting.

MCI virus: Every three minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T virus.

Paul Revere virus: This revolutionary virus does not horse around. It warns you of impending hard disk attack -- once if by LAN, twice if by c:>

Politically Correct virus: Never calls itself a "virus", but instead refers to itself as an "electronic micro organism."

Ross Perot virus: Activates every component in your system, just before the whole dang thing quits.

Arnold Schwarzenegger virus: Terminates and stays resident. It'll be back.

Dan Quayle virus: Prevents your system from spawning any child process without joining into a binary network.

Government Economist virus: Nothing works, but all your diagnostic software says everything is fine.

New World Order virus: Probably harmless, but it makes a lot of people really mad just thinking about it.

Federal Bureaucrat virus: Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which does practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of your computer.

Gallup virus: Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time (plus or minus a 3.5 percent margin of error).

Texas virus: Makes sure that it's bigger than any other file.

Adam and Eve virus: Takes a couple of bytes out of your Apple.

Congressional virus: The computer locks up, screen splits erratically with a message appearing on each half blaming the other side for the problem.

Airline virus: You're in Dallas but your data is in Singapore.

Freudian virus: Your computer becomes obsessed with marrying to its own motherboard.

Public Television virus: Your programs stop every few minutes to ask for money.

Elvis virus: Your computer gets fat, slow and lazy, then self distructs only to resurface at shopping malls and service stations across rural America.

Ollie North virus: Causes your printer to become a paper shredder.

Nike virus: Just does it.

Sears virus: Your data won't appear unless you buy new cables, power supply and a set of shocks.

Jimmy Hoffa virus: Your programs can never be found again.

Congressional virus #2: Runs every program on the hard drive simultaneously, but doesn't allow the user to accomplish anything.

Imelda Marcos virus: Sings you a song (slightly off key) on boot up, then subtracts money from your Quicken account and spends it all on expensive shoes it purchases through Prodigy.

Star Trek virus: Invades your system in places where no virus has gone before.

Health Care virus: Tests your system for a day, finds nothing wrong, and sends you a bill for $4,500.

George Bush virus: It starts by boldly stating "Read my docs...No new files!" on the screen. It proceeds to fill up all the free space on your hard drive with new files, then blames it on the Congressional virus.

LAPD. virus: It claims it feels threatened by the other files on your PC and erases them in "self-defence."

Oral Roberts virus: Claims that if you don't send it a million dollars, its programmer will take it back.