I managed to get a hold of Tom Willard of Performance Foods (Totally
Ferret) and let him know of Katherine's post.  He told that he knows
that they responded to some shelf life questions last week.  Those may
have been her's.  IF they get a question they ALWAYS respond.
 
Given the extreme problems everyone was having with mails last week due
to those new viruses he asks that anyone who sent a question and did not
get a reply, please, resend the question.
 
Now, last week was probably the single worst week for lost e-mails at
gateway servers (type of server function -- not the retailer) due to
viruses and due to viral overload on servers in an exceedingly long
time --- unless most of your traffic was Linux and Mac and even then
you could lose things because of router overload.
 
[Moderator's note: Lots of somewhat off-topic rant about mac vs windows
follows.  If you're sensitive to that may wish to skip the next four
paragraphs!  BIG]
 
I'm not Windows so not personally affected (or infected) by the current
group of viruses since of about 77,000 viruses or worms only 50 are
written for Macs and almost all of those are written for Microsoft
software when run on Macs (Word and Office mostly -- but those are for
OS 8 and 9, not the current Mac OS X).  Mac is basically a Berkeley Unix.
That and Linux are more robust than Windows, though firewalls and such of
course make sense.  (Macs are friendlier, too.)
 
Yet so many people I know are on Windows and our ISP had clamped down so
tightly at the gateway servers (though not as tightly as AOL did) that I
was getting about 1/5th of my usual mail.
 
NO, I do NOT understand this stuff -- I asked Steve who was a
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs and then AT&T
Research and friends with Unix's original authors.  He verbally told me
what I needed to impart from questions I asked him based upon what little
bits I understood from reading and from listening to his conversations
with other knowledgeable people, so any transcription or understanding
errors -- any errors at all -- are mine due to not knowing this material.
I'm sure Bill Gruber will feel free to provide friendly correction and
welcome his input.
 
BTW, it is not just the vulnerability of Windows which makes it a target
(ex: the kid in Minnesota changing just 3 lines of code in an existing
virus and nailing many as a result) --- not just a matter of it being
easier to attack.  Microsoft also has been reported as being seen among
some groups which hate the U.S.  as being as much a symbol of the U.S.
to them as the World Trade Towers.  (Note that those articles mentioned
focus on corporate/capitalistic targets and government targets rather
than symbols of freedom.) Even more important is that Windows is targeted
because it is so common that it has achieved almost monoculture status.
So, just as a susceptible field of wheat will all fall to one disease
because each of the plants is too genetically similar to its neighbors,
so do entire populations of computers go down when they are overly
vulnerable.  More and more places which want to retain their data are
using a mix of operating systems now -- using the Linux or Unix for
back-up -- while having the mass stuff on the monoculture Windows to
reduce costs.  (If you want to think of something scary: there is a
respirator on Windows which at this point doesn't have data exchange
but that has been considered.) If you go to
http://tingilinde.typepad.com/starstuff/2003/week35/index.html
and read 8/22, 8/30, and 8/31 you will get a feel for the risks of OS
monocultures.
 
Anyway, back to how to relates to Katherine's note on not receiving mail:
last week was an AWFUL time for lost mails and no one should blame an
intended recipient or a sender since it was publicized all over about the
huge number of mails being lost in transit or gleaned out.  Remember that
Bill Gruber even had to warn FML members that maybe a third of AOL users
were even getting their FMLs.  That note on the risks of misplaced blame
is MY comment and no one else's, BTW.
 
E-mails are not perfect.  Even when they are working right things get
lost in the ether.  The more viruses there are out there in such a
monocultural medium the more mails will be lost.  The less people run
their viral software the more the viruses and worms will propagate.  If
people want the reduced up front cost of being in the monoculture then
they have to pay the continuing costs: temporal cost running firewalls
and protective software daily, the data cost of completely wiping their
drives when hit, and the monetary costs of upkeep once hit and of tuition
increases due to computer services at universities costing more to keep
up with infected student computers and university computers.
[Posted in FML issue 4257]