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Business

Bad bugs, a break and boffo earnings

WEEK IN REVIEW: Top stories from the second week of January, 1999.
Written by Molly Steenson, Contributor
April Fool! That's the Microsoft bug that will affect every PC in the United States in 2001. The bug causes some Windows applications to operate as if it were one hour earlier than the system clock. This may affect calendaring software and could cause financial transactions to be recorded at the wrong time.

Speaking of ugly things that happen to PCs, there's a real virus to avoid. No, it's not the Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe or the Good Times hoax-it's the picture.exe virus. There are at least two versions circulating right now, as well as a similar virus called soft.exe. If you open the file, it expands into two files, note.exe and manager.exe. They map your hard drive for every e-mail address on your system, search your Internet cache, and ferret out America Online login information and password. Then it launches dial-up networking on reboot and tries to send the information to an e-mail address in China. Good Times it isn't, so users, beware.

In happier news, Apple has a spring in its step again, thanks to a steady stream of great products and $123 million in quarterly profits. Intel wowed investors, and Yahoo! reported $25 million in fourth quarter earnings and announced a two-for-one stock split.

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