(DP) - In a desperate move aimed at containing the spread of Microsoft Outlook, ACME Labs¹ today terminated their entire sales department. "It's a harsh but necessary
step." said Bob Widget, CTO of ACME Labs.
According to Widget, Outlook was first discovered in an isolated case in the European arm of the company's
marketing department a week ago. The employee was terminated and their workstation reformatted.
"We thought that would be the end of it." Widget said. "We were wrong."
Outlook is a pernicious disease that, left unchecked, can rampage throughout an organization. Early symptoms
include slowness to process e-mail and a tendency toward colo(u)red fonts in simple messages. Later on a
tenancy towards large Microsoft Office attachments develops. Of course, use of Outlook also renders the
host workstation vulnerable to a wide range of viral infection.
"Sales people often don't feel any pain." Widget said, but once infected e-mail starts spreading into Linux
based development areas, "chaos erupts." ACME labs gathered all of the sales department's ThinkPads together
and burned them yesterday in a last-ditch effort to end the Outlook threat. Meanwhile, ACME's Research and Development department have barricaded themselves behind a firewall and refuse to have any dealings with outside elements of the company, except via plain text files.
1. Not the real name.