Ed Bott

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Just look at these headlines on Google News!

Except, as Mary Jo Foley points out, the headlines are, well, completely wrong:

A number of Web reports are claiming that the first Windows Vista virus has been discovered. While there is, indeed, a report of an Austrian virus writer unleashing five theoretical viruses targeting the beta version of Microsoft’s scripting shell (a k a “Monad”), that’s where the facts in this case end. Monad is not part of Vista. It’s not in the Vista Beta 1 build that went to testers in late July. Monad’s not in Longhorn Server, either.

You can use this story as a litmus test. If a news source picks up the “first viruses for Windows Vista appear” meme, you can assume they don’t know what they’re talking about, and you can scratch them off your list.

Update: Unless, of course, they’re the sort of responsible journalists that are willing to promptly publish an update.