But before Schwarzenegger could get his hands on the keys to the governor's mansion, the Terminator star found himself fighting off accusations of sexual assault ("I have behaved badly sometimes," he admitted), allegations over his father's Nazi past as well as numerous challenges from the 134 other candidates contesting the Sunshine State's top job.
And despite winning the election with a generous 48 percent of the vote, Schwarzenegger's new role as the "Governator" may prove to be his most difficult yet, with the US$24 billion budget crisis that brought down his predecessor refusing to be "terminated" as easily as Davis was.
-- Andy Morton
10.
Blaster Virus Sweeps World
The potential army of zombies is still out there, waiting to get hold of your computer. In August the "blaster" worm infected more than 500,000 computers worldwide, and apparently it is still wiggling its way through the Internet.
Although anti-virus vendors have downgraded its threat level to medium, the creator of the virus is still on the loose, despite the US$500,000 reward offered by the FBI and Microsoft.
The virus targeted computers running Microsoft XP and 2000 and spread quickly across the Internet by exploiting a flaw in the operating system. It was programmed to turn infected computers into a legion of zombies that would launch an attack on Microsoft's Web site on Aug. 16. Microsoft succeeded in averting the attack, but the virus nonetheless slowed down Internet traffic, shut down systems at hospitals and airlines, and caused millions of dollars in damage.
On Aug. 28 the FBI arrested a 18-year-old from Minnesota who had created a copycat version, and experts say the code, which has been circulating among programmers since 1996, can easily be adapted to attack patched versions of Windows.
Computers infected by the "blaster" worm displayed the message "I just want to say LOVE YOU SAN!" Hidden in the program's code was a message for Microsoft founder Bill Gates: "billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!"
Ironically, another version of the worm circulating at the time acted as an antidote to "blaster" by downloading the fix from Microsoft's Web site.
-- Cobus du Plessis
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