With the 2004 Oscars approaching people are starting to talk about who is likely to win some of the more closely contested categories. The final Lord of the Rings film is widely considered to take the Oscar for best picture – however not all of the bookmaker’s decisions have been met with the same level of agreement:

The decision to place the Mydoom virus as hot favourite to take the 2004 Oscar for “Best Computer Virus” is one of them as virus expert Keith Wilson.

“Really, their justification for putting the virus as favourite definitely shows their lack of knowledge in the subject,” Mr Wilson explained, “I mean, it’s easy for a late runner to come along at a slow point in the season and look as if it’s the greatest work of genius of all time. The Mydoom virus certainly fits this pattern.

“Everyone will remember how the virus successfully knocked the SCO website from the net for a few days. But when it came up against the big guns of Microsoft it was shown up to be the amateur standard that us experts knew it to be. It hardly dented the corporation’s website response times and users were completely unaware that an attack was going on.”

Mr Wilson believes that there are many other virus’s far more worthy of the award, but concedes that the virus will probably get the award.

“At the end of the day, the people deciding know as little about computer viruses as the next man. I mean, last year they gave the award to Microsoft Office’s paperclip assistant.”