I'm programming challenged. How does one disable javascript?
This is a very sophisticated hack. Simple maybe to some, but it was quickly released and shows a desire to attack Microsoft systems. It's important to remember to blame the hackers for things like this, and the admins who hadn't yet applied the required patches. Maybe one day security updates will be absolutely automatic, but right now it's pretty close. The hackers are the problem, not the update process.
I want to thank everyone who gave me tips and ideas and finally the courage to dump my IE and outlook browsers. WOW I really love firefox and thunderbird. i have spent the weekend downloading extensions and tweaking the browser. i even downloaded the mozilla browser just for fun but i like firefox much better. its nice to have friends like you guys who dont mind helping a PC layperson so again thanks to everyone!