Somewhere in the depths of the countryside of the People's Republic of China, a naturally mutated submicroscopic microbe has the nerve to be aerodynamically transferred to the smoggy air of Taiwan. Upon landing in Taipei, the microbe attaches itself to an impoverished octogenarian who lives in an overpopulated 1 room apartment over a fish store.
The microbe works its way into this guy's blood stream, unbek- nownst to him, and in a few days, he's sicker than a dog. But this microbe is smart, real smart. It has heard of antibiotics, and in the spirit of true Darwinism, it replicates itself before being killed off with a strengthened immunity. So, the microbe copies itself and when Kimmy Chen shakes hands with his custom- ers, some of them are lucky enough to receive an exact duplicate, clone if you will, of his microbe. Then they too, get ill.
The microbe thus propagates its species until the entire East Coast of the US has billions and trillions of identical microbes costing our fragile economy untold millions of dollars in sick pay.
However, the microbe is only so smart. After a while, the mi- crobe mutates itself into a benign chemical compound that no longer can copy itself and the influenza epidemic is over. Until next year when Asian Flu B shows up and the process begins all over again. (The same group of extremists who believe that the Tri-Lateral commission runs the world and Queen Elizabeth and Henry Kissinger are partners in the heroine trade think the AMA is behind all modern flu epidemics. No comment.)
The point of all of this diatribe is that computers can get sick too. With a virus.
Don't worry, mom. Your computer can't give you the flu anymore than your fish can get feline leukemia.
It all started years ago, before Wozniak and Apple and the PC.
Before personal computers there were mainframes; huge room sized computers to crunch on numbers. One day, years ago, Joe, (that's not a real name, it's changed to protect him) decided it would be great fun to play a prank on Bill, another programmer who worked at a big university. Joe wrote a little program that he put into Bill's big computer. Every time Bill typed the word 'ME' on his keyboard, the computer would take over. His video screen would fill up with the word 'YOU', repeating itself hundreds and thou- sands of times. Bill's computer would become useless.
That was called a practical joke to computer programmers. Joe and Bill both got a laugh out of it, and no harm was done. Then Bill decided to get back at Joe. He put a small program into Joe's big computer. Every day at precisely 3:00 P.M., a message appeared: 'Do Not Pass GO!'.
It was all good fun and became a personal challenge to Joe and
Bill to see how they could annoy each other.