Birthdays and other anniversaries are often a time for celebration, as we reflect on milestones passed. In the world of computing, we have quite a few happy anniversaries: for example, the first computer (arguably, Babbage's design of 1822) and the first e-mail message sent (1965).rnSome remembrances, however, are less positive, and 2007 marks the silver anniversary of a darker sort—the genesis of malicious computer viruses. In 1982, a virus written by a high-school student in Pittsburgh began appearing on Apple II systems. This virus—known as "Elk Cloner"—infected the operating system, copied itself to floppy discs, and displayed bad poetry. Primarily intended to be irritating, the virus came and went with little notice. Few people spent time worrying about the beastie, and almost nobody predicted that it was a harbinger of the current multibillion dollar antivirus industry.
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