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Got a virus? Cough and bear it.
Computer virus? Please don't share it!

          Whether or not it's the virus season for humans, one never knows when a new computer virus will strike. Facing that catastrophe? Our sympathy; we've been there. Glad you're not? Good. But while on the subject, what is a computer virus, anyway, and how did such things get started? Surely it wasn't Evolution.
          No, the term "computer virus" was first used in the early '80s when a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California, Fred Cohen, first created a self-replicating software program that attached itself to existing programs and attacked the security of multi-user computing systems. When he showed his idea to Len Adleman, his thesis advisor, Adleman noticed the similarity to a biological virus, which uses the resources of the cell it attacks to reproduce itself and and the term took hold. Unfortunately, the idea also took hold in the minds of mischievous and sometimes outright malign computer mavens who passed on not only the word, but generation after generation of viruses (viri?) as well. The first serious damage from a PC virus was reported in 1986, caused by the "Pakistani Brain" virus, which was written by Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, two brothers in Lahore, Pakistan.
          If your computer has ever been infected, you'll understand why the very words "Computer virus" have evoked a self-replicating anxiety for computer users ever since. (Moral: Be careful downloading e-mail that comes to you from strangers, especially programs that have unfamiliar names!)