Couldn't he have found something better to do?
It was on this day, in 1999 that the Melissa virus, actually a macro that was activated in Microsoft Word, was released on the world. Melissa was far from the first computer virus, but it's often credited with being
the first malicious code to cause a worldwide epidemic
and thus earned its place in the pantheon of computer viruses. Pantheon or not, Melissa's Wikipedia entry, though it dates from 2003 and has been edited many times, is short, and far from impressive.
Melissa was sent inside a Word document which upon being opened sent itself to the first 50 names in the recipient's Outlook address book. Interestingly, it's estimated that it caused $80 million worth of damage, which I suppose that by today's standards is rather minimal.
The virus was traced back to David L. Smith who ultimately served twenty months of a ten year sentence, and was fined $5000 for his crime. (And Smith didn't earn his own Wikipedia entry, and instead only has a short paragraph on the page devoted to Melissa.) One site that reports on the virus tells us that
Smith named it:
in memory of a topless dancer in Florida with whom he had fallen in love with
which should cause us to wonder whether Smith couldn't have found a nicer way to pay homage.
Go to: What will we do with all that "spare" time?