THE good got better and the bad became ugly. PCs have become better and virus that bedevil PC users have become uglier. Both these computing aspects parallel each other but the last five years of the millennium will be remembered more for virus than major PC breakthroughs. Virus celebrated their 20th birthday in November 2003. Malicious programmers, riding the WWW wave, have done their best to make surfing a pain in the neck. In fact, such …showed first 75 words of 978 total…

…showed last 75 words of 978 total…binary attachment." The message really contains a 30 KB file that, when launched on computers running Microsoft's Windows operating systems, can send out 100 infected e-mail messages in 30 seconds to addresses stored in the computer's address book and other documents with the extensions names .exe, .scr, .cmd, .pif and .zip. With three million computers affected worldwide at the estimated economic cost of # 30 million, 2004 is already MyDoom year. Unless, of course, new 'kid' surfaces in the remaining 10 months.