WHO IS MILTON, AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?

2 September 2003

Who is this Milton guy and why should I care about his wedding?

I can't tell you how many messages I have received in the last few months regarding "milton's wedding." Each comes with its own special little attachment, which I assume is just loaded with bugs that want to infect my computer.

I join the chorus of voices who are just sick of the current spate of computer viruses sent out by obviously intelligent people who could better spend their time and talents trying to cure AIDS or find homes for homless children, or feed the hungry, or run for Governor of California instead of using what must be superior intelligence in order to send plague and pestelence out onto the airwaves for all of us to fight.

I have a virus checker which runs a scan on my hard drive every night (as well as one which picks up a lot of incoming viruses as they arrive). It has become a regular thing to get up in the morning and discover that anywhere from 1-3 viruses have been killed by the virus checker.

The day that the SoBig virus hit the Internet, I got up and there were 234 infected files which had been fixed during the night. My virus checker got an extra ration of chocolate that morning.  Good virus checker!

I don't understand the need for people to torment innocent people. I don't understand destruction of property, for example. A guy at the party yesterday was talking about how kids from the high school, next door had "tagged" his back fence and wall. Apparently the paint they use has to be washed off immediately before it sets and since he rarely goes around that side of the house, it was his neighbor who saw it and immediately set to scrubbing it. Why do people do things like that?

What fun is there in making a mess of things for strangers?

There is a tree down in the parking lot by the high school here which was "tp'd" at some point months ago. Long white streamers of toilet paper decorating it. I have to admit that the day I saw it, it looked kind of cool, in an etherial sort of way, but now, months later, the toilet paper still remains, as much of it plucked off as possible, but it will take the winter rains to completely wash it out.

What does it say for our society that people find fun in destroying the property of other people?

The Internet just opened up one gigantic blank wall for all of the sickos of the world to paint cyber grafitti with broad strokes. Send systems crashing. Stop corporations all over the world from conducting business. Jam the computers of newbies in Peoria somewhere who think that they need to read whatever someone has to say about milton's wedding, or that the "wicked screensaver" might be fun to try, or that they should hear about "that movie" or any number of other ploys that instigators use to entice people to open up that insidious attachment.

I hope there is a very bleak corner in hell for people who sic viruses onto innocent users. I hope they are given a windowless room, with "It's a Small World" piped in 24 hours a day and only one game of Chutes and Ladders to play for all eternity.