The cycle of the virus

In the late 1970s, when computers really started gaining some popularity,
the only computer one could have in your home was an Apple Mac. It was also
back then that some very clever but malicious people realised, as all clever
and malicious people do, that computer code could also be used to harm
people, and the computer virus was born.



Then, in the 1980s, a young mr William Gates, through a stroke of luck and
judgement errors on the part of others, released an operating system that
made computers more accessible to the populace, and more and more computers
were sold.

Those clever yet malicious people realised that their virus market was
shrinking and changing, and started writing virii for the more popular
operating system instead.



And, in fact, this operating system, and its decendants, was so popular,
that it remains the most widely used operating system today.

However, other operating systems have gained popularity too, the target
market has grown exponentially and the internet has provided hundreds of new
ways of delivering malicious software. Which made the clever evils happy.



And they started writing virii for Apple again. And, to the astonishment of
the Linux community, virii for Linux started popping up - which the Linux
people, of couse, also denied to the general public. Hell, virii were even
written for the myriad of Mobile phones suddenly available.

And still, the Microsoft offering is lambasted for being so virus friendly.



It is always so easy to point fingers at the most popular one, trying to
show its weaknesses, instead of seeing the strengths that made it popular in
the first place.