October 10th 2004 Why Viruses Suck

Loyal Monkey Robot fan Elizabeth “Wiz” Stark recently sent me an enlightening email about some antics going on at my old high school alma mater, Lewisburg Area High School. Being the dutiful editor of a widely-read website that I am, I quickly wrote a short article about these strange happenings when I was at home for the weekend, and planned to post them to the site when I returned to Bucknell yesterday. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of emailing the file as a .zip attachment. Why is that so bad? Well, Bucknell doesn’t like .zip attachments (or .exe or .scr attachments, for that matter). In fact, Bucknell hates them so much that they delete all incoming .zip attachments to avoid a virus outbreak. This irritated me. My file was not a virus—it was an entertaining and provocative Monkey Robot article! How dare Bucknell delete my files! Just because someone else sends a virus in a .zip attachment does not mean I am going to! Besides, I’m using a Macintosh, for God’s sake—the virus won’t even run on my computer! That’s why I use one! Gah! I’m so mad. Anyway, I hope to go back home in a few days (because I forgot some wintry sweaters that should keep me warm and cozy in the coming months), so I will recover the file from my home PC then. Sorry for the inconvenience; I hope to have the Wiz-inspired article up shortly. Stay tuned!