This is not a cute little girl who has been taken along last month to be left by her tearful mother at the gates of the local primary school for her first day. Melissa has the dubious honor of being the first computer worm that infected the internet. She was launched onto the unsuspecting internet community on 26 March, 1999. A the time she infected 1 million computers, which we all thought was horrendous and it probably was, the internet was much smaller in those days.

So what have we learnt in 5 years? Not much really according to New York-based systems administrator Tom Finkle.

Back then, though, for most people a computer virus was new and interesting and a little scary. Now it's just annoying -- we're still saying the same thing each time a virus is released. I bet most of the people who clicked on Melissa five years ago also clicked on MyDoom, Netsky and Bagle virus attachments last week.

Melissa was written by David L. Smith who was caught a matter of days after its release but, the court system being what it is, was not sentenced until May 2002 when he received a 20 month jail term. At his sentencing he said he thought the whole Melissa episode was "A big mistake". Well it may have entered us all into an era of inconvenience but it certainly provided a lot of employment in the virus checking companies.