Richard "Rich" Skrenta (b.1967 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a computer programmer, and author of what is considered the first computer virus to be found 'in the wild': the Elk Cloner virus that infected Apple II machines in 1982. 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... City nickname: The Steel City Location in the state of Pennsylvania Founded 1758 Mayor Tom Murphy (Dem) Area  - Total  - Water 151. ... Capital Harrisburg Largest city Philadelphia Area  Ranked 33rd  - Total 46,055 sq mi (119,283 km²)  - Width 280 miles (455 km)  - Length 160 miles (255 km)  - % water 2. ... A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. ... Elk Cloner is the first known computer virus that has spread in the wild, i. ... The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ...

He graduated from Northwestern University. Between 1989 and 1991 he worked at Commodore Business Machines with Amiga Unix. Between 1991 and 1995 he worked at Unix System Labs and from 1996 to 1998 with IP-level encryption at Sun Microsystems. He later left Sun and became one of the founders of Open Directory Project. He stayed onboard and worked on the directory as well as with Netscape Search, AOL Music and AOL Shopping. Northwestern University is a private, coeducational, non-sectarian research university located in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois. ... Year 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ... Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore International, an electronics company who was a major player in the 1980s home computer field. ... Commodore-Amiga, Inc. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full 1995 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from , its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. ... Netscape Communications Corporation (commonly known as Netscape), was an American computer services company, best known for its web browser. ... It has been suggested that AOL search data scandal be merged into this article or section. ... It has been suggested that AOL search data scandal be merged into this article or section. ...

He has been involved in VMS Monster, an old MUD for VMS. VMS Monster was the inspiration for TinyMUD. He is also known for his role in developing TASS, an ancestor of tin, the popular threaded Usenet newsreader for Unix systems. In computer gaming, a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension) is a multi-player computer game that combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash style computer games and social chat rooms. ... OpenVMS V7. ... TinyMUD is the name both of a certain implementation of a Multi-User Dungeon server, and the first MUD run using that implementation. ... tin is an open source text-based news client. ... Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ...

In 1989 he started working on a multiplayer simulation game. In 1994 it was launched under the name Olympia as a pay-for-play game by Shadow Island Games. He was CEO of Topix.net. Year 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full 1994 Gregorian calendar). ... Topix. ...

External links

• http://www.skrenta.com/
• http://www.topix.net/