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Healthy Viruses

This is awesome. Following the recent outbreak of the Blaster worm, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers, a programmer has developed -- and released -- a benign form of the worm, which actually repairs damage done by the previous worm.

Regardless, computer security experts express concern about the healthy virus. Despite the best of intentions, worms work their way into private networks without authorization. Still, the original worm ruined a lot of IT workers days. And the idea of the Internet being a self-healing system in more ways than one -- reaching even to our desktops -- is a powerful one. If only our power grid worked the same way.