[2833] in Humor
HUMOR: The Pluperfect Virus
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sharalee M. Field)
Wed May 26 12:39:31 1999
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 12:37:49 -0400
To: humor@MIT.EDU, mowu@MIT.EDU, "MEGallagh@aol.com" <MEGallagh@aol.com>,
"kris.m.kelly@us.pwcglobal.com" <kris.m.kelly@us.pwcglobal.com>,
jbran18610@aol.com, dunbar@MIT.EDU, dahv@MIT.EDU, mtsai@bqa.com,
immer@MIT.EDU, jack.gingras@ae.ge.com, tlawlor@palmerdodge.com,
nkahn@gph.com, GDeVoe@rimco.com,
"Jean, Marc (GEAE)" <marc.jean@ae.ge.com>, celia_kent@harvard.edu,
Maryellen Fitzgibbon <mfitzgib@fas.harvard.edu>,
cjwells@fas.harvard.edu,
Cheryl Guarino Buccelli <c_buccelli@harvard.edu>,
leite@fas.harvard.edu, Courtney Nichols <crnichol@fas.harvard.edu>,
wheger@wbc-architects.com
From: "Sharalee M. Field" <sharalee_field@harvard.edu>
>Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 00:38:37 -0700
>From: Connie Kleinjans <connie@misosoup.com>
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.06 [en] (Win95; U)
>To: connie@misosoup.com
>Subject: HUMOR: The Pluperfect Virus
>
>From: Rochelle Grober <rocky@fjst.com>
>Forwarded message from "Jon Singer (Wasser)" <a-jonsin@microsoft.com>
>
>Washington Post: Taking Liberties
>
>The Pluperfect Virus
>
> By Bob Hirschfeld
>
>Sunday, May 2, 1999; Page B05
>
>A new computer virus is spreading throughout the Internet, and it is
>far more insidious than last week's Chernobyl menace. Named
>Strunkenwhite after the authors of a classic guide to good writing, it
>returns e-mail messages that have grammatical or spelling errors. It
>is deadly accurate in its detection abilities, unlike the dubious spell
>checkers that come with word processing programs.
>
>The virus is causing something akin to panic throughout corporate
>America, which has become used to the typos, misspellings, missing
>words and mangled syntax so acceptable in cyberspace. The CEO of
>LoseItAll.com, an Internet startup, said the virus has rendered him
>helpless. "Each time I tried to send one particular e-mail this
>morning, I got back this error message: 'Your dependent clause
>preceding your independent clause must be set off by commas, but
>one must not precede the conjunction.' I threw my laptop across the
>room."
>
>A top executive at a telecommunications and long-distance company,
>10-10-10-10-10-10-123, said: "This morning, the same damned e-
>mail kept coming back to me with a pesky notation claiming I needed
>to use a pronoun's possessive case before a gerund. With the number
>of e-mails I crank out each day, who has time for proper grammar?
>Whoever created this virus should have their programming fingers
>broken."
>
>A broker at Begg, Barow and Steel said he couldn't return to the
>"bad, old" days when he had to send paper memos in proper English.
>He speculated that the hacker who created Strunkenwhite was a
>"disgruntled English major who couldn't make it on a trading floor.
>When you're buying and selling on margin, I don't think it's anybody's
>business if I write that 'i meetinged through the morning, then cinched
>the deal on the cel phone while bareling down the xway.' "
>
>If Strunkenwhite makes e-mailing impossible, it could mean the end to
>a communication revolution once hailed as a significant timesaver. A
>study of 1,254 office workers in Leonia, N.J., found that e-mail
>increased employees' productivity by 1.8 hours a day because they
>took less time to formulate their thoughts. (The same study also
>found that they lost 2.2 hours of productivity because they were e-
>mailing so many jokes to their spouses, parents and stockbrokers.)
>
>Strunkenwhite is particularly difficult to detect because it doesn't
>come as an e-mail attachment (which requires the recipient to open it
>before it becomes active). Instead, it is disguised within the text of
>an e-mail entitled "Congratulations on your pay raise." The message
>asks the recipient to "click here to find out about how your raise
>effects your pension." The use of "effects" rather than the
>grammatically correct "affects" appears to be an inside joke from
>Strunkenwhite's mischievous creator.
>
>The virus also has left government e-mail systems in disarray.
>Officials at the Office of Management and Budget can no longer
>transmit electronic versions of federal regulations because their
>highly technical language seems to run afoul of Strunkenwhite's
>dictum that "vigorous writing is concise." The White House
>speechwriting office reported that it had received the same message,
>along with a caution to avoid phrases such as "the truth is. . ." and
>"in
>fact. . . ."
>
>Home computer users also are reporting snafus, although an e-mailer
>who used the word "snafu" said she had come to regret it.
>
>The virus can have an even more devastating impact if it infects an
>entire network. A cable news operation was forced to shut down its
>computer system for several hours when it discovered that
>Strunkenwhite had somehow infiltrated its TelePrompTer software,
>delaying newscasts and leaving news anchors nearly tongue-tied as
>they wrestled with proper sentence structure.
>
>There is concern among law enforcement officials that Strunkenwhite
>is a harbinger of the increasingly sophisticated methods hackers are
>using to exploit the vulnerability of business's reliance on computers.
>"This is one of the most complex and invasive examples of computer
>code we have ever encountered. We just can't imagine what kind of
>devious mind would want to tamper with e-mails to create this
>burden on communications," said an FBI agent who insisted on
>speaking via the telephone out of concern that trying to e-mail his
>comments could leave him tied up for hours.
>
>Meanwhile, bookstores and online booksellers reported a surge in
>orders for Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style."
>
>
>Bob Hirschfeld, who enjoys receiving e-mails in plain English,
>lampoons the news at his Web site, bobsfridge.com.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sharalee M. Field, Planning Analyst
Faculty of Arts and Sciences Planning Office
Harvard University
Ph: 617.495.8257 Fax: 617.495.7881
