HUMOR: Pluperfect virus

[Johanna Halbeisen <johanna@MASSED.NET>]

 A new computer virus is spreading throughout the Internet, and it is far
 more insidious than the recent 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-mailincreased
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."

---------------------
Johanna Halbeisen
Woodland Elementary School (preK-4)
80 Powder Mill Rd.
Southwick, MA 01077
johanna@massed.net

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