May 19, 2000
I Love You
by Joshua Carden
Hahahahahaha! Through your foolish opening of this column, your computer (and the computers of all those you know and love) has now been affected by the dreaded “I Love You” virus. Global Warming will increase. Interest rates will go up (or down, depending on your line of work). Destruction….Mayhem….AAAAGGGHHH.…….<ahem>….Excuse me, I was just having a little fun there. I got to thinking about the whole “virus thing” when I received the “I Love You” email. Fortunately I had witnessed a special on the news about the bug, so I quickly deleted it - unopened. Others of my acquaintance were not so fortunate.
But as I was scrounging around on the Internet, I began to notice the various strains of viruses that have circulated in recent history. Notwithstanding the devastating effects they can have your computer, a question occurred to me: who comes up with these names? Here’s a small sample from a online virus listing: Babylonia, BubbleBoy, CIH/Chernobyl Virus, Deeyenda Virus, Good Times Virus, Happy99, Hare Krishna Virus, Melissa Virus, PrettyPark.Worm, Prilissa, SubSeven, and the list goes on. As you can see, these names were obviously dreamed up by overworked, underpaid, claustrophobic computer workers, who were locked in their cubicles over the weekend. So I thought to myself “Self, it’s time for some new names. What group is the most capable of coming up with new virus names?” And then you came to mind! Yes, once again, it’s reader participation time! Give me names of computer viruses and the bad things they might conceivably do. Of course, as always, you will receive full credit! Here are my preliminary examples:
The “Wizard of Oz” virus – Causes your computer to play all of your sound files at three times their normal speed, melt when it rains, and run and hide when it’s frightened. Advance stages of this virus are noticeable when the CPU begins to smell like straw.
The “I really like you” virus – Far worse than the “I love you” virus, this one causes your email program to send 100 emails to every person you ever had a crush on.
The “Simpsons” virus – Causes every episode to be shown consecutively on every channel of TV.
The “Married with Children” virus – See above. Only affects fans of the “Simpsons.”
The “Y10K” virus (shamelessly stolen from Homeschool Channel Manager, Rich Shipe) – “You see, back in the early days of computers, short-sighted programmers only used FOUR digits to indicate dates instead of looking ahead and realizing that FIVE digits would be necessary someday….” Oh, who am I kidding?
The “public school” virus – Makes www.nea.org your default homepage.
The “It’s a Small World” virus – Replaces that annoying modem connection sound with the even more annoying Disney song.
The “Emoticon” virus – Reduces every sentence into abbreviations and emoticons like LOL, ROFL, TTFN, OICURMT, :), :-}, : - P, etc. (I’ve read that this is fast becoming the universal language anyway, as evidenced by the following exchange between the State Department and
State Department: We want Elian to stay here.
Castro: LOL
State Department: We mean it, you’d better let Elian stay here!
Castro: ROFL
State Department: Stop that infernal laughing, or we’ll quit sending you money.
Castro: [|}: - P} TTFN!)
So anyway, you get the idea right? Kids, with a great deal of diplomacy, you might even get to count this as a “creative writing” assignment! Good luck!