Truth About Computer Security Hysteria

Oh, you milk-fattened ninnies!

COURTESY ITSELF MUST convert to disdain when Klez comes in my presence. If you're reading this to learn more about it ... predominantly because you are one of a world legion of useless screws who still can't avoid even the most insipid infections — go away now!

When Klez.Z shows up, no matter how many times someone has had to clean up after you, there you will be — rolled again and squirming in a puddle of your own techno-sick, whining weakly for someone else to help you out.

Why are you still here? Instructions are of no use to you until it's too late. Or you wouldn't be surfing around the web, sending me Klez, looking for wisdom (hint: there isn't any), an antivirus download, or someone to separate fact from fiction.

Face it, dear fellow. You can't be helped. You couldn't pour urine from your shoe if instructions were printed on the heel. Truth is, I want you to have a computer virus. I'm certain that when Klez.Z shows up, no matter how many times someone has had to clean up after you, there you will be — rolled again and squirming in a puddle of your own techno-sick, whining weakly for someone else to help you out.

The pain of this is nothing to me.

Much is said about the cost of virus infections. However, little is said of the economic bonuses of them. A world of Klez.Z victims means cash money.

Ten years ago I began writing about this obscure subject. Most of what I did went into something called Crypt Newsletter. It was, perforce, free. And for many years (many of them before the Web was invented) it published annotated virus source code by way of explanation of the subject matter it covered.

[Real quote from one of my forgotten editors ca. 1992: "I don't think anyone is interested in computers." Shades of the world is definitely flat.]

However, about six years ago, just as electronic mail-borne viruses were becoming ubiquitous, I started making money writing the same things I used to crank out for nothing. The more goofs Microsoft made, and the more milk-fattened ninnies there were on-line to be tripped up by viruses traveling through said goofs, the easier the subject was to sell.

Consider, too, those who read material on computer viruses. The lion's share of the reading is done on company time. Nobody reads this stuff for fun on a weeknight. Fun on a weeknight is watching a new episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or the final showing of "Lexx." Or one '70 Gibson SG, a Hiwatt stack, a Walter Mitty-esque appreciation of Live at Leeds and the house to yourself.

So, in a tangible way, most of the people who read material of this nature do so while drawing a salary. And if there were no computer viruses, they wouldn't read it. Therefore computer viruses, as entirely man-made mechanisms, can be said to be underwriting economic success, even if only transiently.

Klez costs can be recognized as part of the overhead that goes to information technology staff salaries and wages for fixing up after user error, computing crashes, rotten software and a host of other everyday handicaps, all man-made, associated with the technology of computing.

Klez costs are info-tech fertilizer, too, easily mixed as one small ingredient added to the ocean of included costs of choosing to use an extremely complex, ever-changing, buggy and error-fraught technology that must be constantly supervised and propped up with human intervention.

Klez is a generator of money-making busy work! It keeps those with an insufficiency of the Protestant work ethic, people who might otherwise be involved in a variety of time-wasting or annoying activities in the corporate workplace, productively engaged.

Much is said about the cost of virus infections. However, little is said of the economic bonuses of them.

AND THIS IS only the tip of a significant iceberg of a related industry that is not even a directly linked part of antivirus software development.

Calculate, for instance, the amount of money earned by others writing of Klez, by the generation of press releases and memos on Klez, by those offering professionalized mass dissemination of information and PR re: Klez. Include the infrequent movie scripts and television dramas employing computer viruses as central deux ex machinas in thriller plots as a consequence of the world-wide mythos of the computer virus, ably supported by the action of Klez.

No, Klez does not burn money! It makes it, the new-fashioned way, reapportioning a resource of finite dimension from one worthy segment of the economy to another, equally worthy. Klez — the Robin Hood of one's and zero's.

Hail and kill milk-fattened ninnies, oh Klez!

And if you continue to labor under the impression that I care if the virus-sodden ever understand computer viruses, banish it! I'm doing this for me.

Insensitive and boorish as this is at your expense — yes! My gift is the devising of intolerable slanders.