July 21, 2007
The Virus's Riddles and Spyware is my PCPosted by Bryan
I have an Actiontec router. It periodically beeps a sound that can only be described as "alarming." It's not like a "hey, how are you? I'm just letting you know everything's cool" beep. It's a "WaOhWaOhWaOh...Dude, get up out of the chair, look around until you find out where this is coming from, and as soon as you confirm that it's coming from me, the router, I'll stop without further issue, leaving you to wonder how much of your personal data is being transmitted to a identity theft ring originating in Singapore and will soon be used to finance a very small paramilitary operation against an otherwise peaceful albeit globally insignificant Pacific Island civilization."
So I decided to go to Actiontec's website. Notice, in the previous sentence I used an apostrophe followed by an "s" to demonstrate possession. The website belongs to Actiontec. At said website, I was greeted by this advertisement.
Here in this ad, the apostrophe and "s" are being used to communicate a plurality of viruses. Notice, in my previous sentence, I correctly demonstrate that the plural of virus is "viruses." However, I checked just to be sure.
And I am correct.
If I were Actiontec, I would have two reactions...first, I would be upset that an advertiser did not care enough to try and jump over that low hurdle of basic apostrophe usage, and second, I would be slightly embarrassed that I (and I'm using the "corporate I" here) had allowed such a misuse to escape editorial control and end up on my front web page.
But then I realized that the ad is for Actiontec's own virus cleaning service.
Note...this does not mean that Actiontec is correct in their ad. This means they are totally without excuse.
And it means that I'm just a little less confident in the quality of my router.
And that may be exactly what it's trying to tell me with the periodic alarm that I can never catch.
July 21, 2007 8:37 AM | TrackBack