Man arrested after PPT presentation

November 23, 2002 7:05 AM

Photos of neked boys popping up during your powerpoint presentations at work? Could be a computer virus.
posted by found missing (27 comments total)

Life imitates art.
posted by alms at 7:19 AM on November 23, 2002

Oh damn.

You gotta clear those 'my recent documents' before doing a presentation, I guess.

Not exactly a microsoft image of the better, computerized future, huh?
posted by Busithoth at 7:23 AM on November 23, 2002

"The company also turned over 65 pages of printed child pornography allegedly found in Smith's desk. "

Man, this has to be the worst virus yet.
I'm unplugging the printer before...Oh my god!
posted by 2sheets at 7:25 AM on November 23, 2002

He would've been better off blaming it on popup windows.
posted by waxpancake at 7:37 AM on November 23, 2002

Just being the devil's advocate here, but has anyone suggested a notion the article didn't even bother to do... that this guy is simply lying?

As far as I know, Symantec and McAfee haven't yet released a gigantic warning about an obviously malicious virus that would have to require the programming to covertly access the internet, download nude photos of children from specific addresses, and not onyl save them to your desktop but put them INSIDE a PowerPoint presentation.

Color me skeptical, but how is that more plausible than "he downloaded child porn at work?"
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:46 AM on November 23, 2002

Correct me if I'm wrong, found missing, but you intended the implication that there really is such a virus as a joke, right? Meaning that the real point of the post is that this guy made a lame excuse for accidentally showing his collection of child porn to colleagues?

I wish that'd been clearer -- I wouldn't have bothered clicking through to what was a no-news story.
posted by BT at 7:58 AM on November 23, 2002

XQUZYPHYR: Perhaps because it's so obvious no one needs to bother (and Crayola does not appear to have a 'skeptical' color).
posted by wobh at 8:01 AM on November 23, 2002

I agree, it does sound remarkably unlikely. Add to that the fact that the "virus" would have had to print out those 65 pages and put them inside the man's desk somehow, apparently without his knowledge...
posted by UnReality at 8:01 AM on November 23, 2002

No-News-Filter?
posted by UnReality at 8:02 AM on November 23, 2002

sorry, by the way, my comment now looks snottier than I meant it -- just that I really did think you were talking about a computer virus (despite how unlikely that would doubtless be), and felt a bit yanked after clicking through.
posted by BT at 8:03 AM on November 23, 2002

Maybe if he made the Switch to Apple.
posted by four panels at 8:04 AM on November 23, 2002

Who wants to bet on how long before there really is an email-borne macro virus that downloads random porn and places it in random Office documents?
posted by wobh at 8:10 AM on November 23, 2002

Actually, with Klez and other viruses, it is very possible for a virus to send out pornography. Some of them grab a random file, you see. Very few of them would sneak it onto your computer without your knowledge, but there are a few worms that use network shares as an alternate vector.

I haven't seen my first case of porn-by-virus, but I'm sure it's happened. I did once help a sales guy at a company I worked for clean off his hard drive before turning in his laptop on termination. Poor guy: I was trying to coach him through select all, right click, delete, and instead he hit open. Poppety poppety poppety went the boobies. I just reached over and turned the thing off ...
posted by dhartung at 8:16 AM on November 23, 2002

Okay, understood, but seriously, if you want us to know it's a joke, at least do something to imply that you're not being serious... quotes or a "riiiiight" somewhere... there wasn't a link to any humorous site either so I really didn't think this was a parody.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:17 AM on November 23, 2002

The beautiful thing about such a virus is that—even if it is bulky, easily detected, and thwarted by firewalls—within days of discovery, it will become the most famous virus in the world.
posted by wobh at 8:25 AM on November 23, 2002

Poppety poppety poppety went the boobies

Now there's an image for ya! (and a possible Fark tagline?)
posted by mischief at 9:07 AM on November 23, 2002

I thought the explanation was too unlikely to be taken literally. For the wasted clicks of the unamused, I apologize and promise to label more carefully in the future. Maybe the real value of this story is as some kind of metaphor for the ironic intrusion into our public lives of the very parts of our selves that we are trying to so hard to hide.
posted by found missing at 9:13 AM on November 23, 2002

This is Natural Selection in the corporate eco-system. What a jackass.
posted by Scoo at 9:55 AM on November 23, 2002

When I read the article I misread the name of the church he belonged to, thinking it said Landover Baptist.
posted by Dick Paris at 11:26 AM on November 23, 2002

if you want us to know it's a joke, at least do something to imply that you're not being serious...

This is why emoticons (smilies) are evil.

Sarcasm requires a certain level of reading comprehension on the part of the audience to be effective. Complaining that a snide remake went over your head does you no good.
posted by majcher at 1:04 PM on November 23, 2002

Err, remark, that is.
posted by majcher at 1:04 PM on November 23, 2002

dhartung, indeed a virus which flashed images from random files on a computer, including web cache images, could cause quit a to-do. I'm surprised it hasn't been done yet.

(Or...has it? --C. O'Brian)
posted by HTuttle at 1:36 PM on November 23, 2002

I went to work today thinking about this and possible technical approaches. But in the end the most important thing to consider for this virus is actually it's name. If the name sucks the virus as a meme will suck too. And that's really the point of it all. Pornhound was the best name I could come up with.

Smith! What's this doing on your workstation?

Ohmygod! How did all that get there. It must be that *&$% pornhound virus again!

(with apologies to pornhound.)
posted by wobh at 7:32 PM on November 23, 2002

Chuckle, in a way, chuckle, I have a friend who likes *pron*, who also does presentations for a living...

Thats why he swears by Toshiba laptops, with hot-swappable drives... He has a separate image/installation for presentations, and a separate one for "daily" use...
posted by jkaczor at 9:17 PM on November 23, 2002

I hope he has red electrical tape around one and blue electrical tape around the other, like the machine-gun magazines in Die Hard 2.
posted by dhartung at 3:44 PM on November 24, 2002

Given the gullibility of most people when it comes to computer viruses, he could have conceivably got away with it if it wasn't for the printed stuff in his desk. He could have people e-mailing all their friends about the new "boyporn75.9 virus" that downloaded files from the Internet by itself and, within hours, a new urban legend would have been born. A convenient excuse for many many people, also.
posted by dg at 9:18 PM on November 24, 2002

So perish all who use powerpoint
posted by alloneword at 6:51 AM on November 25, 2002