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Artie MacStrawman Lives!

Computerworld drags our old straw friend around the block.

The Macalope
Born of the earth, forged in fire, the Macalope was branded "nonstandard" and "proprietary" by the IT world and considered a freak of nature. Part man, part Mac, and part antelope, the Macalope set forth on a quest to save his beloved platform. Long-eclipsed by his more prodigious cousin, the jackalope (they breed like rabbits, you know), the Macalope's time has come. Apple news and rumormonger extraordinaire, the Macalope provides a uniquely polymorphic approach. Disclosure.
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The Macalope
2 min read

You all remember Artie MacStrawman, don't you? Well, if you don't, Computerworld's Greg Keizer can reacquaint you with our old friend.

Criticism from Mac users and other security researchers was almost immediate, with the former focusing on crude insults and the latter concentrating on InfoSec's refusal to identify himself or herself, or prove that the worm existed.

Oh, no, you dih-unt!

The latter group questioned InfoSec's motives and the veracity of his or her claims.

And the former group said "Poopy ka-ka boobies monkey butt!"

"Let's see this worm deliver a destructive payload in the wild and then we can talk again," said a user identified as Ted Wood. "Until then, you're just hot air."

Clearly the implication here is that Ted Wood is in the latter group and therefore must be a security professional. Now, how could Keizer possibly know this when he clearly doesn't have any idea who this Ted Wood is?

Well, he used words like "worm", "deliver", "payload" and "in the wild"! Either he's a security professional or a member of an elite government team that hunts down and eradicates gypsy moth infestations. There can be no other explanation.

For the record, the Macalope doesn't know who Ted Wood is either, but he wonders if he isn't this Ted Wood. Ted Wood the Mac user.

There's more silliness in Keizer's piece but let's stick to the Mac straw man. Yes, nobody should receive death threats for anonymously stating they developed a worm but refusing to prove it publicly. A good pantsing, maybe, but not death threats. That's obviously unacceptable and, speaking for the Mac community (which the Macalope is, of course, fully licensed to do), the horned one disavows any Mac user who would do such a thing.

Still, it's not exactly news anymore that the Internet is home to all kinds of crackpots who are overly passionate about all kinds of subjects. Personally, the pointy one won't even go into the Hummel collectors forum anymore. It's murder.

So spare us the indignant pieces about the unwashed Mac-using masses.