Well Produced Scam
 

So I get this email from "paypal" telling me that there has been an unauthorized change in my account and that they need me to please correct it. Since I'm not an idiot I decided I wasn't going to do anything the Email told me to (since, you know, you should never follow links that are sent to you like that.)

Anyway, I figured that since I'm on my Mac, and I don't have to worry about viri, so why not click on the link just to see what kind of quality scam artists are putting out these days. This is the link right here (I can only vouch for it being Mac safe, so if you're on a PC...):

Fake PayPal

I was surprised that the page looked like the real paypal page. If it weren't for the odd address I might have thought it was the real thing. So I check the actually site:

Real PayPal

Pretty convincing, eh? I wonder just how much time and money these people have to pump out that convincing of a page?

Not much. Open up Terminal and do this:
Now open up Safari and go to http://localhost/~zalister/fake.paypal.html
(I'm assuming you've got Personal Web Sharing turned on. if not, you can prb. open the file directly)
I'm not going to go into detail about how to alter the page to capture id/passwords, but it's not rocket science.

I show mail headers and then forward all the spammed paypal emails to spoof@paypal.com

They are very convincing.

Huh, and the funny thing is that I think the people who put the page together did it from scratch... To bad they didn't know there was an easier way :). I didn't know you could do that! Thanks, I'll start my own sc-- just kidding. ;)

The plural of "virus" is "viruses".

http://spl.haxial.net/viruses.html

I used tor, and entered in some, well, 'bad' information a couple times into the boxes. then even have the bad-email-checking script, so something like "FU**YOU@BLAH.HAH[/email]" won't work. And when you click the 'Why do I need to enter my PIN number?' link:

And if we are going to use 'viri' it should have three "i"s : 'virii'. Although this is technically wrong in current english the computing world seems to be adopting the virii form.

Why?

Huh?
The section that you quoted from the Wikipedia article does not say anything about this usage becoming more common. And note that that section of text was recently (Sept 28) added to the Wikipedia article. I expect it to be removed soon as it smacks of "original research" and/or opinion - especially the last sentence that you quoted.

For what it’s worth, here are Google statistics:

viruses computer – 50,400,000 hits
viri computer – 172,000
virii computer – 490,000

Even tried:

viruses computing – 15,000,000 hits
viri computing – 47,300
virii computing – 211,000

I definitely won’t lose any sleep over this and will continue using viruses as the plural until it is expunged from Oxford’s and Webster’s. That is unlikely to happen any time soon – as both viri and virii seem to be used by marginal groups.

Marginal groups are right in my humble opinion. When using Latin words, the plural -or singular- should form should also be used. Thus the singular of media is medium, the plural of virus is virii.

I looked in several places. I copied the Wikipedia quote only because the author made a very well-phrased statement about language being helpful rather than a hinderance. The bioscience world should use one version, and the computing world shoud use another (or change to a different/better term completely)

You're wrong. There is no Latin plural of "virus". If you were a reporter, your editor would strike your use of "virii" in red and tell you to change it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus

Why? "Virus" is the right word to use for both fields, and has a perfectly acceptable, pre-existing plural form already: "viruses". The computer world already has the word it seeks.

Why not? The biologists had it first, and malicious code only bears a casual relationship to the biological kind (which has been around ~70 million times longer). It's just a buzzword that made it easier to explain to the masses and seems to be very overused. The referenced plural of.. article makes several comments indicating that the term is still evolving - this is what language does, so does it matter what the grammar rules of an ancient and now rather obscure language say?

What are you talking about? "Virus" has no Latin plural because it didn't mean then what it does today. This is an invalid comparison you're making to support your point. Check out the etymology note in American Heritage 4th or OED if you don't believe me.

If we're striking "virus" down as computer terminology, the following also have to go, by your logic:

- Stack
- Heap
- Structure
- Port
- Bug

A computer virus spreads like a biological virus. This is a perfectly valid comparison and justification for why we use the word "virus" in computer science.

The plural of box isn't really "boxen" either, nor are multiple builds of Unix in all likelihood most grammatically referred to as "Unices".

I always figured all of the above were done tongue-in-cheek. Like "vaxen" for Digital's minicomputers running VMS.

OK, so some gullible people bite and begin using 'em entirely in earnest. So?

Time for Apple to change its name
 

I couldn’t agree more with Mikey. The word virus (plural: viruses) seems perfect. It’s highly descriptive and there is no ambiguity.

Words often have more than one meaning; the fact that virus is also used within medicine is no reason to search for a "better" word, nor to insist on incorrect plural forms. And as Mikey points out, stack, heap and structure, as well as port and bug, also carry different meanings in ordinary conversation, and to professionals in other fields.

The same goes for a whole lot of computer terminology: interface, keyboard, hardware (did you buy yours in a hardware store?), peripherals, processor, raid, proxy, router, web, network, file, client, buses, chat, workstation, application, operator, operation, memory, link, mouse…

Come to think of it, following the same argument, shouldn’t Apple change its name? ;)

To paraphrase the questionable slant in the Wikipedia article: "Widespread adoption of another name than Apple would make data tools such as Google far more effective for workers in both the computer sciences and the agricultural community who are doing real useful work."

to quote Ogre: NERDS!!!

To quote myself:

"LITERACY!"

Stack, heap and port are not used outside the programming community, and I've always hated 'bug' - insects don't get stuck in the works much anymore. In mixed-language environments like where I work, 'fault' goes a lot furthur - 'bug' makes people reach for the roach spray. We seem to be stuck with the term though - like the qwerty keyboard.

Like VHS and Beta, the world will eventually make a decision one way or another and arguments about which one is better won't influence the decision much.

I've decided that I'm post-modern, so I'm going to use viri. Anyone who can't understand what viri means please PM and I will translate it for you ;).

Just kidding. Language is really important to me too (even though, frankly, I suck at it). If I'd known that viruses was common usage, I would have used it. I just didn't know. Now can we all just get along and make stupid comments about scam artists?:o

Viri = Men
 

Sure, I know what viri means – it’s plural for "man". :D

Ah, but remember, there can be similar words in two different languages that mean entirely different things. For example "payday" means the day one receives their check in English (or at least in America), but if you say it with a French accent, and you say it in France, I have it on good authority that you just might offend everyone in the room.

Hence, since your using latin and I'm using English (which isn't even a romance language for the love of mike) I think I will take the meaning of viri into my own hands. Thus from now on it will mean "any and all software designed with microsoft's standards, to be microsoft-esque. Eg. 'Windows is a horrible Viri'" And since I'm post-modern, I accept no arguments against my interpretation. So there :).

(For the curious, I'm being fascicious, I have nothing against Microsoft, but slamming Apple didn't feel right...)

Please provide an example of a computer-using office secretary, salesman, accountant, lawyer or soccer mom who can explain the difference between stack and heap as they relate to modern computing.

You’re very wrong.

Stack is used in the library sciences, as well as for other physical archival/storage systems, by gamblers, and even by the snowboarding community. In the appropriate factory, it refers to the vertical exhaust pipe of a trailer (lorry).

Port is a precise term – although with differing meanings – when used by enologists and wine critics, by sailors, drill sergeants and Scottish architectural students.

Some years ago, I contacted a company called Support Plus with a question about MS Word. My contact there replied rather tersely: “Sorry, but we don’t offer support for viruses. And we consider Microsoft software to be viruses.” ;)
.

You're not even making sense at this point. Please go back and re-read the entire thread and see why I made the comparison between dual-use words.

I mean, you are aware that words in the English language tend to have multiple meanings across different areas of use, right? If you drop "virus" from computer science just because the medical community had it first, you should also drop the examples I listed. Sailors have been using "port" for hundreds of years, after all.

Yes, I know about all of those. :D
What I'm not explaining well late at night is that the use of those terms are so different from the computing uses that the overlap is of little consequence. People searching for 'stack' in a programming context will have fewer issues separating that meaning from the 'neat vertical arrangement' or exhaust pipe meaning. Just like 'port' as the opposite of 'starboard' is sufficiently esoteric that an alcoholic wine expert won't get too many mixed results. The related keywords for virii malicious code have much in common with the biological counterpart, and both have a huge volume of information available.

The word 'virus' means poisonous secretion of snakes/creatures/plants; acrid element, and its plural in Latin is viri. Some folks can't resist using the latin version although you are correct, Mikey - in English, it's viruses. Similarly we say alias (which means other, another; different, changed; as an adjective, and at/in another time/place; previously, subsequently; elsewhere; otherwise as an adverb, but who ever heard of alii - that's the latin plural form - we all say aliases. No such word as hippopotomi, either, although I've seen it; I think it's a Greek combination meaning river horse.

Enough....

Um, you have a credible reference for that?
It doesn't seem likely that you do since the rather extensive discussion already referenced above in this thread (e.g. the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus and the documents referred to there) all say that "viri" is definitely not correct.

I looked in a dictionary of Latin words from my youth. It gave viri as the plural of virus, and as the plural of vir - husband, etc. I find the same definitions in Latin WORDS. To quote them:

.
On a somewhat related note – to the interesting tangent we’re on – there is this interesting article on BBC "Geekspeak still baffles web users".

Best regards,
ArcticStones

w00t, l337 roxor. ...3\/3n th0u|-| t3h 4r+1cl3 4i|\|'+ 'b0u+ t|-|4t... Oh well.

Even though the article isn't about that?

Anyway, the scam site is down.

And while your at it, report your scam sites to phishing-test@mozilla.com

I said that the article wasn't about it! Didn't you read my post? (I think I'm sooo funny.)

Am I in the wrong reality?

Yes, if you check your software updater you'll notice that Apple recently came out with Reality v2.1.132. If you can't understand the gibberish then I would suggest getting the update ;).