None of us can escape the crunch of technology in our daily lives, even if we wanted to. Our offices are automated, computerized, digitized, and online in the extreme.
This has its good and bad points. On the good side are all the classic things you hear about when you ponder new computers or software or the gadget du jour. You’ve heard all the spiels so I won’t bore you with a recap.
On the bad side, there are all the idiots across the globe determined to throw a wooden shoe into your delicate machinery (this is literally where the word "sabotage" comes from; sabot = shoe in Old French). Take, for example, the group of Turkish "freedom fighters" who took over BBJ Online for a day in early September (see screenshot below).
The group of hackers, called Code_Power, broke in and put up a new front page to the site, complete with an animated Turkish flag. Unfortunately, in what I have perceived to be a pattern, their message was lost because it had been translated into English so poorly that only a word or two here or there seemed to make any sense at all. As you can tell from some of the excepts below, it’s hard to feel too terrified when you can’t even understand what the heck these folks are saying. Some of my favorite lines:
• "We leave it at the opposite distillation every time are we." Sure you do, pal. What a braggart — is there anyone in the world who can "leave it at the opposite distillation" EVERY TIME? I didn’t think so.
• "Break us however it is to the shields." Nossir. Not now, not ever.
• "Turks if you do not praise it obedience it is meat!!!" I happen to like meat, and that, Senator Turkish, is not meat.
• "…we are the arms which becomes near her subtracted number washes it to our road." Well said. A powerful message indeed.
You’d think that someone smart enough to hack into your Web site could at least install a message that doesn’t read like so much gibberish.
But then again, given the number of spam e-mails I receive each day with subjects lines like "hi, muffin tin," "your cash, mouse-colored," "hi, overseas cap," "hello, owl car," or even ":), open weave," maybe I’m way off base here.
Either way, suffice to say that BBJ Online has repelled its Turkish boarders and is once again sailing the high seas of Internet commerce, unfettered by calls of opposite distillations or meat-praising in any form.
John Thompson is publisher and editor of The Bellingham Business Journal. He can be reached by calling 647-8805, or via e-mail at bbjedit@businessjournal.org.
