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misspelled.
Actually, since a computer doesn't understand what words are, it looks for letter clusters it isn't fa
miliar with, and here is where the disappointment begins.
First, it doesn't recognize any proper nouns-names of people, places, corporations, and so on-or
nonstandard spellings like kerb and colour. Nor does it recognize many plurals or other variant
forms (like steps or stepped), or abbreviations or acronyms. Nor, evidently, any word coined since
Elsenhower was president. Thus, it recognizes sputnik and beatnik but not Internet, fax, cyberspace,
or butthead, among many others.
But the really distinctive feature of my spell checker-and here is the part that can provide hours of
entertainment for anyone who doesn't have anything approaching a real life-is that it has been
programmed to suggest alternatives. These are seldom less than memorable. For this column, for
instance, for Internet it suggested internal (a word that I cannot find in any dictionary, American or
British), internode, interknit, and underneath. Fax prompted no fewer than thirty-three suggested
alternatives, mc\ uAmgfab, fays, feats, fuzz, feaze, phase, and at least two more that are unknown to
lexicography: falx and phase. Cyberspace drew a blank, but for cyber it came up with chubbier and
scabbier.
I have tried without success to discern the logic by which a computer and programmer working in
tandem could decide that someone who typed f-a-x would really have intended to write p-h-a-s-e, or
why cyber might suggest cAuMerand scabbier but not, say, watermelon or full-service gas station, to
name two equally random alternatives. Still less can I explain how nonexistent words like phase and
internal would
68 get into the program. Call me exacting, but I would submit that a computer program that wants to
discard a real word in favor of one that does not exist is not ready to be offered for public use.
Not only does the system suggest imbecilic alternatives, it positively aches to put them in. You have
to all but order the program not to insert the wrong word. If you accidentally accept its prompt, it
automatically changes that word throughout the text. Thus, to my weary despair, I have in recent
months produced work in which "woolens" was changed throughout to "wesleyans," "Minneapolis"
to "monopolists," and-this is a particular favorite-" Renoir" to "rainware." If there is a sim ple way
to unpick these involuntary transformations, then I have not found it.
Now I read in U. S. News World Report that the same computer industry that failed to notice the
coming of a new millennium has equally failed for years to realize that the materials on which it
stores information-magnetic tapes and so forth-irremediably degrade in a not-very-long time. NASA
scientists who recently tried to access material on the 1976 Viking mission to Mars discovered that
20 percent of it has simply vanished and that the rest is going fast.
So it looks as if computer programmers will be putting in some late nights over the next couple of
years. To which, frankly, I say hooray. Or haywire, heroin, and hoopskirt, as my computer would
prefer it.
YOUR TAX FORM EXPLAINED
Enclosed is your 1998 United States Internal Revenue Service Tax Form 1040-ES OCR: "Estimated
Tax for Self-Employed Individuals." You may use this form to estimate your 1998 fiscal year tax IF:
1. You are the head of a household AND the sum of the ages of your spouse and dependents, minus
the ages of qualifying pets (see Schedule 12G), is divisible by a whole number. (Use Supplementary
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Schedule
142C if pets are deceased but buried on your property.)
2. Your Gross Adjusted Income does not exceed your Adjusted Gross Income (except where
applicable) AND you did not pay taxable interest on dividend income prior to 1903.
3. You are not claiming a foreign tax credit, except as a "foreign" tax credit. (Warning: Claiming a
foreign tax credit for a foreign "tax" credit, except where a foreign "tax credit" is involved, may
result in a fine of
$125,000 and 25 years' imprisonment.)
4. You are one of the following: married and filing jointly; married and not filing jointly; not married
and not filing jointly; jointed but not filing; other.
Instructions
Type all answers in ink with a number two lead pencil. Do not cross anything out. Do not use
abbreviations or ditto marks. Do not misspell "miscellaneous." Write your name, address, and social
security number, and the name, address, and social security numbers of your spouse and dependents,
in full on each page twice. Do not put a check mark in a box marked "cross" or a cross in a box
marked "check mark" unless it is your express wish to do the whole thing again. Do not write
"Search me" in any blank spaces. Do not make anything up.
Complete Sections 47 to 52 first, then proceed to even-numbered sections and complete in reverse
order. Do NOT use this form if your total pensions and annuities disbursements were greater than
your advanced earned income credits OR vice versa.
Under "Income," list all wages, salaries, net foreign source taxable income, royalties, tips,
gratuities, taxable interest, cap-' ital gains, air miles, and money found down the back of the sofa. If
your earnings are derived wholly, or partially but not primarily, or wholly AND partially but not
primarily, from countries other than the United States (if uncertain, see USIA Leaflet 212W,
"Countries That Are Not the United
States") OR your rotated gross income from Schedule H was greater than your earned income credit
on
69 nontaxable net disbursements, you MUST include a Grantor/ Transferor Waiver Voucher. Failure
to do so may result in a fine of $1,500,000 and seizure of a child.
Under Section 890f, list total farm income (if none, give details). If you were born after January
1,1897, and are NOT a widow( er), include excess casualty losses and provide carryover figures
for depreciation on line 27iii. You MUST list number of turkeys slaughtered for export. Subtract, but
do not deduct, net gross dividends from pro rata interest payments, multiply by the total number of
steps in your home, and enter on line 356d.
On Schedule F1001, line c, list the contents of your garage. Include all electrical and nonelectrical
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