Title Bout: Bullfighter versus WhiteSmoke

One of the side effects of the Bullfighter software and our campaign against bullshit has been a steep decline in the amount of bullshit available for our study. Just like the ornithologists get all worked up about the decline of the red-footed, white-tufted boobie (or the white-footed one with the red feathers - I actually don't remember) and the destruction of its habitat, we've had a harder time finding original bull in its natural habitat. We're not producing as much as we once did, and we've made a career out of embarrassing the people who continue to write this stuff. Eco-grammarians picket our homes, taking us to task for our over-harvesting of bull.

With this minor crisis unfolding, we were delighted to learn of a new bit of software called WhiteSmoke, a Microsoft Word plug-in designed to enrich our documents. This is a real product, available at http://www.whitesmoke.com/. You can download a 7-day evaluation copy to get a feel for how it works. At first I thought this must be a joke, but after several Web pages of information, the usual mind-numbing license agreement and a professional-looking splash screen, I realized my incredulous laughter wasn't what the WhiteSmoke team had intended. This is supposed to be serious software.

Yes, this is real. (Where did I put that bottle opener?)

I've had Bullfighter on my PC's since 2003. The result? It's difficult to find rich, unmolested bull in most of the documents in that pasture known as my C: drive. Overharvesting, overzealousness or just too many dull conference calls that allow me to run Bullfighter repeatedly -- whatever, I've noticed a serious shortage. WhiteSmoke could have solved that. Just as loggers are required to re-forest the areas they cut, I imagined our legions of Bullfighter addicts taking some responsibility to re-bullshit at least a few documents so people would remember the scourge we had fought. What would happen if future generations never read about the "Value-added initiative" or "Extensible knowledge capital"? WhiteSmoke to the rescue, I thought.

Well, forget that. WhiteSmoke is a piece of garbage. Under the guise of adding sophistication to writing, it pollutes it with deadening adjectives and adverbs and swaps out innocent nouns for ones that make little sense. And it accomplishes all of this through a tedious, manual interface. Let's have a look:

Our customer service could be better. We have four customer complaints for every 100 items we sell – slightly worse than our competitors. But what’s worse is that it takes two phone calls and 20 minutes to straighten things out. In the meantime, our customers have software that isn’t working right. If you believe the research, they’re spreading bad news about our software until we resolve the installation problem. Even then, we probably haven’t converted them into real fans.

That's my original sample, written in Word. Uninspired, but passable. Bullfighter approved - an 8.2 Bull Composite Index is pretty good. (Even the late Dr. Seuss wouldn't score much above a 9.0, and Horton Hatches an Egg doesn't demand the long words you'd need for Norton Hatches a New Antivirus Software Suite.)

After installing WhiteSmoke, I started Word XP and opened my document. Where I thought I was done, and where Bullfighter was contentedly grazing in its pen, WhiteSmoke saw many possibilities for 'enrichment'. The word choices range from extraneous to absurd, and I was beginning to feel as though my free 7-day trial was somewhat overpriced. With some judicious selections on my part, here's where we ended up:

Our quality customer service could be better. We have four customer complaints for every 100 individual articles we sell – slightly worse than our weak adversaries. But what's worse is that it eventually extracts two business calls and 20 minutes to straighten entities out. In the meantime, our enthusiastic clients have computer software that isn't effectively performing right. If you seemingly accept the scientific scrutiny, they're disseminating bad news about our computer software until we suitably settle the innovative installation problem. Even then, we probably haven't transformed them into real fans.

Looking somewhat pale at what I'd ended up with, I gingerly woke Bullfighter for its afternoon feeding and got gored. Now I was down to a 5.1 on my BCI, and I had taken care not to add any known bull terms into the document. To be fair, WhiteSmoke relies on a dictionary of words that come from a real dictionary and not a consulting orientation guide. My Flesch score took a dive, however. What left me shaking my head at the whole experience was that none of the words WhiteSmoke had suggested added any meaning to what I had written. I can't say that it made me sound smarter -- a stretch for any software, and even most of my grade school teachers. I can't say that it's even better in terms of pure grammar.

What I can say for certain is that WhiteSmoke's disastrous design is surpassed only by the stupidity of its concept. If I had to hand out a letter grade, an 'F' would be charitable.

I've sent a note along to the Web Guy, who spends his weekends working on the next generation of Bullfighter, asking him to include a new feature: We would like to automatically run the uninstall program that comes with WhiteSmoke. If Bullfighter did only this one thing, it would be the most valuable bit of software you've ever downloaded.