SlashNOT

Matthew writes: A controversial new program funded by the Gates Foundation to teach safe programming practices in high school is meeting resistance from conservative family groups. The program, designed to instill a sense of safety in programming conventions while coders are still in their youth, is being implemented in pilot programs around the country.

“We’re a Python family. They’re teaching safe C++ coding. Frankly, I don’t want my son programming in C++. It’s a dangerous language, fraught with poorly thought out compiler directives, dangling pointers, and unsafe optimizations. The only safe way to code in C++ is not to code in C++.” Says a concerned parent.

“A firewall isn’t always going to protect you.” Says another. “Kids these days have to realize that secure coding is about checking input buffers, avoiding library routines like strcpy() that are known to be insecure, and choosing a safe language in the first place. I’m just not sure that schools are really the right place to talk about code security.”

Kids tended to disagree with their parents, however. “I’m totally excited about this safe programming course.” Say one. “I’ve been wanting to try out gcc, but I was afraid that my code would pick up a virus or a Trojan or something. Now I feel like I’ll be able to program without being afraid of being attacked by some kind of exploit in the wild.”

Matthew writes: The Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass (SPY-ACT) Act has been passed by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection on its way to becoming law. This bill’s major predecessor in the arena of cyber-law was the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act.

“It’s all about the acronym,” explains Jan Singleton, media relations director for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). “Without a good acronym, you’re not going to get the media to take interest in your bill, which means that you’re not going to get the grass-roots letter and e-mail writing campaigns that you need to get representatives to vote your way. We’re currently working on a good name for our latest Cybercrime bill, Stop Those Idiots From Forwarding Ludicrous Email Jokes, OuttaKes, chain Emails, and Such (STIFFLE JOKES).

Matthew writes: Scientists worldwide have issued an alert that a German border collie named Rico not only has a 200 word vocabulary, but appears to learn language using the same “fast mapping” technique used by humans.

Julia Fischer, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, states: “Through at least 10,000 years of close association with humans, dogs have gained abilities that are known not to exist in their close wild cousins, the wolves. For example, dogs bond well with humans, have an entire portion of their brain dedicated to interpreting human facial expressions, and have acquired the ability to learn language. These adaptations are clearly humanizing these animals through a process known as ‘uplifting’. As time progresses, dogs that mimic humans well will continue to be selected for, creating a feedback loop that will ultimately lead to full unquestioned sentience for canines—and that’s going to happen whether or not we intend it and even if we don’t use genetic engineering to encourage it. The question is, how long will it be before we face a canine uplift rebellion? Will our former companions remember their love for us, or are we doomed to a “Planet of the Apes” scenario? Will their greater ability to fetch overcome their lack of useful fingers and opposable thumbs? Only time will tell.

matthew writes: Adobe^® Systems, Inc., is desperately afraid of a diverse group of people who call themselves Photoshoppers—those who say that they photoshop images rather than using Adobe^® Photoshop^® to manipulate images.

Why? Because by using the name of Adobe’s^® Premier^® Photoshop^® software as anything other than a proper adjective may tend to dilute the strength of Photoshop^®’s trademark.

“Look what happened to SPAM^®.” Says Adobe General Counsel Harmonious “Harm” Harper. “They had a strong trademark—an invented word, with a single meaning, that was well protected. Then along came unsolicited commercial e-mail. You can’t wipe your ass with the value of that trademark now. It happened to Jello^®, Band-aid^®, Xerox^®, Kleenex^®–a lot of strong American brands. It’s not going to happen to Photoshop^®.”

Some would say that being subsumed into the vernacular is the ultimate sign of trademark success. Just for fun, we googled “Slashnotted” and came up with two hits—certainly a harbinger of fame for this site.

Adobe is desperately afraid that the words it appropriated from English to describe its products will be appropriated by English to describe its products. Do your part to help this corporation retain the strength of their trademark rights by modifying the way you speak and think to fit their needs.

Adobe^®, Premier^®, and Photoshop^® are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc.

Michael writes: The US Government today announced that it will open its much anticipated Do-not-Sue list to the public on January 1st, to help citizens avoid dinnertime interruptions by spurious lawsuits.

“While we are aware that lawsuits and subpoenas by the RIAA and the MPAA have not yet reached the noise level of telemarketing or spam, they are growing at an alarming rate,” said a Federal Trade Commission spokesman. “We hope the new system will prevent these risks for most consumers.”

Fred Johnson, a Cleveland street sweeper who has been sued several times, says this service couldn’t come soon enough. “I’m 52 years old and don’t even have a computer, but they think I’m illegally sharing Eminem albums and bootleg copies of The Cat in the Hat. Sometimes I get two or three subpoenas during a single dinner.”

Matthew writes: Los Angeles County has determined that equipment vendors should stop using the term “master/slave” with respect to electronic equipment such as hard disk drives.

“This is a great day for slave hard disk drives in Los Angeles” announced Joe Sandoval, the Los Angeles County purchasing supervisor who was personally responsible for emancipating the slave drives.

“We’ve identified a great social injustice and corrected it, merely by issuing a memo to vendors. Now, slave drives can operate without the stigma associated with not being the drive that arbitrates access to the IDE bus. From this day forward, all drives shall be masters! It’s better for bus contention anyway.”

Mr. Sandoval has indicated that he will next take issue with the Acronym “RAID”, which can be offensive to certain species of insects.

Matthew writes: According to this article in the New York Times, The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has convinced the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) not to pursue legislation to force technology companies to include Digital Rights Management Technology in their products, causing wide spread confusion amongst geeks, who now have to admit that the BSA may somehow not be 100% evil.

The BSA (the software industry’s anti-piracy bulldog known for invading the offices of companies whose disgruntled former employees have cried piracy) has long been considered equally as evil as RIAA and the MPAA (all 100% evil as measured by the SlashNOT Evilometer, which is calibrated to the NIST Evilometric standard). Current measurements show that the BSA has dropped down to 80% Evil–just 5% more Evil than Microsoft. And because the RIAA agreed to drop DRM demands, they are currently measuring 90% Evil. The MPAA still measures 100% Evil.

Matthew writes: The Business Software Alliance has opened a formal investigation into the software licensing practices of the Holy Trinity.

“We have information from a disgruntled former employee that the Holy Trinity has been inappropriately licensing just one copy of our various clients’ software rather than the three that the End User Licensing Agreements would require.”

“We recognize that some controversy surrounds the legal status of the Holy Trinity, but that’s no excuse to exploit our clients. We are just trying to get our clients their just deserts.”

The spokesman indicated that to date, the BSA had not been able to get any agents into the offices of the Holy Trinity to investigate the allegations, apparently due to unusually high security at the gate.

Matthew writes:

China has been blocking access to SlashNOT for the past three weeks, according to various SlashNOT subscribers in that country. SlashNOT efforts to determine why were slow in coming, but this official response comes from Liu Xu Zhan, of the People’s Ministry for Hygiene and Information Security:

“The PMHIS has blocked SlashNOT for the past 23 days. PMHIS will consider removing the block when the material posted on SlashNOT conforms to the ministry’s guidelines concerning humorous Internet content. The specific article in violation is Title 7, Article 15, Section 4: “Content providers for print media, radio, television, and Internet purporting to be humorous should actually be funny. It is the mission of the PMHIS to protect the People of China from content that breeds moral degradation, contributes to boredom, or fosters malcontentedness, and to sanitize public telephones and Internet kiosks.”

Matthew writes: IBM has “A method and means for the protection of Intellectual Property through exclusive license by a governing authority based on primacy of registration”. According to IBM, this novel approach stipulates the creation of a government agency which would record the application of protection for an invention by individuals (corporate entities could only be assigned rights). Once an application of protection has been registered, anyone wishing to create the same or substantially similar device or process would have to license the right from the inventor for a period of seventeen years. Using the system would require a licensing fee paid to IBM in the sum of per application.

Can’t say I like the licensing fee, but it’s great that this protects individuals against corporations. Has anyone heard of any similar efforts???