Qrlx's Journal: My favorite posts to Slashdot

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=37074&cid=3983848

  Imagine this:

"Somebody" writes a virus, let's call it Rhinovirus 31337. The "source code" is copywritten and encrypted in such a way as to be a technological means to protect the information. In this case, the entire workings of the virus are contained in this string:

ATAGGCAGAGATCAGGCTATACGGCGCCTTATCG...

Pharm-O-Leetica "discovers" the "cure" for Rhinovirus 31337 and launches a multi-million dollar ad blitz, softening the market for deep penetration. They buy up a few Congressman along the way.

Meanwhile, back at 2600 Headquarters, Bruce "Emacs" Perens and Leonard "Vi" Felten have teamed up to discover a cure for the 31337 virus. They easiliy de-sequence, or "reverse engineer," the threat. They hire Russian programmer Dmitry "Acrobat" Sklyarov to announce their findings at the World AIDS Conference.

Just before Dmitry takes the stage, the Feds, led by John Ashcroft and Hillary Rosen, storm the Convention and Dmitry is hauled off and thrown in Camp X-ray for overstaying his visa. Hackers find a backup copy of his work and quickly discover that the files are encrypted with the password "voraylkS." It takes another six weeks to decode the archaic Visicalc format.

In the meantime, millions have become infected with 31337. The cure costs about $1000 per month, but rumors begin surfacing that all you need is a glass of warm milk at bedtime and you'll be fine! Brazil announces that they intend to provide free milk to their suffering populous; pharmaceutical companies around the world cry foul. "That's OUR cure!"

A clueless Pharm-O-Leetica VP, dazed from the fast pace of mergers and layoffs, announces "You reverse engineered our virus; only WE are allowed to do that!!!"

(sound of gauntlet falling)
I dare you to come up with a better analogy!

By the way, Neal Stephenson should write a book based on my post, and I'm not just saying that because I'm an egomaniac who is going to accept the +1 Bonus for this diatribe.