7efellight
Nate Phillipps
Solitary Triumph
TheWild Webster
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Anaheim – A new software company aims to slow the spread of ‘urban legend’ spam emails with a new anti-ware offering. ‘NopersWare’ announced their new line of software this afternoon at a press conference in Anaheim stating the offering will hit store shelves and popular internet download sites by mid April of next year.
The new software, marketed as anti-dumbass™ software seeks to compete with long standing debunking websites such as Snopes and TruthorFiction as a means for users to sort through true viral content and false urban myths and legends.
“We conceived of the company when looking at the market of anti-virus software. We saw that market as highly saturated with competitors already,” said company CEO Walter Ames. “If you consider what a virus is, it is something that exploits existing systems to reproduce and flourish. In a manner of speaking, urban legends behave very much like a biological or computer virus, but with the dumbass being the carrier and retransmitter of the virus. And the market was virtually untapped from a software perspective!”
Initial market surveys look hopeful and the company is already receiving considerable pre-order requests. “The problem with existing methods such as the anti-debunking websites is that it requires an action on the part of the user. But idiots would rather just hit the forward button than look up the facts,” says well known PC commentator and pundit Leroy Miller. “A program like anti-dumbass™ is long overdue. I see this as the next potential ‘killer app’.”
Typical mail forwarding dumbass
The company claims that the new software will not only work like existing spyware, malware and anti-virus software in that it will contain ‘known’ signatures or patterns of pre-existing hoaxes, but will also included what they proudly refer to as their ABSAIT or Anti-Bull Shit Artificial Intelligence technology.
“The purpose of the ABSAIT is to simply look for outrageous and ridiculous content to stop urban legends at their source before they begin. The algorithm actually resulted from a Cal Tech psychology research project on political speech.” Ames states that among the triggers the software looks for will include known lists of loaded or negatively connotated words or phrases, forms of common ad hominem sentence structures and certain types of outrageous claims typical to many known myths. This will allow the software to create a BSS or bull-shit-scale rating from 1 to 10 for the user whenever an email containing potentially mythical or nonsensical content is received.
One controversial feature of this new program is what Nopers marketing dubs as ‘pro-active’ protection. A feature which allows outgoing mail to also be filtered is included with the software and has met some complaints from the more savvy and skeptical computing community due to the fact Nopers developers considered it a crucial option to have enabled ‘out-of-the-box’.
“The more intelligent users of our software should have no problem finding and disabling the feature. They may be complaining now, but I think when they see the reduction in their own spam in-boxes they will approve of our decision,” said Ames.
UPDATE:
The makers of anti-dumbassware have recently implemented a new algorithm to detect ‘Dubious and Unmitigated Hyperbole’ – the DUH! ™ algorithm is said to greatly improve the software’s overall performance.
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The ObjectOpus 