Slashdot Mirror
Reuters: 80% of Chinese Computers Virus Infected
Alien54 writes "A rueters news report says that 80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus. They quote a a six-week survey conducted by the [Chinese] National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center cited in the official China Daily newspaper."
That must be why the text looks like gibberish.
Can someone say goldmine for anti-virus makers, at least ones that can produce a chinese version of their product... but oh yeah, with the insanely high % of piracy as well, it doesn't look like anyone would buy the product legit!
The reason Santa is so jolly is that he knows where all the bad girls live.
That "Great Firewall Of China" does a lot of good!
I read 80% of computer viruses infected. Wow that would have been odd, then I realised that I hadn't had my coffee yet.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
80% of China's computer run windows
please be careful here.
you have to be careful trusting anything you read from a totalitarian government who only use the media to advance their own political ends.
Let me guess: they all run IIS?
(Hey, that rhymes!)
I must point out a factual inaccuracy in the article summary. It is not stated that 80% of Chinese computers have at one point experienced a virus infection. In fact, it is stated that over 80% of a sample group of Chinese computer users believed they had been infected with a virus. This perception is a much muddier number, considering I know many of my colleagues believe that advertising pop-up ads for casinos are actually computer viruses.
Here is the source for my observation:
"Only 16 percent of computer users we sampled this year reported they were free from any virus attack, while last year nearly one in three users said they suffered no computer infections," the newspaper quoted the center's chief engineer, Zhang Jian, as saying.
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
If China's gov't can filter so much of the content that their citizens view, you would think that they would somehow figure out how to filter viruses in email attachments and stuff (which is possible)
Or PERHAPS, the name of the Virus is Win32.China.Is.Spying.On.Its.Citzens.Virus
Hmm
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I know it's a tired argument but most of the news in china is made up.
I just wonder what would China have to gain by saying all their computers are 0w3d? Is it the "National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center" trying to get more funding?
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
My computer has been touched by a virus too, doesn't mean it was there for more than a few hours. So I guess my virus free computer would fall into that 80% if I were in china.
Hmm.... in medicine, if you had a body part that heavliy infested with a virus, you'd cut it off or segregate from the rest of the public so the infection won't spread....
Maybe China should be disconnected from the global internet until they can learn some Internet Common Sense and get some AV-Software.. Anyone know the number to Symantec?
That Chinese people like opening temping attachments that promice love, porn, dancing bears, and greeting cards. O_o
on a serious note:
My computer has only been infected twice, both of them rare and harmless viruses. In the past year I have had zero infections... unless you are downloading every single program you can get your hands on or are opening attachments like an AOL newb viruses aren't that big of a problem. (or Kazaa users, but I won't go there. I use WinMX)
I take it that they haven't been using the 'Windows Update' Icon. I remember back in the day hearing of *nix boxen in the oriental that were like swiss cheese. Is this some trend with oriental people? They just don't think they need to patch stuffs up?
Can all fish swim?
80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus
Typical Slashdot journalism. "touched by a virus" is far different than "infected by a virus". My computer gets touched by viruses all the time, but it never actually gets infected, because I keep my apache (the only service running) up-to-date.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It's not extremely surprising. Most asian computer users are still not very well versed in the English language, and that is proven in some of the email text found on virus infected emails.
Because of the poor grasp of English, emails with attached 'cute wallpaper', 'nude pics of Brittney', and 'Figures you please review' will be opened 8 our of 10 times.
Without a big flashing strobe light on top of monitors that would alarm when an infected email appears, most asian users will continue to open infected email without a second thought.
------
Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
to the percentage of chineese restaurant food that's virus infected.
On the other hand, this could be the start of something big. There is reason to believe that "junk DNA", which comprises about 90% of the human genome, is leftover virus DNA. How much of human evolution was driven by viral infection either indirectly or directly? Might the same happen to computers? I think it might be smart to leave China's computii infected and see if an AI evolves. Put up a firewall, of course, in case of a Predator scenario.
It probably isn't much better here in the US. I know that where I work, before we got our network anti-virus, it was probably close to 95% of computers had been touched by a virus. The email based virii spread through the whole company in 2 weeks max.
I am a nobody. Since nobody is perfect, that means that I am perfect.
That's no problem considering illegal copies of any software (including virus scans) are readily available all over asia for $2 US.
I guess they really do share everything then...
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
See Clam AntiVirus and OpenAntiVirus.
If you assume that every person in China has one computer (this is obviously not true) there would be 800 million computers infected.
Well, what do you expect when you take over a billion non-English speaking peeps and put them on an almost entirely English Internet. They must get hit by popups left and right when they go to out-of-country news sites, and the next thing you know, they are infected with spyware and/or viruses. Gotta pity those Chinamen.
"Only 16 percent of computer users we sampled this year reported they were free from any virus attack"
My computer is attacked on a daily basis, but my computer is virus free...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
From what I have seen as a contractor, I bet 80% of the computers in the US have had a virus at one time or another.
80% of Chinese computers run Windows.
Hacked by Chinese!
Computer viruses are small programs often sent via e-mail or hidden in other software. Once inside a computer, they can do malicious tasks like erase data or reproduce and send copies to other machines over the Internet.
I find it disturbing that in the year 2002, Reuters still has to explain to people what a "computer virus" is.
Jesus Christ. What's next, a description of the keyboard as "that typewriter thing on the desk" and the monitor as "the TV thing with all the pictures" ?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Na-ha
"All your computers are belong to us"
Live web cams
I personally have been 'touched' by many viruses (virii?) in the past, but they all got stopped by my antivirus.... i guess i would count as being in that 80%..... Touched is not the same as infected.....
so now we have a computer virus incubator too.
which leads to an interesting thought. maybe some days viruses will be created by computers and breed like flu does. They will gather strenght in a compliant population (china) before emerging to the real world.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
These people have robot dogs, and robot fish, and giant robots with guns for heads.
Yeah, that's right Norton, get on the m*therfucker.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
This brief but rather trenchant opinion piece on the same subject ran yesterday in Asahi Shimbun; reading it, you can see that the media in Japan (as usual) have a considerably firmer grasp on what's happening in China than the American media...
What with software piracy being so rampant and hard to crack down on in China, you'd think most people would have been able to get themselves a copy or ten of Norton Antivirus by now.
Or are prOn and Windows XP the only things that people trade these days?
It says that 80% of the computers in China HAVE BEEN "touched". And here's a link that could explain why
With this many infected Chinese computer systems infected it's no wonder all my warez are infected. I think them Chinese people should check for computer viruses before sending me my warez =]
it's a good thing all my illegal VHS tapes I have can't be played on my system =]
I didn't realize computers were so sexual. I guess after all the pr0n you put on em, they're finally getting hard up.
Once inside a computer, they can do malicious tasks like erase data or reproduce
80% of computers in China have been touched [in the private parts] by a computer virus.
Live web cams
What!? Touched by?
Is some refence to that show "touched by an angel"? Damn I knew the ABC-disney had strong influences, but slashdot! And we always though it would be microsoft that got us in the end!!
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
I used to live in Beijing... as an american there you would be astonished at the rate of piracy. We're used to maybe picking up a copy of photoshop from a buddy, or you know someone who will burn you a copy of windows.... there they sell about any commercial software product (not too long after release) on pressed CDs (with case and jacket) for about a buck in just about any open marketplace. Needless to say, there are not too many people with 'real' versions of the software running around.
The problem with these CDs is that they have been cracked (so people can use them) by who-knows-who and frequently have other 'things' floating around on the CDs and i'm sure there huge numbers of virii that are being distributed in this way. It's really easy to picture an 80% infection rate. It's kinda like a high school computer lab where all the kids trade floppy disks and there is no anti-virus protection.... everyone has it before long.
Only 16 percent of computer users we sampled this year reported they were free from any virus attack
100-16 = 80%
Must have a loose nut on the old abacus.
Live web cams
80%?! I thought the majority of China is using Linux? What happened to all that press about Linux taking over Asia? I guess pirated Windows is still considered "free software."
Haven't they figured out how to pirate norton antivirus?
If the methods used were the same as those from the last survey: http://www.antivirus-china.org.cn/
Then the results are highly questionable. As it was an online survey. Without knowing the methods for all we know it could have been a website poll... and considering it's the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center doing the survey then individuals completing the survey are probably more likely to be affiliated with such a site because they've *had* a virus.
Does any one actually read Chinese so they could give us the full story? The site's homepage is here:
http://www.antivirus-china.org.cn/
They go to internet cafes instead. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those cafes had a virus infection of 100%. Most of the cafes that are cheap enough to be affordable are unlicensed and poorly maintained.
Earlier this year, once such cafe caught fire and 40 users died. The PRC responded by shutting down thousands of these establishments... at least for a while.
Instead of "Hacked by Chinese", do their machines flash:
Hacked by Comrads
?
Table-ized A.I.
Only 16 percent of computer users we sampled this year reported they were free from any virus attack
It's good to see CowboyNeal is gaining popularity in China.
Trying is the first step towards failure.
Mutere deradebo wabahi purobi... Uruko riwyi doze orowo bezu.
Yeah, no surprises there. The only thing this anonymous bonehead has a "grasp" on is his own paranoid worldview. Unfortunately, that worldview is all too common in Japan. What a shame.
Is XP and DRM where you wanted to go yesterday?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That I'll get less spam from them?
Just wondering.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
You idiot. Ever heard of Arnold Schwarzeneggar?
Articles I've read on business management repeatedly cite the fact that the Chinese word for "crisis" also means "opportunity". I wonder if the Chinese word for "computer virus" also means "really cool pirated software with unexpected features".
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Knowing the amount of spam coming from there, maybe are a lot of spammers spreading virus in china. Maybe (I hope) someone think that is time to take extreme measures on spammers because of this
If you asked the same question in an European country or in the US, the result would be "84 percent of computer users reported 'Huh?!' when asked whether their computer had been infected by a virus during the year". The environment is naturally much more hostile there in China, with over 90% piracy rate. It is actually a small miracle that "infected computers percentage" is lower than piracy rate.
They returned her computer a few days later and told her they gave it a liver transplant.
But it starts to get scary if you get sick in China, and the doctors ask which brand of harddrive you want installed in place of your appendix.
Table-ized A.I.
Sounds like a new primetime soap opera...
Tonight on Touched by a Virus, Gordon believes that he has been infected by "Millisa". Little does Gordon know that Millisa is spawning his CHILD!
come on fhqwhgads
Their virus is multiplying as fast as they are!
Yes, mod me down for redundancy, for I did not read through the previous posts and I know that at least 20 people have said this already.
Try this, ask 10 computer users (users, not geeks) these two questions:
1). Have you ever had a strange computer problem?
2). Think it could have been a virus?
I would lay money that you can find an 80% 'touched by a virus' rating on any group of people you like.
Anyone familar with the social sciences and / or statistics realizes that corrolation does not equal causation. However, if you're a gov't agencey (as one reader posted previously) in need of funding, corollation = causation is a very useful tool. Even more so when you engineer the corollation part.
This article is a waste of time.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
China had posted a few articles from theonion as legitimate news. There were rumors that they were anti-science/technology in nature, which is pretty interesting. Whether they were published purposely or accidentally, it doesn't do much for their credibility in my eyes...
"I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants."
That's far from a solution.
1) Clam AntiVirus
Linux only. You think 80% of the machines in China that have been "touched" by a virus are running Linux? Where's your head, in your ass?*
2) Open AntiVirus
Even they say that it is something that even they wouldn't use in a production environment. So that's not a solution, either.
The real solution, as I see it, that will work TODAY, is a commercial virus scanner COUPLED with an understanding of how to avoid viruses. Similar to the way people avoid HIV and AIDS, people can't just use "protection." WRT computers, they would then need to be sure that they were using the latest signatures. Even then, being careful by itself will protect you more than "protection" by itself anyday.
And the number one reported virus was:
BRUE SCLEEN OF DEATH!
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
However, a recent worm called "Bugbear" -- which records keystrokes makes them vulnerable to hacking attacks -- appeared not to have affected many systems in China, the newspaper said.
Apparently, only worms named "Chow Delight" and "Doggy Biscuit" were successful at invading most systems.
... is sending me spam.
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Yep. Shoulda used genuine MicroSoft products, to avoid all those Open Sores.
*This is a quote from a movie. Anyone know which? :-)
You, sir, are what's wrong with Slashdot.
No, just outright theft of software and the ignorance that goes with stealing. I say we kill all those Chinese bastards and reduce the criminal element and surplus population in one fell swoop! Bastards.
They have all those 80% infected computers sending us all their spam. china.com
What was this we heard about the Great FireWall of China not so great now is it? -- (maybe that's why thy are slowly invading Panama)
And we wonder why they all want to move to Linux
The chi-comms are probably blaming us capitolist Americans for ruining their party.
This isn't so hard to believe though, think about it... how many illegal Windows installations are floating around China anyway? I mean put Windows on a computer is bad enough, but then a pirated version on top of it... that's worse, yet add the quantity of these and multiply by the ignorance factor of the users and you have a perfect virus breeding ground.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Couldn't we just write a virus to do that?
"Hacked by Chinese!"
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
That's because virus scanners are part of the pirated software. How else would 84% of the people know they had a virus?
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
me put virus on your.. boxen?
Thanks! I was curious about that. I tried Babelfish, but could only take so much before the lag started driving me insane.
What do you bet that 80% of the 80% are also pirated copies of windows?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Reuters, man...Reuters. Spelling could use a little tuneup there.
This is an easy problem to fix. All these people need to do is search for "Virus Protection" on Google and ... oh wait ...
(Score:-1, Wrong)
All your base are belong t...*BSOD*
Who are the fucking idiots who modded this down? Obviously we can tell who cares about their rights.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
* [Bb][Ii][Gg]5
the terms in this article are very odd ... 'touched by a virus' and 'free from any virus attack'? i would hate to have my expensive research represented by such a summary.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
I checked the site and found the following statement:
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
to hacked by Chinese.
"never met a Microsoft zealot"
Not noted, however, is that the average time to transfer one of these viruses from machine to man is 86 straight hours of gameplay, at which point the recipient will run to the nearest bathroom and die without respawning.
"Why do programmers confuse Halloween and Veteran's day?"
"Because 31(hex) == 7(dec)!"
I heard of a virus that converted all chars into a kind of draw that made text unreadable. Wait!, it seem to afect chinesse people as well!. Wait!, it's not a virus, ... ok... forget it.
Ha!
Soon Engrigsh will be the universal languge!
And you'll like it!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And what exactly is rueters? I believe it's supposed to be "Reuters", but whatever...
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
The problem with slashdot is all these people!
(I was going to say posters but that lets teh editors[tm] off the hook!)
A recent study by some guy down the street reveals that over 75% of all statistics are made up. "It comes as a real shocker to me, especially since 90% of all my decision making all day is based on statistics" says one local woman. The police chief says they're getting closer to figuring out who's releasing these made up statistics. He says "Well 85% of made up statistics are things people hear on a site known as Slashdot, and are then taken as fact, and passed on slightly distorted." "There are lies, damn lies and statistics." says local resident Benjamin Disraeli.
Well before everyone gets all ready to donate anti-virus software to china, please read the article. They don't mean 80% of all computers in china right at this moment have a virus. They're talking about 80% of the computers they sampled, they MAY have been infected (at one time). I'm sure in america the numbers pretty high too, there's just no statistics (yet). So here we go, according to ME, 90% of all computers I've ever fixed in America at one time had a virus.
I'm not supposed to tell anyone.. it told me that it should be our little secret.
I guess that's a meaningless statement from the government or something. At least, I've never even so much have had my linux machines come down with the better known worms, and in fact, I don't even know anyone personally who has either.
No wonder M$ is so pissed about China. If 80 percent is virus infected, those systems can't be Linux.
I read that 80% of computer users in China are running 486DX's on Windows 3.11 so maybe thats why they're infected.
I guess Slsahdotters cannot be bohtered to check thier front pagse for typos such as rueters.
Are you sure people isn't giving too much credit to some of the posters?
Murphy was an optimist.
I know americans who can get in quite a jiffy over love and pr0n too. And Brits. And Egyptians. and Chinese.
What's the point here? Would this have been modded +4 funny if you s/Chinese/Belgian or something else?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Of course! Crisi-tunity!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
90% of US Women Love Bowling
According to a study commisioned by the American Bowling Alley Owners Federation, researches found that 90% of women love bowling. Researchers came to this conclusion by randomly questioning 40 women inside a bowling alley in Scranton, PA.
At least it isnt as bad as teh VD there yet.
No one seems to have any problems with the definition of piracy when in comes to computer software in Asia, where it is obviously a tremendous problem. I know people in Hong Kong that don't buy any real music, videos or software and only get pirated stuff. In fact, some don't even go to movies because they VCD is only a couple of bucks. Yet, many people seem to have problems when someone applies the word piracy to Napster, etc...
Interesting...
I don't know that this is about a language gap. I imagine 8 out of 10 Americans will open email labeled "nude pics of Brittney" as well.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
Become symantec virus software reseller in China...
-i@i-
This confirms what I have pretty much have known all along. If it's not spam comming from asia it's infected windows boxes trying to attack my webserver. My servers http and mail logs are filled with failed attempts and are getting rather large...
linux..... the thinking mans os
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
There is that can be cracked in those games. It's all in hardware my friend. :)
Hmmm... Pie...
What, oppposed to the rather probable 95% of US computers?
I was in Vietnam over the summer. Vietnam is #1 in the word for software piracy, with 94%. They cram everything they can fit onto a cd and with that comes some extra stuff you didn't even pay for...I was not surprised when I scanned five cds to find 4 of the 5 containing at least a few virii.
it's a Microsoft Windows virus, not a computer virus.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
Have computer viruses, then, become like the bacteria on our skin? -- As long as they're relatively benign and stay out of our blood streams, they can live on our skin all they want?
Or are they more like VD? -- Make sure you have current protection with you wherever you compute, otherwise sooner or later you're gonna catch the big one with the destructive payload.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
all they need to do is get mcafee virus scan online accounts and share them, pirating where you know your getting a clean copy
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
Opps...sorry about that, heh
I dunno but all those Chinese computers have viruses that screw up the displays - makes em all look like chicken scratch. I wonder ? Hmmmmm?
Not when you consider that so much software in China IS pirated. IT WAS A JOKE!
The article is unclear on whether or not 80% of the computers actually have viruses. Even the Slashdot post uses the word "touched", not "infected". Viruses come into contact with my computer all the time. I'd bet that at least 80% of the computers in America or Western Europe have been "touched" by a virus.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
"BEIJING (Reuters) - Viruses have infected at least 80 percent of China's computers,"
and the other %20 run Linux.
We honor Subject Line Troll 's style with a +5 rating , the highest honor in the book of trolls !
Do not ask for whom the posting trolls, it trolls for you dear troll!
"a reliable source of today's date..."
With the way software is 'distributed', every new PC comes with the latest version of Windows and every program known to man both Chinese and other languages.
When we bought some of these machines for our China offices, they even came with the latest viruses preinstalled! What service. Wipe delete and reinstall OS. Get back most of the hard drive too.
The way most PCs are managed over there, to have a PC is to have a virus. Most people I've met seem to accept that getting a virus is normal.
It is freaky.
Even the women want bigger penises in China!
AIDS is a syndrome. There are no "strains" of syndromes.
You're right the Chinese have SENKOUSYA! Play the senkousya battle game!! TAKE DOWN AIBO!
http://www.hinden5.com/senkousha/wide.html
(oh wait that's those whacky Japanese making fun of them)
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
Researchers have found that over 80% of Slashdot readers have never been "touched" by a girl.
More at 11...
They could quit referring to Outlook viruses like Klez and SirCam and ILOVEYOU...
Klez is not an "Outlook Virus" it can be executed in any Windows-based e-mail program.
Sircam is not an "Outlook Virus" it contains it's own SMTP engine and harvests its addresses from various files (such as .HTM) on the victim's hard drive.
VBS.LoveLetter does spread using the Outlook address book, though it can also spread via mIRC (though curiously I never hear it referred to as a "mIRC Virus").
I absolutely agree that we should strive for accurate information.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
Happens all the time. I'll tell somebody to press the "Enter" key and they'll be scouring their screen looking for an "Enter" key.
Today I got this call:
USER: "My machine said it got some kind of error, what should I do?"
ME: "What does the error say?"
USER: "I don't know, I rebooted."
ME: "O.K., here's what you should do. Write down the error message next time."
Don't even get me started on right-click vs. left click.
Thankfully out anti-virus software pushes updates out to the workstations automatically and transparently so we don't have to leave it up the these kinds of users.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
Does this apply to Taiwan too? or just Mainland China?
Out of Cheese Error:
Please reboot universe
We set them up the bomb. [.... technical more details
They are on their way to destruction.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
When I was in college in the mid-70s, a number of my fellow students from Taiwan and Hong Kong would bring pirated textbooks over with them, which typically had covers indicating they were cookbooks or written in Chinese or whatever; it reduced the attention of customs inspectors.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sure.. those machines not affected are running linux.
From the land of anarchy we should expect less??
I'm suprised that the firgure is only 80%, I would have thought it to be near 100%..
the other 20% are macs... ha ha ha
How are you gentlemen !!
Are 20% of the Chinese computers running Linux?
If you gotta talk about "Goldmine", then the pot-of-gold ought to be located with those who can provide softwares which are immuned to virus attack, or at the least, can CONTAIN the damage done by virii to a minimum.
To this, may I suggest the various flavors of Unices - from Solaris to *BSD to Linux ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The Chinese people I know (both inside and outside of mainland China) don't care too much of what the government tells them. They know that a lot of what's said from government organizations etc are truths with modifications. You have to read between the lines to get the truth. My best guess is that a lot of Chinese people don't bother about the virus warnings because they don't trust their government. On the other hand, the Chinese government has brought up the Chinese into not believing what the US government says either... Just remember FBI's international Code Red warning.
Maybe the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center's report is part of a wider campaign into getting people ready for the upcoming Chinese Windows clone. (a guess would be that it has a lot of government sponsored spyware...) Making people aware of Microsoft's crappy software and then giving them a "fresh" alternative.
I'm not in favor of the Chinese government touching anything to do with technology, and if they thought that it was time to get involved in this epidemic, they would inevitably censor even more of the web in order to stop the infection rates. This case reminds me of the South African STD problem. where the uneducated allow themselves to be infected out of ignorance. The only way that the mass of china will become aware is if the government steps in. The only thing [the government] needs to do is a media blitz of public service announcements. Educate the public, and they will start to protect themselves. I'm sure that Computer Associates (InoculateIT), Network Associates (McAfee), and Symantic (Norton AntiVirus) would love to cover the cost of such education. Most, if not all, antiviral software is subscription based. And there is nobody happier to pay for a long-term contract like a mom & pop shop that didn't know anything about viruses, and then is made aware of what they stand to lose if they don't protect themselves. Yeah, answer to this is place "protect yourself" ads in every magazine, TV, and radio that circulate there. The government controls all of the media there anyways.
Maybe my answer is to simplistic, but education does make sense.
Maybe My answer is to simplistic, but education does make sence.
So, okay, you find a page on the web somewhere with a hiragana/romanji-equivalent chart. You run the chart through a Perl script to pry loose a list of romanji syllables, then you write another Perl script that generates words by glomming randomly-chosen syllables together. Since it's a syllabary, you can skip the extra 73 seconds it'd take to code vowel/consonant alternation. Punctuation and paragraph breaks are trivial.
That's a bonehead implementation, of course. Maybe the 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o' and 'u' characters (Slashdot seems to remove five-digit character entities, sorry) only appear at the beginnings of words? I, naturally, have no idea! Perhaps I'll refer that question to Professor Markov one of these days. I won't post the output on Slashdot, though. Randomly-generated text gets real old, real quick. Once is enough.
Obviously, no fake Japanese will ever fool somebody who actually speaks Japanese. Then again, I don't think anybody who doesn't speak Japanese was fooled, either.
I would have been more pleased if some fool had up-modded it as "Informative", but what the hell; if it got a few laughs, that's good enough.
CowBoiKneel has nice lips.
And 100% of those run Microsoft. Let the flames begin, but you know it's true...
He who knows nothing, knows nothing.
But he who knows he knows nothing knows something.
And he who knows someone whose friend's wife's brother knows nothing,
he knows something. Or something like that.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...