muleociation (cont. further)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

still more from soc.motss on really stupid content checkers:

[chris ambidge]
        I remember reading in some reasonably reliable source - *New
         Scientist* I think - that some scientist had gone to another
         university to give a talk, forgot some material and went
a-googling
         to get other stuff, using an account at the host establishment.

         Alarums and excursions!  Naughty mateial being sought! Send in
         the monobrow security guards!

         It turned out that the no-naughty-content filters were
searching on
         four-character strings, and thought the visiting scientist was
         looking for X-Rated Sites when in fact he was looking for X-Ray
         Crystallography.

         It must have been startling to be confronted with "evidence"
he'd
         been pornsurfing on a host university computer account.

i'm still recovering from the tale of the content checker that
*deleted* offending character strings.  ASSOCIATION would become
OCIATION (and then, if the checker is paranoid about government
agencies, into OTION), ASSIST would turn into IST, ASSASSINATE into
INATE, MASSIVE into MIVE, PASSION into PION, etc.

and what if you tried to get around the deletion of the actual word ASS
by using replacements (this is the "intercourse the penguin" strategy)?
  would new improved versions of the checker delete FUNDAMENT (reducing
FUNDAMENTAL to AL) and BUTT (reducing BUTTER to ER and REBUTTAL to
REAL) and all occurrences of the words BEHIND, BOTTOM, and REAR?

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)