Sophos punts anti-virus for Klingons Sophos is now offering anti-virus protection for Klingon speakers. According to the company, you can use Klingon Anti-Virus from Sophos to "quickly perform an on-demand scan and find viruses, spyware, adware, zero-day threats, Betazoid sub-ether porn diallers, and Tribbles that your existing protection might have missed." But …
because the page gave me this:
$Header: index.html,v 1.2 2009/05/08 14:53:14 james Web page status: Draft 0.8. Req action: Mktg to review wording and imagery (better screenshots required etc..), and QA to check links. Expected launch date: July 2009. Software status: Ready. $
I love it when typos give you an insight into the bland grey monotonous lives of cubedwellers out in corporate-land.
Mktg to review. bwahahahahhaahahahaha! Better screen shots. Yep, just use the 'Better Screen Shot' command in photoshop for that one, Mktg knows how to use that. Make it BETTER! Or you get a DEMERIT!
Remnds me of the evil signs by The Midget in 'Illuminatus'
"Lunch hour is five minutes. The Mgt."
(In best Worf voice and cadence):
Klingon computers do *NOT* get viruses, they... do, however, occasionally engage in spirited battle for resource control with... unfriendly, programs. Programs which are invariably hunted down and killed. A true Klingon ra'wI' would never stoop to use of the human anti-virus product. No... the true Klingon ra'wI' hunts through a hex dump of the raw hard drive partitions, relying on instinct and cunning to recognize the traces of an intruder, tracking the way through entire platters of hard drives until finally, the enemy executable is found and then, by hand, the ra'wI' sets all the bits of the offending file to null.
It is a great honor. Of course, failure in the hunt leads to dishonor. A ra'wI' who fails to eradicate an unwanted executable in his own system is banished, outcast, and forced to care for the Macintoshes in the advertising department.
I'm guessing it's Sophos' attempt to get us to poke around in the page's source code for further amusements. The source says: "Don't forget to comment this out before going live!"
And if you keep reading the source, there are other tidbits:
"How about a picture of Picard? He's way cooler than Worf - Bob"
"he's not a klingon though, and this is KLINGON anti-virus. Not picard anti-virus...- Edward"
"Maybe we should do a Picard version? - Bob"
"no one even likes picard -Edward"
"I do :( - Bob"
"Klingons do not fear malware. Only the dishonour of falling for Win32 Beverly-Crusher-A. - Matt"
"this will need optmising for search engines!! - david"
"How are you supposed to optmise for Klingon??? - Bob"
"need a button!!!!! - david"
"Only those marketing losers have Photoshop - Bob"
"use gimp fool-david"
____
Methinks in some twisted way that all that, including the initial "error", is *part* of Sophos' marketing strategy. I mean, after all, "normal" ;) people aren't going to be interested in Klingon versions of things so they'd probably not visit the page in the first place, whereas abnormal ;) people like us :) are more likely to delve into the source code to see what causes things like the "error" on the page. :)
Now watch Sophos change it and remove all of the above :(
Quite possibly. In fact, I think this is a textbook example of a good marketing operation. They haven't so much paid for an ad, and they are getting better coverage than they'd get if they offered a large wad of cash to the el reg editorial staff.
Not only that, the cost of doing it must be pretty much zilch! Sophos must be designed for easy translations since they must be operating in 50 different languages, so all they need to do is copy and paste a bunch of random klingon phrases into the translations file (nobody actually knows what they mean anyway!) and how long would it take to do the website?
I'm in utter admiration of the sophos marketing team, this is far better than our marketing department would have come up with in a million years.
It's not Latin - ancient or contemporary. It's a " Lorem Ipsum", a nonsense filler text that looks like a natural language but isn't. Printers have used it for centuries to test fonts and print quick layout proofs.
You'll find quite a lot of it on the web, so look it up on Wikipedia or one of the numerous Lorem Ipsum generators. It's useful when showing designs to clients who haven't supplied you with content yet.
It's traditional, though not necessary, to start such a text with the words "Lorem Ipsum".
/wizearse mode off
I asked my mate who works at Sophos about this.
He got really shifty about it, and didn't really want to speak. It's weird that Cluley hasn't commented publicly or mentioned it on his blog.
Anyway, my mate says it was done for a special customer, and wasn't supposed to have gone public.
Always remember:
* Specifications are for the weak and timid.
* State-of-the-art hardware is a prerequisite to do battle with code.
* One cannot truly appreciate "Dilbert" without reading it in the original Klingon.
* Indentation is for enemy skulls, not code.
* Klingons do not "release" software. Klingon software escapes, leaving a bloody trail of design engineers and quality assurance people in its path.
* Klingon function calls have no parameters. They have arguments! And they always win them!
* Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
* Quality Assurance issues are best solved with a Batleth.
* A true Klingon warrior does not comment his code.
* Our users shall know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
@anon "all they need to do is copy and paste a bunch of random klingon phrases into the translations file (nobody actually knows what they mean anyway!)"
As far as I can tell (my Klingon is acceptable but not great), it is all accurate.
Yeah yeah, we've all heard that before. "Honest guv, t'wasn't me..."
It's not the Galactic Battle Fleet is it? Oh, hang on, that's BSG.
I suppose those 25 odd people who got the boot at the last clear-out will be pleased that the savings are going up in smoke (see reference about lighting cigars with £50 notes).
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