An edict

[avram]

Reading camwyn’s response to a writing exercise got my juices flowing a bit. I think this took more than fifteen minutes, but hey, I’m not a formal participant:

              From: bigthree@metatron.throne.hvn
Affected System(s): GnuOS Intellect Services (v3.0.0-3.1.4)
           Problem: Root exploit
          Severity: High
          Solution: Installing upgrade patch
        Discovered: February 15, 2006
         Published: February 12, 2006

It has come to Our attention that a buffer overflow exploit in GnuOS Intellect Services version 3 will be discovered at 3:15 PM OST on 15 Feb 2006. This exploit affects all current versions of GnuOS-IS, 3.0.0 to 3.1.4, allowing a malevolent hacker to attain root on a culture's global belief-tree.

This attacks works by exposing subjects to a massive influx of new information, in the form of isolated "factoids", or items that aren't necessarily false, but aren't presented in a context that would facilitate incorporating them into a functioning belief hierarchy. (This is also known as a Denial Of Context attack, or DOC.) When a sufficient number of the culture's members have been attacked in this way, their memetic input filters break down, allowing new memes to be inserted without critical examination.

Since the memetic buffer size is a biological constraint, and technological progress will spread the ability to launch buffer-size related attacks more quickly than biological evolution can upgrade memetic firmware, We have decided upon a drastic solution: All belief administrators are to increase the minimum novelty thresholds on their subject cultures to at least 35. (Testbed fundamentalist cultures have been successfully operating for centuries with novelty thresholds of 40 or more.) The benefits of this approach are twofold:

1 - It will minimize the damage that can be done by a hacker that has gained belief root.

2 - It will slow the pace of technological development, thus making the exploits more difficult to launch.

We regret the difficulties this will generate for progressive industrialized cultures.