[comp.unix.questions] red herrings

daveb@geac.UUCP (Brown) (08/12/87)

>In article <944@bsu-cs.UUCP>, dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>> A good way of preserving a copyright on collections of items that
>> individually cannot be copyrighted is to include a few red herrings
>> that could not be there by chance.... Similarly, I've heard that
>> dictionaries include a few authentic-sounding nonsense words that were
>> created by the publisher.

This is also often used on maps, but the technique is subtler: a road
junction is malformed to look (subtely) different than on the
underlying topo maps.  This can, of course, be taken to extremes:  the
tourist map of PEI (Prince Edward Island) contains a number of blatant 
lies...
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.                 |  Computer Science
 Geac Computers International Inc.,   |  loses its memory
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