One, Threes, and a Seven

TTTO “Threes” by Mercedes Lackey and Leslie Fish

Loosely based on the “1337” 5-part XKCD series.

Somewhere in suburbia

Where parents go relax

A mother is now baking

And with just one hand she hacks

She’s playing with the wifi

And she rewrites TCP

And all the hackers, everywhere

Want just like her to be

Three things see no end,

A loop that has no exit code

The number of transistors

And the circle in a road

She won’t allow you to encrypt

‘Cause mother always knows

So VPNs and SSH

Those sockets she will close

She may not look and dress and part

But trust me when I say

That in the game for who has skills

One other’ll only play

Three things are most perilous

Technician with patch

That mother’s youngest daughter

And the man who’s met his match

Little did that lady care

Her son’s name burned the school

For little bobby tables knows

His real name’s just so cool

For she likes puns and funny jokes

And names with meta tricks

Her daughter, she is named Elaine,

With first name just for kicks

Of three things be wary of,

The user’s input strings

The overflowing buffers

And the source IP of pings

When eleven this kid turned,

The master she had met

Had taught her all that he had known

And that she’d not forget

She could not leave the mountain home

Before she had him beat

But he just had to let her go

Her code was just too l33t

Three things are impossible,

To know when programs halt

To solve those NP problems

And to fix a mem’ry fault

She’d break into the NSA

For giggles and for fun

And also to make just quite sure

That RSA’s not done

She learned of copyright abuse

Of Disney’s bribes and crimes

The iPod – that was her idea

Somewhere to put our rhymes

Three things are incredible,

Technology that’s new

The internet and a release

That’s done by deadline’s due

She cracked up all the DRM

The bad guys took up arms

The new laws they had bought for that

To fight some made up “harms”

She’d come to realize that it was legal

What they do

For when the people are asleep

The law that’s passed they’ll rue

Three things never trust in,

A law to save the kids

A law to fight technology

And one that speech forbids

She was not left to her demise

For hackers know their own

And so a guy named R M S

Said, “you’d not fight alone”

He brandished his Katana sword

The lawyers, they felt fear

They had no plan and no recourse

To fight, they’d need – this year

Three things can still save our ass

The freedoms that remain

When we help fight each other’s fights

And don’t forgot our brain

The blogosphere can get the drop

On those that creep by night

And Cory D and R M S

Will help us in the fight

And those who are called pirates

Are our friends, because you see

The global warming they help stop

When they sail on the sea

Three things please remember –

We must win in the end,

Our rights – we must protect them still,

The internet’s your friend