Wednesday,  August 20 12:01 AM EDT

SpamAssassin Unveils New Home Assassin Product for Unwelcome Visitors

The creators of SpamAssassin, a popular spam prevention program available on the *NIX platform, have developed a new product designed to get rid of knocks on the door from unwanted visitors - HomeAssassin.

Theo Johnson, lead programmer for HomeAssassin, explained how the system works. "All you need is the HomeAssassin software, a webcam, a computer and one of our specially trained Ninja Assassins."

The webcam takes a picture of the person at the door and uses rule based image recognition software to determine if the visitor is welcome. HomeAssassin recognizes common clothing patterns (police, salesmen, Jehovah's Witnesses) and facial expressions (angry neighbors, psychotic killers) and dispatches the Ninja Assassins as needed.

Beta testers of the product were pleased with the results with only a few complaints. "Sure, I had a couple of false positives, sorry about your kids Mrs. Holcomb, but overall it works very well," said Darcy Raub of Youngstown, Ohio.

Ted Harkin of Missouri loves the HomeAssassin system, "I don't have to do anything. I just wake up in the morning look quickly through my trash bin to make sure nothing got assassinated by mistake. Then, I just dump the remains on the compost heap."

A competing product DoorBayes uses Bayesian style filtering. DoorBayes uses similar facial and clothing recognition software, but it requires a period of training to "learn" who is welcome and who is not. Matthew Sautner, CEO of DoorBayes LLC described the training process. "For example, slam the door in your mother-in-law's face once and the next time she visits the DoorBayes will do it for you," he said.

Johnson said the SpamAssassin group plans on developing a DatingMyDaughterAssassin product for early next year.

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