Category: Uncategorized

THE CAVEAT. "That said, there have been worms/trojans designed to "infect" computers, find malware, delete it, and then delete themselves and move to other computers." https://lnkd.in/evQuB2z View in LinkedIn

SOUNDS DARWINIAN. "You can make a virus plant itself in a program, but unless it knew what that program was doing and it's exact binary code structure, it's not going to be able to introduce anything beneficial to it. So you'd have to be extremely specialised and probably only work on one program, and probably only one version of that, and you couldn't just stick random "errors" in there - 99.99999% of the time you'll just break things, and the other 0.00001% of the time it won't do anything." https://lnkd.in/evQuB2z View in LinkedIn

SILICON BIOMIMICRY. "Would it be possible to design a computer virus that is made to develop numerous errors. the program could be non harming so it can get passed from one computer to another undetected. that way it is copied numerous times. Eventually allowing for a better (more fit) virus to surface." https://lnkd.in/evQuB2z View in LinkedIn

REPLICATING CODE. “A computer virus is a type of malicious software that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code. When this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a computer virus.” https://lnkd.in/dJJAA4i View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and concludes on the theme of imperfection in nature. Humans have a 2,000 year old history of seeing the world through a lens that tells a story, and within that story is embedded the theme of perfection. Thus, seeing nature through that lens has colored our perspective. But nature is a different reality. Evolution is a messy business. Ninety nine percent of her experiments have ended on the scrap heap. Resolving the distorting lens and reality is our challenge today. View in LinkedIn

SEXUAL VS VEGETATIVE REPRODUCTION. "Mutation leads to evolution in biological organisms over many, many, many generations if at all - even beneficial mutations don't always make it through. Computer programs don't reproduce. They don't have genes to pass on. They simply do not evolve." https://lnkd.in/evQuB2z View in LinkedIn

NATURAL CODE MUTATIONS. “Studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month. Apparently, not insignificant." http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2580933/cosmic-rays-what-is-the-probability-they-will-affect-a-program View in LinkedIn

LOW ODDS. "An error in a program would make a program work differently - and in most cases this means work incorrectly, and in most cases this means worse than intended. The chances of an error improving a program are extremely low." Biological mutations are usually deleterious but some are very advantageous, if only in the long-term. https://lnkd.in/evQuB2z View in LinkedIn

COSMIC RAYS: what is the probability they will affect a program? (Just like DNA mutations). " ""It depends in part on where the program is being executed and how well it's shielded. On Earth, the cosmic ray flux is much lower than in deep space, or even near Earth orbit. The Hubble Space Telescope, for instance, produces raw images that are riddled with cosmic ray traces." http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2580933/cosmic-rays-what-is-the-probability-they-will-affect-a-program View in LinkedIn

MUTATIONS IN CODE. "Changing bits in the code will at best do nothing and at worse make the code cease to function properly. There is a field in computing called genetic algorithms which are designed to simulate evolutionary processes to arrive at a solution, but they are specifically tailored to a particular problem." https://lnkd.in/evQuB2z View in LinkedIn