Lisa Dusseault <lisa@xythos.com> wrote:
>
> - The title-virus itself is problematic. It made me cringe when I read
>about a virus that put people into comas just by displaying a certain
>"snow" pattern on (part of!) their screen.
Neal Stephenson wasn't the first author to use that idea -- I think it
dates back to an 80s short story who's name and author I can't
remember right now and my books are 6000 miles away.
It isn't that implausible: it's evident that in certain cases (i.e.
epilepsy) inputs to the brain can stop it from working properly.
However epilepsy is considered to be a bug.
It does remind me of those tests that were conducted some years ago to
examine the implementation quality of various unix utilities by giving
them deliberately badly-formed inputs... Does the brain have good
input validation or not?
Tony.
-- f.a.n.finch fanf@covalent.net dot@dotat.at "Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead."
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:17:46 PDT