Elliot wrote:
"thy comments ring true and my post stands modified"
Mr. Elliot,
No need to modify your post as you had it correct. I simply expanded on your original post.
"I have to say I personally see nothing wrong with modern companies putting their signatures into things to protect their R&D investment. I assume that the future will see more of this. I see nothing neferious, evil or wrong with it, they have to make a profit - that is a company's principal object after all."
Very true. However discerning intent is notoriously difficult. Case in point - Nestele and baby formula in the 3rd World.
When they first introduced baby formula there, Nestele was greatly praised, even recieving some ceremonial geegaw from the UN. Jump forward 15 years and Nestele finds itself under increasing attack from various pressure groups over the cultural side effects baby formula sales created in the 3rd World. Eventually Nestele gave up the trade to rid itself of the headache.
Now the 64 CrImp question; did Nestele deliberately begin baby formula sales in the 3rd World knowing the cultural side effects would occur? Or did Nestele; like any company that makes money, merely use thos side effects after they occurred to boost profits? In the former case, Nestele would be have had the intent to cause the side effects. in the latter case, Nestele simply took advantage of the opportunities that arose when the unintended side effects occurred.
Now shift this problem of intent to geneered crops, or Frankenfoods as the neoluddites name them. Monsanto; aside from its usual sharp business practices, is routinely flogged over the fact that many of the crops it sells cannot propogate outside of the lab. Farmers using these crops cannot set aside a portion of their harvest to reseed their fields for the next growing season because the crops have not been engineered to allow that.
Why did Monsanto do that? Cynics will point out that the practice forces farmers to purchase new seeds every year. Cynics will also ignore their own role in it; when geneered crops were first discussed they screamed blue, bloody murder and demanded that the crops not be able to propogate in the 'wild'. Thus Monsanto is flayed by pressure groups for geneering a crop in the EXACT MANNER that the same pressure groups demanded! Nice pickle, huh? Not that Monsanto cares, they 'caved' into those demands and improved their bottom line at the same time.
"The point about the car virus is a) virus needs a way in - modern chips need physical wires to be contactable. This tends to stop things where the outside world cant communicate with the chip from being infected (GPS is a possible way in but only if it is connected to the engine chip). Hence toasters dont turn on their users. Further more, and as you say, to be able to automatically drive is an important point for virus. So C21 terran cars are probably not going to cause much trouble unless radio controlled and infected at the factory."
Precisely. Like all diseases, Virus still needs a transmission vector. Stop the transmission and you stop the chance of infection.
Let's look at our 'backward engineered' TL7 combine. Most of the device can be built on the TL7 planet where it used. The better models also have a TL15 'blackbox' installed. That box allows the TL7 to have all the bells and whistles I listed earlier and even more that we cannot imagine.
Because the blackbox controls som many aspects of the combine, it is wired into nearly everything. The combine offers both a nifty radio reciever and a 2-way walkie-talkie function, all hooked into the blackbox. Virus now has a way in.
Thanks to the black box, the combine offers fuel injection and other efficiency/pollution control features. Virus can now control the engine.
Thanks to the black box, the combine offers an auto-pilot feature utilizing either GPS, inertial tracking, or something akin to LORAN utilizing commercial radio stations. Now, Virus can know where it is.
The more bells and whistles the TL15 black box provides the TL7 combine, the more damage Virus can do. Why is the black box installed? In some cases, it was done to create the megacorp chip 'key' you suggested. A more common reason will be because the black box allows the TL7 combine to do so much more.
Now for toasters. I once sparked a bit of a brouhaha on the TML for suggesting 57th Century robots were, in effect, toasters. By the analogy I meant that robots were everyday devices quite literally beneath the notice of the majority of TL15 citizens. You have robots in your house right now, you just don't 'see' them as robots. Look at your thermostat, your dishwasher, laundry machines, DVD player, etc. They all do persnickety jobs to 'standards' you set and rarely change; forex: that thermostat regulates your heating system to maintain a certain temperature zone in your house.
In the 21st Century all these devices are discrete appliances. In the 57th Century, all thses devices will be intergrated into a seamless whole. We already have fridges that call the repair man or order food from the grocery. In the 57th Century, we'll have living quarters that do all that and more. Our 57th Century - TL15 flat dweller will live in a 'device' that cleans itself and its occupant, tidies up, does laundry, orders food and repairs, acts a search avatar on various infonets, is a valet, a chef, a social secretary, and many things that we cannot even imagine.
Now ask yourself this question; Does our 57th Centurian live in an apartment or a robot? She'd answer apartment, we'd answer robot.
When Virus enters that device, everything - from the toaster, to the Barcapounger to the Water-Pik - becomes deadly.
Sincerely,
Larsen
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