For infecting software sure. But for overwriting hardware?
Why do you hate the Virus
- Thread starter Adam Dray
- Start date
For infecting software sure. But for overwriting hardware?
The answer has been right in front of you all the time.
Proto-Traveller.
Grab your LBB 1-3 (or The Traveller Book or Starter Traveller) and just play.
It is called F U N.
Try it, you might like it.
The Dark Side! it has cookies!
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Why not, if the hardware is designed from the get go to be reconfigurable via software? As I said upthread I rationalised it by assuming TL9+ computers are quantum computers based on a neural network architecture. The synaptic processors of LBB8 if you like.
Virus could reconfigure the neural network - effectively 're-writing the circuits'. It would only be able to 'etch' if the host computer already has that capability.
The dividing line between hardware and software is becoming increasingly blurry, with firmware and
FPGAs
and reconfigurable programming computers in use today. It's not a stretch for high-TL computers to use a reprogrammable "hardware" architecture that would be susceptible to a hardware Virus.
Yeah, what's up with Virus? There's no Norton or McAfee in the Imperium?
Well, there's a lot of truth in that. I think the extreme end of high end hackers were messing with BIOS in the 90s. There's not much you can do there (screw up someone's clock? turn off their floppy drive?), but it did happen according to the news reports.
Ergo Virus doesn't strike me as unreasonable in and of itself, but sounds like its effects were a little too far ranging for a lot of people. I'll have to read up.
But remember, the virus doesn't just wipe out the TL 14 worlds, it also works on those TL 9 Starships and those TL 7 Mainframe computers. That's where the trouble starts. It is transmitted by comm, but impacts systems across a wide range of TLs.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Blame the Imperium for insisting on compatibility across the TLs :devil:
:devil:
Those are NOT blind transmitting to an uninfected receiver.
Those work by getting a listener virus on to the target device by traditional means (sneakernet on memory stick, usually, tho' standard network traffic works too). Then, a stub infected system chirps every so often until a fully infected system chirps back. At which point, they establish an audio network, and the stub is upgraded to a full infection version.
Both the stub version and the full version transmit the stub version.
maybe their tl7 is not the same as our tl7. while a tl7 world may not be able to design and manufacture tld processors, it might easily be able to manufacture all the other equipment and peripherals. the chips would be brought in by the dton from the high-tech industrial worlds that churned them out by the megaton. so yeah, while the machines might be tl7 in effect, they might be powered by significantly more advanced processors.
A good working plan for explaining the virus, but a bit of a wrench in the works for the traditional definition of TL (which already had some badly meshed gears).
There's no reason a badly programmed blind receiver can't receive signals that force buffer overflows, just like a network card might accept signals that force buffer overflows. (strncpy and fgets are your friends, though I doubt sigproc code uses them.)
So I get that some people can't stomach the idea of the Virus for technological reasons. I'm pretty happy to say, "This thing is sentient, not just code, and it works in ways we wouldn't understand in the 21st century." That could include energy waves and patterns that can create nanobots that can attack physical hardware.
lostscout5
SOC-12
I didn't hate virus. I just didn't think it was very realistic. But one problem I've always had with traveller was how high in TL A.I. was. I could see making a computer powerful enough to run a full A.I that was small enough to fit in a man sized robot TL16. But a large network should be able to have it a lot sooner. I think the out of control A.I. in AOTI is a lot more plausible. It was at a lower tech level.
Personally I just ignored it and stayed in the spinward marches. The time line went on and I didn't really have to bother with virus. virus was out there, but we were safe behind the quarantine. Regency for the win!
Personally I just ignored it and stayed in the spinward marches. The time line went on and I didn't really have to bother with virus. virus was out there, but we were safe behind the quarantine. Regency for the win!
So I'm curious, would you have liked the Virus if it:
Which of those things are important to you?
- were contained to a sector or two?
- were "more realistic" (transmitted itself in the usual 21st century ways)?
- had easy antivirus countermeasures?
- were not sentient?
- didn't tableflip the 3I canon?
- left psionics out of it?
Which of those things are important to you?
I don't hate Virus, I hate what GDW used Virus to do to the setting.
These are the ones that I would have preferred:
- Didn't tableflip the 3I canon.
- Was contained to a sector or two.
- Had reasonable antivirus countermeasures.
1: no
2: yes
3: kind-of...
4: Oh, yes
5: It was a little late for that. Virus was not needed to table-flip, as Hard times had done that already. Virus was just wizzing upon the grave..
6: makes no difference to me.
See, the only reason I factor Psi in at all is because the half-assed explanation was bogus upon its face. To do what it did by rules, either each and every electronic device was heavily networked, and designed by total freaking idiots.
I wanted to like the New Era - but it failed as a setting to be interesting to me and mine, and didn't match the tech paradigms of the prior editions.
And Hard Times had already altered much of the setting drastically.
Add to that the mere 70 year span... in 70 years, most peoples parents remembered the war.
LOL!!!!:rofl:
