kdo@edsel (Ken Olum) (11/11/88)
In article <3595@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: >spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes: >> (Note -- it's a worm, not a virus, since it can replicate itself and >> does not hide itself inside other code.) > > Several people have mentioned that it's a worm and not a virus. I >tried to explain this to my wife (who is a molecular biologist who works >with biolgical viruses) and she didn't like the term worm. She says that >the distinction of not hiding inside other code is better described by >calling them lytic viruses and lysogenic viruses instead of worms and >viruses. Anybody for electronic transposons? The terminology depends on the exact analogy that you make between computers and living things. If you say that a machine is like a cell, then this recent problem is indeed a virus, because it gets inside your host and uses the machinery of the host to reproduce itself and spread to other machines. If you say that a program is like a cell, and a machine is like a multicellular organism, then it's a parasite instead. If you say a machine is just a fertile place where programs live, then the "virus' is just a random organism. I favor the first analogy, and I think the lytic/lysogenic terms are good ones, but somehow I can't see them getting used much by the news media. Ken Olum
hans@duttnph.UUCP (Hans Buurman) (11/12/88)
In article <1617@edsel> kdo@lucid.com writes: >In article <3595@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: >>spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes: >>> (Note -- it's a worm, not a virus, since it can replicate itself and >>> does not hide itself inside other code.) >>(...) She says that >>the distinction of not hiding inside other code is better described by >>calling them lytic viruses and lysogenic viruses instead of worms and >>viruses. Anybody for electronic transposons? >(...) I >favor the first analogy, and I think the lytic/lysogenic terms are >good ones, but somehow I can't see them getting used much by the news >media. If you look at the reproduction rate, shouldn't this program be called a rabbit ? :-) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Buurman | hans@duttnph.UUCP Pattern Recognition Group | mcvax!dutrun!duttnph!hans Faculty of Applied Physics | tel. 31 - (0) 15 - 78 46 94 Delft University of Technology | the Netherlands | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: any opinions expressed above are my own.