ssingh@watserv1.waterloo.edu (The Sanj-Machine aka Ice) (03/11/91)
Quick question I've been wanting to ask for a while.
If automata are capable of reproducing themselves, by following the
laws of a Turing machine, for a particular hardware architecture and
instruction set, how do you determine the minimum number of bytes that
this can be achieved in?
On a related note, I was talking with a friend about how CDs have
error correcting codes through redundancy. Does anyone know if viruses
yet exist which are capable of being fault tolerant so that if they
try to mutate, and the mutation inhibits its ability for continued
self reproduction, it will return to its former state and try again?
Ice. "Flesh and blood, sacrifice, melts the heart like fire and
ice."-Poison
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!blade_runner!terminator!terminator_II_judgement_day!watmath!watserv1!ssingh!vail@tegra.com (Johnathan Vail) (03/13/91)
ssingh@watserv1.waterloo.edu (The Sanj-Machine aka Ice) writes: If automata are capable of reproducing themselves, by following the laws of a Turing machine, for a particular hardware architecture and instruction set, how do you determine the minimum number of bytes that this can be achieved in? Since there are so may variables involved I don't think that you can get an answer for this by theory. It is entirely emperical. For example for an OS virus to "reproduce" all it needs to do is call the OS routine that writes the boot sectors (this is how at least one Apple ][ virus worked). A couple bytes is all it takes. For other designs the constraints involve the file system operations and how much the OS does and hides for you. On a related note, I was talking with a friend about how CDs have error correcting codes through redundancy. Does anyone know if viruses yet exist which are capable of being fault tolerant so that if they try to mutate, and the mutation inhibits its ability for continued self reproduction, it will return to its former state and try again? You could do this but why bother? It would serve no real purpose for a virus writer and be easily defeatable by the modifier. "Gravity pulls the trousers down Morality pulls the trousers up" -- Bedful of Metaphysicians _____ | | Johnathan Vail | n1dxg@tegra.com |Tegra| (508) 663-7435 | N1DXG@448.625-(WorldNet) ----- jv@n1dxg.ampr.org {...sun!sunne ..uunet}!tegra!vail