Richard, What ever happen to the Java concept of the sandbox, that totally safe play space for code from over the web. I assume it proved to be a pipe dream, or was it that the market placed demanded to break free of the sandbox, so the concept never got a chance.
Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 5:53 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: Hacker intelligence level [WAS Re: [agi] Funding AGI research] Ed Porter wrote: > Richard, > > To the uninformed like me, can you explain why it would be so easy for an > intelligent person to cause great harm on the net. What are the major > weaknesses of the architectures of virtually all operating systems that > allow this. It is just lots of little bugs. It would be possible to write a macrovirus with a long incubation period, which did nothing to get it noticed until D-Day, then erase the hard drive. It only needs a lot of people to be using Microsoft Word: this by itself is (or was: I am out of touch) the main transport mechanism. There are some issues with how that would work, but since I don't want to end up in Azkhaban, I'll keep my peace if you don't mind. The only thing that might save us is the fact that Microsoft's implementation of its own code is so incredibly bad that when it duplicates macros, it has an alarmingly high screw-up rate, which means the macros get distorted, which then means that the virus goes wrong. A really bad virus would then show up, because broken viruses (called 'variants') can cause damage prematurely. Then, it would get noticed. Richard Loosemore. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=69957279-e8fa24
