Summary: Scientist Richard Carrigan warns SETI@Home volunteers their collective world-wide participation exposes the planet to computer virus attack.
:rolleyes:
The best response quoted in the article:
I was wondering where all those Celine Dion mp3s came from. It’s conclusive - Ms. Dion is one of them!
[QUOTE=Nature’s CallI was wondering where all those Celine Dion mp3s came from. It’s conclusive - Ms. Dion is one of them![/QUOTE]
It sure explains a lot. Other possible suspects - Cher, Eminem, Avril Lavigne, Engelbert Humperdinck, and The Chipmunks.
OTOH, I imagine that spreading a virus disguised as random stellar noise would have to rank as the greatest hack ever conceived. I hope Carrigan didn’t give any malcontents at MIT any ideas.
When I read the thread title, I guessed that the vast numbers of computers that all get data from the same source opens the network up to viruses from Earth, on the same principle that if a village has only one well, you only need a dash of cyanide to do them all in.
But no.
This guy is honestly worried that an exterrestrial civilization recieved in 1956 our very first radio signals from 1906, immediately decided they didn’t like us, and then somehow extrapolated from those signals the following:
A) That we would invent or had invented programmable devices
B) That we would have or invent said devices within the 50 year transit time of the return signal
C) That we would use said devices to monitor return radio signals
D) That we would use the same devices for our personal affairs
E) That we would object to having our personal affairs disrupted
F) The detailed software logic mechanism of how our computers would work in 50 years.
Then they would have had to:
G) Construct a program that would damage our programmable devices in a way we would percieve as being damaging (which means extrapolating the cultural norms of a completely alien civiliation 100 years into the future from a short radio broadcast)
H) Translate that virus into a radio signal, and finally,
I) Transmit it with enough power to make the 50 light-year journey.
I trust I’ve made my point.
What advanced civilization would be using Windows™ anyway?
Not so fast! I submit the following…
1983
Nov 9 - Discovery flies from Vandenberg AFB to Kennedy Space Center
Nov 10 - Work on Windows 1.0 announced
Nov 11 - President Reagan became 1st US President to address Japan’s legislature
Nov 28 - 9th Space Shuttle Mission-Columbia 6-is launched
1985
November - Windows 1.0 launched
Nov 19 - President Reagan & Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for 1st time
Nov 22 - Columbia moves to the Vandenberg AFB for mating of STS 61-C
Nov 26 - 23rd Space Shuttle Mission (61-B)-Atlantis 2-is launched
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to weave the fabric of the relevent conspiracy theory.