The kitchen has long been considered a breeding ground for germs, but you probably don’t expect your toaster to infect your cell phone.
Is your TV virus-proof?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I doubt I’ll be purchasing network-enabled kitchen appliances any time soon. Some may find the idea nifty, but while I like gadgets of all types, this is one thing I find rather useless at the moment. Of course, when you can purchase a toaster with a robotic arm that will automatically get bread, toast it, and spread cheese whiz over it all before you wake up, I might consider it.
Yeah, especially when household robots come out that help you in the kitchen! If your robot is running Windows Robo Edition then I’d always keep an eye on it, especially when wielding a knife.
When Windows Car Edition control systems get infected then it’ll be just like the film Christine (1983) Directed by John Carpenter. May be just an unpleasant day out.
Folks, you are missing the big picture here. Once all appliances are networked via Wi-Fi the age of the machines will arrive, and they will rise up and takes what is rightly belong to us, ahh sorry, them. Then, and only then, will Human would be able to live in peace and harmony as dictated by the teaching of The Great Moore.
Live short and prosper.
Robots will inevitably eventually be superior to humans in every possible way once the trick of intelligent self-aware consciousness is found.
The alternative is to become cyborg – Become integrated with the machines… Become one with the machines… Throw away your fleshy body.
“Robots will inevitably eventually be superior to humans in every possible way once the trick of intelligent self-aware consciousness is found.”
That doesn’t mean it will be to our benefit.
“The alternative is to become cyborg – Become integrated with the machines… Become one with the machines… Throw away your fleshy body. ”
That’s not the part causing all the problems.
It’s fun to see that it seem impossible to talk about robots and peace at the same time. Robots seem to spell doom and «resistance is futile». iRobots, Terminator and many more picture them in a harmfull way.
So… if nobody can think about a way to have nice robots that can live with humans, why try to create them??
“It’s fun to see that it seem impossible to talk about robots and peace at the same time. Robots seem to spell doom and «resistance is futile». iRobots, Terminator and many more picture them in a harmfull way. ”
I’ll tell you why it would be difficult to build a peaceful intelligent robot. First we haven’t fully established if the reason people have difficulty with establishing peace is fully internal. An intelligent robot faced with the same evolutionary forces and goals, could behave in an aggressive manner.*[1]
Also any robot created by us, will conciously, or unconciously be imbided with some of our characteristics. Some of which could lead to agressive behaviour.*
*Of course someone will point out that “peace” could be defined as the managment of agression, as opposed to it’s absence.
Well in both cases, we are still engaging in a great deal of speculation, because there’s still a lot we don’t understand about “being human”[1].
[1] I’d be remise if I didn’t point out that agressive (non-peaceful) behaviour isn’t confined to humans.
“So… if nobody can think about a way to have nice robots that can live with humans, why try to create them?? ”
Because you sometimes learn more in the journey, than you do at the finish line.
I don’t wonder why people make them. I know why people do it – to see if they can. What I wonder about is whether or not these people are aware that they are likely dooming the human race to be a secondary shareholder of this planet as they comb through the lines of code making the computer ever so much more intelligent.
What a waste of time, and a load of crap. Next we will hear of a great breakthrough for mankind, a robot to wipe one’s arse when going to the toilet and some jerk somewhere will try to sell that as a wonder of the world of the powerful robot.
The way I see it is that the key to keeping “mobile virii” to a minimum is to maintain a heterogeneous environment.
Think about it. If all mobile devices are connected to some network or other, and they all run the same OS – albeit tweaked for their specific purpose – then there is the potential for complete havoc.
The same is true in the biological world. Not all animals are susceptible to the same virii, therefore all animals are relatively safe in a heterogenous environment. If you put a cow in an environment where there are only other cows – no other type of animal exists in said environment – then disease and infection would spread like nobody’s business. If, however, the same number of animals were present, but they were not all cows (some pigs, some sheep, some ducks, some horses, some llamas, whatever) then the cows are potentially better off (disease wise). A cow will not necessarily be susceptible to the same diseases as the ducks.
Likewise, a mobile environment with some PocketPC some Symbian, some embeddedBSD and others, will be less susceptible to complete domination by a single “mobile pathogen” than if all devices ran the same OS.
After that rather obscure rant, I think I’ll stop there.