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First Digital Simulation of an Entire Life Form
An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience is reporting on what appears to be the first digital simulation of an entire life form. Researchers created more than a million digital atoms to reverse engineer the satellite tobacco mosaic virus, a relatively simple organism. But is it really a life form? From the article: 'Viruses are tiny bundles of protein and genetic material that straddle the line between life and non-life. Many scientists prefer to call them "particles" because even though they contain RNA or DNA like other lifeforms, they can only replicate inside other living cells.'"
...Symantec/Norton, McAfee, CommandPoint, Crudpuppy, ClamAV, Grisoft and the rest are all preparing signatures, otherwise if this thing gets in the wild it will turn your data into nothing but pond scum... ;P (Aren't there ANY moderators with quirky senses of humor anymore?)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
...We've been able to have viruses on computers for many years now.
"satellite tobacco mosaic virus"
That sounds like the greatest hits of American products, all in one convenient album.
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make install -not war
If they can simulate something else than a virus (because I don't think viruses are intelligent) could they by this way obtain intelligence by simulating an intelligent animal?
Of course. It would take an absolutely colossal amount of computing power, but given sufficient resources and a complete understanding of the basic physics and chemistry involved (neither of which we have yet) you could absolutely simulate a living creature, and the simulation would be intelligent. There have been many sci-fi stories that have used this basic concept. In fact I expect the first intelligent machine will attain its intelligence by simulating a living brain (although at a much higher level than individual atoms).
Dude, this is going to blow your mind.
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