Slashdot Mirror
Scientist Infects Self With Computer Virus
superapecommando writes "A British scientist claims to have become the first human to be infected by a computer virus, in an experiment he says has important implications for the future of implantable technology. Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading infected a computer chip with the virus, then implanted it in his hand and transmitted the virus to a PC to prove that malware can move between human and computer."
just plain stupid
this sounds like that cyborg man retard from a few years ago.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
OK that's pretty stupid.
quick, offer his a job as a slashdot janitor!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
What a fscking moron
Or a show-off.
Or better, a fscking show-off moron
I couldn't think of anything more irrelevant, like, REALLY
I mean, this is Uri Geller type of BS
The mind boggles.
how long until
The implications of this being that.....what? When The Evil Government (tm) infuses us all with tracking chips, we open up ourselves to being hacked?
I can see it now....
Can new RFID technology lead to making you or your families ZOMBIES of the federal government? TONIGHT on Glenn Beck!
My other sig is clever.
Infect chip.
Implant chip.
Get chip to infect computer.
How was it ever contracted, let alone transmitted by the human? You could wear the chip as a necklace, tie it to a paper airplane, or just throw it and get the same results.
All he showed was that a computer virus can be transmitted from an implanted computer to an external computer. The scientist did not infect himself with a computer virus, he infected a chip that he had implanted in himself. If it is news to you that a computer chip implanted in a person can be infected with a computer virus, then this is the wrong board for you.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If we're looking for firsts....
I once had a cold and sneezed on my keyboard.
Does that make me the first human to infect a computer???
Or was the good doctor merely going after being 'first' at something?
Adult Role Playing Forum
I don't see the relevance. Maybe if the chip which is not standard now adays is infected with a virus that specifically causes problems. Say you have a chip that keeps your hearth rhythm normal, and the virus tells your "device" to make your heart beat 200x a minute. This would be troublesome, but not what this was meant to show. Though I think it is conceptual proof-of-concept. So when we do go down that route of future implants security measures need to be put in place. There was an article not so long ago where it was shown a person could send signals to a pacemaker to cause harm.
It seems like he was just trying to make headlines.
I almost thought this was a real story and I was about to say what a load of cr@p it was. Then I noticed it had the Idle tag.
We're still far off from GITS's brain hacking. His biological functions remain entirely unaffected, as he is merely carrying the infected chip with him. Effectively, he might as well just be keeping a passcard with an infected smartchip in his wallet, the result would be the same.
SPAM coming from his ass? Literally?
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
How is this different from transmitting a virus via floppy diskette, other than the fact that he carried it on the inside of his hand, and the read/write mechanism was RF instead of magnetic?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
He only "proved" that a computer virus can move onto a writeable computer chip. We've only known that for how many decades now? Nice theater, though.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If I stick a virus on a thumbdrive, stick THAT up my ass...
Could I make headlines too?
I'll download a database of computer virii and store it on a usb thumbdrive. Eat it. Plug it back in after I find it again. It'd be about as useful as this study. Actually more useful, because we'd find out if a usb thumbdrive can survive stomach acids.
And here I was, all excited for a story that sounds like it came straight out of Snow Crash. Nice try, dude.
"Before criticizing someone, first walk a mile in his shoes. Then, you'll be a mile away... and you'll have his shoes."
"A British scientist claims to have become the first human to be infected by a computer virus, in an experiment he says has important implications for the future of implantable technology. Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading infected a computer chip which was then implanted in his hand with the virus and then transmitted it to a PC to prove that malware can move between human and computer."
This is the first time a computer chip implanted in a human has passed a virus onto a PC.
And did we really need a proof of concept of this? File it under 'Fucking-Duh'
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Is for this researcher to be the first to contract the metavirus when it arrives...
He infected the microchip that he embedded in his hand. The virus had no affect on his body in any way. The only difference between this and carrying malware on a flash drive is that he had the memory implanted on his body. If he "infects himself", it implies that the malware had some sort of affect on his body/physiology.
What a fucking idiot. Seriously.
Now, if, and I mean -if- he had a chip that was actually wired to his nerves and he got that infected with a virus then maybe I could see the point.
Personally, I think we should wire something up to his eyes so we can tell him how fucking stupid he is in scrolling, blinking text.
In other news, chimpanzee learns sign language by listening to Metallica. To achieve this, researchers simply taught the chimpanzee sign language while playing Metallica.
The article is just worded poorly. It implies that he actually contracted a computer virus, just like any human virus.
All he really did was just implant a chip in his hand that had a virus on it. Then he demonstrated that the chip would actually transmit the virus. Which isn't really a huge shock, since he was using it to communicate with other devices in the first place. According TFA, he used it for security passes and his phone.
So, at some point, he turned this into: "Pacemakers are at risk"....which, since they're not communication devices...no, no they're not.
Sounds to me like someone lost their grant money or something, and was trying to justify eating doughnuts for 3 years and doing nothing else.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
When I first saw this, I thought Alastair Reynolds was a prophet. Then I found out it was kind of a dumb story. *Yawn*
What do you think, sirs?
...thought experiments are sufficient.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
I will now be the first human being to have Linux installed ...
*puts Linux ISO on USB flash drive and drops his pants*
My work here is dung.
I agree with everyone that this demonstration was stupid... But the bigger question here deserves to be discussed - implanted devices CAN be infected with viruses, and we have to be careful about that... Implanted devices are becoming more and more common - it's not just pacemakers anymore. There was an article in Wired recently about the drive to create a "smart" insulin pump, one that would sense your blood sugar level and then adjust insulin delivery accordingly. This will become more and more common as we apply technology to "curing" disease... Keeping that technology virus free should be a high priority, especially as this technology gets integrated in more complex ways.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Wake me up when someone has actually infected an organic organism at the cellular level with an honest to goodness computer virus made up of 0s and 1s (which is theoretically possibly since the human body controls itself in large part by electric pulses sent from the brain).
http://www.bynarystudio.com
If i'd eat an infected USB disk, id get the same result?
If I'd cough some influenza on my keyboard id get the same (yet reciprocal) result?
Idle is indeed the word.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
http://www.google.com/search?q=captain+cyborg
Ah, without clicking on any links (we have to stop feeding that fraud), google let me know this was the work of his sidekick, not him directly. Now, I demand that this fraud be fully identified in all future slashdot posts about him or his minions (an addendum to this thread would be wise, too), because HE'S A FUCKING CHARLATAN!
Seriously, he called himself the "first cyborg" for putting an RFID chip in his skin years after people have had pacemakers, cochlear implants, and fucking wires in their brains (for vision to the blind and computer communications for the paralyzed). All reporters who called him "the first cyborg" should be fired, all "news" outlet that published that crap should be fined and stripped of all journalistic-perks (press passes, immunity from certain police procedures, etc). He's an attention whore who pulls these stupid publicity stunts to promote his books, stop helping him with his frauds.
You can't take the sky from me...
If I swallow my thumb drive containing all my favorite programs, would they come out decompiled?
This guy is from the Cybernetics department at Reading University in the UK. This happens to be where I got my EE degree from. From my point of view he's just succeeding in devaluing my education
What about wireless implants?. Now to guarantee the safe access to a building all they must be scanned by a anti-virus
It won't surprise you to learn that Dr. Gasson's Lab at Whiteknights is only a few miles from Mr. Geller's residence in Sonning. If you want to find out what other idiocy the cybernetics department of the University of Reading have been up to, do a quick search for "Kevin Warwick".
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
The virus did not originate, in any way shape or form, from his biological matter. So this is a pile of crap, this attention seeker should have his tenure revoked.
It moved PC > Computer Chip > PC.
This experiment is about the same as infecting a jump drive, putting it in your pocket, then infecting some other PC and proclaiming it a miracle of science.
At no point was this virus ever "in" a human. It was being transported by a human, but it was still "in" a computer.
I have to agree. How effing pointless is this?
It's psedo science mumbo jumbo that's designed to appeal to the press who appeal in turn to the unwashed clueless.
The word virus in phrase computer virus is descriptive analogy to illustrate how a computer virus works.
Replicating from infected computer host to infect other computer hosts that come into communicative contact. The terms virus, infect, host are all used in the description of biological viruses.
This story is about a man who has implanted into his body a small device capable of storing information. The information just happens to be a computer virus. It could just as easily have been a random pdf or some porn. His body is incapable of receiving, decoding, or executing the information on the chip. There is no crossover, no human to computer infection. He shoved a computer chip up his arse that computers equipped with suitable anal RF readers can read. So what?
Shove a USB pendrive onto into his head and make a story about man augments memory by drilling hole in his skull and ramming memory chip inside.
Man shoots up gay porn into his arm would have probably been a more interesting story with more relevance.
You've not proved anything, you've just made yourself look like an idiot.
So, what, you proved that flesh can't block radio signals? Good job there moron, we've only known that for about 100 years or so.
God, I can't wait until the mainstream media gets wind of this one. The stupid, it will burn.
It would be fun to design a chip in your throat (think auto-tuning for voice cords' diseases), that has the ability to emit chemicals (to offset the hypothetical disease) and detect the current level of chemicals in the throat (for the purposes of negative feedback in order to control the normal level of drugs in the throat).
The chip is run by the software of course.
The virus would modulate chemical release with the ability to kill the host or send a digital virus sequence via modulated chemical signal to a similar chip in another person.
Then, of course, it is much simpler to imagine a two-way radio based connection to such chip.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
. . . my body runs Linux afterall :)
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Acquire RFID chip from the organization you wish to compromise, if they use them to track inventory, it's probably quite easy.
Load the chip with a rootkit, and insert it back into the supply chain.
Profit?
I don't know if it's news, but I've never thought of it before.
Why not just swallow it then remove it from the toilet, less surgery, and the same damn thing. Just bizarre what people do sometimes.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
"British scientist" - wow, don't hear those words next to each other too often! It's sort of an oxymoron like "military intelligence" or "ethical journalist". The culture of innovation and discovery is going away, the future of Britain is a stable, multicultural society that respects the wishes of its citizens.
this is a duplicate - how did it make the front page?
Ok, that guy is a complete and total idiot, but when I first saw the title I thought, he wrote a computer virus to alter his DNA...i.e. using computer software to manipulate "genetic software" (I call rights to that one, bitches). Anyways, my idea is way cooler and scarier than some idiot with an implanted chip that infected a computer...a better story would have been the chip he implanted in himself gave him syphilis, then cured said syphilis, or that he went through the trouble of implanting a chip, only to find his firewall or anti-virus software blocked his attack, he contracted some disease from the implanted chip and the world is left with one less moron...too harsh?
I have never seen anything on slashdot before that I would say WTF over, but this seriously deserves it. Come on, delete this. It was completely stupid to even try to post this as news.
That is probable one of the biggest piece of false-science I have ever seen in years. The exact same thing could have been done with any compromised wireless device; the fact that the chip is under his skin is completely irrelevant. People helping to carry computer viruses have been around for decades, remember those floppies of shareware with virus on them??? Come-on!
So is he going to start spouting random advertisements for cheap prescription drugs, pr0n websites, and how to enlarge my member, or simply be a zombie as part of a botnet?
Get back to me when he infects his pacemaker, or muscle controller, or drug release system, etc etc.
Dude has a crappy computer chip in him that has a virus on it. Now what? Will he try to get rid of the virus? Will he try and take the chip out?
He has a useless computer chip in his body. That has got to suck.
Imagine him trying to brag to people about it:
"I have a computer chip implanted in me." "Cool, what does it do?" "Nothing, it is infected with a computer virus."
FAIL
The world is how you make it
Jeez, this is stupid! I hope the guy is reading these posts, I can't believe he doesn't know how stupid this is.
I also can't believe anyone would fund this... damn!
Slashdot - this is below you.
Makes about as much sense as flying mega shark.
What a load of crap. He proved nothing. The human is not the vector, the RFID chip is. And I HATE it when they call RFID implants 'computer chips'.
Is taking everyone on this site down a notch.
remove it
What is it with nerds and implanting technology into their bodies? It doesn't seem to have much to do with practical use. Is it some kind of power fantasy?
What is THAT?
I mean... Jeez! I am at a loss to conjure up the words that will allow me to voice how stupid this whole situation is, and how mind numbingly retard this guy's single neuron must have been years ago, before it died an agonizing death!
In the end, there can be only one!
For me, this post and summary is an all time low for Slashdot.
Maybe if the summary had said "check out how stupid this is..."
Geeze. C'mon. What if somebody has their abdomen opened up and puts an entire laptop in there? What's the difference?
Then later found out it had the Conficker worm. Good thing we are incompatible or I might have gotten worms.
What kind of mad scientist University is this?
Are there any 2-D bar codes with enough capacity, and a bar code reader system with enough security holes, that I could get a tattoo on my arm that could infect random windows boxes?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
And for his next trick, Dr Mark Gasson will insert an Atari 2600 controller into his anus, and proceed to control a Windows PC's mouse cursor with it. This is the first time a human has ever taken over control of a computer with the twitching of their rectal wall, and demonstrates the need for anal computer security.
All hail scientific achievement.
What we do not need in the IT security field is stupid publicity stunts.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I suggest we copy a virus into a removable media. Nop, not a small pendrive, I am thinking of a 4GB Quantum Bigfoot. Then, we stick it up this "scientist's" ass. Wait 2 days. Then we plug it back in into a computer. For science.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Would give a new meaning to "jacking off"
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
I had visions of a real-world Snow Crash.
Did anyone notice the Dalek in the background controlling Dr Mark Gasson?
Snarf!
The University of Reading does not have the reputation of other universities in the U.K., and this is a good example of why.
This was a transmission between machine and machine. It is no different than a malware infection from a USB stick.
To quote the very first response: "Stupid. Just plain stupid."
I'm not one to complain about /. editors; but, come on!
This is "News for Nerds - Stuff That Matters." Did CN just hire some recent college grads that majored in Type-Writer Maintenance and wouldn't know the difference between HD Memory and computer memory?
Just....plain....stupid.
No, I'm not kidding. I have a pacemaker (the term "fatal error" is not a euphemism to me).
Yes, the guy is a twit. "Infecting" a chip, sticking it in himself for storage, then using it to "infect" another chip, all to say "computer virus infects man, then vice versa" is stupid.
However...
As a prior /. article noted, there are concerns about the security of wireless-interface modern pacemakers and other implanted medical devices. Get close enough to me and you could (with undue effort) surreptitiously reprogram my pacemaker to annoying or lethal results. It is conceivable (though unlikely, as the software is very robust due to the severity of errors) that someone could write and deliver a computer virus to a pacemaker, a virus which in turn could infect the diagnostic computer at the patient's next tuneup, which could then repeat the cycle when used with another patient. Conceivable as a thought experiment, yes, but also vanishingly small probability in the real world (not enough computers of enough value to be worth the effort, coupled with extremely strict data checking therein). This may not "infect" a person in the normal sense, but could have very real life-altering effects (what, really, is the difference at that point?), and could involve a "contagious" vector that could spread to other implanted devices.
I'm not worried ... but neither can I dismiss the concept entirely.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
May 26th will now be known as "Face-Palm Day".
Or "May Fool's Day".
Just one day after Towel Day, too.
This signature intentionally left unblank.
While this story has absolutely no redeeming value, it (and the comments above) do serve as boredom release. Does this get filed under Slashdot's entertainment section? SlashUS?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
...for the Ig Nobel prize ?!?
I bet someone has swallowed a floppy/pendrive/whatever with a virus on it before.
(+1, Disagree)
Too bad he didn't infect himself biologically; it surely would have been a new addition to the Darwin award winners! ;-)
Pointless Self Promotion
I tried to put a virus infected PIC controller in my ear - I only felt slightly more stupid.
This guy is not only a moron for thinking this qualifies as infecting a human, but he's an assh*le for pushing the scientific community toward accepting something so trivial and, dare I say, fake as real science.
I hope the implant process hurt. Like *really* hurt. Also, I hope the virus code makes the chip heat up so it burns him from the inside. Slowly.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
covers all the bases this could ever touch...
*sigh* I'll end up with no hope for humanity.
This signature is DRM protected. By the DMCA, you are not allowed to counteract or oppose to it.
I'm never going to infect my computer with a rhinovirus, or a common cold, or polio. It's not going to get smallpox (even in the lab), chickenpox, or herpes.
When we start making computers out of biological components, then we can have this discussion. In the meantime, I could implant an infected chip in my shoe and make a claim.
Stupid.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If the doctor embedded a Bluetooth device that would remain undetected until he sent a special-coded signal, at which point it would seek to compromise blue tooth devices in the reachable area with a malicious payload, THEN it would be a news item. The current story is nothing but supermarket trash-paper ZOMG ZOMBIES headline.
He really got caught after giving his wife a case of Syphilis. "uhm, yeah, honey, I was doing an experiment. Yeah, experiment that's it.. See I injected an infected computer chip into my body, yeah that's it, infected chip and it mutated into Syphilis and that's how you got it."
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
So this implant thing...is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?
Omg you guys!
My phone got a virus while it was in my pocket and now my computer is infected!
This is like, proof that malware can be transferred from pants to computer!!
Somebody tag this with snowcrash.
I, for one, welcome our new computer-virus-infected-implanted-chip-wannabe-scientist-overlords!
Someone obviously needed to get into the press desperately again.
I presume the festering implant also qualifies this "scientist" as the first instantiation of "AI" -- Artificial Idiocy.
and then i proved Man can core dump.
Idiot.
Just as long as my computer can't get the clap, I'm ok.
Well, no, this fails to be even Uri Geller kind of BS. Uri Geller was a fraud, but he knew how to put on a good show and sell an illusion that was actually quite appealing. In fact, a notion that many people wanted desperately to believe in.
And even if you didn't believe in magic, it was at least very interesting as in trying to figure out "where's the trick"? Before Randi went and showed how it's done, it wasn't obvious at all to us non-trained in the conjuror arts. It was a good trick.
But this guy and Captain Cyborg... words fail me. Really.
I'm a SF fan. I like the idea of cyborgs and all. I like the idea of transferring information directly from a machine to a human and viceversa, though I must qualify it there: to a human brain. I'm even willing to entertain the notion of human consciousness transferred to a machine -- though not to the extent of being a techno-rapture cultist or anything. Etc.
I should be exactly the market target for this kind of stuff. Except not _this_ kind of retarded stuff.
Someone thinking that implanting an RFID chip under the skin makes him Captain Cyborg, or this guy thinking that storing a computer virus on a chip under his skin makes him "infected"... isn't even funny. It's ridiculous, stupid, and just a complete non-sequitur for the actual topic of cyborgs. A guy with a pacemaker or hearing aid is actually more of a "cyborg" because those actually interface with the living tissue and perform a function. A chip that's under the skin but not actually connected to anything biological just is not it.
It doesn't even leave you thinking "what is the trick" or "good trick", because there is no trick. It's just a bad case of equivocation. It's transfer from PC to human only by virtue of the vagueness of the phrase, rather than any useful sense or interesting sense.
If we're to talk Uri Geller comparison, guys like these are more like the equivalent of some guy claiming he's the first guy to eat with his arse. So he shoves a spoon's handle up his arse, takes it out, and then eats something with that spoon.
It's freaking sad, that's what it is.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sounds like something similar to what my 2 year old does when he's not getting enough attention. If the scientist had stuck it up his nose, it'd be spot on.
I heard the term "Tabloid Science" the other day, and this couldn't be a better example (unless it additionally threatened to increase global warming, discover aliens, and involved robots becoming self-aware).
This story is, as I understand it, about a guy who transmitted a computer virus using a RFID chip that happened to be in his finger. And yet, we have this all-star headline, reposted everywhere from the BBC to Slashdot. It's reminiscent of the back pages of popular science magazines ("enslave ants to grow all your woman-attractive pheromones, now only $2.99!") except this is now science reporting, on the Internet.
But I do appreciate all the sex jokes. Hell, we've got to have a place for that in the morning.
scientist must have been Jeff Goldblum. I wonder if he had line of sight transmission capabilities?
Holy, sounds like those 1rst April headlines.
This is actually somewhat interesting if you regard the whole affair as performance art, and not actual research.
-- "The reward of suffering is experience." - Aeschylus
Would this ' computer Virus` malware be Microsoft Windows?
The summary makes it sound like he implanted the chip with a virus in it to prove his point. Completely not what happened.
The chip is in there as part of a greater study in security, part of an entirely different study of a larger scope, it operates his phone for instance. The whole virus discussion is just an aside to the research. The summary writer for slashdot is the moron here.
this:
"infected a computer chip which was then implanted in his hand with the virus and then transmitted it to a PC to prove that malware can move between human and computer"
is an absolute lie. the chip was already there for other reasons.
Coat the sharp sheet metal edges of a PC case in herpes and call the Geek Squad.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Asked for comment, the scientist spoke only one word: "FIRST!!!!11"
...opened (the) Windows
OK, this is hardly a revolution of any kind, but science does require that you do things to prove they are possible not just assume you can do them. Long term there are lots of pratical little details around becomeing a cyborg.
I'm the first human to have an iPhone application installed. I stuck an iPhone in my mouth while an application was being downloaded from the app-store.
I should have picked something other than Windows Vista for my pasemaker.
The declining status of science these days is appalling. This is George W. Bush science!
For those who think this claim has validity: What REALLY happened is that a computer CHIP was stuck in the guy (aka he was 'chipped'). The CHIP was infected. The CHIP was then used to infect a PC. You might as well replace the 'human' element with 'hamster' or 'cement mixer' or 'dirt' or 'asteroid', blahblahblah. Someone send this guy back to high school please.
Now I understand why I cannot keep my hand out of my man parts! The chip in my hand must have gotten infected with the ILOVEYOU worm!
What a dork...
I could inject a usb drive infected with a virus under my skin and plug a computer into it and it would just about be the the same. It'd be interesting if a biological virus translated itself into a computer virus and it passed the bio barrier into hardware.
Form of, a jackass:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann
1. No human was infected with a computer virus.
2. No computer virus was transmitted to a computer from a human.
3. Either he's extremely stupid or just a media whore.
The chip holding the virus was physically located in his body, but it in no way interacted with his body. If that's his only standard then every driver of a car is a cyborg that receives radio signals directly to their brain.
Actually, even that stupid statement is more true than what the british moron said since some interaction between machine and operator exists in a car/driver situation. Unlike that douchebags situation where he's being a convenient tabletop or pocket made of flesh that thinks sticking something randomly inside your body is some kind of breakthrough.
Is that creep the same one that earned the nickname 'Captain Cyborg' for is stupid and false claims of being a cyborg just because he jams things in his flesh that have no other interaction with his body and will still do their exact same function if in a shirt or pants pocket, or even a handbag? I bloody hate that lying duplicitous media whore conman...
That's too easy. How about Linux on a dead badger?
stupid is as stupid does.
that some blinkin' idiots can wreck things by just walking past.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
A simple injection of PC-Cillin should take care of the virus.
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
Instead of buying this expensive part, waste time getting it infected, implant it in yourself, get it to infect another computer.
Why don't you just buy a Windows PC and staple it to your head. Everything accomplished in 1 step. All the extra steps will be handled automatically without the need of human intervention.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Sorry, but much as I love Slashdot, a good deal of misunderstanding here stems from the Slashdot's sensationalised introduction, which is tabloid-press level.
If you RTFA or VTFV , you'd see that nowhere in the linked article OR the video does the researcher imply that he somehow contracted a computer virus, merely that a chip WITHIN HIM did,
and that this chip could potentially pass the virus to another RFID chip or computer system in general.
Of course it stands to reason that a sufficiently sophisticated RFID chip could do this, but at least this is being demonstrated done by SOMEONE, and it IS relevant to widespread technology. It mightn't be the most epochal study in history but it is necessary.
Hmm, I wonder if you could do something interesting with an RFID sensor in Schrödinger's Cat? Nah, it isn't a workable loophole, it's still an observation :( .
I read about this same story in the Weekly World News ~20 years ago. I would have expected /. to either more carefully decide what it selects as credibly news-worthy or find a way to integrate Bat Boy into the story as well (for humor's sake) since there is otherwise nothing redeeming here.
So, I could take a usb thumb drive, get it infected with, say, Win32/AutoRun.UG Worm, shove it up my ass, eat a burrito, poop it out and without washing it, plug it into a computer, and yell "Eureka!" when I start getting pr0n-filled popup adds as the worm takes over? The path to science is a weird one.
No, its garbage. They put a "virus" on a device temporarily in the researcher to generate buzz for a book.
This researcher is a student of the other jackass who keeps putting things in himself and claiming to be a cyborg from the same school.
Implanting an infected chip != first human infected with a computer virus.
At best he is the first human carrier of a computer virus.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
One wonders if this wanker ever spammed his colleagues with warnings about the "Good Times" virus.
I do not resort to name calling... well come to think of it yes I do if it is true. So here goes.
All of you that are saying that "this is stupid" blah blah blah blah blah.
Are you all that mentally challenged that you can not see a use for this? Yes you are right when you say that it is not connected to the human, it is transmitting anyways.... yadda yadda yadda.
Whatever... if you can not see any possible use for this you might as well quit breathing cause I am sure even your kids (if you have any) could come up with a use for this.
Personally I see a huge potential for this which I will not share right now since I really should patent it first before I share it.
I guess being booksmart - like most of you are who replied negatively to this article - is highly overrated. I think even the library janitor can see the simple wisdom of what Dr. Gasson has demonstrated. Don't let your intellects blind you to simple truths that you don't need to prove with science and that you don't need to read in a book. What good does all your knowledge do if you can't even see the plain truth of a matter?
P.S. If you who responded negatively to this article ever need a "modern" heart, I hope it doesn't have an embedded system containing a ... virus.
Fucking moron.
not exactly a 'snow crash', is it?
Reminds me of a joke:
When in the mist, light is slower then sound.
Why? Because you hear the car sooner then you see it.
Just want to add my own, this is stupid and anyone who's remotely impressed by this is stupid, post to the mass. This is stupid.
Puzzle Daze is now my job
Shoe on head!
Computer virus on implanted chip in arm!
(stupid caps filter denies you all the true /b/ experience)
Is it just me or is anyone else worried about the Dalek that listening in on the entire conversation. Maybe its making plans to spread the virus and subjugate the entire human race. "EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!"
Imagine the confusion that will result when he gets a staph infection at the injection site. And the press releases.
Truth.
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