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Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

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Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#31

Post by streety »

nwinter wrote: post #20
ejs wrote: post #4

Update all the people with ie6 to something newer

How difficult would it be to write a virus that fixed common system vulnerabilities? Could one write something that would run Windows Update, download Spybot and some other free antivirus programs to do a sweep, update Java and Flash, etc.?

Although I have no sources I was under the impression that the more sophisticated viruses already did this. Not for altruistic reasons but because they want exclusive control of the resources available.

I imagine it's similar to the biochemical changes that occur in a newly fertilized egg to prevent entry of additional sperm.

I could be wrong though. As I say I haven't exactly researched this.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#32

Post by run4yourlives »

jlees wrote: post #25
chaosmachine wrote: post #10

Synchronize the system clock, set the volume to maximum, and then, at the right moment, and with perfect synchronicity, each computer would play back a prerecorded speech claiming to be a message from God...

Or Rick Astley.

Same thing no?

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#34

Post by icey »

cperciva wrote: post #23
randomwalker wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure did. Funny thing is, I was into this stuff back then (at one point me and another guy were chasing the record for the largest 7-tuple in arithmetic progression; we ended up with the second largest), so I'm sure I heard about your effort at the time. BBP survives in my memory a decade later, but not PiHex. I have to say though, your original comment was definitely an obscure reference, even on HN :-)

I have to say though, your original comment was definitely an obscure reference, even on HN I think a lot of people who have been here for longer than you were aware of my connection to PiHex -- it has come up a few times.

Not all of us keep our leather bound "Life and Times of Colin Percival" on our desks.

Some of us keep them under our pillows so we can have sweet, sweet cperciva dreams.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#36

Post by Shamiq »

themic86 wrote: post #29
Steve0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was thinking along those lines. Start transferring money from all accounts to all accounts. Stop when everyone has the same amount of money. Should be fun for a while.

How much would everyone have if that happened? My guess is somewhere around $50k.

Maybe, but would it retain its real worth?

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#37

Post by randomwalker »

randomwalker wrote: post #22
cperciva wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBP algorithm is not only parallelizable, it's embarrassingly parallel. Each term in the series can be computed independently of the rest. In case you missed half of the joke: The PiHex project computed the quadrillionth bit of Pi back in 1998-2000... and was run by yours truly.

I sure did. Funny thing is, I was into this stuff back then (at one point me and another guy were chasing the record for the largest 7-tuple in arithmetic progression; we ended up with the second largest), so I'm sure I heard about your effort at the time. BBP survives in my memory a decade later, but not PiHex. I have to say though, your original comment was definitely an obscure reference, even on HN :-)

Just read that comment again, I meant the largest 7-tuple of primes in arithmetic progression. Otherwise that doesn't make any sense :-)

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#38

Post by ars »

themic86 wrote: post #29
Steve0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was thinking along those lines. Start transferring money from all accounts to all accounts. Stop when everyone has the same amount of money. Should be fun for a while.

How much would everyone have if that happened? My guess is somewhere around $50k.

Depends on if you mean M0, M1, M2, or M3.

If you mean M0, then assuming 300,000,000 people in the US it's $2,500 per person. If you mean M2 it's $25,000. And M3 is is a secret, but in 2006 it was about 35% larger than M2.

Defining money is a lot more complicated than you think, since the majority of the money in the world is in the form of debt, and it's not actually possible to share it around.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#39

Post by themic86 »

ars wrote: post #38
themic86 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would everyone have if that happened? My guess is somewhere around $50k.

Depends on if you mean M0, M1, M2, or M3. If you mean M0, then assuming 300,000,000 people in the US it's $2,500 per person. If you mean M2 it's $25,000. And M3 is is a secret, but in 2006 it was about 35% larger than M2. Defining money is a lot more complicated than you think, since the majority of the money in the world is in the form of debt, and it's not actually possible to share it around.

good point. I was doing a simple "how many 'dollars' are in 'circulation' / population". of course, most money isn't money, it is, like you said, digitized debt.
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