This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
"a lot of computers are closed systems that are responsible only to themselves, with no way to even contact the outside world, let alone receive new instructions from some malicious techie."
Unless you use wireless internet. I think that's what this one is about.
LTR - When I wrote that, I meant that a lot of computers, or things that use CPU's cannot be "reprogrammed" in the conventional sense from somone who just hooks up a laptop. Small appliances, the CPU on your car, their programming is hard-wired into them, and cannot simply be changed the way you can change the font on a webpage by altering a line of code. It's a double whammy, not only is ANY computer vulnerable to an hacker, but a hacker can make said comptuer do almost anything once they get in. "Closed" in that sense means that the device is not constructed in a way that it can be repogrammed without opening it up and changing it's guts, but on TV and in the movies, all you have to do is dowload your program onto it, and bingo, it'll do whatever you want.
Ununnilium: Plus, if you're using a wireless internet connection, the thing has to have a wireless connection of its own.
Seanzo: "Inspector Gadget's niece Penny's Computer Book. A laptop computer before there were laptop computers, she could break into anything to help her Uncle Gadget."
According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong, of course ;-), Inspector Gadget first aired the same year that the first laptop was introduced (The Gavilan SC).
Ununnilium: I think that's close enough. It's annoying when people put a bunch of qualifiers in a statement that otherwise flows nicely.
BT The P: Animation Lead Time. It takes a while to make a cartoon, which hurts topicality. In fact, I'm off to make a page on that. Bluetooth, away!
Semiapies: "Many of the electronic things it spreads through, like cash registers, aren't even supposed to be online." I haven't seen the movie, but there are cash registers that are networked to store servers that do connect to each other via the internet. Some of them even use wireless networking. If they're especially modern or even futuristic cash registers, it's not unreasonable.
LTR - Ah yes, but they are on a company intra-net, you'd never put them on a publicly-accessable non protected network, as that way, someone could get into the system and start stealing CC numbers or changing the prices of producs for thier own gain. Again, they are online, but it's a secure online that can't be cracked by someone out in the store parking lot with a laptop. The store I work at has the servers inside a secure room along with the store safe for just that reason
Krid: Sad to say, but it's recently come to light that somebody has stolen 45 million people's credit cards due to insecure networking of cash registers. Of course, that's just a concrete example; credit cards have been using some form of networking to authenticate for years - which has been dial-up until recently, but it's still a two-way digital connection.
From the Terminator 3 example: "Worse still, the Terminator is able to control current day automobiles through infecting them with nanobots, which doesn't explain how they could pick up the signal."
Surely the nanobots could construct a small transmitter? Such manufacturing is, as I understand it, part of the potential advantage of nanomachines.
