-----Original Message-----
From: mark@unicorn.com <mark@unicorn.com>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: 07 January 1999 12:29
Subject: Re: Major Technologies
>Spike Jones [spike66@ibm.net] wrote:
>>no, because the most dangerous form of grey goo would be the
>>replicator running the ultra simple program
>>
>>10 eat
>>20 make copies of self
>>30 go to 10
>
>Hardly. The fundamental problem with grey goo is 'how do I stop myself
>eating my copies?', just as the fundamental problem with computer virii
>is 'how do I stop myself infecting programs I've already infected?'. If
>a virus doesn't check for prior infections it pretty quickly destroys
>the computer it's running on, and kills itself in the process.
But Grey Goo doesn't mind if it kills it's host. It doesn't even mind if it eats other grey goo. If you have an expanding sphere of grey goo, the inside goo can feed on itself while the outside goo eats other things.
Samael