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IS COMPUTER VIRUS, A LIFE?


 Life:  An organism composed of cells have a life cycle; undergo metabolism; can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, reproduce and evolve.

 Virus;  It is a biological agent that reproduces inside the cells of living hosts.  When infected by a virus, a host cell is forced to produce thousands of identical copies of the original virus at an extraordinary rate.

     Let us try to find out whether a computer virus is a life according to the definitions. 
     Suppose, a press is printing a recipe for making tea.
     If a proof-reader deliberately replaces the word 'sugar' by 'salt' and sends it for printing, thousands of copies will be printed with the error.  Here an error has crept in and multiplied.  It is a kind of virus.  But it can be rectified easily using common sense.

      Consider the following computer code:
     for adding 1 to 10
     for I = 1 to 10
     SUM = SUM + I
     NEXT I
     PRINT SUM
     The above program works fine and prints the sum of 1 to 10.  Suppose I insert malicious code or command as given below.
     FOR I 1 to 10
     SUM = SUM + I
     NEXT I
     "Go to Beginning"
     PRINT SUM

      Now the execution will repeatedly go to the beginning of the code.  The sum will never be printed.  The computer goes into an endless infinite loop.  The computer cannot do any other work properly and all the CPU time will be taken by this program.

      Suppose, this code multiplies and spreads through a network of computers and infect other computers, it attains all the characteristics of a living virus.  It may be killed by an antivirus (again a piece of code).  Or we have to kill the host, the computer.  That is, we have to erase the computer memory completely and reload all the software again.

       Bio-virus is Nature-made
      A computer virus is man-made,

      In a way, we can say computer virus is almost a life but not carbon based but silicon-based.  It is electronic life and not biological life.  But in future, Robotics and electronic life may dominate.

      Anyway, we have to learn to live with viruses, be it electronic or biological.    
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