6 ms·
Right--as I understand it, it's not that different than Google's "Meeting Room Hardware Virus": "I imagine it started with all of the adapters which were throw
by matthewmcg 11y ago
Right--as I understand it, it's not that different than Google's "Meeting Room Hardware Virus":
"I imagine it started with all of the adapters which were thrown around in every meeting room. Everyone with a Macbook of some flavor needed a DVI to VGA adaptor in order to use the projectors, so they were plentiful. Somehow, someone probably damaged one of them and smooshed a couple of pins into places where they should not have gone.
"Then, someone else forced this into their Mac. Perhaps two pins tried to go into just the one socket. At any rate, it would now break the socket and get it all out of whack. That socket, used with another adapter in another room, would then break that adapter. This new broken adapter would then go on to break even more Macbook DVI connectors.
Thus, we had a hardware virus." [1]
[1] https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/24/dvi/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/24/dvi/
- gmantom 11y agoSounds like AIDS. What with the sockets and everything.
- jotux 11y agoSimilar things happen with PCMCIA cards. The connector design on PCMCIA cards is just awful in that male pins are in the receptacle/PC. If you accidentally clog one of the holes on the PCMCIA cards connector and plug it into a receptacle it will bend the pin over.
- tropo 11y agoMale pins on the card would fail just the same way, plus they'd also get more damage from being exposed. The only upside would be easier repair and, in most cases, cheaper replacement. The correct fix would be pins with a better length/width ratio.
- TheSpiceIsLife 11y agoOr no pins as at all but rather a PCB edge connector[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_connector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_connector
- rudolf0 11y agoThat might be the best analogy for prions I've ever heard. (At least for this audience.)
- lambda 11y agoAlso reminiscent of the Zip drive "click of death" problem, in which bad media could damage drives in such a way that the drives could damage media that would further damage other drives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death
- shiro 11y agoIt sounds very plausible explanation of prion infection. I'm a layman and don't know how far the correspondence go---but if the correspondence holds, is there an agent that complements prions? That is, if prions are damaged receptacle, is there another protein for the damaged plug that propagates damage to other normal proteins?