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So this is basically a self-propagating virus started by someone indeed offering Free Public WiFi, now kept alive by hopeful XP users clicking on the network?
by Cushman 16y ago
So this is basically a self-propagating virus started by someone indeed offering Free Public WiFi, now kept alive by hopeful XP users clicking on the network?
That is so wild. It's like the ad-hoc wifi equivalent of a chain letter.
Edit: Thinking about it, it's even crazier... Because the bug only happens when there aren't any available networks, it springs up in situations when there are a lot of people looking for wireless, but there isn't any— on buses, conferences, etc. The exact sort of situations where people are most likely to try out "Free Public WiFi", so the virus is more likely to propagate.
Furthermore, the name is important. In order for it to become a widespread phenomenon, it has to be a name a lot of people will click on. But we can imagine that a lot of people have set up ad-hoc networks with different names that wound up being temporarily duplicated by the bug. Some of those with attractive names may have caused further duplication before finally disappearing. The more attractive the name, the more likely it is to be duplicated before being overwritten. In effect, the name "Free Public WiFi" has been selected for.
I'm calling it: This is the first (global?) distributed wireless network that evolved on its own. Unfortunately, evolution doesn't require that it actually be useful to people :P
- mayank 16y ago> This is the first (global?) distributed wireless network that evolved on its own. Not really. It's emergent behavior in a complex system. You have a lot of entities (in this case, unpatched Windows XP SP2 and below systems), and a set of very simple local rules (if (winxp and no wifi) then create last adhoc network, if (human and see "free public wifi") then click link). The fascinating behavior that emerges from the interplay of these local rules is the global "virus" if you will. It's a fascinating area of research, and even aside from the inflated egos of some physicists in the area, I'm glad I'm studying the field. Read Duncan Watts' book "Six degrees" for a decent popsci introduction to the field (you might have to skip some self-aggrandizing of physics as the Savior of Intellectual Thought though). Edit: cellular automata are a more recognizable CS example of this.
- Cushman 16y agoThat's not contradicting me? Evolution is a special case of emergent behavior in a complex system. The rules of the buggy system mean that any ad-hoc network can be replicated if a user connects to it. That creates selective pressure on the name of ad-hoc networks in that convincing more users to click on them causes further replication. So we have a (somewhat) self-replicating entity, with variation, and a selective process applied to that variation. Sounds like evolution to me. (Of course the names are originally made by people; but if we assume that ad-hoc networks aren't named with the intention of creating a self-replicating pattern, they're effectively random from the perspective of the ecosystem. The success of "Free Public WiFi" is a product of selection, not human design.)
- jamii 16y agoEvolution requires mutation. If the name occasionally got garbled then it would be evolution.
- imd 16y agoEvolution requires survival of the fittest. If the name got more enticing over time then it would be evolution.
- jforman 16y agoTechnically evolution does not require survival of the fittest or mutation. Evolution is merely the change in allelic frequency in a population over time. Without selective pressure (i.e., "survival of the fittest") you can still have evolution via drift, the founder effect, etc. Drift is a very important source of evolution in a lot of situations (during my PhD I studied how a source of seeming drift in the coding regions of genes was actually caused by selective pressure in some cases). Without mutation a population can still evolve, too - for example, if a disease struck and there was no mutation, an allele that protected against the disease would quickly dominate the population. This is a much more pedantic thing to point out (on my part), though, since every stretch of every organism's DNA mutates. The different mutation rates of viruses, bacteria, and humans due to replication errors (and the resulting effect on evolution) is a pretty fascinating topic, though.