> Shame they deleted the scene explaining all that. It's still easy to find though.
Huh! I always thought the logic was that since the aliens used earth satellite systems they had already interfaced with human computer systems and the infection was made via the satellite system, which I believe the main character was knowledgable about.
That doesn't entirely follow, though. Just because you could talk to the alien computers doesn't mean you could execute a program on them. IMO the deleted scene is the only way it can make sense.
Actually lol, who says the aliens were not running a emulator of our own systems and in their hubris ran it on elevated privs.
ok ok, considering the Aliens allowed their own ship, which was visually compromised AND could have been easily scanned for non-alien life(?)... clearly not a culture of security.
That's like saying a C64 virus could work against a Linux box, because a C64 modem was used to control the C64.
And as the virus author, you've never seen Linux, have no idea about anything past the C64, including bioses, CPU structure, APIs, PCI/etc architecture, and all other computing hardware, and?
That's being friendly, because they'd be interfacing with computing systems hundreds, thousands, or millions of years more advanced, written by aliens, which view the universe entirely differently due to different brain structures, with an unknown number or type of senses, with an unknown way those senses work or are perceived, with "code" not necessarily in binary, or using silicon based chips, or even transistors, or.. well, this part never ends.
The premise is immensely absurd.
Of course it is a movie, but this sort of canon puts it into soft scifi, if not fantasy.
If you go with the logic of the deleted scene, it's like asking if an 80s programmer with no knowledge of modern hardware or software could still make a virus that would infect modern systems, which makes it significantly easier to swallow.
Well, you can use an approach like CosmicOS [1] to bootstrap a functional computer to the alien hardware and then write a JavaScript interpreter and display in that bootstrapped language. In fact autonomous agents might be needed in general due to the long round-trip time of such interstellar messages.
"This civilization appears to be sending threatening messages in form of a simulation that demonstrates their destructive intent. Put their eradication on the TODO list."
One of my favorite copypasta, for it’s cosmic level of deranged belligerence:
“A LETTER TO ALL ALIENS SPYING ON EARTH'S WIRELESS INTERNET SIGNALS:
DEAR ALIENS,
IGNORE EVERYTHING THAT NASA AND THE SPACE NERD SCIENTISTS HAVE TOLD YOU. THIS IS THE ONLY OFFICIAL, LEGITIMATE, HONEST STATEMENT OF ALL THE PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENTS OF PLANET EARTH. ALL OF US COLLECTIVELY, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, THINK THAT:
• EVERY ALIEN IS A SON OF A BITCH
• WE WILL WIN ANY SPACE WAR
• OUR ENTIRE PLANET IS A BOMB
• FUCK YOU FUCK YOU
WE WILL NEVER EVER CHANGE OUR OPINION IGNORE EVERYTHING THEY PUT ON VOYAGER 1”
I propose we inscribe the Doom and Quake source onto twin golden platters[0] and send them into outer space with the next interstellar probe.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record