The Newton Virus spreads joy
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted March 7th 2008 3:01PM
posted March 7th 2008 3:01PM
[Thanks, H&M]
posted March 7th 2008 3:01PM
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I wish I could afford a Macbook Pro.
And not just because of this. ;_;
Ah, the good old days of Sneakernet viruses. :D
Seriously, that is an ingenious "virus" that not only would be awesome to use as a prank, but would be a "cool" way to see if your accelerometer's on the fritz. :D
Plus it can give you minutes of entertainment.
AKBlade13
Wow they bought it...
Nice work Troika... trick ya!
It's not a virus if it isn't self propagating, and since it's not malicious...
Still, in old school terms, I suppose it could be a virus.
Heh heh, call Steve Jobs, there's a "virus" for Macs
Nope, even by old-school standards it isn't a virus, because the code is not self-replicating.
Well, real viruses don't replicate themselves either. They have to infect a host cell and make the cell do the replication.
You can say the computer is the host which has to do the replication, but perhaps you can say it's the computer+user, in which case this virus can replicate.
I didn't think so, but then again, I was pretty young in those good ol' days ;)
I wouldn't mind having this as a screen saver!
Thats as much of a virus as the ctrl+shift+alt+direction arrow shortcut in the intel integrated display drivers. You really want to screw with a coworker, spin their display orientation around upside down or sideways. Its even more fun if they have no damn clue how to adjust the video orientation afterwards.
I can't believe they used "Workaholic" and "Mac" in the same sentence. That makes it totally unbelievable.
A clever hacker will write a virus that duplicates this, except that it installs malicious code. Then it will be easy to sucker all the Mac Users because it is "cute" and "artsy". And no sweat because it's not like they even know how to detect a real virus. And then comes the iPhone version...
I know a huge number of windows users who would download spyware disguised as something artsy in a heartbeat. Sorry, but each operating system has such a wide user-base that you just can't make ignorant assumptions like that! The world is filled with idiots, and I do believe that they have distributed themselves fairly well between the different computer platforms.
And yes, I own a mac and love it.
@AnyKey
NO WHERE did he say shit about windows. Now STFU you apple loving queer.
Yea, no shit windows users would find it, we already had it in the way of the Bonzai buddy. What he is saying is that all of those stuck up pieces of crap who use macs would think its cute and disregaurd it thinking that their PC's cant get viruses, when in reality it IS a virus.
Oh and enough of this PC vs MAC crap! a MAC IS A
P ersonal C omputer
you god damn retards.
And NO I dont own a mac, Why? because I'm a GAMER that's why, now go fu¢k yourselves.
But ... clever hackers don't use Macs!
Yeah, but a Windows user would have an anti-virus installed and it would pick up that malicious code. Where as a Mac user...
Reminds me of an old school virus that would display an animation in the foreground, while in the background, a command prompt opened that ran deltree c:\
I'm starting to wonder about all the Apple whine posts. Now I wonder, how many posts have Microsoft or Windows references? Get over it. It's all gadgets.
and no, I do have a Mac.
http://tiny.cc/ZEXyt (google trends)
Says something, doesn't it?
OK, but now I'm wondering what does this say?
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Engadget%2C+Engadget+apple&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Or this?
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Engadget%2C+Engadget+apple%2C+porn&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Did....did I just write I DO have a Mac? Doh. I mean I _don't_.
....dang....
i envy everyone who has one of those
SO COOL!!!
Hmm..
So, a mac can be silently infected with a virus just by putting a USB key into it for a couple of seconds with no other interaction? And this is seen as good? I can't begin to imagine the reaction if this was for a windows machine.
"Don't worry! Its just art!"
Says who? The authors of the virus? People thought BonziBuddy was cool at the time too.
Like someone said, Mac's don't have Autoplay, so just plugging a USB in will do nothing, so no, Macs can't be infected by simply inserting a USB.
But moat macs DO have firewire and the fun direct memory writes enabled, right?
So just inserting a firewire harddisk could do the trick.
If someone is skilled enough to use the webcam of a laptop as a motion detector, then it could work on a PC!
Since when do workaholics and use Macs?
That's something I wouldn't mind having.
This must be fake, because Mac users had me thinking Macs didn't get viruses. (Sarcasm)
I had emailed Troika to ask if there would be some sort of download of the newton virus and I got this response:
"Thank you for your interest.
The newton virus is currently not available for sale.
However, I will put you on our waiting list and inform you as soon as it is.
Best wishes"
hmmm....
I didn't know the MBR had an accelerometer. I figured the virus was just using input from the camera as positional data (without showing on screen what the camera was seeing) to determine how to react depending on how the notebook was tilted.
When I saw the headline I thought it was a virus for the Apple Newton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
Just thought I'd point out that Apple is not mentioned a single time in this post or its tags. This is a post about art, and this "virus" is not necessarily only for Macs.