On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 19:10:03 +1100 "Andrew Williams" awilliams@daikin.com.au writes: [Big snip of interesting material]
:I think the assumption that 'if it is alien it cannot be known' is not :necessarily valid, especially if there are similarities to earth ways like :spaceships with seats in them, keyboards, windows, tariel cells and so :forth.
OK, when I assumed Zen would be incompatible, I made several assumptions. First, I assumed that the computers were advanced enough that a biological model was more appropriate. For example, plants, fungi, and animals all share biological roots from about a billion years ago but have developed in radically different ways. Obviously, some things seem like common solutions. Others don't. Even convergent evolution has limits (ichthysaurs, sharks, and dolphins might lead you to believe their form would be the universal adapation of sea going animals - until you consider tribolytes).
But, I was also assuming Orac interacted with the computers on a level at least partially dealing with the equivilant of what had become the computer's cell - and that his ability to do it could be compared, say, to a virus trying to penetrate and take over a larger organism's cell - that the level of involvement and system compatibility had to be fairly high. There are several diseases that are species specific and others that won't effect related species in the same way. So, for example, turnips don't get the flu and birds don't get root rot.
If these comparisons are valid (debatable on both points), then I don't see how Orac did it unless the tariel cells had a single origin.
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