There are, obviously, a wide variety of viruses out there. The show has mentioned, both directly and by example, a number of classes and categories of virus. My challenge to you, good comrades, is to help me come up with a reasonably complete classification system.

What we know, or at least what I can remember:

Demonstrable types/functions:

• Megabyte's function is to seize control, pure and simple. Any destruction he caused was a side effect of this.
• Hex is a "chaos virus", and is predominantly destructive, although the destruction takes many different forms.
• Daemon was ultimately destructive, but had a megalomaniac approach to spread as far as possible before her fuse burned down.
• All we saw Gigabyte do was steal/absorb energy, but he wasn't around for very long so we don't know whether he had other aims in mind as well. Still, hogging system resources is a plausible virus MO.
• The mantid virus in Icons was straightforward predatory.
• The brother viruses in Where No Sprite Has Gone Before were destructive, but with a stealthier approach than the others we've seen.

Class: They referred to Gigabyte as "Class 5: energy-absorbing." This might refer to his function, as listed above, or his reaction to energy, or to something more general regarding energy (i.e. could include Hex's ability to generate her own).

Power limit: Mentioned in Nullzilla, and also by Dixon Green. This one, at least, seems fairly self-explanatory.

Infection rating: Also mentioned by Dixon. Could mean how strongly controlling a virus' infection is, or could indicate who/what they're able to infect (binomes, sprites, machinery, Guardians).

Miscellaneous:
Cron virus: The kind of virus that does nothing but spread until a certain date and time (April Fools' Day and Friday the 13th are popular), at which point it will perpetrate whatever nastiness it is meant to. Has obvious real-life basis.
Supervirus: Never actually defined in canon! Despite what the wiki would have you believe, Hexadecimal and Gigabyte are not superviruses; I say this because they made a big thing of Daemon being one, so if the others were, someone would have mentioned it. Therefore, it can't be merely to do with raw power, although she's got that as well. I personally think it's her apparently limitless infecting ability. (It's possible that the raw power is a prerequisite for that, but does not qualify one as a supervirus on its own.)



(I admit to having an ulterior motive for posting this topic; I roleplay Enzo2, who is steadily progressing at the Guardian Academy, and it would help me to know what the heck he's been learning.)

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My purpose in life is to put other people's neuroses into perspective.

It seems to me that there would be only two major divisions of viruses;

1. Those that destroy, directly and simply (i.e. Hexadecimal, the brother viruses, the mantis, and (possibly) Kilobyte and Gigabyte)

2. And those that tend to take control for a (not exactly destructive, but) corruption of a system's normal function. (Daemon, Megabyte)

Of the latter type (2), Megabyte's approach seems to be like some kind of fascist dictator, like Hitler or Stalin. We saw the kind of oppressive society he wished to create in the name of what he perceived as a desirable form of order. Really, he is a representation of such real-life control freaks in our own world.

On the other hand, Daemon was similar in principle to Megabyte, but different in her approach, as she was more of an insidious cult-leader. Her followers did not FEEL oppressed, as they were deluded into thinking they were happy under her control. This could actually be an indicator of the depth of her infection potential. The more fundamentally a sprite is infected, presumably, the less able they are to fight it. And this utter inability to fight the infection at a fundamental level could manifest as a perceived contentedness with the infection. (Whereas Megabyte's followers were controlled more by fear; an unpleasant emotion which you could imagine yourself resisting more readily). Although Daemon's ultimate goal was indeed complete destruction, she was more of a corrupt and control virus, like Megabyte, until then. Plus, she perceived said destruction as a desirable form of 'peace'.

Having said that, I would agree with you that Daemon's status as a "supervirus" is a direct reference to the power and potential of her infection capability.

I would also like to note that pretty well every virus we have seen has been 'robotic' in some way. They never did look like regular sprites (kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, hexadecimal, mantis). It could be supposed that the more powerful a virus is, the more deceptively sprite-like they are. Hence, Daemon was NOT robotic like most viruses, which could be taken as another indicator of her status as a "supervirus". (Powerlog, and his Spectral brother were also viruses, I realize, that don't look robotic. But in that episode, we were told of a 'process' that enables spectrals to be turned into sprites. If there was some kind of sprite-conversion technology involved there, then this could simply be an exception to the general rule of viruses being robotic in appearance.)


Now for the former division of viruses (1). You could probably think of them, in general (with Hex being a possible exception), as lower-order viruses. Their function seems simply to cause destruction; usually only in one or a few systems. Thus, they are not usually very dangerous, except to those in the system they are in. (Megabyte seemed to have the potential to spread beyond Mainframe quite readily. He was just always thwarted by Bob, who we later learned, was acting to keep Megs 'contained'). Within this division, you can expect to see a similar array of variations in approach. The Mantis virus was just basically a predatory animal virus, while the Brother viruses were more like stealthy bounty hunters or vigilantes.

Hexadecimal, I think, is a special case. I don't really think of her as a 'complete' virus. We never see her infect anything the way Megabyte does. It seems to me she represents simply the personification of Gigabyte's transfinite power reserves and abilities; creating a highly-unrestrained destructive force. In raw code-form, you could think of her as a program missing crucial lines of code for stability and proper function. Megabyte, by contrast, seemed to inherit more of the true-viral properties of 'corrupt and conquer'. Hexadecimal's incompleteness is also indicated, obviously, by her insanity and by the way her face doesn't move between mask-changes. Plus, she exclaimed that she suddenly felt 'whole' when Bob defragmented her head.

Finally, the distinction of a Cron virus, I would think, could apply to any virus in the two major divisions. Specifically, I took 'cron' to mean a virus that destroys by self-destructing at a predetermined time. If it is a highly infectious virus (as Daemon was), then obviously this self-destruction would apply to all that it infects in that time. So... Cron = programmed self-destruction. Remember when Daemon orders Daecon to die, she says "Cron, one oh one". So she tells him to self-destruct and gives him the predetermined countdown.

So distinctions of Cron, or Trojan Horse, etc would then be relatively minor subclasses of viruses within the larger two divisions.

And when Gigabyte was referred to as class 5, such classes could be yet another line of classification which refers to a virus's raw energy processing ability and susceptibility to conventional deletion tactics.

So does any of that rambling make sense? ^^;

I dunno, my attention span ran out around the third paragraph.

Seriously, though, I have to disagree, just because there are plenty of different types of viruses in real life, so (although no one could accuse ReBoot of realism) it doesn't make much sense to break them down into two.

As for robotic appearance, that's not just a virus thing. Phong looks semi-robotic; so did Backup in "Icons", and Maxine. Frisket has a motor in his muzzle. Binomes, the majority of the population, are rather metallic. The simple fact is that, in cyberspace, there is no contradiction between living and robotic, and the people, sprite, virus, or otherwise, run the gamut.

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My purpose in life is to put other people's neuroses into perspective.

I'm willing to concede your point about robotic appearance. That was just an aside anyway.

However, I would like to defend my position on overall classification, as I'm not sure you appreciate what I'm saying on that.

Are you aware that biologists can classify ALL life on Earth into one of only THREE major domains?: The Monera, the Eukarya (that's us) and the Archaea.

Imagine that. ALL life on Earth, with all it's incredible diversity, falls into one of these three domains. All the diversity you see after that are successive genera within each of those domains.

So when I say that viruses can be classified into one of two MAJOR categories, it in no way diminishes the diversity that is possible within those categories. All the diversity of viruses that we see, and generally think about, would be attributes of sub-categories, sub-sub-categories, and sub-sub-sub-categories that would become more and more numerous and divergent as you move down the branches of the hierarchical tree.

All I'm doing is trying to take an overview of the WHOLE picture of what we've seen of viruses, their functions and patterns of behavior. If you can first classify them all into a small number of large groups, and then work your way out from there, it just simplifies the process of classification. That doesn't mean it simplifies the viruses. You see?

You can perhaps propose a different way of recognizing and defining those large groups, but I don't think you can argue against the value of using this strategy of classification which is used by biologists all the time.

The point is a fair one, and I certainly don't think a single, numbered "class" describes everything about a virus. However, I still don't agree with breaking it down into two, if only because I know for a fact that there are viruses that don't fall into either of those categories. Ever heard of the "Cookie Monster" virus?

(The "robotic" thing is something that comes up with surprising frequency, is all. I was inclined to go on about it a bit because I hear it too much.)

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My purpose in life is to put other people's neuroses into perspective.

Two, three, four. It doesn't matter the number of major super-groups, but it's best if it is a SMALL number. It simply involves finding a few lowest-common-denominator attributes that are common to a large variety of viruses, and then classify them further into smaller categories.

Starting from a small number of large groups is still something that makes a lot of sense, from where I am standing.

So anyway, if these 'cookie monster' viruses don't fit into the major categories that I proposed, then explain to me why not, and/or propose a different way of defining the major divisions of viruses. I'm not married to the ideas I proposed, but I think the principle of classification is a sound one.

Okay, well, that doesn't sound like it contradicts what I was thinking, if you consider draining system resources to be sufficiently different from simply trashing the place. Gigabyte is only class 5, after all, so that doesn't necessitate a particularly high total number.

The "Cookie Monster" virus was a specific virus, back in the '70s, and in fact "is often cited as the first computer virus to appear "in the wild," and even infected some secure systems at the Pentagon." It would randomly cause your computer to display the message "I WANT COOKIE, GIVE ME COOKIE", which could be made to temporarily go away by typing "cookie". Typing "Oreo" would banish it altogether.

In other words, there must be a class of virus whose sole function is to be a pain in the butt.

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My purpose in life is to put other people's neuroses into perspective.

So then, from that logic, it would seem that a scale of 1 through 5 represents a virus's destructive potential. So, just being annoying would be class one, and being able to directly drain energy as well as cause physical damage would be class five. And classes 2, 3 and 4 would be degrees in between those two extremes.

But then, the potential to actually infect and control binomes and sprites, like what Megabyte and Daemon were able to do, would be an entirely different ability that would require its own line of classification. Do you agree? That's not to say that there couldn't be some overlap, with many viruses able to do both.

Obviously, Daemon would be higher on this scale than Megabyte, since Megabyte seemed to require binomes to submit their pids to do this, while Daemon only needed to interact with the same 'environment' as her victims.

Mm, I don't think it's actually a scale. As you said, organisms are divided into animal, plant, fungus, bacterium, or protist. Those aren't degrees of anything, but you could, if you wanted, assign numbers to them and say that, for example, we are Kingdom 1 organisms.

Infection ratings and power limits, now, those are more likely to be scales. Although infection rating might be more complex than that. We never did hear a canonical example.

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My purpose in life is to put other people's neuroses into perspective.

Well, the fact that numbers are used is what suggests to me that it is a scale. If it was just a grouping that had no other relation to other groupings, then it would just be a name, not a number (like animal, plant, fungus, protist, or bacterium).

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a particular major group of viruses are the ones that have the ability to infect binomes, sprites, systems and control them to perform some corrupted function. Well, within that classification, there would be a variety of types of viruses with different infection capacities. And this would qualify as a scale of potential, referred to as an "infection rating".

But then, I don't see why class 1 through 5 wouldn't also be a scale. The only real question is, what is the factor that is being measured there?