P1 was never designed to gain control of banking computers,
it just could. P1 stands for "Priority 1". P1 could
de-compile, analyze, and re-compile for efficiency, the
programs that were running on the system. P1 rewrote itself.
And the story goes on from there.

Steve Martin wrote:
> 
> > "The Borg" is a race in the series StarTrek which work collectively. The Borg
> > Trojans spread around (since they are trojans I guess they are hidden in
> > other applications) and work collectively to flood internet servers and other
> > bad things.
> >
> > Since I was quite impressed with the idea, I told a friend about it. He asked
> > me if I could write such a trojan for him. I was stunned and asked "What?,
> > Why?". "But make it render povray scenes instead. I want a PoV-Ray
> > renderfarm!"
> 
> Refer your friend to a book called "The Adolescence of P1". It was
> published
> in paperback several years back. It's old enough that the computers in
> the
> story were all IBM mainframes (so it's pretty dated), but the
> protagonist
> in the story does something of this sort to gain control of a group of
> banking computers in Chicago and accidentally creates an artificial
> intelligence that runs in basically every telecom-connected mainframe in
> the
> world (including banks, SAC, the DEW line, et cetera). This would be a
> great
> thing to have, I guess... just say "P1, please render my multi-megabyte
> POV
> file and let me know when it's done, that's a pal!". <grin>

-- 
Mr. Art

"Often the appearance of reality is more important 
than the reality of the appearance."
Bill DeWitt 2000

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