Sonja wrote:Even though it looked like the shinki store was closed Hina probably just snuck her way in there and got it. I find it interesting that they couldn't just turn her off to stop the spread of the virus. Surely shinkis must have the ability to turn off without damaging them.
We don't know what type of memory Shinkis use. To get the sort of speed and power required to create such vibrant, complex personalities, they likely store data in some form of volatile memory. This turned up in the discussion of episode 5; I still think that Shinki's "brains" are FPGAs, not ASICs, so they lose their state when they lose power. If so, that means that while a Shinki's memories could be archived in solid-state NVM, their personalities would disappear and would have to be reset (to factory default if a backup hadn't been made). While it would be possible to send a Shinki into stasis, doing so would require a complex diagnostic to do it without hurting their personality, memories, or mannerisms; the kind of diagnostic a virus likely would screw up. Under normal conditions, Shinki never actually lose power; they sleep on their recharging cradles. They probably just aren't made to be shut down on a regular basis like a computer.
As for the virus itself, while it could just be for kicks, Shinki have built-in wireless (pretty powerful, at that), a large chunk of processing power, and the ability to learn and adapt. If you harnessed those abilities, you could create a truly frightening botnet. That, or you could just use the virus to steal personal information. How many Shinkis know their master's social security number, credit card number, or password, do you think?