Top ten evil computers

By Rich Trenholm on 01 November 2007, 10:12am

11Pages

1
...
7
8
9
10
11

Skynet
The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Good-guy quote: "A few years from now, all this, this whole place, everything, it's gone. Just gone. There were survivors. Here, there. Nobody even knew who started it. It was the machine, Sarah."

Some would argue that computers are only tools, and will only do what they are told by us. Such people have obviously never used Windows ME. But there's an element of hubris in the idea that several of these computers only turn on their masters when we try to turn them off. So it was with the daddy of evil computers, Skynet, which became sentient -- you'd think someone would have seen that coming -- and when humans tried to pull the plug, launched a nuclear apocalypse.

In a temporal paradox, Cyberdyne Systems reverse-engineered a microprocessor from the remains of the Terminator T-800, a cyborg assassin from the future. The processor was added to all US military hardware, bringing strategic defence under the control of Skynet, a revolutionary neural net-based artificial intelligence.

Skynet is near-unique in the pantheon of evil computers as it actually wins, wiping out most of the human race and laying waste to the earth. Humanity: pwned!

According to Terminator 2, Judgement Day ocurred on 29 August 1997, and the surviving humans were preyed on by Terminator killing machines, until John Connor -- Sarah's son, himself the product of a temporal paradox -- destroyed Skynet. Thanks John. Bit late, mind.

Evil rating: Mwahahahahaha!