Are Viruses Life Forms?

When we think of life, we usually think of the basics; Plants and Animals. It is, of course, much more complex than that. There is a massive amount of Kingdoms of living things, all different in many ways, all unique, but they all have one thing in common; The Cell.
The Virus, the focus of this paper, does not contain cells, and given it's size, it is not a cell. This is why, in my opinion, Viruses must not be considered living things.
But what is life? Many groups and induviduals have different opinions of what the qualities of living things are, but they are all generally the same.
The universal description is the following
MOTION -- does it seem to move under its own power? Does it move with some discernible purpose? (Toward food, away from heat, etc)REPRODUCTION -- does it have some way of making more of itself, either through sexual reproduction or by budding or fissioning in some way?CONSUMPTION -- does it eat or drink? Does it take in nutrients in one way or another in order to survive, grow, and eventually multiply?GROWTH -- does the organism develop over time, increase in complexity, until it reaches a mature stage?STIMULUS RESPONSE -- does the organism respond to external stimuli, i.e. has a nervous system of some sort to detect external conditions?(Newton Biological Resources:http://newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99171.htm [University of Chicago Newton BBS])
This description shows the basic requirements of an organism to be considered 'living', and as you can see by the Italics, one requirement is met. The term reproduction, is also a very loose idea. If anything that reproduces can be considered alive, then one could easily state that Energy is alive, seeing as how energy is constantly replicating into true and virtual duplicates, most of which destroy each other, but some of which escape and exist, thereby being two from one, and therefore being alive.
The main problem with attempting to generally identify life is the fact that we, as a species, feel the need to organize and classify everything. But the problem with this is the fact that there are many uncertainties and things which break off from the mainstream.. both on earth and everywhere else in the universe.
We are still lacking an adequate definition of life. This difficulty in defining our object of study adds an important factor of complexity and uncertainty to the discussions of its existence (Life in the Universe: http://www.lifeinuniverse.org/noflash/Lifedefinition-04-01.html)
As stated here, we will have great difficulty defining things when we aren't even sure of what our definitions are.
However, I still have a concrete argument to state, so I will do so. The reason I think Viruses (using our current template for classification) should not be considered living is the simple fact that they do not conform to enough of the basic rules for life.
Viruses do not move, they are merely carried along by whatever substance they reside in. They do not consume, they merely use living cells as sweatshops to grow duplicated, which do the same thing. They do not grow, after being produced in their host, they are the final shape and size. (as for injecting genetic material when contacting a cell, that is not stimulus response, it is mechanical response.)
A good way to compare Viruses with actual living organisms, is to find an organism comparable to a virus, but that is defined as living. For the comparison, I have chosen the Infestational fungus called Mycoplasmata.
Mycoplasmata is a living fungus that until recently, was allways believed to be a virus, not only because of the way it operates but also because of it's unusually small size.
When biologists did tests on Mycoplasmata, they were stumped by the fact that it passed through semi-permiable membranes designed to retain cells. When they studied it's habits, they saw that it: a) acted as a parasite to other organisms and b) drew it's nourishment from that host, and could not reproduce without a host organism.
This, of course, led them to believe that this was a Virus, after all, it was far smaller than living cells, and was a parasite. But why is it no longer classified as a Virus? the advent of powerful, high magnification imaging hardware showed biologists that Mycoplasmata is, in fact a cellular organism. Instantly, it was moved from Viral status to a living organism.
There you have it, the composition of cells is the barrier. Living things are made of Cells. Period.
Viruses are nothing more than genetic fragments, which, being genetic in nature, reproduce, but nothing else.
That is my place on the argument of Viruses, living or not. This is, of course, simply my humble opinion, and however right is may be, my correctness simply relies on our current classification methods, which are, like all other human creations, flawed.
We are trying to control something which is powerfully beyond ourselves, and even though it seems we've got it, in reality, we have absolutely no clue. I am a proponant of unified theories. Life is far to simple at it's source to turn into some product catalog of science. Until we develop an extremely simple unified biological theory (such as the one I have theorised in a document which I will never release) biology, like all other sciences, while vastly interesting and stimulating, will allways be a filthy mess of Human error.