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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ P2P In 2063...

Posted by: Fix-it Oct 11 2003, 08:25 PM

With p2p going rampant these days, it made me think: Why do decker's programs cost so much? with all these Data havens, and "free information". one would think that "free code" would also be present.

(NOTE: this is a strictly IC discussion about the gameworld, not on the ethics of p2p. don't wanna get myself banned here)

Posted by: Nephyte Oct 11 2003, 08:32 PM

Basically game balance.

The arguement that people want to get paid for their work doesn't really hold up. I doubt the population is in general any greedier as a rule then it generally is today. Therefore you're most likely to find just as many people willing to pirate other peoples goods for no-profit (or even better: a silent agreement of reciprocal pirating) as you are today.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 11 2003, 08:41 PM

Because we're not talking programs like Quake. We're talking big, powerful programs which cost an arm and a leg IRL and which are difficult to get.
Typical end-user software!=high-level software.

~J

Posted by: Adam Oct 11 2003, 08:46 PM

Also, remember that if I can take the Black Hammer 8 utility you just handed me and fry you or your deck with it, you'd be a little reticent to hand it over. And if you've coded that Black Hammer 8 that gives you the edge over everyone, why would you give it away? You've just built a tool that will help keep you safe and do your job better, and part of your job involves being better than every other decker that's vying for work.

I can see piracy being rife amongst "kiddie deckers," but when you are literally trusting your life to the programs you're running, are you willing to take the risk of downloading them from an open P2P node?

That said, Shadowrun was developed years before people typically had access to the 'net, much less high speed access and abundant P2P networks and programs, so it simply wasn't accounted for. Even in '99 when Matrix and Target: Matrix were being worked on, P2P was still relatively new.

Posted by: Fix-it Oct 11 2003, 09:37 PM

QUOTE (Adam)

This makes the most sense. but I imagine other utilities, music, games, etc. would most likely be still on p2p.

Posted by: John Campbell Oct 11 2003, 09:40 PM

QUOTE (Kagetenshi)

Because we're not talking programs like Quake. We're talking big, powerful programs which cost an arm and a leg IRL and which are difficult to get.

You mean like enterprise server operating systems, quality relational databases, full-featured Web servers, nigh-unbreakable encryption packages, world-class software development tools... and all the other stuff that you can get for free on a Linux CD these days?

Personally, I tend to figure that anything resembling mainstream peer-to-peer is dead in the 2060s. We're talking about a world run by corporations, after all. You've heard about all the Gestapo drek the RIAA and their ilk have been pulling in the real world? Now imagine if the RIAA had extraterritoriality that made them answerable to no one but their bottom line, owned the government and the media (I mean more so than they do now), and had guns. Lots of guns. There'd probably still be file exchanging going on on well-protected nodes like Shadowland, but it's not something you'd want to do casually.

And given the hardware control proposals that various corps have been bandying about, it might well require an illegally modified cyberdeck to actually be able to use any software or digital media you acquired in an unauthorized manner (not a significant problem for real deckers - cyberdecks are illegally modified by definition - but probably an insurmountable obstacle for 12-year-old Bobby warezing on his family's stock cyberterminal). That could very well apply to software acquired from unapproved sources, too... which would pretty well kill any mainstream open source movement. No downloading Linux for you! Your terminal won't run it. Buy Windows 2065 like a good corporate citizen!

Given the right batch of players, there's some very interesting campaign possibilites here, I think.

Posted by: Buzzed Oct 11 2003, 09:51 PM

High-End programs are more like $10,000 to $100,000 on average these days. There was a thread about this awhile ago in the old forums. Someone mentioned a program used to predict some wierd stuff for scientific research. Like magnetic folds in sound waves or some StarTrek like reading. In the future, we are talking about a virtual environment.

Q: How much space does informatioon about a single strand of hair on an agent's head take up in The Matrix? (the movie)

A: An entire DVD.

Also, remember that the higher the rating program, the more up-to-date it is. So naturally, the higher it gets, the more expensive. SOTA will cost you.

Posted by: Cray74 Oct 12 2003, 01:12 AM

QUOTE (Fix-it)

With p2p going rampant these days, it made me think: Why do decker's programs cost so much? with all these Data havens, and "free information". one would think that "free code" would also be present.

Sure it is - and part of writing utilities might involve finding chunks of free code P2P that...

1) Have not been copied by dozens of other deckers, and thus have already been rendered obsolete or recognized as vulnerabilities by corporate IC writers
2) Are not more than a few months old and thus work against the current versions of IC
3) Have been made available by deckers who spent hundreds of man-hours writing the code but are uninterested in profiting from the sale of the code
4) Instead of 3, the code is available because it was stolen from the decker in question, and you can find that stolen code without getting your virtual ass kicked by a pissed decker (who might just release the code and its counter-code to corporations to render it useless to other people)
5) To find truly righteous code, not stuff fit for rating 1 to 3 utilities, you have to pay out bribes, trade favors, etc.

End result: code is expensive, or at least time consuming to write, even with (or because of) p2p

Posted by: Nephyte Oct 12 2003, 02:04 AM

I dunno about all that. About the tonnes of man hours involved.

Lets take this make believe team.

Smithy, Computer 5 (Programming
Martine, Computer 6
Bellia, Computer 4 (Decking 6)
Bogart, Computer 7.

Team of 5, able to work under Smithy's guidance. We'll say they manage to get a total of 2 task pool dice. [(8+6+4+7+2)/4 = 6.75 or 6]

They decide to write some Validate 8 (256 MP), Attack 8D (320 MP), and an Analyze 6 (108 MP). We'll assume each team member has access to the decks neccassary to get a bonus ( aka at least 640 Active/Storage Memory), assuming Program plans were put together for each projec and average successes for each. (2 successes on each program plan). Programming suites are level 4 for the sake of ease.

rolling 10 dice against a TN of 4 will result in 5 successes (on average) for each of the level 8 prgrams and against a TN of 2 will result in 8 for the rating 6 analyze.

256/5 = 51, 51/5 = 11
320/5 = 64, 64/5 = 13
108/8 = 14, 14/5 = 3

Total projected time for this team to finish all the programs: 26 days.
Marketing projections:

Validate Super v_8.1 = 128,000
Smash Bro v_8.1 = 160,000
Snoopy v_6.1 = 21,600

If assmuing a corporate enviroment, For a small team that's projectionally making around 100K per member a year, they just pumped out in 2 months a helluva payoff. The economics in Shadowrun are just screwed up if you follow the books....