 Matrix realistic? |
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 Dec 12 2006, 09:42 PM
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#26
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ghostrider  Group: Retired Admins Posts: 4,196 Joined: 16-May 04 Member No.: 6,333  |
It'd be be easier (SR3 at least) to use a few existing rules for the purpose than it would to invent rules specifically for social engineering, I think.
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Dec 12 2006, 11:12 PM
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#27
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,537 Joined: 27-August 06 From: Albuquerque NM Member No.: 9,234 |
It is. We've done it. But in general it's not an effective way in SR4. In SR4 hacking is so effective (per RAW) that it's almost never worth the effort. If nobody can ever catch you when you drive a bulldozer through the front door and haul off the safe why should you choose an approach where you have to worry about security systems, locks and armed guards? |
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Dec 13 2006, 04:07 AM
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#28
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517 |
How about the unreality of cybercombat? I mean why would you advertise what programs you had with icons of swords and such or even have any motion based on getting into a fight. Why would there be any icon of security at all? Why have an icon look at another icon for any real information?
Why have the whole spacial analog in the first place? I can understand VR for chatting in virtual malls and as front pages for commercial web sites but why would you give anyone else permission to effect your icon? Why do we need all this persona crap? They tell us that it is based on the idea that you as a person can't react that fast and that your persona is actually doing the work. If that were true then why do we have a choice at all? Why not require us to write up our normal reactions and have them happen like scripts on a mudd? |
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Dec 13 2006, 06:28 AM
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#29
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,086 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 364 |
It probably comes down to error-rate. Even the most well crafted Decision Tree/expert System will pick the wrong pre-scripted action to take a certain percentage of the time, especially in the situations when, based on the inputs the expert system was programmed to consider relevant, there's not a dominant choice between several pre-scripted actions. By putting a human in the loop with the expert system, and exposing the human to all the incoming inputs, not just the ones that the expert system driving the persona is coded to consider to be important, you gain the benefits of the human's skills and intuition for those times when the expert system is having trouble picking the best response, while still getting the speed benefits of expert-system driven pre-scripting. As for why those computer-code based inputs must be filtered through VR Iconography, instead of being presented directly to the human in the loop, it comes down to the sheer volumes of information needing to be presented. At least, those were the explanations that I gave in previous editions. In SR4, where you have the capability of coding agents that are essentially just as skilled in hacking as their human counterparts, it would seem that processing power has finally progressed to where an expert system can be complex enough to make the right decisions as often as a human would. It's one of the reasons that I'm not too troubled by the fact that using AR can be just as fast (and in some cases, faster) than using VR. |
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Dec 13 2006, 06:34 AM
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#30
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,537 Joined: 27-August 06 From: Albuquerque NM Member No.: 9,234 |
Except for that annoying page 217, where they say that this precisely what they don't do. "The vast majority of Matrix activity (data traffic, background processes, etc.) is highly uninteresting and would quickly overwhelm your senses, so the bulk of it is fi ltered out. Instead, basic AR Matrix perception is usually limited to a very narrow subset of things, such the icons of nodes/users you are interacting with, menus, dots, arrows, and any display features you call up." |
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Dec 13 2006, 07:07 AM
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#31
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 732 Joined: 1-December 06 Member No.: 10,116 |
Well I would assume thats where scripting comes into play. Ok for data feeds type X or what ever, bring up this notification, following options are A B and C.
A=Standard Attack program B=Black hammer Attack program C=Run like a little sissy girl hopped up on an overdose of adrenaline and throw up defensive programs X, Y and Z. Everything else doesnt matter becuase it simply doesnt concern you at all. |
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Dec 13 2006, 09:51 AM
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#32
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,086 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 364 |
That's AR Matrix perception. "Virtual reality is a drastically different experience than AR." SR4, p.228 Though to be fair, previous edition's descriptions of VR mentioned similar "filtering" of unimportant items. However, even if you assume that the expert system is considering every single input that hasn't been filtered out as unimportant, having a human in the loop adjusting the weight and importance that the expert system gives to certain inputs, in real time, based on a "big picture" view, can still result in higher performance than you'd get from an untuned expert system performing alone. |
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Dec 13 2006, 10:04 AM
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#33
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517 |
So then if it really is some expert program analogous to an agent then why not get rid of people hacking and send those actions giving commands to your agent?
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Dec 13 2006, 10:10 AM
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#34
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 732 Joined: 1-December 06 Member No.: 10,116 |
Because the agent is effecitvely lowlevel AI, where as a sort of semi scripted intuitive interface is effectively just waiting for the proper input. Simplest analogy is the keyboard on a computer. Sure we get easily and quickly get letters, numbers and symbols. But behind all that is a whole TON of code you never see. In actual reality all these words you see here, everything you see here is just a bunch of 1's and 0s on the binary table. Their very quickly interpreted by the computer to represent actual letters. But when you get right down to the nuts and bolts of it, thats not at all what they are.
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Dec 13 2006, 10:46 AM
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#35
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517 |
So are you saying that youthink it IS realistic or not?
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Dec 13 2006, 10:53 AM
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#36
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,086 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 364 |
In previous editions, the difference between an expert system running by itself and an expert system that presumably made up the bulk of the Master Persona Control Program, running with a human decker fine-tuning the end results was pretty wide; you could send the expert system by itself, but you wouldn't have the same effectiveness of sending in a live decker immersed in full VR. In SR4, with the increased processing power behind agents, taking the human out of the loop is becoming more and more of a viable tactic. |
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Dec 13 2006, 11:00 AM
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#37
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 732 Joined: 1-December 06 Member No.: 10,116 |
I'm not really saying either way. I mean we cant currently directly connect our brains to the internet. While VR technology exists its very crude and limited, bandwith is also limited etc. I mean its -feasible- I suppose. Which in a way is saying it's 'realistic'. Though without actually having a real VR system to hook directly into the human brain directly through the neural pathways. It cant really be said if you can actually kill some one with a simple program, affect their brain with a virus or what ever. Theoretically it -might- be possible. There's probably other theories that attempt to debunk this idea. So all I could really say is its... 'sort of' realistic the way it's represented. Assuming the technology esists, and it actually works the way it 'theoretically' works under SR then yes it is. But we dont have anything actually like that right now, only vague similarities. Not to mention the SR system cuts out alot of stuff that exists/can be done in the real world as far as the internet is concerned. This is however for the sake of simplicity. And certain parts of I I consider unrealistic, such as how you can crack a SOTA encryption program in a matter of seconds. If it was so damn good you might neve rmanage to crack it. Of course maybe you actually happened to manage to steal a copy of the proper decryption program. *shrug* So to I guess sum it up another way, for the 'feel' of shadowrun and whats considered posisble in that setting, yes its got at least a 'semirealistic' feel to it. But it cant possibly be actually realistic (At least not yet) since in many cases there isnt any 'real' technology behind it, real technology is simply the basis behind the idea that is the matrix. |
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Dec 13 2006, 12:24 PM
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#38
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 858 Joined: 25-August 03 From: Braunschweig, North German League, Allied German States Member No.: 5,537 |
Don't forget the unlikely but canon "one generation knowledge/technology setback" caused by the crash of 2029. (I still love how one of the characters in Shadowplay simply can't believe that the Corvette he's sitting in was built in 1990 - from his 2050s perspective technology couldn't have been so sophisticated back in the 20th century...) |
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Dec 13 2006, 02:30 PM
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#39
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panda! Group: Members Posts: 10,331 Joined: 8-March 02 From: north of central europe Member No.: 2,242 |
VR (at least in the hot sim kind) also contained text stating that some kinds of data was translated as other sensation then audio, visual and similar. the user chould maybe pick up the tell-tale signs of a trace by what subtle sensations it would generate in hot sim... |
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