A Few Weird Things from Unwired, Hmmm... Options

[Ancient History]

A burnt SIN is one that is connected to a crime or exposed as fake. When your John Smith XXV alias hits Canada-America's Most Wanted, that SIN is worse than useless-it's a liability.

A stripped SIN is one where the biometric data has been removed, effectively disassociating it from whoever its connected to. A bit like finding an ID card that has the name, birth date, and social security number but no photo, height, eye or hair color. The history's still there, as well as any evidence in Lone Star's lock up, but the SIN itself will no longer point at you and your pretty DNA.

Direct Neural Interface...ah, this is a little weird. You'd really have to crawl back through the editions to see how it's changed. I mean, if you really want to do it you'd look at Neuromancer and all the cinematic things that were done to Case's brain through trodes and go "Okay, so trodes are DNI." Then you can maybe look at Synners and their sockets as one of the forebears of datajacks and go "Okay, so datajacks are definitely DNI." DNI at this point means that if you can turn something on or off just by thinking about it*, you have a direct neural interface.

*Does not include any Resonance or Magic abilities, which can do wacky things all on their own.

[Sir_Psycho]

That statement kind of depends on how they errata the Optimization Program Option which is the other can of worms that I mentioned. It currently does not specify whether the System is based on System or modified System. If it is the former, as it seems right now, then you are correct. If it is the later as most people are assuming and house ruling then your argument is incorrect.

A starting hacker has Response 5 and System 5 or 6. This means that his modified System is 5 and can only run rating 5 programs. With a geo sat that suddenly becomes 3 and now he can only run Rating 3 programs. The difference between Stealth 5 and Stealth 3 can be staggering at times. The optimizaiton option fucks with this because now the geo sat can still run rating 6 programs just like the non sat commlink.

That is interesting. I would be very keen on getting a verdict on that from the devs, because that's a real limit on satlinking. It makes it useful for making secure drops, but for a real hacking job, you'd need to hit the waves and expose yourself to trace and burn. It's a very elegant solution, and I take my hat off to you.

As for the SIN forging rules, I think a SIN can be forged efficiently under current rules. The contacts required provides exploits and backdoors to accounts (ideally admin, but that would be a pricey ID forger), it makes ID forging more about bribes and connection and established exploits than it is about hacking.

Personally, I disregard the rules for ID forging via extended test. I think it's silly that you can pull off a really dangerous hacking operation just by doing it really slowly.

Also, I was explaining the concept of DNI and ASIST to my new group. ASIST was and IS hard, but I'll handle that IC by having one of them slot a chip at some point. DNI was easy though, I just said "Frag keyboards, you're the input system, now."

Your brain is now the input system for your computer. You plug it into your skull and your sim module translates the computer code into sensory data, and vice versa.

[Ryu]

Ahh, in that case I shall strip my SINs by providing "more accurate" information. It should be possible to really mess a SIN up by partially stripping it - interesting.

As for the DNI issue, I´m unfortunately not talking about technological evolution between editions, but a confusing state of SR4 rules. Playing with a completely different paradigm once you buy a new book is what "no retconning" tries to avoid.

[Blade]

A few explanations about satellite and why they aren't that good:

1. Satellite signal are easily jammed. It's sadly not reflected in SR4 rules.

2. Why are you untraceable? Just because the satellite doesn't aim its signal. It just broadcasts the same thing over its whole coverage area. Nowadays that's not much of an issue since encryption is strong enough, but in SR4, it means that anyone in a 100km radius with a decrypt program will be able to get all the data you receive from the satellite.

3. Probably the most important one: satellite requires some kind of LOS between the satellite and the receiver. If you're inside a building, you won't get any signal. Hills or even tall building can disrupt the signal as well.