Rules for Computers that makes sense, Do you really know what makes sense ? Options

[Namergon]

To avoid a big deviation of the 4th Edition topic, and because the "computer rules in SR don't make sense" concept is too good not to rant a bit on it, I create this new topic.

So, I read many comments about how SR rules about computers don't make sense. The first thing to notice is that the grudge most often comes from a comparison between nowadays computers and SR Matrix technology.

- PCs are compared to cyberdecks: where did you get the idea that are comparable ? Personal Computers do exist in 2060 SR world, and their cost are indeed in line with nowadays PCs costs. Cyberdeck are just ENTIRELY different things. They are a concentrated filter between the human brain and the Matrix, design to handle in real time (at thought speed) the tremendous amount of data exchanged between both. I mean VR data, interaction data, the last of which can be incredibly complex. Basic cyberterminals are not so SOTA things, true. But they are so much cheaper. Cyberdeck are also very restricted gear, and deckers for the most part have customized decks. When is the last time you tried to develop an OS on your own ? How many time did it take to you ? Building your deck is not like buying PC spare parts, assembling them and run the drivers and applications.

- Utilities programming: I do work in software engineering, and the figures I see in Matrix are quite right, believe me, for the complexity and size of the stuff designed here.

- Program and data sizes: it should be taken into account that any data in SR world consist not only in the very information alone, but also with all what is needed to manipulate it (VR info for Matrix use, interface for pocket or non-Matrix equipment, etc), let's say "metadata". I'm surprised that many people are choked at the size of data files. Did you looked at a .doc size of Word2000 ? Try to compare the same document typed with Word 97. What could have been added in the Word 2000 file ? Metadata. the text in the Word 2000 is the same as the same text typed in a text editor, but they don't look the same, and you can't do the same things with both.

Well, I could rant for long, but I prefer to let people bring their own point, and react to mine. 8)

[Iggy]

My biggest peev with computers in SR is basing the cost of personal computers on storage size. I realize that at one time memory was incredibly expensive but those days have passed.

My second biggest peev is that it is cheaper to get your entire body wired so you can automatically use any skill anytime than it is to purchse a Fairlight Exalibur. I may be wrong but it seems a system that can translate computer code into a controllable human movement and feedback loop is going to have at least as much hardware and be as advanced as the most advanced cyber-deck therefor the costs should be in the same range.

Although I completly agree about the the time it takes to design and program things.

[Kagetenshi]

There's a much bigger market for developing things that allow people to use skills they haven't learned than for giving people enough raw processing power that nothing short of highly illegal activities will come close to using it all.

~J

Edit: or highly advanced research, or combatting said highly illegal activities, but decidedly non-mass markets.

[WolfJack]

I agree that a cyberdeck is far to specialized to compare it to most public cyberware. I think a good comparison to make would be to look at a dedicated server vs. a standard PC.

A small sized business, base configuration, server from Sun will start at $7,995.00
A very basic starting PC from Gateway will start at $599.99

Main difference is the audience the product is marketed to.


-Wolf

[Iggy]

Yeah but I don't think most cyberware is common to the "Mass Market" especially things like skill wires and wired reflexes. I just don't see cyberware such as that being any more popular in the general meta-human population than a drek-hot deck. furthermore the comparison of a server to a desktop is just plain silly to me, the primary difference isn't the audience it's the number of users you can support. I can do everything on my desktop that I can do at work through the server except accommodate 50 users. And to back up my previous statement about the processing power required to control the human body see here: http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm I would think that computers would have to get at least as powerful as the human brain to perform just basic tasks. To perform much more advanced tasks the computer would have to be much more powerful, after all it is emulating the software of the brain. :)

[Kagetenshi]

We're not talking a server-in-a-box, we're talking a mainframe-in-a-box, though the two have been treated as synonymous often nowadays.
As I've said elsewhere, you're carrying the equivalent of big metal under your arm. That costs.

~J

[Iggy]

Yeah and currently the 3rd fastest super-computer in the world (Virginia Tech's "Big Mac") cost 5.2 million dollars. For being #3 in the world that doesn't seem like that much money to me. My argument is that computer prices will get cheaper and cheaper. All computers from little wrist computers to cyberdecks just seem outlandishly priced. Any computer you can lug around with you just isn't going to cost that much money even with 60 years of inflation.

[Crusher Bob]

Also note that computing power is becomming more of a bulk commodity, if you want 2X computering power you just pay 2X the price (rather than x^2) .

[Aristotle]

I can only follow the "server in box" theory so far. You don't really "serve" with a cyberdeck, so it makes more sense to compare current day servers with Shadowrun hosts (not cyberdecks).

Of course a cyberdeck still shouldn't be compared to current day personal computers or workstations. The Shadowrun equivalent of those is the tortoise. IIRC

You would do better to compare cyberdecks to the highly specialized industry computers of the current day. These are computers that are still meant to be used by an individual (not as a server) but are so specialized as to be more than a simple workstation.

After all, your typical wage slave doesn't tool around on a cyberdeck, and even your standard matrix enthusiast probably sticks to "low end" decks. Those upper tier decks are the realm of government/corporate agencies, military organizations, and various mercenary or clandestine professions (i.e. Shadowrunners). These are highly specialized fields with a need for highly specialized equipment that is more advanced than the typical person would ever hope to come in contact with. When you look at it like that, it makes perfect sense.

I work for a company that builds specialized, ruggedized, computers for various government and military agencies. These things are fast as hell, and can take amazing amounts of punishment. The cheapest machine I've ever built at work was a single computer that sold for somewhere around 8k. I've also built orders with integrated modules that have exceeded 200k for a single unit.

So, on the hardware side of things alone I can completely see why high end decks are so expensive...

[Crusher Bob]

Notice that those costs are for 'ruggedized' electronics, not for actual processing power. An excaliber that only needs to 'sit on my desk' will me much cheaper than the excalibur I need to take into the mud with me.

[Aristotle]

And my point was that most (not all) folks who require that sort of processing power have the potential to be in situations where they are not simply sitting at a desk. They often have to carry these decks (afterall, half the point of a cyberdeck is that it is easily portable) into various environments, through potential hostile situations, etc..

I suppose part of my point hinges on how I see cyberdecks being used. Like I said ... I just don't see your standard desk-monkeys using one of the high end decks.

Also, my example above is what I have from personal experience ... I'm sure costs are above the cost of your typical workstation for other specialized systems as well (maybe not to the same extreme, I don't know). Ruggedized or not.

[kenji]

Aris: who/what do you see as the target market for cyberdecks? illicit activites is too fringe to justify the continuing R&D work that makes this market happen.

from a Chromed Accountant perspective: "where's the customer?"

---
my biggest peev with computers, especially software, is the cost. digital data has zero cost of duplication, except for the media used to transport it. it is the best materials-cost to price-markup ratio you can get. (production cost is almost ALL labor and marketing/packaging.)

but this also has the problem that illicit duplication would likewise be low-cost. there is no way that someone who commits criminal acts with their computer (ok, deck. semantics, whatever.) is gonna pay for *all* the novahot software they've got. and where's the homebrew code? 'cause it WILL happen that people just tinker around and make stuff cause they can.

---
but really, there ain't much parity going around the SR universe concerning prices. it's almost like a zillion discrete, fascinating little thought experiments were all thrown together into a great cohort of tweakability and we just called it "the SR system."

[Crusher Bob]

Yep, D&D 3.X is the only game I've seen so far that even attempts a unified economics system, and I'm not sure it they got a working one or not.

SR economics have always had the 'who'll pay $$$ for this stuff?' problem. CP2020 where things were pretty cheap and no one really cared if you had an ass-gun made much more sense.

[Nath]

Outside of security and espionage concerns, a lot of corporations and administrations would like to have their system's maintenance and repair operations reduced to a few seconds or minutes, or even "on the fly". Considering the importance of the Matrix in SR, that could be thousands of nuyen saved each time. That does not justify every refinment of cyberdecks, but big Sensor persona, high rating operational utilities, reponse increase and "highlighting" reality filter would be useful for that.

[TheScamp]

[hobgoblin]

one more thing about filesizes, dont forget the advent of java nad .net lately. maybe its not just metadata but allso a bytecode part that acts like a small program.

as for comparing skillwires to cyberdecks, cyberdeck are the hottests of the the hot outside of hosts. it allows a person to see and manipulate the datatraffic at a level that would make any network engineer these days go all stary eyed. its nothing like traveling down the line and feeling around outside the firewall to findout what the hell is going on :) everything down to the hardware level is translated into neural traffic for your body and mind to compute. just like a rigger becomes a car you become the computer. its like haveing a packetsniffer and generator wired into your brain on a very low level...

a skillwire in comparison is more like a expertsystem hooked up to major muscle groups and signal inputs. when a chip kick in you loose control of your own body. instead of you being in control of the machine the machine controls you. this is the part that makes BTLs so insanely scary on a level equal to the most highend drugs today.

and computer prices based on storage? not to far fetched i think. rember that while a cpu may last 2-3 year a diskdrive can be filled, filled and filled again in the same time. i allso suspect the fact that as everything is chip based even the smallest of storage chip contains some computing power. we are already seeing the Hz race slowing down as most software that we have allready do the job we want them to do at so high a speed that there is no waiting what so ever. allso im kinda looking at the pc of sr as a kind of hybrid gameing console in that the software comes on chips that you plug in and it runs of them, no need for a cpu that loads the code...

the only real problem is the fact that video and audio files have a bad habit of changeing size based on where it came from. otehr then that i find the sr matrix to be working fine, the lack of details in how things work is a general problem of SR as its generalized to make it eatable by other then professors :)

[Aristotle]

[Abstruse]

Also note that a Legal-to-own, wageslave-used Cyberdeck only comes with Sensor and Bod. Mo Masking or Evasion because they have no need to hide their signature or to get involved in Matrix combat. They just do their job and that's that. The lower-end security decker? HE gets Evasion because he'll be expected to combat hostile deckers. But does he need Masking? Why? So he can sneak around the corp's computer system? You must be insane! But the hardcore in-house decker, HE gets Masking for when he traces the decker back to his home terminal, hacks into the competition's servers, etc. And of course, the corp doesn't want his activities traced back to them, so they want to supply him with the best. And we all know there's no such thing as a totally secured system, so that development code gets out and used to develop pirated and hacked versions for Icepick or whoever. Not to mention design time the deckers themselves put into the hardware.

My point? Your desktop computer or pocket computer (The ones you pay for by the MP, which is a measurement of both memory size and processing power BTW) would be more of an analog of a home PC or a laptop, thus priced accordingly. A cyberterminal, with its VR equipment etc. would be much more complex and therefore much more expensive (about 10 times more expensive than an identical "tortoise" system). An actual deck meant for electronic breaking and entering DOES have a market -- Corps, military, and organizations as stated before, but that market is much more specialized and therefore is much more expensive.

Go to your local bookstore and look at the average price of a hardback best seller type book. About $20-30. Then go to a college bookstore and look at the average price of a textbook. About $120. They both use the exact same paper, exact same bindings, more or less the same amount of time, effort, and research went into both (at least the well-written best sellers will), but one is more than 5 times more expensive. Why? Because there is a limited market for the publisher to recoup expenses. They're going to sell 100, 1000, 10,000, or more copies of the best seller for every copy of the college textbook. Therefore, they charge more to make up for the price. Same thing for "Special Edition" DVDs or foreign/specialty film DVDs that are burned in the exact same process as plain DVDs, same for data CD-ROMs compared to music CDs, same for a computer designed for general home use as opposed to a workhorse server. One has a larger market and therefore is cheaper, one has a limited -- but still viable -- market and therefore is more expensive.

The Abstruse One

[Kagetenshi]

[Crusher Bob]

And getting a computer to do what my desktop today can do in 1940, it would have been the size of New York.

[Kagetenshi]

And miniaturization has limits, limits that we don't actually know right now.

~J

[hobgoblin]

and in SR every chip is optical based so the problem of heat goes out the door :)
thats the big issue for big iron computers, heat. i think i have heard about a cray the us military have that use a blood like liquid to cool it, nasty...

[LoseAsDirected]

Well, the key is to figure out how much a basic ASIST program costs, and then multiply that by a few thousand.. That should give you a good idea of just how much a nova hot fraggin' deck will run.. I don't mind the prices on decks, for the most part.. It's the damn costs on programs that annoys me.. At least those can be programmed rather easily.. I hate having to cook my own deck.. it usually takes way too much downtime (leaving little time for my precious programs)..

[hobgoblin]

how can you be sure that the program are easy to write. in fact if you read the matrix sourcebook you will see that a logged in user dont need programs to do any actions its acount allows. the programs are specialist tools that work mutch like a combo of rootkits, worms and viruses of today. they analyze the host, find holes, use those holes to gain access to a system and try to keep them open.

what your seeing when the hosts tests against a deckers detection factor is basicly a expert system that are constantly checking error messages and so on to look for patterns. and when patterns are found actions are taken.

so even the lowly read/write utility is a monster code of signals and probes wrapped up in a editor. aim it at a file and it will try to find a security hole to use. if the host finds a pattern in the activity then it will kill of the prosess and fire up preset actions to counteract the threat.

it seems that while today if a computer changes ip it will have to restart every connection out there the matrix of tomorrow allows you to switch addresses in mid job somehow, maybe by sending a special signal telling the system to send future transmissions to the new address or something.

most crackers today are script kiddies, they dont realy understand the finer pint of the software they are useing as long as it works. the real heavyweights constantly write and rewrite theyre own toolsets to match the moveing target that is computer security. the security hole reported today can be gone tomorrow.

[Kagetenshi]