Ok, according to what they say about BTL is that once the program has run its course the user crashes. It also states that one can hack the “one-shot” rule for the BTL chip and re-use the chip.

Now to my question, how much editing/hacking of the program would be necessary to edit the actual end of the program so that it goes in an infinite loop? For a hacker with a BTL addiction of “Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy” it would be quite convenient if he would be on a permanent high (not that I’d like to see what happens to someone who’s crashing after a six month joyride in funland.)

I doubt it would be difficult but it would not be wise. Assuming that he has someone to change his IV bag every day (Not like he'll actually remember to eat or drink) he could suffer severe and permenant brain damage from such abuse.

Actually, as long as it is moodchips then the user would be able to move around freely but would be very, very happy/sad/angry or whatever takes their fancy.

Still, after being happy for six months and the BTL stops, crashes, is disabled or whatever then you are in for at least a few weeks depression.

The way I see it, you really couldn't run a BTL (even a "nice" one) 24/7... the main problem being that the peaked pleasure/sensation/happiness signals would cause your body to produce tons and tons of excess chemicals and hormones... your glands would overwork themselves, and dry up - or your body would just be so doped up on its own chemicals that at some point something would have to give. Maybe a liver. I dunno, I'm no doctor.

Of course, I think it would take a long time for that damage to accumulate, and in the meantime, it would just be like being on "happy pills" all the time. Your friends would think you were very weird, and you would think that they are fantastic.. .and that everythign is fantastic.

Linked network BTL abuse?

Not sure about this, but since one can transmit freely in a linked network of Commlinks what’s actually stopping you from having one BTL user transmit the BTL data to a small circle of networking BTL junkies? This way they can have a shared experience and cut down on the BTL cost for themselves?

Interesting interrogation technique actually…

Just have a Sim Module, trode net and a commlink.

Tie the victim in a chair, put trodes on him and put a commlink on his head with a skinlink and designed to “send” only – or pipe it from your own to the trode net.

Now we can have fun, leave the victim in a dark room and let them experience feelings like fear, terror (of darkness for example) a small room and being afraid of tiny rooms and other such emotions.

You use a cracked BTL chip with an increased playback length and unplug him the next morning and start asking him questions, if you don’t get your answers you just plug it in again.

Copywrite code, probably. Unless the BTL was meant to be poly-POV and a shared sim-experience. Then it'd just be more expensive to begin with (in SR3 the cost was multiplied by the number of people who could use it). Of course, with the cracking rules, any hacker worth his salt could crack the thing, and transmit it to anyone who's interested... but they wouldn't be sharing the sim, they'd just all be experiencing the exact same thing... which for moodchips or something might be okay, but for tripchips or dreamchips it'd be kind of lame. I figure BTL junkies don't want to always watch the same thing over an over again. A video-game junkie eventually wants different games, and not everyone wants the same game. TV junkies don't all enjoy watchign the same channel. Even emotion-junkies might want different emotive tracks, or some variation in them at least.

So something like that would be good in a pinch, I imagine, or for a while, but they'd want to keep getting new BTLs anyways. At least, that's my take... a real junkie would probably take watchign the same cracked BTL over and over instead of going a day without a fix...

But considering how easy it is to crack programs... i don't think there would be a market for BTLs if a junkie could jsut crack one and enjoy it over and over whenever he needed a fix.

In SR3, the addiction rules from M&M required you to eventually move on to harder-moreadictive BTLs. That might be a good reasoning.

Or could it be possible to load a BTL program into an agent loaded with attack ice, similiar to the psychotropic ice of the past to use on a corporate hacker? Hit them with Black Hammer to jam open the simsense feed and flood them with a BTL program?

If you looped the happiness, eventually you'd run out of happy. Joy is experienced by the release of chemicals from resevoires in your brain. While you aren't feeling joy, those resevoires fill back up.

But if you set yourself to release the happy hounds continuously, eventually those resevoires would dry up, and your ability to experience happiness would taper off.

-Frank

It's not that you'd run out of happy, but that you'd eventually have to use the BTL to feel normal. It's as if you'd be causing a form of brain damage, since you'd be less responsive to normal feelings of pleasure -- exactly what happens from the abuse of known drugs (but we're reluctant to call it braindamage, but it essentially is).

Stop using it, and you'll experience extreme depression. Even if you get over that, the things that used to make you feel good will feel washed out and not as fun anymore. Your brain doesn't want to be happy all the time, and it will fix itself so that you will never experience happy again -- unless you increase the strength of the BTLs.

Not that the above would stop people from doing it... I think it's a great way to die slowly. "News at 10, the even darker side of BTL addiction: People who sim themselves to death."

Using it as a form of interrogation is definately a viable alternative to torture, since you don't have to try to keep the person alive -- just sane.