...I know, sometimes it's hard to know when things are said or around here (I try to denote this). But yes were it 2070, I would take many more precautionary measures (as I mentioned) than just having good lights, a loud air horn, mirrors, and a "6th sense" about traffic (where I live seems a lot of drivers fall under the 0 "unaware" skill rating).

It's not a question of whether things can be done without DNI, or whether it's safer. Safety should be a major consideration, but come on. If it's more convenient then people will do it because people are, with a few exceptions, stupid and lazy.

exactly.

Fish hater!

gits: sac anyone?

there are plenty of cellphones today that let you surf the web and manage your email. i don't really consider those activities to be outside the bounds of cellphonery.

look, i'm not saying you can't use your commlink with no DNI at all. what i'm saying is that DNIing your commlink is easier, faster, and more accessible, and that you have access to a lot of things with DNI that you otherwise wouldn't. and i'm saying that for these reasons are enough to entice most people to use DNI, despite the possible dangers.

I suspect that the issue here is that the game rules text doesn't emphasise the advantage as greatly as it likely would to experience the difference firsthand.

Secret BJ from that special friend while I'm stuck in some boring meeting? Yes Please! Said sexual favour secretly gifted from the cute, co-DNI-enabled coworker sitting across and 2 seats down the table from me? I'LL TAKE THREE!

But not so compelling when framing it like most players think of it: So how many extra dice does that give me to shoot people and be all ninja-like while I steal shit?

And with DNI, the giant hairy pot-bellied lumberjackish male coworker who wants to give you a blowjow can look and feel like a cute young lady.

I'm starting a "KK character references pool." Guesses cost $1 each. At the end of the week, the person closest to the number of times Kyoto Kid mentions one of his PCs in a post wins 1/2 the money collected.

iirc ar can grant you +2 dice on any test the gm green lights. question is, how many of those require you to use two hand and flip some pages of text at the same time? thats one reason i can think of for going dni.

...that's fine for the power user corp account manager who needs to keep track of Exchange quotes while completing his marketing analysis report (that was due yesterday) and juggling five clients on the line all at the same time. For Joe User wagsleave who wants to check on the footy standings while waiting for the bus or his wife Jane who is looking for a new recipe to download to the autocook for tonight's dinner, űber-multitasking is not that important.

it's not about ubermultitasking, it's about convenience. yes, you can stop and pull out your velcro keyboard or poke your screen every time you want to use your commlink. but given the option of just thinking at your commlink, most people are not going to bother with non-DNI options.

Or you can just talk to it. Talking to it is more intuitive than thinking at it (since you can associate it as a person, hell, give it a voice and call it HAL if you want to) I think someone who doesn't know much about computers (joe average) would be more comfortable talking to his computer about what to do, rather than thinking at it specific instructions.

Joe Average in 2070 is as intimately acquainted with computers as Joe Average in 2007 is with his TV set. DNI has been around for forty years, at this point. it's hardly some arcane cutting-edge technology that only the tech elite are comfortable with.

i'm not particularly happy with the sudden appearance of the wireless matrix myself. but the fact is, it is big in 2070, and DNI is the "easiest and most common way" to use AR according to SR4 page 209. yes, there are lots of people who, for whatever reason, use non-DNI with their commlinks. but most people use DNI.

...it's Bill the Gates. He's actually a spiker who secretly owns NeoNet. Like all his other endeavours he rushed it to market concealed by a big media blitz. Just wait until it begins to unravel.

There are ways to eliminate the threat of momhammer altogether.

I believe that the following six point plan will be very helpful.

First
Merge the Sim module and and trodes into the comlink, making them a single physically contiguous device.
There, you can not hack someone's trodes without going through the comlink and you don't need to totally rewrite the matrix topology rules, either.

There is no reason for the sim module to be separate from the comlink, since it was an integral part of both te cyberterminal and cyberdeck. Making the trodes an integral part of the comlink is a safety and convenience feature that just makes sense. It encourages nearly universal DNI use.

Sim Module and trodes can still be purchased separately, for direct access to devices other than comlinks, but it is not usually done.

Second
Implanted comlink is merged with wireless datajack, since comlinks serve the same functions as wireless datajacks and are less vulnerable. Implanted cominks come in two models, user-upgradable and fully internal. User upgradeable comlinks are accessible through a forehead port with may be obvious or non-obvious(Perception+ Intuition (3) to detect). Stand alone datajacks are always wired and can be directly connected to most external devices, including comlinks.

This eleminates the same momhammer loophole in datajacks.

Third
Anyone "accessing naked" (directly accessing a device via DNI, without a trusted comlink as a buffer) is vulnerable to direct attacks against his brain from that device.
It will be stun damage unless he is running hotsim.

Fourth
Due to the risk of Dumpshock, you cannot turn off any device while it is being accessed. Disabling this safety feature requires a Hardware+Logic ( 10, 1 hour) test.
Corporate systems will probably not have this feature disabled, due to the disk of hospitalizing large numbers of employees due to dumpshock.


Fifth
Cyberimplants are not wireless enabled by default, and must be routed though an external access implant (comlink, skinlink, or datajack) for diagnostics and firmware update. The only exceptions are those which require it, such as the ocular drone and eyeball smartlink (though the latter's wireless can be disabled in favor of a skinlink or datajack).

This removes the "I directly haxor your cyberarms" issue while still enabling electronic "stop punching yourself" in anyone with a implanted DNI, which would be fluff encouraged for all heavily-cybered characters due to the benefits for diagnostics without need for surgery.

Sixth
All wireless devices are directly hackable within their range. Signal rating of all devices can be adjusted by the user. Listed signal ratings are maximums. A device's Signal rating cannot be reduced if doing do would dump any user accessing it unless the dumpshock safety is disabled.

...I'll stick to the canon rewrite that it was an EMP burst which brought about the crash in '29. Simple, more sensible and no need to redesign any hardware or bash heads on any concepts.

We can assume that the crash virus didn't actually attack offline systems or segregated networks, because essential services weren't down for decades. With an EMP taking out all electronics on the planet, you end up living in the dark ages and all infrastructure has to be rebuilt from scratch. Of course, the difficulty in mass producing complex electronics when no electronics factories exist should be quite obvious. You end up at the point when you need to build complex specialized electronics to make your electronics factory work.

kzt, its called headware, and installed in the head. Get over it.

Moore's Law is hard to apply here, since the technology didn't shrink in size at all for 20 years. i suppose it's possible that the tech was shrinking all along, and they just never changed the cases except to modify the internals to accept the shrunken guts. which would be really stupid, when the cost of just making smaller cases would be made up for a thousand times over by the profit from being able to sell smaller, sleeker technology.

Intel circuits are down to 45 nanometers and next year's production will be down to 32 nanometers...that's less than 1/10 the wavelength of visible light for anyone counting.

Here's a cool article about IBM's two newest breakthroughs this month that will bring computer chips down to the size of dust:
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle...cleID=201803325