If I was paying millions of dollars for a computer, it had damn well better match my office's color scheme.

attempting to apply logic and rationality to SR is the point of most of the threads on this board. it's a hopeless task that some of us enjoy wasting time on.

most people who buy multi-million dollar computers do so because they watched shows like Star Trek and Farscape when they were growing up. we're as impressed by sleek design as anyone else--but unlike non-geeks, we are more impressed by actual performance.

besides which, smaller and sleeker means more portable. i carry my laptop around because it lets me do some of my work wherever i go. if i could pack the power and utility of my desktop multimedia machine into a laptop, i'd be able to do all of my work wherever i go, and i would be a very happy man.

Wow! A quote that states that a commlink or datajack can indeed be implanted in something other than the head, which is exactly what I said (even down to the cyberlimb example). Thanks.

sigh. yes, and they got tech jobs in the first place because they watched Star Trek and Farscape. most tech geeks are sci-fi geeks who grew up (or didn't, whichever). for instance, the Bird of Prey prototype stealth plane was named after the Klingon warship.

My point is that it can't be implanted in ANY part of the BODY. Only that it can be installed in the head OR in a cyberlimb. If you have no cyberlimbs, you can't put it anywhere except in the head.

Fiction always does. Just look at where modern computing was in 1944 - 63 years ago, and the delta between Now and Then, and the (fairly small) delta between now and 2070.

First electric telegraph was used for regular communication in the 1830s. Radio kicked off in 1901 or there abouts. You could say the internet was developed in 1980. 70-90 years between major, major technologically communications breakthroughs.

Thats an 80 year delta. There could very well be a huge new milestone in communications technology by 2060! Whereas the SR matrix is just a big open access wimax network.

To put in it context what futurist could have guessed the internet in 1944. None. How are these guys going to get it all tight!

...there are your futurists, individual, institute, and corporate, who attempt to extrapolate from current scientific and social trends on what the future my be like.

These frequently have come up short.

Then there's the fictional authors like Verne, Heinlein and Clarke, who on occasion have seen a concept or two of theirs come to fruition such as the viable submarine boat, home computer, "instant cook" (microwave) and robotics.

Somewhere on this board there is a link concerning the inventor of the cell phone. His inspiration came from Roddenbery's Star Trek Communicator. Today's flip phones owe a lot to the old 1960's prop.

...a few more (from the original series)

Computers with voice recognition
Insertable Read/write data chip
Laser Surgery
Global Teleconferencing
Portable Computer Systems
Resonant Imaging

Now whether fiction (particularly SF) has prophesied the future or was more a inspiration for an invention is hard to say. I'm sure that some people asked, "I wonder of that really would work?" A few pursued it and today we have a number of personal conveniences that if you took them back even twenty years would be looked on as being "Sci-Fi".

This is why it humours me when a futuristic game like Shadowrun which is so wrapped up in "whiz-bang" tech has to do a midcourse adjustment after a RL advance in technology catches everyone by surprise.

In some ways, it's almost easier to set things in the far flung future (like Traveller) with tech that is so improbable it would almost never be eclipsed by RL developments.

It's not anything bad mind you for I know that it takes time to playtest and get everything ready for release, deal with the printer, bindery, distribution channels, etc.

Several SF authors have mentioned that near future is really hard to do well. It's extra-hard to do well and hot have people laugh at it in 10 years. Some just won't do it. Far Future or ATLs are easier.

Worth tossing in at this point, I think, is that the SR world is not "our world + # years".

And everything else in the SR books after about page one of SR1.

...of course SR1 was released in 89, so technically, that "event" was still 16 years off at the time and maybe-possibly-coulda' happened.

Still, the destruction of Carnegie Hall, the Performance venue wet-dream of any respectable musician, was a sad thing.

Kind of the same for the original Royal Festival Hall in London which was in the area now known as the Lambeth Containment Zone.

...digital print prep and managment.

I just skimmed though this thread so pardon any inadvertent repetition.

The first thing people need to remember is just how rare a person with a 5 or 6 in a skill really is. An NFL player is only rating 5 in Athletics. Shaq is rating 6. Presidents of nations are the equivalent level for Social skills.

Most of the people in the Shadowrun word who work for a corp have maybe 1 skillgroup at 3 ranks. That is a college degree in their field.

And many wage slaves aren't even at that level.

So the security rigger at anything less than an ultra secure AA-AAA facility has maybe 4 points in the relevant skills.

You also have to realize that any commonly available program will be exploited and become easily cracked very quickly. Yeah, that script kiddy can download a bunch of rating 6 programs, but how many other people have downloaded them as well? This is a SINer kid who has enough money for these programs. Lone Star could track him down in a day, a mega could do it in hours or less. And remember, spreading a computer virus is an Omega Order offense. The CC drop's Thor Shots on your head for doing it. And once the corps recognize the vulnerability they upgrade their security and put out patches for everyone else. Say 10,000 script kiddies bought those rating 6 programs, a week later they are rating 1 because 1 of them got caught and the programs exploit was closed.

And let's look at window in real life. It is known to be an insecure OS but it still controls over 85% of the home computer business and is fairly big in the corporate sector (I don't have exact numbers). There are already bot nets made up of more than 10 million computers. What do you think happens in Shadowrun where everyone over about the age of 5 has a computer on them at all times?

Maybe 5% of the people in the Shadowun universe actually have good, secure comlinks.

So when you get your PC runner hacker who has 6 ranks in the relevant groups, is using SOTA (or better) tech, with custom coded programs that are almost as good as AAA megacorps have, yeah he should crush pretty much every system he will face. Yes he can crash the marks taxi. Yes he can make that Lone Star car think it's on the other side of the city. Yes he can kill the average person on the street without warning or being traced. He is also 1 of at most 500 people in the world with that capability. He's the Shaq of hacking, the wright brothers, the Blue Angles Stunt Pilot, the President of a nation, the CEO of a megacorp.

So why should a company spend millions of nuyen on a computer system that will keep out that hacker when they can spend a hundred thousand nuyen and keep out the other 6,499,999,500 people. Especially when most of the few people capable of this type of hacking work for prime megacorps or governements.

Maybe a dozen runners in the world are that skilled.

As for the Agent Smith problem, perhaps the Matrix backbones analyze the traffic through them and if they notice to many copies of the Agent they just purge it?

Yes teh matrix has lots of problems but the vast majoity of them arise when you start thinking of the PC runner as teh norm.

The simple fact is that your brand new, just generated, 400 BP runner could walk up to the front door of any megacorp and say I want a legit SIM and a job and he would have it. Your hacker, mage, or face would start at a high lifestyle level. Adepts and street sams would be largely the same (but they are easier to compensate for).

...many apologies from this end.

[looks at reference on PDF]

I'll have to chide the writers then for prolonging the myth, and for placing Evil Kenivel in the Elite class along with Baron Von Richthofen. Kenivel took unnecessary risks. I would put Chuck Yeager up there instead.

The problem that I have with skill ratings is that the math just doesn't equate to what you'd expect from newbies and pros. Yeah, I understand that the big difference polynomially(is that a word? It should be) is that the probability of getting 1-2 hits on a consistent basis goes way up. But the ability to make higher threshholds really isn't there, when the difference between a dabbler and the best in a hundred years is an average of 2 hits.

Funny, I thought Resonance was uncapped as well.