Thats pretty Vivid.... Imagry...

Sure, but that just relocates the profit center within Renraku... they still make the same profit, which goes against what you said before. Seriously, who cares if IT suddenly becomes the massive profit centre... actually lots of execs do, but fro the shareholders perspective, its the same as makes no difference.



I'm not sure if you're saying that Desktop workers don't need an operating system, or that an R6 operating system would be more expensive to deploy than an R1 one? I feel both are absurd. Infact, based on real life computing, the R6 program is much more likely to have enterprise features that reduce the cost of deployment. But as it doesn't go either way in the fluff or rules presented, that statement is entirely baseless.

Equally, it seems completely absurd that you wouldn't provide software to do their jobs, and make them go back to pen and paper. If you ARE proposing that they need to do software to do their jobs (which they patently do), it doesn't matter at that point whether you are giving them an R6 program or an R1, and you're going to install every common application on every desktop because you have no licensing concerns and this makes your SOE simplier.

Those overheads are fixed because you need to give users programs, and their ratings have nothing to do with it.

I just said that the megacorps would use R6 programs exclusively, and the incremental costs are very low - Agents are autonomous agents that can upload and install themselves on nodes, so the deployment costs would be at or close to 0.

Seriously, I think you need to go back and re-evaluate your argument. You haven't showed a single reason why corporations wouldn't use R6 exclusively, nor have you demonstrated any of the premises of your argument.

Corporations mostly do not incorporate it in budgets outside of IT
Corporations do not get to expense or asset software at commercial shelf prices, instead they have to expense it at the cost of development
The cost of deployment is not related to rating as you seem to indicate without substation.

There is documentary evidence of US government employees doing that today, so in the brutal future, it's probably more commonplace.

I don't see anything wrong with corps using a lot of R6 software, at least for spiders/security hackers and other people whose job depend on having the best and last version of their tools. Less so with other workers: between those who just don't see any reason for upgrading, those who are used to their older version of their software and those who need to use that specific version because they use that other software that's incompatible with the last version and has been discontinued...

But I don't think it means that corps will only use R6 agents. Ignoring the cost of the hardware to run them on, there are a few reasons why all the corp's nodes won't be patrolled by rating 6 IC, even if they can get them for free:
* Keeping the R6 IC means upgrading it regularly. One way is to have someone do it, which has a cost. Another way is to connect the node to some upgrade system which isn't always possible and can lead to pretty serious security issues: a hacker could spoof the ID of the upgrade node and use that to upload his own agent or, even worse, compromise the upgrade node so that all the nodes it's connected to will be infected by his IC.
* Running the same IC everywhere means exposing it to a lot of attackers, which means that exploits will be found faster. Part of the high rating of a R6 IC might just be because it's rare enough to have no zero-day exploits available, just like part of Windows' vulnerability to viruses is because it's the most interesting target to most hackers. Because of this, corps might want to restrict their R6 IC to sensitive systems.
* Some people might prefer using their trusted R4 IC that's proven its efficiency to the new R6 IC that hasn't been widely tested yet.

In My opinion... I do not think that ALL Corporations would deploy R6 Programs... NOT ALL Corporations have Programming Departments, and MUST buy their programs somewhere else... they will purchase the optimal program for what they are doing... Why spend the extra money for features that you don't need with a Rating 6 Program when a Rating 4 will suffice?

That being said... those Megacorps/Corps that do write their own code will probably use the stuff that they code themselves, whether it is a R6 program or something a little less flashy...

Keep the Faith

CodeBreaker, nope, believe it or not I was referring to an actual rule that was brought up and quoted in the other Agent thread that was active when you started this one, in fact if I remember correctly you even posted in the other thread as well but I'm feeling far too lazy to actually double check the latter.

Not to mention the little fact that allowing Agents to run on their own hardware breaks the game ala "Agent Smith" and has done so long before Unwired decide to slightly muddy the waters and Fourth Edtion 2.0 appears to be pulling back from, hence my comment about it being a matter of debate as opposed to outright calling you an idiot.

What I find truly amusing though is the fact that no matter which one of us is right about Agents, your "earth shattering" Matrix Trick still doesn't work.

OK, last bit first. Yeah I admitted that it doesn't work at the very beginning. The Trace rules are weird. We then moved off of that and started talking about how Agents could be run on their own hardware. Don't get me wrong Ravor I have not been arguing for my idea, I have been arguing that you are wrong and that suggesting that Agents cannot run off their own hardware is disingenuous. It is not in anyway debatable, in fact it is supported multiple times in Unwired and the Fluff.

And then; Why does an “Agent Smith� problem break the game? I have shown plenty of methods to get around a possible Botnet attack (Passcode Restrictions, Access ID Code problems, GODs intervention). How exactly do you see a large number of Agents being a problem for Hackers? Yes, it makes things a fair bit more dangerous. If you are detected in a Node you can damn well believe that in no time at all all hell is going to break loose. But so what? That means a Hacker has to be more careful, and has to actively act against the possibility of being trapped by a large number of IC.

It also means that some Corps, those with the resources to do so, can make unhackable nodes. So what, Corps can quite easily already do that (Trap Doors, Chokepoints ect.). This is simply another thing that a Hacker has to think about when he tries to get that paydata sitting in Example Corp As data vaults.

And wading into the Rating 6 for all talk. I agree that the Mega-corporations are probably using some of the best software around, and that their IT departments are almost certainly using Rating 6 software. But my example IC Farm was for an AA Corp, one that probably does not have an in house programming department (Because I cannot imagine a lot of AA Corps would, other than those that specialize in writing software.

And a thought on the lone programmer creating his own master software. I know that this is not supported by RAW, but by the time that a single programmer sitting in his basement could throw together a Rating 8 Agent (And the OS to run it on) is there not a good chance that the rest of the market has caught up with that user and everyone is using that software? Thats a good three years, and in my mind Program Ratings are simply a method for the system to compare programs. So a Rating 8 Agent written for today's market might be just as proficient as what is called a Rating 4 Agent written in three years. Again, I know this is not supported by RAW but look at how fast the software/hardware market advances today. What is cutting edge today is normal user stuff by next year, and basically obsolete in five.

And around and around we go.

As has already been pointed out to you repeatedly the text in SR4A indirectly contradicts explicit text in Unwired. As Unwired is still canon and is listed in SR4A as advanced matrix rules it over-rides any coincidentally contradictory text in SR4A unless errata'd.

The problem with Agent Smith has never been that Agents can access nodes other than the node they are loaded on but that multiple copies of identical Agents can be run on inexpensive hardware and used in mass attacks very easily. A number of loop-holes were closed in Unwired, in particular identical Agents are now no longer able to access the same node, all must have unique, and expensive or time consuming, access ID's. Mass attacks are also limited by a nodes subscription limit.

Your claim that accessing multiple nodes has always been one of the core Agent Smith problems is one you have been unable/unwilling/too lazy to substantiate.

Repeatedly.

Cthulhudreams.


I've had a good deal of time to consider your position.

Tymeus is right, assuming that all corporations have access to self-coded copies of all programs at Rating 6 is an attitude that is directly contradictory to the fluff of SR canon.

Some corps are good at software, others are not. Some are specialists in System, others in Firewall and still others in Attack or Stealth. There must be some measurable difference between the mechanical properties of each corp's software to support the fluff and for any sort of competitive marketplace to exist.

If a corp wants all of it's software at Rating 6 it must buy at least some percentage of it from it's competition.

Additionally, I don't think your assertion that a corp can spread massive amounts of it's own code around it's hardware with no copy protection holds water. Such a set up would leak like a sieve and the lowest common denominator of employee would be selling your code on to the Warez groups within minutes of it being rolled out.

A corp must install copy-prevention measures on every piece of code in it's install base. Such measures are going to be physical in nature and are going to cost money.

Thinking about it while the servers were down I concluded that much of the cost of higher Rating code has to be in the form of Passkeys and dongles of various sorts. The more you want to charge for a piece of code and the more effective it is the stronger your copy-protection must become.

On the subject of code strength homogeneity across your organization I don't think that holds true either, even if it were possible to do so economically the wider you distribute a piece of code the quicker it will leak into the wild, the faster it will be hacked and the bigger the financial consequences of a single breach become. If a hacker can compromise one node he can compromise any node, you have kept nothing in reserve.

In conclusion while your argument makes sense, given the basic principles you have started from, the resulting world bears no similarity to established SR canon. You must, therefore, be wrong in some regard.

crizh once more down the rabbithole we go.

Yep, I've read the argument that Unwired should override Fourth Edition A but I find the very idea laughable on its face, Fourth Edition A is the newer book and thus should be used to clarify Unwired when the two disagree, not the other way around. And no, that doesn't make Unwired any less "canon", it just means that Unwired is overdue for a series of Errata.

As for the Agent Smith problem, something that I don't think you are considering is that it has multiple faucets, yes, the ease that a Decker could build one was definently a huge problem and was the problem that was most focused on since DMs are stupidly expected to pull their punches and not play their NPCs intelligently. But another faucet of the problem with "Agent Smith" was the sheer ammount of tomfoolery that a hoard of Agents that didn't have to worry about responce degradation could be used for. One doesn't counter the other.

However, with that said I tend to agree with you that corps aren't going to be running ( Rating 6 ) programs across the board.

Codebreaker I think you are vastly underestimating the size and scope of the corps if you don't think that a AA has it's own software department.

Sure, but not the rules because you can seriously just write that all in 5 minutes. The fluff just doesn't fit with the rules here at all, much like the rest of the matrix.



Did I say no copy protection? As copy protection appears to be 'check in with master server for validation, otherwise not run' you're just going to have hundreds of millions of licenses



Except its not, because the rules say its software patches to get it out.



It's just the matrix rules and matrix fluff are written by different people who apparently never talked to each other. Or had an objective in common. Or a plan.

It shows through all the time, this is just another classic. If you want to bring it back into line, it is just handwavium 'the corps are morons' stuff.