Hi,

With the advent of trodes, I'm wondering how common place is it for non-hackers to use VR? In SR1, it was relatively common - at least for wageslaves with a datajack. In this day and age, would use AR more often than not? Or would they switch to VR when they need to concentrate to do their work?

On a somewhat related note, I can't help but wonder why telecommuting isn't more common than it appears to be in SR?

This is very much a fluff related question and definitely one for the writers on this forum.

- J.

Who cares? Home or office, you're still in the archology anyway

You'll realise how bad telecommuting is when you log off and realise that your live-in partner has drawn a gigantic penis on your face in permanent marker for the fifth time this month.

Not eveyone lives with college students.

- J.

It would be easier to hack into average joe employee's home computer then it would to hack into the business node. This doesn't mean you can't hack into the business node or that some fanatical employee won't have black ic loaded at his house, but for the most part it is cheaper and easier for the company to protect their assests if they are all together.

As for VR, I see it used quite often for entertainment. Why would a teen sit back and play some WoW on his commlink when he can lay back and play INSIDE WoW? I also imagine a large industry based on simulations. Imagine this scenario "Oh noes, the plane is going down, can anyone pilot a plane?" "Well, I am just a janitor, but I have logged nearly 3,000 flight hours in VR!" Very helpful in my opinion. I just hope that the student doctors start using it. I am tired of them learning how to carve people on my tender abdoman.

Of course, this is all from a guy who has never played, even though I was told to make my character back in January... so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Okay, shall I point out the issue in a manner that is less light hearted? VR Telecommuting leaves your body vulnerable to, for example, being mistaken for unresponsive from disease or medical condition, being subjected to assault from frustrated co-habitants, and you aren't aware of something that is happening in your home (like a fire, or a burst pipe) which can be exceptionally dangerous. It also mixes work and pleasure to a degree that corps might not like.

These may not be likely, but it's a sane move to avoid activities that put you at unnecessary risk without comensurate reward.

or narcissistic attention hounds...

In my opinion telecommuting is Very common for alot of jobs, the 6th world is run by corporations, and corporations have things such as logistics and amministrative matters to take care of; the money saved form not paying rent and manteinance must be more than enough to cover the losses of minor hacking.

As for VR, it's probably used mostly for entertainment or for working in a more pleasnt (less psychologicaly alienating) settings.

heh, grab a apartment complex, set your workers up there, pay them less scrip (the housing is supplied by mama corp after all), run the whole office environment out of the VR nexi, and maybe even have some after hours virtual entertainment going.

basically, if you can make them not leave the place, security becomes that much simpler...

btw, i ran into a real life telecommuter example a while back. it was basically a large screen HDTV, camera and mic setup so that it was like a window into the office area from home, and from the office it looked like a reception window (complete with a shelf to rest things on while talking to the person at the other side).

this made interacting with the person telecommuting as easy as if the person was in the office (save being able to bring physical object to said person).

and if the person wanted some time off, the tv on the office end would appear as if the blinds where drawn...

I'd say that teleprensence really isn't that common in the Sixth World for two reasons, the first and ironically the lesser reason is security, not only are your wageslaves harder to secure physically, but you also have to worry about their computers, networks, and even the wireless traffic. The second and paramount reason is that the one thing the corps crave more than money is control, and it is easier to control your wageslaves if you require them to be in the office.

How hard would it be for someone to set up some kind of alarm in case of fire or other situations that involves your meat body? 

I don't imagine that would be too hard. And unless you are reaaaally busy in VR, you can always check a cam feed of yourself every so often to make sure you aren't secretly wetting your pants or something

If I were to use VR, I would likely to stay in the comfort of my home/room. I would have warning system set around the house that would notify me while I'm in VR. Also a few video feeds around the house if necessary. Since I am home and preferably alone or with someone that knows me, there would be no mistake of disease or medical or condition. As for assaulted from frustrated co-inhabitants, I don't know. Don't piss them off to begin with? Get a lock? If they were going to assault you to begin with, I don't think vulnerability inside VR is your biggest concern. They might as well drug your food or assault you while you sleep. You really should just move somewhere else.

As for fire, burst pipe, or other situations, those should not be too much problem with a proper alarm system. I don't think staying in VR often put you at unnecessary risk without commensurate reward. By staying in VR, I can do things in the comfort and safety of my own room/bed. I don't have to worry about commuting to places. I don't have to worry about getting mugged in the streets. I don't have to worry about becoming part of the collateral damage from those pesky shadowrunners. 

Yeah.. I really think you are more likely to get assaulted outside of your home than inside. Though your mileage might.. differ?

True, it might be safer for you, but the problem is that the corps really don't give a slot about your safety, they only care about theirs and if putting you, aka Wageslave 94*&13*AP into harm's way helps them in any way don't for one second think that they will hesitate to do it.

Seems the issues that make telecommuting nebulous today are still going to be an issue in future

The reason I was thinking about VR was with the rules on Psychotropic IC and Simsense programming rules given in Unwired, I was thinking of some really, really nasty uses of Black IC in the hands of a shit hot Matrix programmer. I'm wondering how much memory tampering is actually possible.

- J.

I imagine telecommuting would be a whole lot easier to do in 2070 than it is today, and could actually be common for smaller corps where most of the jobs are purely computer or Matrix based. The thing with megacorps, though, is that they're hugely paranoid control freaks, so they always tend go with the route that gives them more centralized control, even if it's not as efficient, cheap, or even as secure. That goes for everything, not just telecommuting.

You can take care of monitoring your meat bod by using a biomonitor. The rest can be taken care of by a small drone with will alert you if there is a problem with your home.

You are -6 for physical actions while in VR.

Even now there are amazing counter measures to prevent hacking remote computers. I'm not talking about just sticking it behind a wireless router and calling it good. Ive seen computers that use a usb cypher with a rotating cryptographic key that changes down to the hundredths of a second. I would seriously doubt it if technology of the 2070's wouldnt allow wageslaves to -=securely=- work from home. I could be wrong though... I was once.

In theory yes. but there is some fluff text in Unwired which basically says that changes in cryptography have gotten to a point where mathematicians have realised ways to break any formula.

In game terms this means that any Encrypted file/node/system/program can be Decrypted.

- J.

If you're responding to my post, then it's no big deal. When the biomonitor alerts you, you just jack out and deal with what's going down.

in the end i think we need to redefine "securely". that is, nothing is 100%, but if one can get it down from 90%+ to 10% or less getting in, then its by all means secure (as the remaining can be monitored, arrested and so on).

sounds to me like what your describing would be a combo of passkey and dynamic encryption (unwired, p64-66).

Securely enough maybe, but not securely. Because if there was a way to allow wageslave to securely work from home then there would be a way to prevent hackers from eavesdropping conversation on the fly, from intercepting signals and playing with them, even from decrypting files and nodes without stealing a legitimate passkey first...
In short: hackers would be harder to play, and any hack would require a lot more of preparation and time.

and a lot more rubber hose then technical knowhow...

"Now mister Anderson, I'm going to..." *SMACK* "ask you one..." *SMACK* "last..." *SMACK* "time..." *SMACK* "what is the password to the mainframe admin account?" *SMACK SMACK SMACK*

In the end, it probably depends on the job the wageslave has.

1) If it's important enough and the corp is security conscious enough, it will be done on site.

2) If it's not that important or the corp (small one) isn't that security conscious, it will be done off site.




Honestly, I wouldn't know what the wageslaves do exactly or whether my examples fit what I have said above, but the megacorps have the man and resource to figure that out

Say if their job deals with communicating with the average customers, as in no one especially rich or important, then it doesn't really matter if they aren't doing inside corp premises where security is high. Their job would be little interest to shadowrunners and if the wageslave screw up, he'd be fired from the position. Then again, maybe a rival corp will come in and try to steal the customer, so I'm not sure if I can find a good example. I am sure there are some jobs that fit condition number two though.




As for VR or AR. I think the corp would just make everyone use VR, so that they get another IP and in theory more efficient. Even if they round up all the wageslaves to corp premises, they would just tell them to go to VR for ease of communication and monitoring them.

and if its really important (or a politically touchy subject), the wageslave will be living on site...

First of all there are several things being missed here.

1) When you are in VR you are not completely oblivious (This is not Astral projection) you are -6 to all physical activities while in VR. You could theoretically go shopping and hold a conversation while in VR. You can certainly hear the smoke alarms going off.

2) If an employee is working from home, he will simply slave his system to the work system. At that point it is basically impossible to hack his system without first going through the corporate network. You would need to decrypt the signal and then attempt to spoof the codes of the work node to get into his system. This would not be done by common hackers, and more advance hackers are trying to get to the work system anyhow, and will still need to hack unless they force the wage slave to give up his access codes.

3) The dangers of Black IC and such are scary, but with the exception of cyber terrorists, that sort of thing only happens to criminals invading corporate networks. Or at least this is the impression of "the normal people". How many people on this list have ever been involved in a shooting? Bombing? Axe murder? These are obviously sensational occurrences, not things that happen to "real people".

just thought i'd mention, for the average wageslave this is not necessarily true.

most people will have a perception dicepool of about 2. some might have a bit better, i suppose, but not all that many.

i'm going to suppose that the fire alarm is "obvious/large/loud", and the subject is in VR. now, technically they're also distracted, but i'm going to be nice and assume that's part of the -6 penalty for full VR. (normally, i wouldn't even require a perception check outside of VR, but consider that VR is equivalent to the penalty to sight-based perception when you can't see a dang thing)

so then, we have a threshold 1 test. also, it stands to reason that the "object/sound stands out in some way", for +2 dice. finally, there is a -6 dice penalty from VR. that's a net of -4. i will again refer you to the perception dicepool of the average person. even with visual enhancement at rating 3, they have only a 1 in 3 chance (with a 1 in 6 chance of critically glitching). so the average person *won't* hear the smoke alarms going off. that being said, i rather suspect that smoke alarms trigger all kinds of AROs, and probably also make virtual noise too, with special software (for safety reasons) that makes it cut through that ork thrash metal song you were playing at full blast. in fact, i rather expect AROs have changed fire safety a lot, because an AR overlay of the building you're in can effectively let you see through smoke to some extent. it means you can be able to hear instructions playing, reminding you what to do in the event of emergency. in some systems, there is probably a emergency fire procedures knowsoft that automatically uploads itself, though that's probably the deluxe model.

Or set up the smoke alarm so it warns you in the matrix. Tada




[edit:]


If it's THAT important, they will be.

Perception dice pool should be 3 on average actually 2 stat and 1 skill, unless they are extremely mentally retarded. Perception is a skill that nearly every Metahuman on the planet possesses with at least 1 rank, but since the average person has a 1 edge (ok maybe not, but they must be part of a group to take an edge from unless the GM really hates them), and would simply spend their 1 edge to get 1 success.

I do agree that most people who had a good reason to work in full VR would most likely slave important home functions to pop up as AR tags. Also bear in mind that those who are using a trodes and a decent comlink with a sim module have some fair disposable income, and these would tend to be bright, competent people in the first place. These people, especially if they are working for a corp will be doing their VR from what they think is a safe location. They are not likely to be doing it from an alley in the sprawl.

no, normal people don't have perception. just like normal people don't have pilot skills, they have a skill rating of 0, which is ordinary, average, knowledge level. the description of rating 0 is "The general baseline of knowledge shared by society. This is not incompetence, it is the standard level of untrained knowledge held by any Joe Average."

this is backed up by the standard grunt stat lines: for example, the corpsec security unit doesn't even have any perception. neither do the halloweeners (and lieutenant), the humanis goons (and lieutenant) or the regular triad goons. lone star, red samurai, tir ghosts, and the triad lieutenant do, however, but even lone star only gets it at 2.

normal skill level of normal people is 0. 1 represents some degree of specific interest in the area, with at least some practice (though probably not much official training, unless it's the early stages leading up to more advanced training)

Why would the common worker want to deprive the corporation of the ability to provide three times the productivity that comes with VR? Perhaps they need to attend some more corporate team spirit development sessions?

Of course they are gonig to be in VR if they are doing something that VR is more effective at, the question is whether or not their meat is in the corp office or not.

Depend on job, it's probable if you have to control the warehouse that supplies junk to various Stuffer Shaks you are not going to need to be physicaly in the office, but if you work on some documents such as balance reviews will you probably do it on a network isolated from the matrix (such as the office's LAN).

Maybe, I guess it depends on how much you see the corps as wanting to control every aspect of your life, as viewed from the cyberpunk genre which is stuck in the 1980s view of evil big biz. As such I don't see them being willing to give up the ability to pump the very air that you breath full of drugs and then charge you for them.

First off, let me drop in a quote before I get onto this in depth.

Runner's Companion, P154: Lifestyle Categories/Comforts/Middle

Your home has enough comfortable furniture to fill it. It’s probably mass-produced, but it won’t break when someone sits on it. You probably have three or more household drones and a multi-function soy processing unit. Your walls are fully covered with AR paint or wallpaper. You may even have a collection of knick-knacks. Your CHN is secure enough that you could telecommute. This is the lifestyle of typical wageslaves.

Emphasis mine.

OK, I think you're mostly over-estimating the security threat by an order of magnitude; you all play shadowrunners or manage their opponents as GM. It's to be expected. Shadowrunners are concerned with ABSOLUTE levels of security. The majority of things tele-comuting wageslaves do is not really in any way sensitive in nature; if it were, they'd be in a high-security facility full-time. But the REAL problem is hinted at in the fluff: data volume. There are SO many connections going on, all over the place, the likelyhood of somebody with the skills an gear (and interest) to hack any particular connection for the purpose of industrial espionage or something equally nefarious are vanishingly small; There's just too much out there to sift through. If there was enough power to sift for a random connection that had valuable data as opposed to garbage about the company picnic going across it at any given time, 'runners would already be out of business because The Authorities could just sift every single camera in the 'plex until the found your squat. It doesn't work that way. Most telecomuting can be done over a (relatively) secure connction, enough to keep out the average decker. Keep in mind, when telecomuting, technically you're subscribing your CHN to the company mainframe in a way, so even if you get into the user's CHN, you need to beat the corp mainframe's security to get to the juicy paydata; See my comments elsewhere about the security advantages of corporate cloud computing. The most sensitive information that is actually STORED locally is going to be the user's itinerary (if they're a target themselves) or if they are one of those people who are the face behind the ID-10-T error, but then the dumbslot probably has the stuff on her personal 'link anyhow, and that's probably just as hackable while she's having a latté down at the café as working from home or at the office. Remember: your security is only as good as your weakest link - ordinarily the laziest/stupidest user. If you implement our security right, getting into their "secure" only gets you past the first line of protection, and you'd better believe the CORP has a full-time spider and serious IC protecting the VPN Nexus gateway on their side watching for suspicious activity - like a regular user trying to access files that aren't a part of their department, or trying to save their work to an off-server device.

Anyhow, that's the telecommuting thing. As to VR, I think it gets a LOT of use in the home for entertainment almost as much as for work. Datajacks were almost ubiquitous in 1st and 2nd Ed, and despite the increasingly "retro" perception of hard chrome in 2070, I still see a datajack as an almost de rigueur accessory for any serious corporate wageslave, if for no other reason than answering that awkward/annoying call from your boss/mother while not alone in bed requires a fiberline and digita avatar of your face where background sounds won't register,just as one example. In outside life, AR means you don't have to bother with VR. And as a final note, you don't have to run fully immersed in VR to be using the tools of VR - remember that VR is almost as much about th DNI (Direct Neural Interface) control of the 'link/device as it is about the SimSense cutout of reality. That distracted looking lady in the smart chic Zoé suit walking down the street might be having a teleconference while working on a marketing presentation in her head.

Well, that's my two centinuyen. Insert original Ralph Nader quote here.