So I'm reading through SR4A after not bothering with SR4 a few years back due to my players preferring SR3, and discovering some fluff and crunch changes that make me wonder. The one that stands out best to me is the bits about wireless functionality being standard in all cyberimplants. Reading through the base book, all of the cyberware presented is systems that have been in use in-game since what, the 2040's? Only now having wireless disabled on your gear penalizes anyone doing maintenance on it.

Did the street docs lose their touch over the last few years, or is this just one of those things that has to be shrugged off to maintain suspension of disbelief like how one can maintain anonymity in a world where information networks and drones with cameras are literally everywhere?

It's SR4 idiocy. They wanted to make Combat Hacking viable by making cyberware wifi-accessible.

Of course this is stupid; security-sensitive people (security guards, shadowrunners) will want to prevent hackers from getting access. So they came up with a lame excuse about maintenance uses.

By the time of Unwired they were getting embarrassed by it so they decided that cyberware is usually wired-only after all.

Think of the progression of laptop technology, they all have wireless now so no one really expects to plug them into a hard line, but most are still capable of it if needs be.

The key to understanding is to realize that SR4 is not a continuation of Shadowrun; it's actually a different game entirely, with different themes, with the history of the previous games pinned onto its tail and the transition handwaved.

~J

The functions of all cyberware can be controlled via DNI (it's spelled out somewhere in the BBB, but should also be pretty much self-evident). This allows you to turn Wired Reflexes on and off as needed, toggle vision modes of you eyes, and also to turn off the wireless interface in public and then turn it on again with the blink of an eye when going to the doc.
Really, cyberware hacking is one of those things which just got blown way out of proportion.

Are you saying that doing a maintenance check on the street sams ware wouldn't be easier when you can wirelessly get a read from the multitude of senseor all over the wares.

Proof?

I think the point is that "oh sure it's easier alright. But it a huge security hole and no one likes it. So we went back to the old way."

Sure. which is why you ask him to turn on the maintenance port via DNI. It would be pretty dumb to leave it in maintenance mode all the time.

How long has the the US transition to IPv6 taken? How long did the mystical change between SR3 & 4 take?

SR4, pages 1 through 354?

~J

LOL That's a fair point. SR manages to do world-bending changes in 5 years, and in real life we can't get intelligent ideas implemented in a single country in 10. And I thought SR was supposed to be the dystopia...

You sir has won the thread. Here, have a cookie.

But in RL we have not had our entire internet/matrix structure suffer a complete failure and almost total wipeout. If that were to happen in RL I would hope that within 5 years that it would be back up. In SR, the tech for the new AR matrix was already available, just not economically viable to replace an in place system but was pushed out as either cheaper than replacing the old system that was down or the AAA mega's were able to push it as the new system to make more money.

I am of the partial belief that we have not changed over due to the either the cost of the changeover or those who would rather just stick with what they have now and who dont want to change. More probably a combination of both.

Ah, so the same reason we're still relying on normal gasoline instead of the alternatives: Stuck in our ways and unwilling to shell out the cost to change over, despite the long term benefits of the change or upcoming issues with not changing.

Got it.

There is no way to store electric energy cheap and effectively, and even with what there is, energy density hardly is one tenth of gasoline? Or are you refering to ethanol or refined plant oils?

Ethanol is cleaner and cheaper, yes, but I think that if you take into account the "CO2 costs" of the plantation, ethanol is not much cheaper than gasoline.

Also, it depends on the ethanol. If I recall correctly, sugar cane's ethanol is cheaper than corn's ethanol.

Any alternatives at this point. It just seems that the path to alternatives is actively opposed whereas the one for the IPv6 changeover is simply due to apathy.

Also with ethenol and refined plant oil there is a increase in the cost of food products if not done correctly. Even when just California went to a mandated increase in the percentage of bio-diesal fuel for state vehicles there was a noticable blip in the food market. When/if we go for another increase across the country or world wide we their will be a much greater impact on food prices and availability.

While I have no problem with going there eventually and getting of gasoline, I do really think we need to understand the long term ramifications before doing a full changeover. I do think that going with electric vehicles in the long run is much more sustainable and realistic but even then it will need improvements. here though, I think these improvements will come over time as it gets deployed.


Anyways, I think thats far enough of this from me as it has nothing really to do with SR

Yeah, but 5 years after a horrible worldwide disaster (which system shutdown says caused more deaths than VITAS) caused by poor security (Umm, the SECOND huge worldwide computer security disaster) they put in place system that was FAR less secure than the one that crashed. Umm, how is a MegaCorp economic interest advanced by deploying a NEW! worldwide network that is even more vulnerable to sabotage or hacking?

Color me unimpressed.

Yes, it has nothing to do with the lifetime and cost of an accumulator compared to a gas tank, energy density, storability and temperature sensitivity of batteries. It's not as simple as you make it.


The engine's fantastic. Energy storage sucks. It has been like that for 150 years, and is unlikely to change. Unless you live in SR's world, with it's mystical batteries that never decay and offer comparable energy density (energy derived per weight).


Now that's heresy if I ever saw some. But I agree.

Well, I think they got into new tech is better tech syndrome. Sometimes people/megas dont make sense when they do whatever they do. But in this case I definately do agree with you. It makes no sense at all unless you are the "Google" mega of SR and all/most of your money comes from advertisement. In that case this seems like the perfect system for them. I still prefer to have cyberdecks [or their commlink sized replacements]and having the old wired system myself.

I see SR4 as a continuation of Shadowrun. Shit always happens in SR. SR4 is just another variation on the theme.

Shit always happened in Dark Sun, too.

~J

(Hmm. That's my first double post 'glitch' ever. Interesting.)

*colors kzt unimpressed.

Woo, rehashing the same old complaining for the millionth time, yay! Is it so hard to just go with it? The cyber maintenance rules, if they're *ever* used at all, are the tiniest aspect of a huge game.

Well, that's true. The well thought out, clearly written, fast playing and carefully debugged hacking rules clearly make up for the rarely used cyber maintenance rules.

Exactly. It's almost like you're talking about something totally unrelated to the thread topic, perhaps a long-standing and recurrent gripe that you've threadjacked into?

It's possible. But already said that assuming that people who are not totally nuts just active the maintenance via DNI when they want someone to run diagnostics is the sensible interpretation of the rules/fluff, but people wanted to keep talking. If someone wants to bitch about the computer/hacking or firearms rules I'm all over it.

I think it's wired interface, not DNI, but yep. I wasn't focusing on you specifically, but coloring is just fun. Yet Another SR4 Sucks thread merited a comment.

The really funny thing about this remark is that said change also was a software upgrade.

Yes and no. IIRC, going to full IPv6 is going to require replacement of a lot of routing equipment on the part of a lot of businesses. Part of what makes me so irritable at the new Matrix from SR4, really. I've worked in the IT business for quite some time, and every corp I've worked for has at least one system running on legacy hardware a decade or more old, often with software that would be considered utterly out of date but which does exactly what they need and would cost more to recreate on 'modern' hardware than to maintain as it is.

I think it's safe to assume those things exist. It's just that they're not, by definition, part of the Matrix. If necessary, data derived from them somehow is transferred to a Matrix device, and boom: back into the new system.

Here at the end of 2010 Cisco has had about two generations of hardware across their product lines that can support IPv6 in hardware. But Cisco only stopped charging extra for IPv6 functionality in switches in March of 2009 with 12.2(50). RFC 1883 was Dec 1995. I expect that I'll be supporting IPv6 in production by 2016, based on NIH and NSF (etc) grant requirements, but at this point we just have rumors that they will be pushing this "in the future". We certainly see no need for it based on our internal users.