Which is fair - I was more getting at something I have a conceptual problem with in cyberpunk more generally. I get that it's a genre trope, but it just bugs me.

I'm with Bull on this one, but then I've always had that view of the Matrix.

The difference from our computers here in 2013 and the Matrix of 2074, would be akin to the first consumer computers in 74-77 and the Computers we have today. Sure they 'were' computers in 74, you could buy them, but if someone told you "Oh well in 35 years, your computer will be able to, through the air mind you, talk to billions of other computers around the world in real time, play immerse video games with player bases larger than the population of Greece, and that you could fit your entire music library, your brothers, sisters, father's mothers, music libraries, and all the books they've ever read on a computer you can fit in your hand and slip in your pocket, oh.. and it'll only cost a few hundred bucks!" You'd go "Wow, that's awesome but computers (( in 1974)) Don't work that way man!"

You can.. Envision such wondrous things, but there's no way you could describe them in 1974 with the computers you had around then. Trying to "Make them work" with 1974 technology would be moronic. Same way with the Matrix. We can visualize it in our minds, or even in art, be it visual or written descriptions, but trying to get from where we are now, to there, using 'Real world technology" is a joke.

So why try? It works in Shadowrun because, that's how it works in Shadowrun. Have a problem with the plausibility? Just make sure you keep an eye out for that armadillo that's bigger than a 4 story house and can suck up racks of cluster bombs dropped on it and only get ornery. Or that bird that is big enough to carry off Elephants to eat. Lets not even touch dragons and such.

You're now defictionalizing, at which point I'm going to have to point out that I was talking about something high level that's not directly related to the specific technology involved. Basic protocol structure's not gonna change - it's largely a description of the elements you cannot have networking without. I mean, it's not like the physical layer is ever gonna go away, as an example.

Yes, but the important question is, why would Corps have more than two, maybe three models of cyberdecks?

Using SR4's numbers, they'd have the Rating 6 Cyberdeck that they give out to their rank-and-file cyber-operatives. They'd have a Rating 8 Deck for the guy in charge of those cyberoperatives, and a Rating 10 'deck that they'd hand out only to their Ultra-Important Persons who can basically order the company to give them whatever they want (if Damian Knight wants a Rating 10 deck, Damian Knight gets an R10 deck, even if Ares Military Electronics has to gear up to make him a one-off,) those VIP's cyber-bodyguards, perhaps, and their elite black teams.

And, of course, for installations where your spiders are going to be in one place while they do their security spidering, they don't get decks, they get heavy metal; they get Nexi, and say bye-bye to program-running-at-once limitations.

There is no reason what-so-ever for the corps to manufacture goods that are illegal to sell in most places in Ratings 1 through 5. That's what he's saying: not that the corps won't make illegal cyberdecks, but that they won't make the ones it does not make business or operational sense for them to make. They can't profitably run production lines to run off and produce these things, because anywhere they're allowed to sell them, either nobody will buy (sure, Ares can, if it chooses to, sell cyberdecks illegal in the UCAS in its Ares Electronics Outlets that are on extraterritorial property, and Lone Star/Knight Errant will be sitting on the sidewalk to harass their customers and arrest them for the purchase they just made with their cold hard jing,) or they'll be selling in places where nobody has the money to buy, and would probably rather bust in and take them by force (Setting up in Redmond Barrens, for instance.)

So then, their market for illegal cyberdecks consists of their own security forces and black operatives, the Grid Overwatch Division, assuming they land the G.O.D. contract, corporations without a strong Matrix focus, and governments.

None of those are going to be buying the Rating 1 illegal cyberdeck. Nor the Rating 2, 3, or 4. Maybe 5, but probably the 6.

Uhm, no. Even not considering accelerated technological progress, it'd be like today's computers versus the computers of the 1950s. In other words, very, very different.


Ah. Well, if there are GOD Model 1 and GOD Model 2 decks, I'd be fine with that too; if there's a whole palette of different decks, like in E1 through 3, I'd have trouble believing they're as illegal as Mark makes them out to be. But I cannot see a market for "beginner" decks and "medium" decks in the security business, as ShadowDragon says.


Ah, so it's "this is not Windows with magic". I'm entirely with you there.

*shrugs* You don't know that. We're talking about direct brain/computer interfacing. You very honestly don't know WHAT they'll have. That's the entire point. Just like those people in 74 couldn't dream of the computing power and abilitys of the modern PC or Smart phone, we can't really conceive what the Matrix would 'take' to be brought into effect. It's just as alien as magic, and the rules both fictionally, figuratively and literally haven't been written yet.

You can't sit there and go "Oh, well protocol structure's not going to change! You can't have networking with out it!" Look how much computers and programming changes year to year. Look at the Apple II and then look at a 4th Generation Ipad. Other than an Apple on the case, and you use your eyes to see a screen, everything has changed.

You don't know that we can't have networking with out it. Just like those in 74 probably thought you couldn't have computers with out plugs, or be able to upload the way we do. They couldn't conceive of wi-fi.
For all you know it could be and very likely is, so different from our computers in 2013, to look like a 100% new thing all together. And that's the point. No more than you can try and 'disprove a spell' based on Physics, you can't 'KNOW' how the matrix works.

Actually, it'd be more like the earliest computers in the 1950's.

Your point is valid, mind. Just, 2014-60 is not 1974.

However, I still don't think it's automatic invalidation, if you mention "in real life, ____".

I hate to break it down for you, Pepsi Jedi, but nothing much has changed qualitatively in computing since 1974, much less since the 80ies. Pretty much nothing has changed in the foundations of computer science, at all.

ARPANET was established in 1969, so computer networks were already there by 1974. Transmitting data wirelessly was not "inconceivable" by 1890ies, and changing pseudographical screens for color HD ones makes no principal difference, just as replacing magnetic tape drives (or what was it, semi-permanent magnetic memory then?) with HDD or SDD drives. Whether you type on a physical keyboard on Apple II or a virtual keyboard on an iPad screen, you're using realizations of the same concept, which began with typewriters (and which still bears ugly birthsigns from that time). If you met an engineer from 1974, explaining to him that "computers will get faster, smaller and cheaper, pretty much everyone will be able to afford one, and they all will be able to exchange data" would be extremely banal. And there is nothing that a well-funded team of engineers would be able to do with a computer in 1974 that you wouldn't be able to do on your PC, and you can do many things besides - that's what technological development is all about, giving you new abilities.

Now, in what comes to the Matrix. A few things have changed for it, but for all we know in the established fluff, those are limited to output/input mechanisms and decryption algorithms. There is nothing that'd invalidate modern computer science among those changes that we know about (before you argue: technomancers invalidate it no more than magic invalidates the laws of physics, and things like unlimited bandwidth and zero ping are in fact not "unlimited" and "zero" but "large enough not to notice the wait" and "small enough not to notice the wait", respectively). Abstracting it to a system working differently from today's Internet, I am fine with. But that system not being internally consistent or going against logic and common sense, just like any other illogical piece of fluff, would be ruining the system. "It is so because we said it's so" does not work here, it's not magic (and even magic is limited by its own laws). So claiming, like Bull does, that RL logic somehow does not apply to Matrix just means capitulating before the task of formulating working rules.

At a complete stab-in-the-dark guess, and given how things like this generally tend to work in real life (uh oh, there's that phrase!) ... we still might see, say, 3 to 5 models of relatively standardised cyberdeck. Because, well, someone has to make those GOD decks - most likely, many[/i someones, working to a common designed architecture. And the corps will still have their own in-house security spiders and such.

And the manufacturer is going to want to benefit from [i]economies of scale, which means not hand-building each one ... no ... it'll mean an assembly-line affair. Standard layout, standard parts list, standard (foundation) software.

And then, inevitably? A shipment is going to get 'jacked. A crate will "fall off the truck". Someone in Q.A. will "fail" a few perfectly-good units, because they "know a guy" who'll pay good money for an out-the-back-door sale. Or a group of shadowrunners is going to get ambushed by a corp hit-squad who was just a wee bit less competent than they needed to be, and during the "loot the bodies" process .. "hey look, this slot had a cyberdeck! BONUS!"

They'll find their way into the shadows. The first non-corp units will be handmade (maybe copies of a few captured units?), and for a while, most or all will be at least partly hand-made. But, well ... it is shadowrun, after all. Which means, the Black Market is always trying to put buyers together with whatever they happen to want.

Cyberdecks included.

In 1974, lots of computers still used PUNCH CARDS for data entry - which were still in widespread use until the early-to-mid-80's. Moving from punch cards to magnetic, and then optical, storage was a qualitative advance. Around 1981 or 1982, my father was studying computer science ... and all the programming and data entry was done with punch cards. All of it. Stacks, and boxes, and CASES of them.


"Print this data to punch cards."

...

Hmm, guess there's one thing, eh? *shrug*

I doubt corp deckers would use a Radio Shack deck

@Fatum: Ferrite core memory, immortalized by countless "memory cores" in scifi

So what? Instead of punch card, you now have blu-ray and flash drives - the compression of data has changed, the ideas behind its storage for input not so much. Just the fact that ones and zeros are now represented by tiny black areas on plastic, not paper, does not make a qualitative change.

You can print data.
And if you want, you can still get a punchcard printer from IBM - zSeries mainframes still support them (actually, they emulate them for all JCL jobs submitted).


As for the cyberdecks, self-made vs factory-produced - how many runners make their own assault and sniper rifles, much less heavier weaponry? :3

I have to admit: the podcast + Bulls news regarding the new matrix are ... troublesome. There are of course no details yes, so I really hope that I am wrong (perhaps Bull could clarify?), but a matrix only for legal users? This would lead to a SR3 Matrix, where only the deckers would use it for commando raids while the rest would "tipping on the pocket secretary" and not use the matrix at all due to tracking/surveillance considerations. To be honest it was a avery good development in SR4 that the matrix was usable for everyone (as in everyone had a link and used the same space and attributes and was part of the daily life, both in background and in rules).

I sincerely hope that in SR5 the link/deck prices are still normal/affordable and not in the SR3 range where you had to be a rich man before you could start hacking/decking.

SYL

At my workplace we still put lots of data on punchcards -- there is a huge load of empty ones in the basement and instead of throwing them away we have adapted them for taking notes

... and there will be standard performance benchmarks. There will not be a large gap in performance between a Renraku Master User Device (MUD) and a Transys MatrixGOD 2000, because those models compete for a limited field of buyers who all have the same standards, more or less.

If those brand name decks are to be viable as PC decks, there has to be, though, because there has to be a progression possible between the decks (like the old Radio Shack PCD 1000 versus the old Fairlight Excalibur). I'd personally like to see decks being custom jobs and every decker building their own and maintaining it as a standard, not least to avoid the problem of super-expensive decks apple mentioned.

Personally, I am happy to see a more reglemented Matrix return. SR4's super-free, security-less Matrix had just all kinds of facepalm moments for me (even the real internet is more regulated than SR4's Matrix was).

As a gamemaster, I still think that there are good stories that can only be told with encryption that can resist for a week or a month, and datastore that can only be accessed physically. That has nothing to do with realism or how computers work in real life, but simply with having plots that a merely skilled hacker can single-handedly resolve.

without the fluff telling me that everything must be connected to the Matrix.
I have yet to see NSA gear and software "fall off the truck". I wouldn't call that realism. It rather is the internal consistency Shadowrun require for PC to have military-level gear like cyberware and hacking stuff we expect them to.

The qualitative nature of the change is not in the technology or it's underlaying systems. If it were, then there would not be a qualitative change between hand-forged tools (carbon-infused iron heated and battered into shape), and machine-forged tools (carbon-infused iron heated and battered into shape), even though the modern tools might be a hundred thousand times bigger and be ready to use in a tenth the time or less.

The qualitative change, is in our relationship to that technology.

...

I've no idea how old you are or aren't. But I actually do (dimly) remember the 1970s, and I remember the 1980s. My first introduction to home video games, was the original Pong console unit. More to the point: the first personal computer I owned, was a Commodore Business Machines C-64; I got it for Christmas in 1985 ... I was fourteen years old, and the C64 was an absolutely amazing piece of technology at the time (also, one of the gifts for the holiday, and gods bless my mother for the scores of hours of overtime she worked, and then tens of hours she spent scouring stores, in order to get it for me).

Now, the C-64 was, by today's standards, a woefully primitive, underpowered, limited-capability machine. No hard drive, no built in nonvolatile memory - there were two options for permanent storage were (a) a cassette drive, or (b) 5.75" floppy disks. There was no "mouse" or other pointer - though you could use a standard Atari 2600 style one-button joystick for many games. I think you could connect it to a modem, but I'm not sure that was even possible. Compare that to my current PC, and .... good grief, my mouse has more computing power (and probably more memory) than the whole C64 did!! The internet - email, Twitter, Facebook, Steam, streaming movies from NetFlix, iTunes (hell, my iPod is a million times the computer my C64 was) ... yeah. The whole adds up to a strong qualitative change. Because, sure the parts each existed independently in 1985. But they hadn't been put together, and more importantly had not yet been rendered commercially affordable to the majority of people, until many years later.

To be as succinct as I can: how we interact with and relate to all those devices and systems, is what has changed. And in sixty years? We are not able to predict, with any degree, how we will interact with and relate to the technology available to us at that time.

Which is to say: while looking to real life for ideas is all well and good, "it isn't possible because the setting says so" is also a legitimate response, simply because doing otherwise might never occur to someone in the setting.

After all, how many teenagers right now are perfectly comfortable surfing the web on any number of devices, even circumventing parental control locks or other security measures?

And ... how many of them would know how to use a TELNET client, without looking the instructions up online? Hell, how many of them would even know what TELNET is ...?

Now project that forward, to those teenager's grandchildren in the 2070's.

Just because you - presumably not a veteran freelance black-ops professional - don't personally know of it, do you really think it doesn't happen?

Here'sone great example of a "fell off the truck" sort of thing. NSA's own people allegedly stole fifty thusand rounds of ammunition.

Then there's the 700 cryptography machines they lost in Viet Nam ...

A-level corps won't be able to buy the "best of the best" gear for their spiders, let alone the B-level corps who might want to have a couple in-house Matrix Security specialists.

So, I'm sure there will be machines with lesser capabilities, at a lesser pricepoint. After all, if there's a market for something .... someone is going to produce it and sell it.

A lot of them were available to professionals. Whatever was not available, was easily imaginable (okay, except maybe for the social networks, because seriously, why would anyone want to post every little thing about their life for all to see?)

The effect is less for the professionals, again (I imagine, I was neither a professional nor alive in 1974).
But yeah, sure, our interactions with the computers and the degree to which they permeate our lives have changed. But that is not what we were talking about.

Actually, most computer-savvy teenagers know what telnet is if only because any sysadmin manual will tell you to use ssh over it as more secure. A better option would be coding with direct memory access by address or something. But, again, anyone in IT now knows what telnet is, and people in related fields know the tricks previously available and much more. We can do more, not less - that's the essence of the progress. Some moves might become obscure for being complex and rarely used, even if effective in some particular cases, but they won't magically stop working without a good reason.

Flint knapping is pretty much a lost art (being revived by a very, very few).

Not many people know how to hand-smelt and -cast bronze implements.

...

Some knowledge falls into disuse, then obscurity, and finally, is forgotten. That's also part of progress.

Few people posses those skills now (in the developed countries). However, if we want, we can learn them just the same, as evidenced by existence of reenactors, and bronze will be hand-smelted just as well as it was three thousand years ago.
The knowledge is still there thanks to that great idea called writing stuff down :ь

No, it really isn't that simple. Just the few people who can flint-knapp, are re-inventing the entire process. And it's taken them years, perhaps decades, to do it.

And ... "developed countries" ...? Try, few people know how to do that anywhere on the face of the earth. I'm talking about making stone-age tools, the knives, scrapers, and so on of Neanderthal and early Modern humans.


Not everything gets written down.

And see, that's a bit of 2010's thinking you've got there - you're assuming everything has been recorded, and those records preserved. We don't tend to preserve things we come to think of as irrelevant.

Obviously of course, given that this is a purely text medium, I won't be able topoint out any examples of this - because if it exists to be pointed out, it's not an example of "no longer exists", now is it? Ha!

...

No, wait, actually I do have an example. It's something that has been theoretically rediscovered, but for a century or more, was completely lost. Noone knew it, and noone had written it down:

How the moai of Easter Island were moved into their current positions, with only hand-power (and not even horses or oxen).

The most recent theory I've seen - proved with a hands-on test to at least be possible - was a system of ropes, and "teeter-wobble-walking" them from the quarry to their final position .... a method that jbes well with the oral traditions, which include legends of the statues "walking" (and the motion looks VERY like walking). That's probably how at least some of them were moved. But we don't know for certain.

Sure, because outsourcing is a forgotten art. Also, regulation =/= free enterprise.


Unless it is illegal. Then, it may be syndocate/individually produced (see deckmeister decks), but certainly not by major megacorps. Why should they cater to the shadowrunner/low-end competitor market? It'd only shoot themselves in the middle to long run, and unlike (most) real-life large corporations, Shadowrun megas do plan ahead for the long run apparently.

"Outsourcing" and "in-house" are mutually exclusive.


It's only illegal for the people who can't afford the license.

(Which might entail registering your DNA and EEG signature, then providing a bio sample as a Ritual Link, along with a stupendous pile of cash that only a B-corp or above could even contemplate spending ...)

How much does it cost, huh? Honestly, it can't cost all that much, since a 'deck is still a piece of electronics hardware. Again, let's look at comparable commlinks: a Response module of 6 costs 8,000 , and a Signal device rating of 6 costs 3,000, as well the System and Firewalls at that rating. So, 17 grand basically, for a functional out-of-the-box R6 hacking deck just ready have programs installed.

That's not "best of the best," mind you, that's "best of consumer grade shit." It's not like filling your offices with the computers James Cameron used to make Avatar, it's filling your offices with top-of-the-line consumer grade Apples. Or, in this case, buying only a few of them, since you're giving them to your Spiders, and these are people on whom literally everything you do is dependent.

Are you really going to cheap out and get them the computational equivalent of an iPad to do their job on? A talented graphic designer might be able to make fantastic art on an iPad, but they're not gonna be happy about it. But this isn't graphics design we're talking about, it's security. so it would be more like running your firewall on a computer running Windows 98. Do you really want to entrust your security to an old POS box running Windows 98? Yeah, I don't think so.

There will not be a "legitimate" market for what are electronics that are otherwise more illegal than guns covering the whole product range from "Babby's First Hacking Box" to the Skullfucker Black Deck 90,000 VIP edition.



There will not be that market. Companies that can't afford the deck that Ares gives to its rank-and-file cybersecurity technicians are companies that will just hire an outsider spider to log on and check their systems every now and then. That is the lesser pricepoint, because those companies are very, very poor, and they wouldn't be able to afford a spider's full-time services anyway.

Yeah, you have to reinvent things if the culture which developed them did not bother to (or could not) write them down. This is obviously not the case with computer development.
Project data might get lost, as well as chip plants or plant blueprints. But not the knowledge on related skills.

I suggest that you inform yourself about "our" current capabilities of building a Saturn V transport rocket for manned lunar missions. Hint: Some of the plans for that did get lost. The know-how for building one (particularly in production areas) has been lost as well ... and that includes at least some parts of "computer development". According to NASA engineers we'd have to totally re-invent the whole thing, because mission critical knowlegde has been lost.

As for computer development? Ever wondered why programmers of certain languages like COBOL in some areas are despreately sought after, usually turn out to be well in their 50ies or above and are paid large sums if found? Because the broader knowlegde (and experience) has been lost or is short of dying out.

Okay. How did the Egyptians raise obelisks? They had writing. They wrote on nearly every surface they could find! So, how did they do it? Not just, how do we think they might have done it, but how did they actually do it?

Or, you know, here's an easier one: how do you play Senet ...? How would Hapshetsut, or Tutankhamun, have played the game? Shouldn't something as simple as the rules for a board game, have been preserved by prolific writers like the Egyptians?



No knowledge is forever.

EDIT to add: thanks for the Saturn V reference, Cochise. That's perfect!

It's not knowledge lost, it's just that nobody wants to code that outdated shit any more. There's no problem with teaching someone willing to do that, the problem is with the lack of enough volunteers.

Just repeating your earlier statement doesn't change the fact that you obviously "missed" a part of what you quoted fomr me: According to NASA engineers we'd have to totally re-invent the whole thing, because mission critical knowlegde has been lost

That part goes directly against your own claim that the knowledge on related skills have not been lost. Matter of fact: They are lost. There's pretty much no one alive who has the related skills ... thus the very need to re-invent in the first place.



It doesn't matter why the practical knowledge and experience has degraded. All that counts is the outcome: The knowledge itself is lost.
This doesn't mean that the knowlegde cannot be re-developped, but the status quo still is: For now gone.



Trust me, there are more than enough people "willing" (due to the high incomes associated with it), but not enough teachers ...

First off: I thought that was "[...] obviously not the case with computer development" ...?

Second off: how do you know they ddn't write those things down? Perhaps the only copies did not survive, or else we simply haven't found them.

Thirdly ... the Saturn V thing? People did care to record it. However, they didn't care to preserve those records. Same with programming in COBOL: it's no longer a skill we generally consider especially useful, so we as a species and a civilization are discarding it. Because yes, progress generally builds on what happened beforehand. But, those details of "beforehand" which we no longer need, we tend to discard. Or simply forget; we (aside from a dedicated few, at most) simply don't invest in preserving that knowledge for the future.

...

Face it, Fatum: your presumption was mildly incorrect. It's not the end of the world - learn something, and move on.

They say the knowledge of the thing's design has been lost, what does it have to do with skills?

There are guys working in the field, to begin with, as well as the books they learned from.
And the problem is much more in supporting the mission-critical legacy code that only a handful people know their way around than about learning COBOL well, anyway.


And it is not the case with computer development: no skill has been irrecoverably lost for being unrecorded.

That means less people with that skill, not the absence of possibility of acquiring it.

And that of course means that nobody in 70 years will even guess to consider the things an RPG gamer today knows about. And if he tries, it won't work, because Matrix Magic!

How about you prove it instead of persuading me into accepting it in this patronizing manner?

Now, I only worked in computer engineering for the French ministry of defense. I know the amount of paperwork and checks involved for casual computers and network equipment (simply because of network security risks) and the extra layers for anything that contain classified components. The rules are written to deter attempts by foreign intelligence agencies. The first reason you won't see sensitive stuff sold for a few thousands bucks on the black market is because there are organizations willing to pay tens or hundreds thousands bucks for the thing (if not millions for real state of the art technology).

Bullets were not, as far as I understand, sensitive piece of equipment. Just regular bullets. Hence why nobody would really have cared about paperwork for those. I guess they stole ink pens too.

The 700 machines is more of a thing. Still, it happened at the end of a decade-long war that ended with one of the biggest debacle ever for the US armed forces. Kinda specific circumstances. Besides, as noted above, you have far more chances to find those machines in the storage depots of the Vietnamese, Chinese and Soviet/Russian intelligence services, than on Saigon black market. Then, if independents with the required skills managed to retro-engineer the machine, the technology acquired would still be outdated a few years later, long before the stars are right again, another machine got lost and they got the chance to acquire it.

Actually, I would rather expect cyberdeck technology available to runners to be first handed by some national and corporate intelligence services, when they no longer SOTA sensitive, to Vory, Yakuza, Triad and Cartels for large-scale deniable operations. Then, after the initial operation is discontinued, said gangs can start to distribute the now almost outdated technology on the black market. The low-rating wouldn't be actual low quality grade, just old technology. A bit like buying in 1989 from a Vietnamese fixer an Encrypt program retro-engineered from what was SOTA at the NSA in 1964.

"Skill" is always a combination of factual knowledge and experience. With regards to the Saturn V there is a factual loss of knowlegde (despite the fact that the theoretical principles are still being understood and taught) and there's next to nobody with experience remaining => The related "skills" are currently simply not availible a.k.a. "lost".



Yet you cannot simply order modern engineers to built a Saturn V ... So where's the "skill" and "knowledge"?
And even if you could order them to do so, you'd face the lack of production facilities which would have to be re-developped and the re-built as well.



It's a matter of understanding the legacy code, the underlying design patterns and so forth. So in this area it's again a question of experience beyond the most basic knowlegde about language syntax.



Nobody claimed that the loss was "irrecoverably" (at least in the current situation). It more a question of necessity and desire.



~hmm~ I don't quite understand what your asking here from me or rather _PAX_. It's not up to me to prove anything beyond the point that your claims are somewhat faulty. I made a very explicit reference to lost knowledge and the resulting skill during modern times that you - for reasons unkonw to me - don't want to accept. It's not my business to provide a different theory and then proving it. My "job" here was, to test your assumption and by bringing up one example that goes against your theory ... I have fulfilled my "duty".

"Building Saturn-Vs" is not a skill. "Designing and building heavy rockets" is. And it is not lost. Sure, thanks to the blueprints of the particular model being lost, restoring them would require time and money - but it's not out of the realm of possible somehow (which proves the skill is still around). If the exact same blueprints are restored, and a rocket built according to them, it will still fly just like Saturn-Vs did.

The catch is in combination of highly critical code that must be supported in an extremely orderly manner and that code being sensitive enough for very little people knowing about it. Learning COBOL per se has little to do with it.

If you read up there in the thread what this discussion is actually about, you'll notice that the point I'm arguing with is that in 70 years people will lose enough computer knowledge to not only fail to know the answers to their questions in specific areas, but actually to the point of failing to be able to ask those question to begin with. To go with Saturn-V analogy, since people have developed such a nice space elevator for delivering stuff to lower orbit, building a rocket when they decide to fly to the Moon will be impossible.


Please reread the quote: I was not replying to you.

Stupid Tag-restriction ~sigh ~


Sure as hell "building a Saturn V" is a skill. It's even the simplest form of what you call the relevant "skill".

And it is not lost. Sure, thanks to the blueprints of the particular model being lost, restoring them would require time and money - but it's not out of the realm of possible somehow (which proves the skill is still around). If the exact same blueprints are restored, and a rocket built according to them, it will still fly just like Saturn-Vs did.

The fun part being: It's not the blueprints that are lacking (actually most of them are still availible). It's more about production technologies and facilities. It's also about understanding the blueprints in question. And no, the possibility to re-aquire the "skill" does not prove that it is still around. I have the very profound feeling that you're using a very different (and wromg) definition for "skill" and to a certain extend "knowledge" as well.

The catch is in combination of highly critical code that must be supported in an extremely orderly manner and that code being sensitive enough for very little people knowing about it.

The parts of code I was referening to isn't necessarily "highly critical" beyond the point that a re-design with more current systems is just too cost intensive and most certainly the parts I'm talking about are not "sensitive" to an extend that you'd need or want to have as few people knowing about it as possible.

Learning COBOL per se has little to do with it.

That's the part where I purposley remarked that "skill" is always a combination of knowledge and experience. Oh and for the record: I do happen to know more than enough software developpers that have been brought up under the "object oriented" paradigm and show serious problems whenever they have to deal with code that was developped under older coding styles. So I doubt that "learing COBOL" per se isn't also part of the issue.

If you read up there in the thread what this discussion is actually about,

I suggest that you refrain from further assertions as to what I have read, noticedd or understood, because all you'll achive with something like that: Open this whole thing up to a stupid flame war ... particularly when you're the one who "missed" parts of what others have and have not written.



Nowhere did I question that particular argument about "stupidity in design" when it comes to the information about the new MATRIX we have been provided so far.
I'm totally with you that this has a major "bullocks" factor, but that doesn't prevent me from telling you that your own PoV is flawed as well.

To go with Saturn-V analogy, since people have developed such a nice space elevator for delivering stuff to lower orbit, building a rocket when they decide to fly to the Moon will be impossible.

That's what you get for using absolute wordings when dealing with stuff that is very relative to begin with. While I'm totally with you that some of the stuff that quite obviously is going to become the new MATRIX standard is pretty much "FUBAR"ed, I can also say, that under the assumption that mankind really developped a "space elevator" the building of a lunar mission rocket would become "impossible" on a pratical level regardless of them being still viable on a strickly theoretical level (even without setbacks comparable to the stuff concering Saturn Vs).

Please reread the quote: I was not replying to you.


Just do the same with mine
That "or rather _PAX_" isn't in there just for fun.

The rest is arguing technicalities, imo.

Oftentimes, Fatum, the technicalities are the most important/compelling aspects of an argument.

Yes, but this is a thread on Shadowrun V, not Saturn V.

Sure you can. They just make an Extended Aeronautics Mechanics (Rocketry) + Logic Test with a penalty for working from memory, tools, and working conditions. =i)

It shouldn't come as a surprise that we're arguing "technicalities" when dealing with a very technical issue named "MATRIX"

Yes, but this is a thread on Shadowrun V, not Saturn V.

And repeating yourself - again - doesn't further this conversation. Sorry, while the opinion part of your argument is okay (new MATRIX not being logical), your arguments (about not occuring knowlegde losses) are still flawed to a certain extend. So while it's a Shadowrun V discussion, the Saturn V comparison is still valid and icronically even fitting due to the involved number.

Well, here's one ... build an ancient thing using the correct measurements. Like, for instance, the cubit. We think we know how long soem cubits were, in some areas, but not in others. "Make a 1-cubit long measuring stick, based on ancient Hebrew measures" is, currently, an impossible task. It's kinda written down, the people who invented it are still around, but nobody knows how long that particular cubit was, nor are there examples of it still around.

Knowledge can, and does, vanish.

We're better at retaining these things now, but not flawless. A good war generates collateral damage and looting, religious tensions are often involved, and museums are almost *always* targeted ... destroy the other religion, smash their history, or just break in and look for gold, silver, and other valuables.

There're cryptographical codes that have never been boroken due to the key no longer existing, while chemicals have vanished from history ... see the discussions about Greek Fire, for instance.

Knowledge can, has, and will again, vanish.

(What the heck lead to this side-track, anyway?)

I believe I was pretty clear that there is nothing there to discuss any further. You think skills to also include knowledge, experience and production capabilities, in addition to competences and understandings, and you don't like my opinion that skills in computing can't be lost. Fine by me, it's marginally related to the thread's topic anyway.

The claim that it's totally normal for the new Matrix not to possess the capabilities of the WMI Matrix or the modern-day computing, and that modern-day capabilities should not be used as a guideline for what Matrix should be able to do.

LOL Oooooooooooooooooooooooook buddy. You just keep tellin' your self that. Nothing has changed in the foundations of computer science at all since the 70s! LOL Maybe in Russia brother.

So, do Turing machines work differently now?

Computers work differently now.

Is binary logic different? NVM or RAM are built around completely different principles - like, they're not NVM and RAM any more? Network data transmission principles have changed? Modern machines do not have a keyboard for input and a screen for output? Execution sequence works completely differently, and you have to keep that in mind constantly? What?