I explained it earlier. You no longer connect, you access the data layer. It's the resultant emergent phenomenon of a mesh network that has gotten so large that it defies any conventional explanation, much like consciousness is the emergent phenomenon of a sufficiently complex neural network.

You're looking at it as a classical model of a computer wanting information, querying the location of that information, and asking all intervening devices to kindly route that information. I'm saying that the information is in fact distributed throughout space, and because there's so much more of it than you could measure in bytes (remember megapulses) devices have to get their answers out of the information soup that surrounds them by flashing out a signal (like a neuron) and then converting the billion information flashbacks it receives into something interprable by the user. It's very fuzzy, and not discrete.

Okay, having read over the thread on the SR boards where KarmaInferno lists all the bonuses...I have only one question. What. The. Fuck. Goddamnit you guys, I was just coming around to the idea...

@ StealthSigma
It is only best guess from me now. But it seems the matrix was adopted to be similar to the astral space. So whenever you activat an data exchange you get a vulnerability from the matrix. Like every spell is vulnerable from the astral space and if you go dual natured you yourself can become a target.

So as a matter of fact cyberware now funktion kind of like magic. It can be turned of from the matrix like spells can be turned off from the astral. But in both cases neither foci nor ware can be destroyed. The distinction is, that ware gets the advantage to give some boni, without the need to open up to the matrix.

I like that in general, because it is (in my opinion) really streamlining the rules and including hacker in the game rather than forcing them to play their own.

EDIT: Fixed that for you.

Heheheh. Well, if it's any consolation, I don't think ill of you for attacking the merits of the analogy as baseless and ridiculous, rather than attempting to explain why the the analogy is bad.

Honestly, if I were in your position, I'd probably do the same.

...but then again, I'd also try to avoid your position. Because I'd have a hard time explaining why the fundamental utility of an abacus is different than the fundamental utility of a calculator when, at the physical layer, it's all pretty much the same. Except, oh yeah, one does it through manual physical labor, and the other does it by varying levels of voltage through solid state transistors, without room for human error, and arrives the massively complex computations at miniscule fractions of the time.

...Hey, wait a second! That's kind of like how being attached to the Matrix brings with it all the resources of matrix attachment! And sidesteps the limitations of local resources. Because you can, like, use the distributed network of transistors to answer your math questions for you, instead of relying on the physical impulses of your little finger.

Yikes. Yeah, you're in a tough spot. Best stick with condescending one-liners.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Aegis, some of the bonuses DO NOT MAKE SENSE. Why should 'open/close x' commands have anything to fucking do with the goddamn Matrix of increased computing power?

Before that question can be answered, you have to first come to grips with the fact that Matrix3.0 is so awesome that just connecting to it makes you a super human by comparison to your ludite friends who refuse connectivity.

Imagine life before electricity.

Now imagine life in 2013.

When you can grok the difference, you can start answering questions about bonuses.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

First off. No. We know this to not be true, because open/close commands didn't require the awesomeness of the Matrix prior to 2075. In fact, that analogy is flawed on a basic level. If I wake up tomorrow and find myself to be fucking Heracles, no superpower gained makes opening a door or taking a shit a fundamentally different action that it did when I wasn't fucking Heracles.

Or your analygy sucks.

The problem is outside a few cases in the given list most of these things would not require complex calucluations that would need either an abacus or a calculator. Saying look more processing power wih this here calculator is meaningless when it would be quicker to add 2+2 in your mind. Sending a open command a simple on/off command does not need processing power from the combined computing of the matrix, in fact trying to use it would be slower.

Sounds like, in 2075, you'll be a great candidate for an Amish enclave, hehe!



Nah. There's lots of ways to waste processing power. Like, what if you have MASSIVE overhead in your authentication protocol? Bingo. Suddenly distributed computing dramatically increases even stupidly simple actions like Open/Close. Magic.

Want to see me waste even more processing power?

Now you're using Challenge Response Reverse Challenge Reverse Response Random Seed Authenticate.

Ouch!

Better get that $#&@ online, son.

Anyway. Don't confuse the above with me trying to defend the stuff your nitpicking. I'm really not. I don't disagree with you that some of it is silly. I'm just saying you need to get your head in the right place, before you can answer these questions. Part of that is understanding how incredible this new Matrix is supposed to be.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Where to even start? First off, even trying to make that connection suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of how the technology you were discussing actually works as the processing power and capability of modern computer applications work and an abacus are utterly incomparable beyond anything other than "do math over a period of time". On the other hand, Goodle's ability to process math based on a properly worded query is almost negligibly superior to a properly programmed application. In fact, the only advantage Google has is slightly higher universality. However, that ability is almost unimportant, as the devices being discussed rarely need that sort of universality, since they are typically devices with a dedicated purpose.

Since you seem to have a fairly solid grasp of technology, I can only believe that instead, you just have a fundamental lack of understanding of how being funny or clever works.

Watch your tone folks.

Mmmm. So... Step Two is Ad hominem?

I'm not saying I disprove of your methods. I just don't think they make you correct.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Uh huh, so you really believe that you can wire two isolated devices together and call it the matrix?


Yep, everybody celebrated MRSI and submersible aircraft carriers...or bloodzilla before that, or...


In other words, you define everybody who dislikes online boni in concept or implementation as dishonest and inconsistent. Because you believe the stuff is "a good thing no matter how silly the boni in particular are", which obviously must have been the mindset of the designers, too: "Screw logic and internal consistency, we want it and don't care how silly it makes the game"


And before you continue preaching your newfound faith in the matrix as the new astral, please answer my question from upthread: How are you going to account for the completely different topologies or RL and matrix representations?

What's the ad hominem? You made a bad analogy. I didn't force you to do that. If you look worse for the exchange, the damage is entirely self-inflicted. /shrug

I mean, I should be offended that you believe me to be so stupid as to think that your analogy was even remotely valid. You are having a lot of trouble in these threads with how you talk to people, your tone, and the "jokes" you gravely mistake for being funny. Don't think I haven't noticed.

Aegis, saying 'The new Matrix is so incredible that even taking a shit while you're connected to you makes you shit faster and harder' is a mysterious answer. It doesn't explain anything, any more than saying 'Wizards did it.' In SR, one thing that it's always had, in varying degrees, has been that most shit was explainable. Magic was magic, but it has certain rules and laws regarding its usage. So did tech, so did the Matrix. I can't simply accept that the Matrix is incredible without some fucking sort of explanation of how it is so, compared to the previous iterations of the tech.

In fact, the Matrix is an incredible emergent cloud phenomenon was already around - in fourth. With Technomancers and sprites, (Garbage code lolwut) yet it didn't fundamentally change how the shit works. It's an infonet with distributed processing, why the fuck does it make the act of opening a door better? Kruger may be a bit coarse in his replies, but your answers are confusing at best, because they don't actually explain anything.

Fourth was awful, though.

I can't believe I'm about to reference the OSI stack. The data layer, as you term it, is equivalent to layers 6-7 (Presentation, Application) of the OSI model with MAYBE layer 4-5 included (Transport, Session). Layers 1-3 (Physical, Data Link, Network) are what the topology primarily consists of and that defines how the network is structured. In the similar but different TCIP/IP model you have four layers Link, Internet, Transport, and Application. Link provides for connection devices within a single network while Internet provides for connecting together networks. Transport governs how data gets from point A to point B while Application governs the user interface.

There are important tools to recognize because you're getting hung up over the user interface. The core of the modern day Internet is a function of Layers 1-3 of the OSI model and the Link and Internet layers of the TCP/IP model. How the Internet is used is governed by the higher layers, whether this be a web browser to access a HTML page, a FTP website to share files, or connecting to your favorite online multiplayer game. How all of those things are done has changed with the Matrix but the underlying network has not. The core of the Matrix is also still rooted in is the same classical architecture and topology that we currently use and that is how it has been described in the rulebook. That is why we can use modern day examples as analogies... only the user interface has changed.

That exploded several times and there's something new.

So, just so I'm clear, you want a concrete explanation of technology that doesn't exist today, and operates under fundamentally different architecture (No network architecture, implicitly trusted distributed computing, etc), and when people give you abstract analogies to help your brain grok the abstract concept that is being laid out, you reject them because they are not concrete?

You need to extrapolate from the examples that there is a fundamental difference between online, matrix access, and offline, non-matrix access. And the difference is so extreme as to be compared to a candle vs. a floodlight.

It cannot be explained concretely in modern terms because no such thing exists in modern terms. It can only be explained in abstract terms. Abstract concepts is an essential part of understanding complex topics. This is complex. And fake. Therefore, can only be explained abstractly.



The problem is that you can't explain the matrix that the authors are envisioning without hand waving some of the details.

For instance, let's talk for a moment about what they're proposing with distributed computing. It's implemented in a protocol that implicitly trusts interconnected devices, shares processing freely, and yet is somehow devoid of massive distributed denial of service through exhausted resources, and somehow maintains anonymity. Additionally, this exists in a world with near instantaneous cryptographic brute forcing. That ignores modern gateway/perimeter architecture.

I think that if you're trying to figure out the new Matrix, there are just some HUGE HURDLES that you need to get over that are much more significant than whether or not something works better when its connected to the matrix. It's like, once you've gotten to that point, why would you nitpick little details like that? And if you just fundamentally missed the important part about how technology works to notice that those things matter, then why the heck would you even attempt to build a case for why things shouldn't work a certain way. (Hint: You'll have a hard time.)

Is that better?

Truly, I'm not being condescending. I'm just pointing out that the best answer is: The New Matrix Rules. Plug into it. Enjoy it's awesomeness. It makes life better.

How? Magi---Errr... Technology.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Might as well be asking how a warp drive works compared to a car engine.

Are spells more vulnerable from astral space than from the physical plane? Can you beat them down again in astral combat? I would love that.

...I just did. Informational network created through ad-hoc mesh connections and distributed processing. (Why do you think your toaster has a processor in it?)



Except I'm not trying to figure out how it works on real world terms - I'm trying to figure out how it works on Shadowrun terms. Consistent technobabble, in other words, on a level that we can abstract and go, 'Hey, I can imagine this.'



That's exactly why I can build a case for why shit shouldn't work a certain way. Because if I wanted to Magical Tea Party a game with a magical internet and cyberware, I don't need a fucking rulebook or setting. I'll just make shit up. I buy books with real money specifically because I expect to find shit better than I can do by saying 'I made it up, MAGIC!' The current wireless shit, as it's being explained, falls horribly short of that test.

I'm not trying to be coarse. I just don't appreciate somebody being a blatant smartass, and I'll be here to throw the BS flag.

It's even less appreciated when it's someone who has made a career over the last few days of making bad analogies and being smarmy about subjects he doesn't fully understand.

These kinds of topics are ridiculously complicated because there's always a disparity between what technology can do, and how it will actually be used. Between what technology is capable of, and how much of that capability will be adopted. When you look at how the Wireless Matrix and this ludicrous "Always On" idea would interact in a "real world", you're not just asking "What can the technology do". Ask Sony how well Betamax sold. Minidisc players. There's a reason why engineers don't get to run the businesses they are making products for. Because customers and end users don't actually care about what the technology is capable of, but instead how it will be used.

Shadowrun is a game in a world filled with corporations. What do all of those corporations do? They sell products. They aren't going to sell products if they make products that people wouldn't use. That's the first level of complexity in these discussions. Much about the "always on" nature of Shadowrun bucks most conventional wisdom on the kinds of products that catch on. We'll forgive them. They aren't designing a futuristic market simulator. So despite the fact that the widespread adoption of some of these invasive technologies which seem to buck common human behavioral norms, some parts of modern Shadowrun just get lumped into the "Okay, sure" section.

The other thing Shadowrun is filled with are ingenious people who excel at bucking the system, and the game's entire point is that those people actually succeed at doing it. If they didn't a Shadowrunner's life would be short and brutal and the game wouldn't be much fun. Or, at least character creation would need to be quicker, lol. So even if the corporations are building products nobody would use, but the universe says they do, the top end users would still be modifying them to suit their own purposes. Shadowrunners represent the elite minority, and they network with people (contacts) who are even more elite in their respective roles. If people are cracking iPhones for relatively minor upgrades in capability, and the cloud based Photoshop is already available offline (lol), and other communities are developing entire open source operating systems for more or less free, it takes a lot to assume that the same community of underground hackers and codeslingers wouldn't be doing the same things to the technology available in Shadowrun.

Remember, what is possible is only rarely attached to what is probable. For every thing that you can sell, you have to have people who want to buy it and use it. And then you'll always have the improvers who are going to take your technology and make it "better". Because what gets sold to the public isn't always the best product, but instead the most marketable one. If you are willing to hand-wave these things in your game because you don't understand them, or even if you just plain don't care and can't be bothered to modify your game, I won't fault you for it. People play games for fun, and I won't tell you how to do that. But if you're going to argue it with me, best be properly equipped with the relevant knowledge. Like I've said many times, you won't find me arguing the specifics of bridge building because I only have the most baseline understanding of structural dynamics. But I do know computers, networking, marketing, and consumer behavior (as well as a host of background concepts to those like sociology, psychology and economics).

Basically, unless you're thinking about these topics from a multitude of different angles (and angles that you actually understand, not just that you are aware of), there's probably something you aren't thinking of. I appreciate sarcasm and jokes. Just make sure you know where you stand and what you're talking about before you start slinging it around. If you use sarcasm with somebody like me, you'd best be standing behind an authoritative voice. Otherwise, perhaps that's not the best method of attack.

@JamesX5
You always could, as far as I know. At least when they were sustained with foci. Actually you needed counterspelling to do so.

The point is, that if I am right I like the idea of the matrix beeing also an layer of the world like the astral world. At that point the mundane would also have something they could call their own.

@ Kruger
The major issue is, that we have nothing even close to the properties of the matrix. Cybercombat alone totally breaks the internet analogy.
That means that you can't deduct much about technology making use of the matrix and you can't even get into what kind of information the matrix holds.

To validate your argument the matrix would need to be cut back drastically. It would at the most an simulated surrounding with no correspondance to the actual processes.

It is the same if you try to apply our marketing dynmacis to race of mages, even if they are just able to do simple stuff like summoning food, fire, teleporting, healing etc.

Or people who do not age, hunger or get sick.
It starts with simple things: If you got cheap, clean energy, energy efficiency is not an issue but every technology will try to make use of this kind of energy. Such a civilisation might never use fossil fuels, if their "energy source" releases electricity. If their energy production is by default quite large they will mostly search for ways to store electrical energy.

Now ask those people why they do not use a combustion engine. Thats what you are doing here.

Irion, that was true for Fourth Edition as well.

How it works:

1) The Matrix is everywhere.
2) Any sufficiently complex computer network, including internal cyberware connections, interacts with it.

Why?

Because that's the sort of thing that happens in science fiction. Science, you know, fiction.

If this was a brand new game, without about 30 years of history behind it, I'd buy it. But not since we already have 30 years of history.

oh right, of course.

the new matrix, designed to be ultra secure and completely corp-controlled, under the highest level of lockdown ever, is also designed to anonymously provide computing power to whoever wants it without bothering to ask what it's for or restricting it from certain people.

and also, somehow, sending information back and forth between thousands of different devices speeds it all up. because, having tightened up security everywhere, not only has that somehow made everything faster instead of slower, it has actually made it so fast that the signals travel backwards through time.

also, the megacorporations are totally okay with their own security forces being completely dependant on exposing themselves to losing every advantage they have, as is every military, security, paramilitary, criminal, and security-conscious organization in the whole world, because this new matrix is just so awesome that it chops out the portion of the brain that makes rational decisions like "hey, we should just provide more computing power *internally* if this device needs it to function, because being self-contained is an important part of the function of this device"

it's so obvious...

[/sarcasm]

it doesn't make sense for the technology, which has never been so far beyond our comprehension as to be made of pure handwavium, to suddenly become so.
it doesn't make sense for the setting, which is full of paranoia and people frantically trying to secure everything, to allow massive vulnerabilities to be essential if they want their stuff to work to full potential.
it doesn't make sense for the setting, which has repeatedly suffered from massive matrix disasters, to happily rush blindly towards a matrix that freely lets everyone use computing power from anywhere with no information recorded and no questions asked about what it's being used for.

if this was some new RPG, with a new setting, sure, they could do whatever the hell they want. they can make the matrix magical. but it isn't a new setting. this is shadowrun. they get the advantage of a recognized setting that people like, and they get the drawbacks too: if you do something stupid with the setting that is completely obvious to the people who love it, there will not be a good response. if there is an actual legitimate reason why sending "a single bit of data to be distributed across every single device within a kilometer before being sent 6 inches away from where the bit was first sent from could somehow be faster than just sending it those 6 inches in the first place, i'd be fine. but there is absolutely nothing to explain that.

we have the setting as it existed. it made sense. we could relate to it. none of the technology was something so far beyond our comprehension that we couldn't imagine it before. certainly, it was beyond our technical means of creating it in many cases, but it has never been something where it was "sufficiently advanced technology" as to be indistinguishable from magic.

and if it suddenly became so, i want a damned good explanation. not just some handwaving and lame "well maybe it's this" excuses.

We're already down that rabbit hole. Wireless Matrix didn't fit in with the SR3 to SR4 transition and essentially rewrote the game universe. This is the logical path for a transhumanist technological singularity style setting, so here we are.

Fine, keep ignoring what is written about it in the rulebook.

You keep saying that, but is fundamentally not true. SOTA 2064, System Crash, and previous shit about NeoNet and otaku have all been around since at least 2nd (though I'm not great on pre-SR3 stuff.) And the setting is not transhumanist tech singularity - play Eclipse Phase for that. This is Shadowrun - and the setting is cyberpunk. Always has been, always will be.

You mean that time the matrix exploded and killed a bunch of people and left other people with magical wireless brains and now everything is wireless and the matrix is everywhere and everyone uses it for everything?

Otaku needed datajacks, they just didn't need cyberdecks. Technomancers have wireless brains.

EDIT: Ninja'd.

Your point being? The same shit otaku's used - complex forms, sprites, the Resonance - that shit all existed with otakus, except now they didn't even need a datajack. Not really a major shift.

I mean the part where the rulebook describes how the Matrix is physically laid out.

You're being intention obtuse and completely ignoring it or you're really just not getting it and believing that all the supernatural BS, which doesn't matter, somehow completely ignores topology.

Okay, sure. I mentioned Authentication Protocols in passing. That may be a good place to start. Let's hand wave, for a moment, instant Cryptographic compromise and assume that for some reason our modern understanding of brute force decryption occurs in O(1) time or O(Log(N)) time, or something other than a REALLY, REALLY long time. Lets assume that for some reason, there exists undefined threats which can royally screw you up without very, very strong authentication.

In the real world, very strong authentication has a number of features I'm not going to outline for you, but at a minimum we're going to need some strong mathematical component. Let's pretend that because brute force decryption is so powerful, that the underlying math for strong authentication is MASSIVE.

Simply by that little possible explanation, we can invent a reason why an object can act one way while locally processing, and another way with teh p0wahZ(!) of teh netz. Suddenly, the threat of non-authenticated access to a device is so severe (Incidentialy, in the real world, authentication is a HUGE deal) that unauthenticated access simply can't be allowed. Even with direct connections. So you have two choices:

1) Connect to the Matrix and allow the computations necessary for your authentication protocol to be distributed, and reap the benefits of responsive gear or...

2) Rely on your local processing to snail its way through the math. Your choice.

Is that a decent start?



Cool, dude. I'm not ninja, I just play one on TV. Sorry we couldn't connect. Good luck on your next Comptia certification.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

At least we're in agreement that Shadowrun died back with SR4, and what we have now is the Asylum Films version, Shadowbiz. It looks kinda familiar to Shadowrun, and based on similar ideas, but it stars Eddie Furlong and Geri Halliwell instead of The Rock and Olivia Wilde. Sure, the special effects are a little off, and the writing isn't so good, but hey. It was streaming free on Netflix and we had some time to kill.

Or you can assume instead that I also have some knowledge of information science. In SR, P=NP, and this is proven, verified fact. So yes, encryption is useless, because everyone can just plug in the algorithm and blammy.

And this just might be why nobody seems to like you or respect your ideas.

Just a thought.

No, you're trying to treat it as the sum of its parts rather than the emergent phenomenon that it is. You're also complaining that the rules don't follow your insufficient explanation of the system, and ignoring that wireless brain people are completely impossible anyway. Ergo, if you allow for Technomancers as appropriate for the setting, you have to conclude that the matrix isn't just the computers, but something else concurrent with the computer network.

No, I can't, because I believed in magical hacking people since at least third edition. What you seem to not be grasping is not that its impossible in real life, its impossible in Shadowrun.

No they didn't. Otaku are fundamentally different from Technomancers.

So there's a start. If our modern versions of encryption (Elliptic Curve, Prime Factorization, etc, etc) are useless then the underlying math to develop even marginally useful encryption is...

...impressive. Probably impressive enough that you can start questioning how long it would take a local processor to slog through it, instead of distributed processors. Which makes free-action-sealing gas masks more believable, provided you're willing to accept that technobabble about risks from unauthenticated access.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Fundamentally, you say? They didn't use the Resonance, thread Complex Forms, and call sprites?

No matter how much super magical BS you slather on top. The laws of math can't be ignored. Which means, that while there may be super magical BS to slather on and avoid the problem P=NP being true means that no non-magical means can prevent the breaking of cryptography.

No it is not. It is, like Epicedion pointed out, the logical next step.
I like it from a gamist point of view, while I have to say, that I do not like it from a narrative point of view. (Which I have already pointed out).

You're right, I would question it. Were it not for the fact that they've had the technology in Shadowrun to run it through local processors for basically the last fifty years.