Roger that.....

I'm curious how much of the world you could track if you told YKK to implant RFID (or eqv.) in every product they make.

Actually, I see it more like the guy in the Mexican wrestler mask wearing a sandwich board who stands in the median of a busy street advertising a local Mexican restaurant (This is quite possibly the worst job in the city in summer), although it's just a slightly twisted take on your example. One of the things I think should be clarified is that you still have to take the menu from them, same as you would IRL or in SR pre-AR.

Amen to that, except for still shopping there. I'll stop myself before I go off on a tangent about how despise and loath Wal-mart.

Name, and perhaps one more aspect: bizzaro tech *shrug*

The description of what a tech** sees is close to what i expected (as posted in a thread here a while back), but they haven't touched yet on attacking devices, devices fighting back, or cracking into someone's PAN.

BTW sapphire_wyvern i did talk there about how hardwire isn't a huge security advantage, although i could see it having limited applications. Where there is lots of cash to throw after an extra bit of security, in a newer building that is built and prewired for it's current use, where there is limited or no mobile devices, and the system is physically issolated from the Matrix with no communication lines in or out.

I agree this whole idea could get messy if the developers artifically force all old-style cyberware to disappear. But i could see the corps mostly controlling cyberware production, and pushing the stuff that has wireless connectivity to be the norm. The old-style cyberware you come across is then either lower quality (hello Mr. SOTA) or is terribly expensive because it is custom made and the corps don't want it out there (except when it is under their thumb and working directly for them).

Coupled with some advantages of a wireless system, the pervasiveness of wireless capable cyberware could be somewhat natural in many classes of cyberware. Advantages like the SR3 palm/weapon induction pads, or linking all your headware with external devices without having to cut in router hardware. If your cyberspurs are controlled by your PAN, once you had the commlink and the cyber legs in the cyberspurs could be essense free since you don't need a DNI. Downsides yup, but if there are suitable defenses it could be a reasonable trade-off to go either way.

In any event i don't expect many mages signing on for 'ware commlinks (bad name choice, they share little with previous SR "commlinks" other than they communicate over radio frequency). Perhaps HUD goggles, but those would be relatively low security risks.

I expect that even luddite characters are going to be within the reach of a tech. Indirect attacks lauched by controlling the devices in the environment around the luddite target. So your team would do well to have a tech on board unless the run is going to take place in the woods with the only vehicles, gear, and such around being luddite level.


**I'm beginning to like the name "tech". Short, concise, doesn't have the same level of goober baggage of "technomancer" or "hacker". The people that like "technomancer" could even delude themselves into thinking it's a shortened version on that.

ok the menu idea wasn’t the best. the catalogue of a store that has customers on eth other side of the world would be more correct.

The way system is being escribed is that you remain in full position of your meat senses and have an overlay of the information added by AROs within your line of sight. Let’s say I am in the renraku arcology mall looking at the tridio sets there. I look at them and an ARO pops up on each one to give me information on what I am considering buying. I decide I want to compare the prices of the novatech models. I cant access the AROs because I cant see them, I cant likely even get a direct signal to a novatech store. How do I now access that information?

In SR3 I would have had to sit down at a terminal and access the matrix, ether in tortoise mode or using a RAS override, the pargam for matrix 2 suggests that people clapped out with a RAS override is a thing of the past but throwing a non localised matrix view on your field of vision would be extremely disorientating, my question is how this is done.

Also are we to lose all the total immersion matrix sites running everything from educational simulators to coffee shops? These places had no logical physical location so they will have a great deal of difficulty interfacing with an ARO or augmented reality sweet.

As to the treatment of those that can not or choose not to get a full PAN I agree. But I worry that the rules will state that everybody is connected or at least fail to mention that there are people that are not connected and thus the hacker tricks don’t work on them.

Runners could even fall into this category, they are being treated as badly as sines as you said, remember many runners have always been sinless. They will at least want to be able to turn off there devises to avoid there location being triangulated (a trivial operation given the number of receivers around the place.

We need rules for the absence of these devises on PCs and NPCs, that was my only point.

One group of purists will be tolerated, the awakened, as long as implants cause magic loss (and I will be most disappointed if this is not the case) and magicians remain an in demand commodity there refusing to have ANY cyber or bio ware will e tolerated if not encouraged by corporate power structures, they will still have to ware the non implanted versions but they will use non implanted versions of the parts that are normally implanted (with a commiserate lack of performance). For example, a display link would be common ware so you can have the AROs displayed directly within your field of vision. A corporate mage could get a set of glasses that incorporates a heads up display that will show him the AROs but because the glasses may not be quite strait he suffers -1 pool for perception tests. Items such as those glasses should be included in the equipment listing in the main book (this is only an example based on many potentially erroneous assumptions but I think it makes my point)

Other items I would like to see include a external comlink assessed threw an old style data jack, data encryption that is reliable over the week to month time frame (military grade encryption being reliable over the year to decade timeframe), smartguns that still use wires (I don’t want a cheep jamer stuffing up my interface, or a hacker emptying my clip while my gun is in its holster)

The statement of a warless device in your clothing makes little sense. What dose it do exactly and why would I pay for 30 electronic units instead of 30 sets of clothing with a pocket that will fit my single device that dose those things.

Edward

It does advertising, so you can afford the uber-cool clothes with programmable patterns (in exchange for half a square foot of advertising space on your back). Now, the advertisments can dynamically change depending on where you are. Walk into a mall, and your back will display an ad for the sale on at the office furniture store across the way.

It also does style-avoidance. Are you showing up to a party and don't want to be wearing the same dress as someone else? No problem! Use your PAN to set your range of allowable styles, and it will automatically shift you to a pattern and color that guarantees that you will make your own, individualized impression.

And it keeps track of ownership. Did you put down your jacket and can't remember where it went? No problem! Just follow the AR arrows to it.

There might be still be the zonked out mode. Sort of a full immersion mode vs. ARO. In many ways a similar difference as between astral projection and astral perception. However that is pure speculation as i don't think there are any offical comments or playtester hints pointing to the existance of such a mode.

EDIT: That mode might be limited to those with more invasive cyberware implants and, perhaps, technomancers without the special cyberware. After all it would be really tough to have full immersion with just pair of goggles.

Remember that SR3 had retinal projection systems and such that overlaid data in your field of vision. That's how Smartlink systems work.

There might be perception modifiers that the GM can apply in particularly hairy environments. As well if your PAN is cracked into the attacker might be able to purposely obscure your vision with bogus graphics. Remember that in SR3 astral perception applies a +2 TN modifier across the board. They might handle perception modifiers the same under AR as under astral perception (however that is modeled in SR4).

And image/data displays.

(Which basically goes back to Neuromancer where Wintermute hijacks Molly's clock implant and uses it to display alphanumerical messages in her eye.)

Or so they can track their kids.

Screw that worthless piece of junk. SR's had the Whitelaw sunglasses with the HUD in them for years (since NAGRL, but referenced in Seattle).

Untill someone hacks into your clothing and overlays the full body nude they snagged off of the RF Telecom that is in you bathroom.



I dunno, I have a hard time seeing this as 'Coming to Be.' I say hard, and not impossible becuase who knows what'll happen in the next 50 years. *shrug*

Right now RFID, cookies, etc are all under close scrutiny by consumers and consumer advocacy groups.

And what they don't know won't hurt them line won't work at all - everyone's gonna know something is up. This isn't something that can just be hidden away.

Personally, I'm leaning towards wireless networking (pronounced 'WEE-nee', not 'wine').

You're assuming that everything in the PAN contains an active transmitter. Most likely, 99% of your PAN-aware objects are going to be passive, containing the 2070 equivalent of modern day RFID tags (as Eldritch aluded to earlier).

RFID tags are tiny, unpowered, non-volatile data stores. They are completely inert until they pass through an RFID scanner. The scanner's low-power EM field gives them just enough energy to broadcast their data. Once they're out of the field, they go inert again.

So your PAN would most likely be comprised of, say, 25 RFID tags, powered by a scanner in your commlink, rather than 25 RF transmitters constantly bleating out their data. Turn off your commlink, and you effectively disappear. That is, until you pass through the active scanner located in the entrance of a mall bookstore, for example.

Or, you could take the time to rip out the tags from every bit of gear you own.

Just a guess.

Who, me?

I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend to be one of those deaf mutes or should I?

Agreed. It's a local nowawadays term, doesn't render well in a cyberpunk/sf game.

Stop saying that word.

The line of "just not getting it" and having no idea what CyberGeneration is... Is apparently much, much wider...